Ever wondered how premium firewood and innovative leadership could redefine an entire industry? Join us in this captivating episode of **Seek Go Create - The Leadership Journey** as Tim Winders sits down with Leroy Hite, the visionary behind Cutting Edge Firewood. Discover how Leroy's unique delivery system, high-standard products, and faith-driven entrepreneurship are transforming the firewood market into an unparalleled premium experience. Listen in to explore leadership, innovation, and the power of passion in shaping a groundbreaking business.
"We reinvented the firewood industry by raising the bar on quality and delivery." - Leroy Hite
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Leroy Hite is the CEO and founder of Cutting Edge Firewood, a company that has redefined the firewood industry with its premium products and innovative delivery solutions. From financing his business with personal loans and maxing out multiple credit cards, to creating a patented delivery rack that streamlined operations, Leroy's entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to quality have driven substantial growth and success. His leadership style emphasizes passion and perseverance, and his faith-based foundation guides both his personal and professional life. Leroy has also diversified his offerings to include premium cooking woods and innovative products like thermoelectric fire pits, establishing Cutting Edge Firewood as a leader in the market.
1. **Innovative Business Practices**: Discover how Cutting Edge Firewood revolutionized the firewood industry with a patented delivery system and premium product standards, leading to significant growth and a nationwide customer base.
2. **Passionate Leadership**: Learn from Leroy Hite’s leadership style that balances passion with perseverance, emphasizing the importance of taking time off for creativity and well-being, and hear his journey from unconventional financing to industry success.
3. **Faith-Driven Success**: Be inspired by how Leroy Hite's strong faith and entrepreneurial spirit guided him from working at Enterprise and Georgia Pacific to founding a thriving, disruptive business that values both quality and meaningful, analog experiences.
### Resources Mentioned:
1. **Cutting Edge Firewood Website**
- Listeners are encouraged to visit the company’s website to explore their premium firewood products, cooking wood, and new fire pit products. [Cutting Edge Firewood](https://www.cuttingedgefirewood.com)
2. **LinkedIn**
- Tim Winders invites listeners to connect with Leroy Hite on LinkedIn for more insights into his entrepreneurial journey and business innovations. [Leroy Hite on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/leroyhite)
3. **Books & Masterclass**
- "Fire Nights" book by Burke Atkerson
- A MasterClass on fire by Aaron Franklin
### Action Steps:
1. **Implement Quality Standards in Your Business**
- Just as Leroy Hite emphasizes the importance of high-quality products and services, identify areas in your business where you can elevate the quality standards to differentiate from competitors.
2. **Take Time for Rest and Reflection**
- Inspired by Hite’s commitment to taking a Sabbath or sabbatical, set aside regular time each week to disconnect from work, reflect and recharge. This can increase creativity and productivity in your personal and professional life.
3. **Innovate Your Business Processes**
- Consider innovating operational aspects of your business, similar to how Cutting Edge Firewood patented a delivery rack to streamline their process. Look for ways to make your operations safer, more efficient, and ultimately more profitable.
🔹 Unlock Your Potential Today!
1. **Innovation Drives Opportunity:**
- Leroy Hite emphasized how innovative approaches, such as the patented firewood delivery rack and concentrating on premium cooking and pizza wood, significantly streamlined operations and met customer demands, resulting in substantial business growth.
2. **Importance of Leadership Style:**
- Leroy discussed his hands-off leadership style paired with high standards, illustrating the balance between giving employees autonomy and maintaining quality. This approach helped him develop a robust leadership team and navigate the growth of his organization.
3. **Faith as a Foundation:**
- The episode highlighted Leroy's strong Christian faith, which played a crucial role in his decision-making, risk-taking, and overall business strategy. He reflected on how faith guided him through challenges and spurred the entrepreneurial spirit within him.
4. **Value of Physical and Analog Experiences:**
- Despite living in a digital age, Leroy advocates for the importance of physical connections and experiences, such as spending time around a fire. He suggests taking time off or observing a Sabbath to recharge, maintain creativity, and avoid burnout.
5. **Embracing Risk and Perseverance:**
- Leroy's journey illustrates the importance of perseverance and taking calculated risks. From maxing out credit cards and personal loans to selling his house to fund the business, Leroy's story is a testament to the courage and determination required to succeed in entrepreneurship.
00:00 Introduction and Early Financial Struggles
00:41 Meet Leroy Hite: CEO of Cutting Edge Firewood
01:26 Leroy's Journey and the Birth of Cutting Edge Firewood
02:36 A Fireside Chat with Leroy Hite
05:01 The Universal Appeal of Fire
06:14 The Disruption of the Firewood Industry
10:22 Balancing Work, Faith, and Family
20:23 Leroy's Early Years and Entrepreneurial Spirit
32:18 Personal Faith Journey
32:47 Faith in Business
33:28 Starting Cutting Edge Firewood
35:51 Challenges and Growth
41:39 Innovations in Firewood Delivery
43:19 Expanding Product Line
55:12 Leadership and Company Culture
58:59 The Future of Firewood and Fire Pits
01:04:23 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Mentioned in this episode:
Unleash Your True Leadership Potential with Tim Winders
Imagine embracing the full extent of the leadership potential you were created to fulfill. This isn't just a dream; it's a journey that begins today with Tim Winders, your mentor in transformative leadership. Through Tim's executive coaching, you'll dive into the core of what it means to be a truly influential leader – one who combines skill with vision and unwavering faith. It's about transcending conventional success, embracing your purpose, and discovering the joy in leading. If you feel called to become the leader you were always meant to be, book your free Discovery Coaching Call with Tim. This is where your transformative journey to authentic and purpose-driven leadership begins. Let's unlock the extraordinary leader within you.
I got a personal loan and maxed out seven or eight credit cards.
Leroy Hite:and honestly, that was my finance of the company for the first.
Leroy Hite:Five years was I would, during the spring and summer, I would get as many credit
Leroy Hite:cards as I could And then in the winter, when cash was good, I would pay them
Leroy Hite:off my, My score would shoot through the roof and then I would get more credit
Leroy Hite:cards, max them out in the spring and summer, pay them off the next winter.
Tim Winders:What does it take to turn a simple necessity like
Tim Winders:firewood into a premium product that enhances every fireside experience?
Tim Winders:Today on SeatGoCreate, we're excited to welcome Leroy Hite, CEO and founder
Tim Winders:of Cutting Edge Firewood, a company that has redefined the standards for
Tim Winders:firewood quality and customer service.
Tim Winders:Growing up in rural Northwest Georgia, not far from where I grew up, Leroy's
Tim Winders:early life around the woodpile and his later frustrations with subpar
Tim Winders:firewood led him to create a business that delivers nothing but firewood.
Tim Winders:The best, whether it's for a cozy winter fire or a backyard pizza party, or just
Tim Winders:enjoying a quiet moment alone, possibly with a cigar whiskey cutting edge
Tim Winders:firewood ensures every fire is perfect.
Tim Winders:Join us as we explore Leroy's journey from a young boy to man, by managing
Tim Winders:his family's wood pile to becoming the entrepreneur behind the leading firewood
Tim Winders:supplier in the industry and how his commitment to quality and customer service
Tim Winders:is lighting up lives one fire at a time.
Tim Winders:Leroy, welcome to Seat Go Create.
Leroy Hite:Thank you so much for having me.
Tim Winders:Glad you're here.
Tim Winders:And you're coming to us from my old home state, right?
Leroy Hite:All right, Georgia,
Tim Winders:What part of Georgia you in?
Leroy Hite:Metro Atlanta, Peachtree Corners specifically.
Tim Winders:Peachtree Corners.
Tim Winders:When I was at Georgia Tech, my first co op job was at a Georgia power
Tim Winders:office up in Peachtree Corners.
Tim Winders:And while I was working there, I met my beautiful bride out
Tim Winders:at Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Tim Winders:And so that place has, is near and dear to my heart.
Tim Winders:And,
Leroy Hite:say so.
Tim Winders:This is going to age me.
Tim Winders:that was almost 40 years ago.
Tim Winders:Peachtree Corners was a pastor then.
Tim Winders:No, I'm just kidding.
Leroy Hite:you're no doubt.
Leroy Hite:I'm sure it
Tim Winders:and, I'm coming to everybody from the Black Hills.
Tim Winders:We have relocated, Theo, our RV.
Tim Winders:I'm up in the Black Hills of South Dakota and enjoying that.
Tim Winders:But Leroy, let's not pretend we bumped.
Tim Winders:Let's say we're sitting on a plane and we just start chit chatting
Tim Winders:and I say, Hey, What do you do?
Tim Winders:What's your answer when someone asks you what you do?
Leroy Hite:I really have two answers, but the one I usually give
Leroy Hite:is I own a firewood company and I love to just see how they react.
Leroy Hite:And people from different parts of the country, depending on if they've heard
Leroy Hite:of us or not, usually react differently.
Leroy Hite:And, people used to act completely differently before we were
Leroy Hite:well known than they do now.
Leroy Hite:used to, I would say that and they would change the weather.
Leroy Hite:now if they've heard of us, they're like, Oh my goodness,
Leroy Hite:you're not, Those guys, are you?
Leroy Hite:so it's fun to see the difference.
Leroy Hite:and it's a lot of fun just to say I own a firewood company.
Leroy Hite:Cause if they haven't heard about us that, they have no interest,
Leroy Hite:Wow, you have all your teeth.
Leroy Hite:That's incredible.
Leroy Hite:kind of thing.
Tim Winders:a lot of people would have, if they're from certain parts of the
Tim Winders:country, there's some people that would have no thought of this, but they have
Tim Winders:the thought of old beat up pickup trucks sitting on the side of the road, with a
Tim Winders:load of firewood, pretty gnarly looking, but if you need firewood, you've got it.
Tim Winders:It's from out of me a place in Virgin, Utah, that they've got a big,
Tim Winders:pretty janky hand painted sign out front that says organic firewood and
Leroy Hite:is it spelled F I R E W O D or is it
Leroy Hite:F I R W U D?
Tim Winders:I'm pretty sure they're
Leroy Hite:For sale.
Tim Winders:and I love a good marketing.
Tim Winders:I know you've done roadside signs.
Tim Winders:We may talk about that later, but I love it.
Tim Winders:It's intriguing to me.
Tim Winders:And when you're in like RV world, they sell you like four or five sticks
Tim Winders:of firewood for, 10 or 12 bucks.
Tim Winders:it's like the margin on it
Tim Winders:is amazing, but, I let's, before we dive in, let's talk a little bit
Tim Winders:about big picture macro firewood.
Tim Winders:I mean, I've heard you talk a little bit about.
Tim Winders:What firewood leads to, I don't know
Tim Winders:that people are looking for firewood.
Tim Winders:I think they're looking for what firewood gives them.
Tim Winders:What are some of those things that they give us?
Tim Winders:And I think we're going to have a good conversation about this.
Leroy Hite:so this is a, it's the other thing I tell people if I'm
Leroy Hite:really wanting them to understand is a fire is like a beautiful sunset.
Leroy Hite:There is no one on earth that dislikes it.
Leroy Hite:It's universal.
Leroy Hite:It's unifying and it's primal.
Leroy Hite:after a stressful day, um, oh yeah, and I forgot, you can take a 95 year old
Leroy Hite:man from Ethiopia and a three year old girl from the States, they will both
Leroy Hite:sit in front of a fire and stare at it.
Leroy Hite:I actually have a, one year old, and if there's a fire in the
Leroy Hite:room, she's always looking at it.
Leroy Hite:but, after a stressful day, I can take a whiskey, sit in front of the
Leroy Hite:fire, and my stress level goes down.
Leroy Hite:I think deep thoughts.
Leroy Hite:my wife and come out the mood changes.
Leroy Hite:It's romantic.
Leroy Hite:My daughters can come out and make s'mores and memories.
Leroy Hite:They will have for a lifetime.
Leroy Hite:can, teenagers will put their phones down and talk to their parents and it
Leroy Hite:can be at the center of a wedding party.
Leroy Hite:and.
Leroy Hite:And I make incredible food with our cooking wood, whether
Leroy Hite:it's steak, pizza, or barbecue.
Leroy Hite:And, I love on one side that experience, it's all around an experience.
Leroy Hite:But then on the other side, yes, before we got into the industry standard was wood
Leroy Hite:set outside for 12 months, rot would rot.
Leroy Hite:Literally have mushrooms growing out of it.
Leroy Hite:The business strategy, the, customer service and that overall customer
Leroy Hite:experience that's so important to me.
Leroy Hite:Match the product quality of rotting wood.
Leroy Hite:I like to compare it to water partially because, I get a lot of comments like,
Leroy Hite:why would I spend that much on wood?
Leroy Hite:It literally grows on trees, which I say, why do you buy bottled water?
Leroy Hite:It literally falls from the sky and the industry was.
Leroy Hite:Um, basically, going into your backyard and getting water out of a puddle, a muddy
Leroy Hite:puddle and drinking that or using that.
Leroy Hite:And we took the industry from that level, skip getting water out of a well,
Leroy Hite:skipped, Tap water, Dasani, Aquafina, and went straight to liquid death or
Leroy Hite:whatever high end fancy smancy bottled water in a bottle, glass bottle.
Leroy Hite:Um, and so really it's, we've really come in and completely
Leroy Hite:transform the industry there.
Leroy Hite:I can't really think of another industry in the past few decades.
Leroy Hite:That was as ripe for disruption as firewood.
Tim Winders:it's, it is fascinating to me.
Tim Winders:And I want, and we're going to go through your leadership journey
Tim Winders:because I do agree from looking at things and from studying you guys,
Tim Winders:there's been a, it's one of these things where it's a disruption in an
Tim Winders:industry that probably no one knew.
Tim Winders:no, let me say it this way probably no one knew the industry existed.
Tim Winders:A lot of people didn't And so if they didn't know it existed, they didn't
Tim Winders:know It was right for disruption, but I want to stay High level before we
Tim Winders:go into the journey you've been on because I think there's power in this
Tim Winders:message When I was reading through your stuff, there's a couple of things that
Tim Winders:jumped out at me that kind of tie in with our theme that we've been really
Tim Winders:having quite a good bit at seek, go create here, the leadership journey.
Tim Winders:we've been seeing this over and over again, and that is
Tim Winders:in a highly digital world.
Tim Winders:In a fast world, in a world with so much coming at us, things that are,
Tim Winders:I'll use the word analog or things that are slower paced seem to be
Tim Winders:getting quite a bit of traction.
Tim Winders:And that's what I heard you say when you talked about fire again,
Tim Winders:let's don't talk about firewood yet.
Tim Winders:Let's talk about the fire for just a moment, because see that
Tim Winders:to me is a lifestyle product that people are yearning for.
Tim Winders:Correct.
Leroy Hite:Absolutely.
Leroy Hite:It's, and it's only going to accelerate as everything online basically becomes
Leroy Hite:fake as AI makes video and stuff.
Leroy Hite:it, people will yearn, yeah, for the analog, for the natural,
Leroy Hite:for physical experiences.
Leroy Hite:Connections with other people that aren't digital that are in person or
Leroy Hite:like around a fire and you really can't beat The only thing that comes close to
Leroy Hite:sitting around the fire with connecting people is sitting around food and
Leroy Hite:food tastes better cooked over wood.
Leroy Hite:So it's perfect.
Tim Winders:and you can
Tim Winders:do both.
Leroy Hite:it's the caveman TV.
Leroy Hite:Yeah, you can do both.
Leroy Hite:Exactly.
Leroy Hite:And it's the caveman TV.
Tim Winders:And you don't have any plans to generate or create AI fires, correct?
Tim Winders:Let's just go ahead and get that out of the way early on here.
Leroy Hite:it's funny.
Leroy Hite:So many people, and I get the, allure and, and the reason behind doing it.
Leroy Hite:People all the time might be an exaggeration, but I've had a lot of people
Leroy Hite:over the years say, you need to do a video of a fire and put it on YouTube.
Leroy Hite:That's for the hour that just loops at people.
Leroy Hite:And I'm like, no, it's nothing to do with us.
Leroy Hite:Like I'll do a video on how to start a fire, how to use our firewood.
Leroy Hite:and things like that, but I'm not, that has nothing to do with us.
Leroy Hite:so
Tim Winders:So would you consider is your leadership style,
Tim Winders:would you be like high energy?
Tim Winders:do you have hustle in your makeup at all?
Leroy Hite:is absolutely in my, makeup.
Leroy Hite:I'm not, comparing myself to some leaders that I know that are high energy.
Leroy Hite:I wouldn't say I'm high energy.
Leroy Hite:I can't, I definitely can come across more high energy than your average
Leroy Hite:person, um, and I can come across as.
Leroy Hite:optimistic, other than reality analyst.
Leroy Hite:I can, but it's, I think what people, ultimately two things that really
Leroy Hite:come through, that I think people see is the passion and the perseverance,
Leroy Hite:which kind of makes up grit really.
Leroy Hite:it is people when I talk about a beautiful fire and how it's.
Leroy Hite:Like a sunset, people hear the passion.
Leroy Hite:They feel the passion.
Leroy Hite:but then when they see my story or when they work with me, they
Leroy Hite:see the grit of just, I keep going no matter what, keep going.
Leroy Hite:no matter, what happens, giving up isn't really an option.
Tim Winders:The re, the reason I asked that question, one of the things
Tim Winders:that I do, and we talk about it quite a bit here, are how to balance And
Tim Winders:balance isn't even the right word.
Tim Winders:Let's say integrate.
Tim Winders:How to integrate, our faith, family, all that we really are, that we say sometimes
Tim Winders:are important to us, but maybe it doesn't
Tim Winders:line up on our calendars and things like that.
Tim Winders:And what I found, I briefly told you a little bit about my story before we
Tim Winders:hit record, but what I found with me is
Tim Winders:that I was addicted to more.
Tim Winders:Or being busy and I just kept, it was more if there was one company, we
Tim Winders:wanted to start another one.
Tim Winders:If there was, real estate, we needed, we didn't need 10, 50 properties.
Tim Winders:We needed a hundred, 150, we weren't going to buy one a month.
Tim Winders:We were going to buy five a month, all of that.
Tim Winders:It was just more.
Tim Winders:So here's what I believe a fire is.
Tim Winders:let me connect some dots here because it,
Tim Winders:let me tell you what the RV life did for me.
Tim Winders:It forced me.
Tim Winders:To be patient.
Tim Winders:I cannot be in a hurry and drive this 40 foot square box of a vehicle.
Tim Winders:My thought is, and I'm going to ask you this in a form of a question,
Tim Winders:is that you can't be in a rush.
Tim Winders:with fire.
Tim Winders:Is that a correct statement?
Leroy Hite:Yeah, absolutely.
Leroy Hite:A fire.
Leroy Hite:The whole point of it is, um, to start it and sit back and relax.
Leroy Hite:And either get lost in conversation or get lost in thought, deep
Leroy Hite:thought, staring at a fire.
Leroy Hite:It's all.
Leroy Hite:And, yeah, me specifically, I am definitely that drive, drive.
Leroy Hite:And it's funny, I'm a all or nothing kind of guy.
Leroy Hite:if I'm working out, I have the hardest time not pushing myself to the limit.
Leroy Hite:if, anything I do, it's all or nothing.
Leroy Hite:And, but it's funny, I can flip a switch and a perfect example of that
Leroy Hite:is, and a lot of people have a hard time believing this, every Sunday.
Leroy Hite:I take off completely.
Leroy Hite:I check out.
Leroy Hite:I turn my work brain off.
Leroy Hite:And so it's a all or nothing.
Leroy Hite:It's a nothing.
Leroy Hite:I do leave my phone across the room so I'm not tempted to open it and look at it.
Leroy Hite:and I spend about two hours.
Leroy Hite:staring at a fire.
Leroy Hite:on the Sunday, I spent a lot of time reading books to my girls.
Leroy Hite:I read a lot of books to my daughters, spend time with my
Leroy Hite:wife, go to church in the morning.
Leroy Hite:And, so it's that.
Leroy Hite:Just flip a switch.
Leroy Hite:but when I do, flip the switch back on, I have a hard time stopping until I decide.
Leroy Hite:And in fact, in, 2022, I actually took, the month of March off
Leroy Hite:and did no work for the month.
Leroy Hite:Just flip the switch.
Tim Winders:What is that?
Tim Winders:What is that like?
Tim Winders:people in the faith world will call that a Sabbath, people in just the business world
Tim Winders:will call it a sabbatical, which obviously
Tim Winders:has a very similar route.
Tim Winders:do you call it that?
Tim Winders:Or is it just you?
Tim Winders:cause I, I do believe that.
Tim Winders:Clearing our mind is what allows for
Tim Winders:creativity and, being intentional and things like that.
Tim Winders:give me a little bit more on that because I could tell you people
Tim Winders:aren't good at that typically.
Leroy Hite:Yes.
Leroy Hite:and it took me a while to really dial it in and I've gotten better over
Leroy Hite:time, but it, yeah, flipping the switch is, It takes self control, but once
Leroy Hite:it becomes a habit, um, you love it.
Leroy Hite:And it, and it's not, it, we're just better for it.
Leroy Hite:And you get more done with that time.
Leroy Hite:And I think, a great example, of course, is Chick fil A and what they've been able
Leroy Hite:to do with being closed one day a week, but, professional athletes, and physical,
Leroy Hite:scientists have proven even your body, if you take a day off, you do better.
Leroy Hite:the, the world's leading, Experts on lifting weights advise an absolute
Leroy Hite:maximum of working out six days a week.
Leroy Hite:If you work out seven days a week, you will not get as good.
Leroy Hite:It's not that you'll get the same results.
Leroy Hite:You'll get worse results.
Leroy Hite:and it's the same thing in work is, and yeah, sometimes emergencies can come
Leroy Hite:up and really part of the habit is.
Leroy Hite:and I almost forget about it now, because I've been doing
Leroy Hite:it for so long, is on Saturday.
Leroy Hite:When you're talking about work, tomorrow is Monday.
Leroy Hite:Um, and it's funny people at our business sometimes we'll do that.
Leroy Hite:and I catch it cause I want to make sure we're on the same page,
Leroy Hite:but it'll be Saturday and they'll say, I'm going to do this tomorrow.
Leroy Hite:I'll reach out to you tomorrow.
Leroy Hite:And I'm like, by tomorrow, you mean Monday, right?
Leroy Hite:And it's always yes.
Leroy Hite:so people have even just bought into it internally in the business.
Leroy Hite:but, it's amazing just coming back refreshed, and, how much more creativity
Leroy Hite:I have when you take that time off.
Leroy Hite:it just allows your, your brain to process the thoughts, and allows you to be more
Leroy Hite:creative, and on the other hand, even if you're not a creative type, it allows you.
Leroy Hite:And everybody has creativity, but even if you don't consider yourself as
Leroy Hite:the creative type, it stops burnout.
Leroy Hite:Working seven days a week is a guaranteed way to burn yourself out.
Tim Winders:Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Winders:And I also believe it helps us make better decisions.
Tim Winders:It limits mistake.
Tim Winders:There's all.
Tim Winders:Types of benefit.
Tim Winders:And if someone's listening in here, if they've been listening
Tim Winders:to the 250 plus episodes, they know that message is important.
Tim Winders:But, I want to say that our first learning point for anyone listening in is sit
Tim Winders:by a fire more often have more fires.
Tim Winders:And I heard two hours.
Tim Winders:That's the,
Tim Winders:is that a prescription?
Tim Winders:is that what you're saying?
Tim Winders:is that our first, the three steps of success from Leroy first sit by a
Tim Winders:fire for two hours a week.
Leroy Hite:huh.
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:So I, yeah, a minimum of two hours.
Leroy Hite:Earlier last year I started, Sundays I do that and I actually listen to
Leroy Hite:two sermons on Sundays and then I've started a habit of during the week,
Leroy Hite:having about a two hour fire and just staring at the fire for two hours.
Leroy Hite:It's amazing just how much better I feel after that.
Tim Winders:So one of the things for me, the reason that I'm asking
Tim Winders:so many questions about the fire, as opposed to the firewood, we're
Tim Winders:about to get to the firewood, but
Leroy Hite:I love it.
Tim Winders:I, and because I think it's what's driving the passion,
Tim Winders:it's the marketing, it's the message, it's the purpose, all of that.
Tim Winders:we've got cars out here.
Tim Winders:I'm interested in how they're built.
Tim Winders:But I need them for what they do for me.
Tim Winders:And so a couple of things I thought of when I was thinking about the
Tim Winders:fire, there's a masterclass for those people that have masterclass.
Tim Winders:There's one by Aaron Walker, who's the Texas barbecue specialist.
Tim Winders:And I found myself getting frustrated with this.
Tim Winders:Leroy, you would probably appreciate it.
Tim Winders:But on masterclass, he has, it's about a 12 session class.
Tim Winders:And before he even talks about barbecue, he actually
Tim Winders:does
Leroy Hite:Franklin
Tim Winders:Aaron Franklin.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:So I just say that I say Walker, Aaron Franklin, sorry about that.
Tim Winders:Thank you for correcting me, Aaron Franklin.
Tim Winders:And, I think he does about four episodes on the fire,
Tim Winders:the fire.
Tim Winders:so that's pretty cool.
Tim Winders:mention this as a pitch.
Tim Winders:And I think it blends in well, I might need to connect you guys.
Tim Winders:in a couple of weeks, I'm interviewing a guy named Burke Atkerson.
Tim Winders:He's out of Colorado Springs and he's written a book called
Tim Winders:fire nights and he's in ministry and the ministry is all about getting a
Tim Winders:handful of guys around a fire once a week and oddly enough, or interestingly
Tim Winders:enough, there's sometimes a cigar, there's sometimes a sip of whiskey.
Tim Winders:And
Tim Winders:it's really all about men connecting at a deeper level, which men
Tim Winders:are typically not real good at.
Tim Winders:So I'm just
Tim Winders:mentioning that to you and also to the audience to be looking for that.
Tim Winders:If I could time it well, I might actually put these episodes back to back and
Tim Winders:see if we could have, the firewood and the fire nights combined there.
Tim Winders:So anyway, Fire definitely
Tim Winders:important and I like that it brings patience in a world
Tim Winders:that's hurry up and go fast.
Tim Winders:So with that, let's shift a little bit and let's talk about how
Tim Winders:cutting, cutting edge came to be.
Tim Winders:And I know there's a lot of story here and there's places people can go
Tim Winders:to get a lot of it, but I think what I'd love to do is I knew, and I know
Tim Winders:you grew up in Northwest Georgia.
Tim Winders:I think I'm going to force you Leroy to give me one or two key
Tim Winders:things from Leroy the early years, okay, that have impacted you.
Tim Winders:Could be positive or negative.
Tim Winders:something that's driven you that's gotten you where you are or something that
Tim Winders:it's called a Scarlett O'Hara moments.
Tim Winders:as God is my witness, I am never going to blank.
Tim Winders:Mine is I'm never going to work corporate again.
Tim Winders:I'm not going to work corporate.
Tim Winders:And God is my witness,
Tim Winders:you the reference.
Tim Winders:just a couple of things
Tim Winders:growing up.
Tim Winders:obviously you're exposed to, trees and fires
Tim Winders:and all of that, but What else?
Tim Winders:What's come to mind when I ask, when I force you to come
Tim Winders:up with one or two items?
Leroy Hite:Yeah, it's funny, I don't really have the, I will never
Leroy Hite:whatever, moments, when it comes to that, it's funny.
Leroy Hite:Cause, I have like, I do have goals, but they're, it's really, they're not goals,
Leroy Hite:they're visions and I'm just working in a general direction, um, with the
Leroy Hite:business and growing up, I didn't know I was going to be an entrepreneur, I,
Leroy Hite:and it's hard to, I might make it three.
Leroy Hite:I might break the rules.
Leroy Hite:I'll never was a rule follower.
Leroy Hite:I grew up Northwest Georgia, pretty poor, one of eight kids,
Leroy Hite:had a ton of chores growing up.
Leroy Hite:And, and had, I could give so many examples, but tons and tons of
Leroy Hite:chores, yard work, and, I remember one of the chores was cutting
Leroy Hite:the grass and trimming the grass.
Leroy Hite:And I remember we had these scissors, we didn't have a weed eater.
Leroy Hite:We had these scissors that I would use to cut around trees and, the phone pole.
Leroy Hite:And they were so dull that it was literally a breakeven, whether you
Leroy Hite:should use them or just pull the grass.
Leroy Hite:and so half the time you would see me out there pulling the grass up
Leroy Hite:around the trees and the poles.
Leroy Hite:and that was the kind of manual labor that I grew up in doing.
Leroy Hite:And so I think that really instilled a level of work ethic
Leroy Hite:that I'm not scared to work hard.
Leroy Hite:and.
Leroy Hite:And which I think, which I'm very thankful for.
Leroy Hite:I hated it at the time, of course.
Leroy Hite:Um, but I remember even as a teenager, going and helping other people
Leroy Hite:that had kids with yard work and they would always comment on, wow,
Leroy Hite:you have a really good work ethic.
Leroy Hite:And I didn't really think much of it at the time, but, looking back
Leroy Hite:on it, I'm like, yeah, apparently I did have a pretty good work ethic.
Leroy Hite:Um, The next one, is, and I'll talk more about her probably in the story,
Leroy Hite:but, meeting, dating, my wife met when we were 17 working at Chick fil A.
Leroy Hite:we got married spring break, junior year of college.
Leroy Hite:Um, and, And she's been incredible as an entrepreneur's wife.
Leroy Hite:Um, but in that, Oh yeah.
Leroy Hite:And then the next one would be during college at Berry college.
Leroy Hite:they had an entrepreneurial program and, and I would definitely
Leroy Hite:say that was pretty incredible.
Leroy Hite:It lodged something in my head that I could not get out of my head.
Leroy Hite:Just the entrepreneurial bug, the spark, the ember, whatever.
Leroy Hite:if you want to do a corny, puns, but it, it really did lodge in
Leroy Hite:my head and while I was there, I started a different firewood company.
Leroy Hite:And I just realized.
Leroy Hite:This is completely undisrupted.
Leroy Hite:It's a backwards thing.
Leroy Hite:Like me just sitting down for 30 minutes and thinking about it.
Leroy Hite:I could come up with new ideas to innovate the industry.
Leroy Hite:and, so it was a comparison.
Leroy Hite:It was a completely undisrupted forest that nobody had really
Leroy Hite:gone through, to disrupt it.
Leroy Hite:There were no paths.
Leroy Hite:and that was absolutely a turning point that I can look back at and be like,
Leroy Hite:that was a defining moment of my career.
Tim Winders:you think, was there any clues to that entrepreneur
Tim Winders:spirit, entrepreneurism prior?
Tim Winders:it's a very odd story for someone to say they took, they
Tim Winders:were in a program or a class.
Tim Winders:Our daughter actually, she went to High Point University up in North
Tim Winders:Carolina and they had an entrepreneur program, which I thought it was an
Tim Winders:oxymoron for someone to be in college.
Tim Winders:And studying entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, you
Tim Winders:get it.
Tim Winders:you understand that.
Tim Winders:or, but I guess it can help unlock it.
Tim Winders:We're looking back.
Tim Winders:Were there any clues growing up that you may have had it other than the
Tim Winders:work ethic and we'll, I may come back to that later, but other than that,
Tim Winders:something that you said, you know what, I need to make me some money and I'm
Tim Winders:going to figure out a way to do it.
Leroy Hite:I think it's work ethic and looking back.
Leroy Hite:And I even knew it at the time ish.
Leroy Hite:I've always looked at things differently than other people.
Leroy Hite:Even in college, I played a lot of Halo.
Leroy Hite:and a lot of Halo and I miss it.
Leroy Hite:It was a lot of fun.
Leroy Hite:Had it, that was a flipping a switch that when I started this business and had a
Leroy Hite:daughter, I was like, Oh, that's gone.
Leroy Hite:That's over.
Leroy Hite:Gave my X Box to my, nephew, nephews.
Leroy Hite:And, even in that, like I wasn't particularly skilled.
Leroy Hite:Like in reflexes and being able to, but I, there were other people way more
Leroy Hite:skilled than me, but my strategy and it was just really um, my, gut strategy.
Leroy Hite:Um, I played differently than anybody else that I ever met.
Leroy Hite:And, and that and like, when I think about rules, I always go to the, people
Leroy Hite:think I'm, There's people think there's either rule followers or rebels.
Leroy Hite:There's a third option.
Leroy Hite:And that is you look at the reason behind the rules.
Leroy Hite:And I did that as I, I look at the reason behind the rules and I try and follow.
Leroy Hite:when I agree with them, the spirit of the rule versus the letter of the rule.
Leroy Hite:and so I think those are some kind of, instances.
Leroy Hite:it's funny, I, when I worked at a, enterprise, we took
Leroy Hite:this, personality test.
Leroy Hite:I think it was.
Leroy Hite:And, and I, when it happened, I was like, Oh, that is interesting.
Leroy Hite:one of the question and I don't remember what the question was.
Leroy Hite:I just, it was, ranking your level of independence.
Leroy Hite:And I think it was like one to 50.
Leroy Hite:it was when I was an assistant manager and everybody, all the
Leroy Hite:assistant managers were single digit.
Leroy Hite:I want to say they were like seven to nine.
Leroy Hite:Maybe there was one that had an 11.
Leroy Hite:All the area managers were, which were our boss's boss.
Leroy Hite:the highest was like a 23, if I remember correctly, I was like a 47.
Leroy Hite:So
Tim Winders:looked and they all looked at you like dude, they
Tim Winders:said dude, why are you here?
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:So I think that, that was, and obviously I'd already, I had The entrepreneurial
Leroy Hite:spirit lodged into me at that point.
Leroy Hite:But, so those were some looking back.
Leroy Hite:It is funny though.
Leroy Hite:now think of me as like extreme, creative type.
Leroy Hite:Growing up, nobody thought of me as a creative and even some of my college
Leroy Hite:buddies have over the last few years commented, you came up with that.
Leroy Hite:I can't believe that kind of thing, but,
Tim Winders:one thing related to one thing related to creativity i'm
Tim Winders:going to ask this before we leave
Tim Winders:the early years I'm gonna
Tim Winders:ask a little bit about your faith because i've heard your story and I know
Tim Winders:that later it's significant There's a,
Tim Winders:I think a significant thing that you did as you started your business.
Tim Winders:But I don't think that those
Tim Winders:things are just, you wake up one morning and say, Oh, I'm going to
Tim Winders:do something that shows my faith.
Tim Winders:And then I'm a follower of Christ or something that I know.
Tim Winders:But, and
Tim Winders:listen, truthfully, there are clues when someone says they
Tim Winders:work for Chick fil A.
Tim Winders:It's like immediately, Truett Cathy spoke at my wife's
Tim Winders:graduation.
Tim Winders:that, yeah, he was a, yeah, tell me a little bit about, there's two things that
Tim Winders:I want to frame before we dive into some leadership styles and things like that.
Tim Winders:And that is, tell me a little bit about.
Tim Winders:your faith growing up, where you were your family of
Tim Winders:faith, where you, were you a Christian coming out of the womb or,
Tim Winders:or was there a decision later on?
Tim Winders:I've talked to people
Tim Winders:that
Leroy Hite:what you call uh, The ultra reformed.
Tim Winders:that, yeah, I'm not saying that's good theology, but I'm
Tim Winders:telling you, I've had people that have said something like, I've been
Tim Winders:Christian as long as I could remember.
Tim Winders:In
Leroy Hite:You can call me John the Baptist, Jr.
Leroy Hite:yeah,
Tim Winders:Yeah,
Leroy Hite:cause you
Leroy Hite:know that story with them and the womb.
Tim Winders:listen, you mentioned a couple of things that were significant.
Tim Winders:you big family, eight kids, Northwest Georgia.
Tim Winders:So you're in the Bible belt.
Tim Winders:You work for Chick
Tim Winders:fil A and you said you were poor.
Tim Winders:so I'm sitting here going, man, this is like a
Tim Winders:solid.
Leroy Hite:Christian.
Tim Winders:Christian kid.
Tim Winders:Homeschool.
Tim Winders:Did I get, can I get a homeschool out of
Leroy Hite:it was public school.
Leroy Hite:although ironically, my daughters had been in a, private school, but, my wife.
Leroy Hite:Led this decision, but, we're actually going to homeschool him next year,
Leroy Hite:which I'm pretty excited about.
Leroy Hite:But, but I was at no public school.
Leroy Hite:and I thought I was going to send my kids to public school.
Leroy Hite:but the world's an interesting place now, and especially with, four daughters,
Leroy Hite:very quickly that just dissolved.
Leroy Hite:It wasn't even like a decision.
Leroy Hite:It was just, with, but, public school.
Leroy Hite:And I think a lot of, actually that, that could be another, clue
Leroy Hite:to being an entrepreneur is I was really like self educated.
Leroy Hite:Um, I, give, credit to where credit's due, I had a fourth grade teacher that
Leroy Hite:introduced me to the Hardy Boys books.
Leroy Hite:And in the fifth grade, it might still be the all time record, but I.
Leroy Hite:Crushed the all time record in number of books I read because I basically read all
Leroy Hite:the Hardy Boys books in the fifth grade and But that kind of started my love of
Leroy Hite:learning and being self taught and Like in school, I got to where I would just ignore
Leroy Hite:the teacher and I would read history books and read through the science book.
Leroy Hite:And, and so I was really stealth taught, even though I was sitting in class, I
Leroy Hite:would use that time to teach myself.
Leroy Hite:Um, and on the, yeah, I grew up in a Christian family, solid Christian parents.
Leroy Hite:I'm very thankful for that.
Leroy Hite:and so with that, With my love of reading, at an early age, I started reading through
Leroy Hite:the Bible, read through it multiple times.
Leroy Hite:And, I have a, very useful skill set.
Leroy Hite:I'm not the best at memorizing, but I have a phenomenal skill to
Leroy Hite:remember the gist, the summary of what I heard, how that played out in
Leroy Hite:college is I could sit in classes, not take notes, not study for the test.
Leroy Hite:And I would make an A or a B usually.
Leroy Hite:and, but so I read through the Bible many times and, and got
Leroy Hite:a good understanding of it.
Leroy Hite:and yeah, and, I um, put my, my faith officially it, as I grew up, it became
Leroy Hite:official, you leave your parents faith and it becomes your faith at some point,
Leroy Hite:high school and into college, that definitely happened to me officially.
Leroy Hite:but there's never a time as long as I can remember that I wouldn't
Leroy Hite:have called myself a Christian.
Leroy Hite:or, that you wouldn't have looked at my wife and thought,
Leroy Hite:yeah, he's probably a Christian.
Leroy Hite:Along those lines with the business, something that is cool that are along
Leroy Hite:those lines are is we've had a couple, a few customers ask our customer
Leroy Hite:service department, are y'all are Christian business solely because
Leroy Hite:of our level of customer service.
Leroy Hite:Um, which I take as a big compliment.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:technically a company cannot be saved.
Tim Winders:There cannot be salvation for a S corp, C corp.
Tim Winders:I, again, theological stuff here, but the leader, the founder of the company
Tim Winders:can run with principles and it's, when we share love, I'm doing a deep dive
Tim Winders:study on the kingdom of God right now.
Tim Winders:And a lot of it's going to spill over into business.
Tim Winders:What does that mean for business standpoint?
Tim Winders:do you think that cutting edge would exist if your faith wasn't what it was?
Leroy Hite:there were, and we can dive into this however you want, but, but
Leroy Hite:between the time when I had the previous firewood company and when I
Leroy Hite:started cutting edge firewood, looking back on it, I wouldn't have called it
Leroy Hite:this at the time, but looking back on it, it was a loud and clear hauling.
Leroy Hite:but I was way too afraid, um, to lean into that.
Leroy Hite:cause had the theological truth, but I didn't have the experience, of that
Leroy Hite:theological truth of, of really leaning into what you think God's calling
Leroy Hite:you to do, stepping out in faith.
Leroy Hite:and that played.
Leroy Hite:and it's, when I started the business, we'll get into this, but
Leroy Hite:I started it basically fasting and praying and listening to sermons.
Leroy Hite:And there's been so many times when I've been in the fetal position and
Leroy Hite:I've gone back to different biblical truths over and over again, listening
Leroy Hite:to sermons on faith, listening to people in the Bible, exercising
Leroy Hite:their faith and, and really seeing.
Leroy Hite:It's been really comforting looking at Biblical figures and seeing
Leroy Hite:my story in many ways reflect their story of Just like them.
Leroy Hite:I'm far from perfect made a lot of mistakes, but God uses Both the
Leroy Hite:good things I do, the intelligent things I do and the dumb mistakes
Leroy Hite:I've made, to, to teach me and to make me into who I've become.
Leroy Hite:and ultimately When you wash everything away or if you burned everything away,
Leroy Hite:the foundation is ultimately on the, on my faith of that's what I lay the business
Leroy Hite:and my future on is, is that rock.
Leroy Hite:and the verse, of course, that if you build the house on the rock, and it
Leroy Hite:doesn't, it of course doesn't promise, financial, it's not that the Bible
Leroy Hite:promises that you're going to be rich, or that your life's going to be easy.
Leroy Hite:And in fact, my life has not been easy.
Leroy Hite:but, at the core, that's what I base everything
Tim Winders:So what's interesting, this is what I've heard along the way.
Tim Winders:with this conversation.
Tim Winders:and I would agree faith is in all likelihood the foundation because the
Tim Winders:faith probably fed a lot of the growing up, the work ethic, things like that.
Tim Winders:I'm guessing that the faith probably led to your, was it Michaela?
Tim Winders:what's.
Tim Winders:Yeah, led
Tim Winders:to your wife, which is an, a lot of people will say who you choose or
Tim Winders:who God chooses for you or however people look at it to be your spouse
Tim Winders:is a significant factor in whether or
Tim Winders:not someone succeeds.
Tim Winders:And I'm sure you could tell story after story.
Tim Winders:We may not have time for it here.
Tim Winders:if I could with my wife, it's my goodness, why did she stick around with me?
Tim Winders:And the things that I asked
Tim Winders:her to go through, and I'm sure you've got the same story.
Tim Winders:And
Tim Winders:all of those things built up and then we're going to hit through this real
Tim Winders:quick Yeah, I mean i've heard, chick fil a you were considering being
Tim Winders:an owner operator you worked at.
Tim Winders:the car
Leroy Hite:enterprise.
Tim Winders:enterprise.
Tim Winders:Yeah, which probably
Tim Winders:that was cool.
Tim Winders:I don't want to go there though and then I think I saw it's
Tim Winders:a different type firewood.
Tim Winders:Were you a georgia pacific?
Tim Winders:Where are you like big corporation?
Tim Winders:That's a
Tim Winders:firewood company.
Leroy Hite:they, they hope the wood doesn't burn there, but, yeah.
Tim Winders:Okay.
Tim Winders:Sorry.
Tim Winders:But I think everything, I do believe the path that God leads us on as a
Tim Winders:preparation for getting to a place.
Tim Winders:And it's not as if we arrive, it continues.
Tim Winders:It's why we call this the leadership journey.
Tim Winders:That's part of the journey.
Tim Winders:so that, and then the two things I heard there, these are kind
Tim Winders:of church words we're using.
Tim Winders:And so called and that you fasted and prayed.
Tim Winders:And it led to this business starting and things like that.
Tim Winders:And some people have trouble understanding that called.
Tim Winders:Let's don't get into the fasting and praying.
Tim Winders:It's just a, I think it's just a way of clearing our head.
Tim Winders:Let's, can we leave it at that and move on for maybe someone
Tim Winders:listening going, how does that work now?
Tim Winders:We're not
Tim Winders:going to do a teaching on fasting and praying here.
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:And for the record, that was the first time that I'd ever done it.
Leroy Hite:And it was spur of the moment.
Leroy Hite:It wasn't even planned.
Leroy Hite:Um,
Tim Winders:It was spur of the moment for you.
Tim Winders:It was probably not spur of the moment for God.
Leroy Hite:yeah, probably.
Leroy Hite:I think that's the, uh, that's theologically correct for sure.
Tim Winders:So what year did cutting edge get started?
Tim Winders:Let's tell a little bit about that story in the time we've got left here.
Tim Winders:So cutting it, this was you were, you went through a
Tim Winders:lot of, a lot of items that were probably preparing you truthfully
Tim Winders:for starting this company,
Tim Winders:this business, you had done the thing in college and all of that.
Tim Winders:So what year are we at with cutting edge and the fasting and the prayer that you
Tim Winders:did, and then bam, let's start a business.
Leroy Hite:2013.
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:2013.
Tim Winders:So now we're talking about 10 or 11 years and you started
Tim Winders:the business and it was money in the bank And everything was just
Tim Winders:super duper right out of the gate.
Tim Winders:You've been living the dream life ever since right
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:I was, his name?
Leroy Hite:My mind's called blank.
Leroy Hite:the, cut up your credit cards guy.
Tim Winders:dave
Leroy Hite:yeah, Dave.
Leroy Hite:yeah, I was Dave Ramsey's worst, nightmare.
Tim Winders:are you the
Leroy Hite:I, uh.
Tim Winders:against?
Tim Winders:Yeah, we did that with real estate, too Did you build your company on credit card?
Tim Winders:So
Leroy Hite:yeah, absolutely.
Leroy Hite:That was my, I got a personal loan and maxed out seven or eight credit cards.
Leroy Hite:and honestly, that was my finance of the company for the first.
Leroy Hite:Five years was I would, during the spring and summer, I would get as
Leroy Hite:many credit cards as I could that way.
Leroy Hite:Sorry.
Leroy Hite:And during that, so I got as many credit cards as I could.
Leroy Hite:And then in the winter, when cash was good, I would pay them off my,
Leroy Hite:My score would shoot through the roof and then I would get more credit
Leroy Hite:cards, max them out in the spring and summer, pay them off the next winter.
Leroy Hite:And so my credit score would go from 300 to 800 a couple times a year.
Leroy Hite:And it was just a rollercoaster, but I would go higher and
Leroy Hite:higher with my credit score.
Leroy Hite:And that's how I, financed the business for the first few years.
Leroy Hite:until I got to the level that I
Leroy Hite:got my first SBA.
Tim Winders:Cause originally it was firewood.
Tim Winders:You were in the South in an area that has about a, has a three or
Tim Winders:four month winter, and sometimes they don't have a winter, right?
Leroy Hite:Right.
Tim Winders:moving?
Tim Winders:Do you ever consider going somewhere else?
Tim Winders:Go farther north.
Tim Winders:Sorry, man.
Tim Winders:But
Leroy Hite:You know, not, not, yeah, no, not initially.
Leroy Hite:I've thought a lot about it, in the last few years.
Leroy Hite:Um, but then now that we shipped to 48 states, there's less of a reason.
Leroy Hite:but I still think about it and debate it.
Leroy Hite:it'd be interesting to have a location in Boston or New
Leroy Hite:York, any other northeast city.
Leroy Hite:Um, Dallas, Texas is pretty interesting too,
Tim Winders:it is
Tim Winders:so you started and it was still pretty much firewood seasonal, people
Tim Winders:don't want it March through November ish and, so you're on an
Tim Winders:up and down.
Tim Winders:Tell
Tim Winders:me when was the time that this went from a, just a firewood for people's fireplaces
Tim Winders:or outdoors to something bigger?
Tim Winders:Give me if it's a multiple step along the way, or if it's a point in time,
Tim Winders:because to me, that's where creativity and to me that those are divine type
Tim Winders:moments in my opinion for company.
Tim Winders:So tell me
Tim Winders:more about that.
Leroy Hite:Yeah, there are really two super critical points.
Leroy Hite:One was, in 2017 when I went to my wife and said, Hey, we've got
Leroy Hite:to take this to the next level.
Leroy Hite:I know we have two little girls at home and you're eight
Leroy Hite:months pregnant with our third.
Leroy Hite:I got this wonderful idea of let's sell our house and invest it in the business.
Leroy Hite:And we did that.
Leroy Hite:I took that money, redid the branding, hired our first delivery
Leroy Hite:artisan, hired the first person employee that was taking care of
Leroy Hite:customer service, got our warehouse.
Leroy Hite:And, reinvented again, how to do deliveries and what that led to
Leroy Hite:it was we would just stack all the firewood to we included the
Leroy Hite:rack and have a patent on that.
Leroy Hite:And that took the deliveries from approximately 2 hours.
Leroy Hite:Once I arrived at the house.
Leroy Hite:To about 15 minutes once our delivery artisan arrives at the house, it made
Leroy Hite:it way safer and it made it where it was efficient enough that we could make money.
Leroy Hite:before that it was way too dangerous.
Leroy Hite:There's no way I could have paid somebody else to do it.
Leroy Hite:Um, and, so it was like, it would take eight, it would take about 18
Leroy Hite:hours to do eight deliveries the first four years when I was doing it.
Leroy Hite:and then it went down to, where now you can do about 16 deliveries and 7.
Leroy Hite:5, 8 hours kind of thing.
Leroy Hite:Um, and, so that was hugely important.
Leroy Hite:And, and then in 2019, we started putting up yard signs around town and they were
Leroy Hite:just our logo, um, and put them, hundreds and hundreds of them out, and eventually
Leroy Hite:we started putting them in our customers yards, but, And we started leaning into
Leroy Hite:cooking wood and pizza wood, and then we made our first dollar outside of Georgia.
Leroy Hite:And all those things added up to talking about divine timing
Leroy Hite:that was at the end of 2019.
Leroy Hite:And in 2020, obviously COVID happened.
Leroy Hite:And, and we just immediately forexed year over year.
Leroy Hite:which is hard when you have to have the employees and the raw materials in
Leroy Hite:advance and the systems and the SOPs.
Leroy Hite:That was hard scaling like that, but, we, massive growth, but, and so the
Leroy Hite:cooking wood and firewood, the cooking wood and pizza wood went from essentially
Leroy Hite:probably half of a percent of our revenue to 20 percent of our revenue
Leroy Hite:while our overall revenue forexed.
Leroy Hite:And, our, we made our first dollar.
Leroy Hite:outside of Georgia, where now it's the majority of our revenue,
Leroy Hite:um, is outside of Georgia.
Tim Winders:did some of that level out the seasonal aspect of the business?
Leroy Hite:It did to a large degree.
Leroy Hite:do in our best month compared to our worst month, three,
Leroy Hite:three and a half times as much.
Leroy Hite:Um, whereas, um, it used to be, it was about 15 times as much.
Leroy Hite:In our best month versus our worst month, so it's still quite seasonal.
Leroy Hite:but it's a lot better, than it used to be.
Tim Winders:Yeah, I love the, the industrial engineer, industrial
Tim Winders:and systems engineer at Georgia tech is getting excited in me.
Tim Winders:You talking about that process and delivery improvement
Tim Winders:was that.
Tim Winders:The same delivery that you do outside of the Georgia market, or are you
Tim Winders:just shipping or have you, what have
Tim Winders:you done to me?
Tim Winders:Cause it's not as if, wood, firewood, cooking wood is a light.
Tim Winders:a light
Tim Winders:product, tell me a little bit more about
Tim Winders:that, what that looks like.
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:really, we build it into the business model.
Leroy Hite:We build it into the price.
Leroy Hite:and it's, yeah, it's not cheap, shipping it.
Leroy Hite:but because it's the best, that want the best are willing to pay a premium
Leroy Hite:price for, for a better experience.
Leroy Hite:And really.
Leroy Hite:Um, if you look at it and you're like, why are people paying that much more for wood?
Leroy Hite:You'll never understand unless you make the leap to, Oh,
Leroy Hite:they're not paying for wood.
Leroy Hite:They're paying for an experience and people will pay a premium for experiences.
Tim Winders:They're paying for that experience we talked
Tim Winders:about at the beginning,
Leroy Hite:Yes,
Tim Winders:that peace, that relaxation and things like that.
Leroy Hite:and really at the end of the day, like having a fire,
Leroy Hite:the whole reason you do it is enjoy it to have an experience.
Leroy Hite:So, why go somewhere else and spend half or even a fourth of the money?
Leroy Hite:To have a terrible experience where you can't get it started.
Leroy Hite:Or you have it stored in your home and bugs are crawling out of it.
Leroy Hite:Or it smokes and everybody smells terrible afterwards.
Leroy Hite:it's really, ours burns hotter.
Leroy Hite:You want the heat.
Leroy Hite:You want it to burn longer.
Leroy Hite:you want the ambiance.
Leroy Hite:You want the lively flame.
Leroy Hite:You want the amazing aroma.
Leroy Hite:and, you want, yeah, less smoke.
Leroy Hite:You want it to start easy.
Leroy Hite:There's, it's miserable to try and start bad firewood.
Leroy Hite:You're sitting there playing with it for an hour and then you just have to
Leroy Hite:continually go and attend it when you should be sitting back and enjoying it.
Tim Winders:right.
Tim Winders:There are some companies, That, that I've interacted with it.
Tim Winders:Their goal is to be the lowest cost on the market.
Tim Winders:some companies, they want to scale and address the masses and everything that
Tim Winders:I'm hearing from you is I'll throw out some words and then you could just respond
Tim Winders:in whatever way you want to quality.
Tim Winders:Not just the experience of the product.
Tim Winders:Yeah, not just the experience of the product, but as I understand it, it seems
Tim Winders:like the customer Service experience.
Tim Winders:I think I see that terry bradshaw is a big fan of you guys and
Tim Winders:a big customer and all of that Which is cool And so lowest cost Is Not your goal.
Tim Winders:I'm guessing you're, I'm guessing the product is pricey relative, but, and then
Tim Winders:I also want to throw in here competition.
Tim Winders:I
Tim Winders:think I've heard you saying, correct me if I'm wrong, that you
Tim Winders:really don't have competition.
Tim Winders:is that correct?
Tim Winders:So whatever
Tim Winders:you want to address with all those words.
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:On, quality, what I always say is any product we release, I
Leroy Hite:want it to be the best in class.
Leroy Hite:In quality and I break up quality into aesthetic and functional and
Leroy Hite:I want us to be the best in both.
Leroy Hite:So when it comes to the firewood, our firewood is beautiful.
Leroy Hite:You can use it to decorate.
Leroy Hite:And the racks of firewood that are on our website, every single rack that
Leroy Hite:leaves our facility looks that good.
Leroy Hite:we have an internal mantra of, pretend that every rack or every
Leroy Hite:product that's leaving our facility is going to Terry Bradshaw or that
Leroy Hite:it's going to a photo video shoot.
Leroy Hite:And when Terry Bradshaw places an order, there's no internal memo that
Leroy Hite:says this is going to Terry Bradshaw.
Leroy Hite:It better look perfect because that's that's the internal.
Leroy Hite:Everybody knows that for everything that leaves.
Leroy Hite:Um, so that's the quality piece.
Leroy Hite:competition.
Leroy Hite:Um, I kinda as a visual, I say when we act like this is the floor,
Leroy Hite:this is where the competition was.
Leroy Hite:Or when I entered the market, I entered the market probably about
Leroy Hite:right here and I've moved up to here and it's are we a lifestyle business?
Leroy Hite:So even when you say we're a firewood business kind of thing, and.
Leroy Hite:We've, I've had a lot of, maybe as many as 50 like imitators
Leroy Hite:enter the market right here.
Leroy Hite:if you asked me if I was honest and, what I wish that they weren't there,
Leroy Hite:the answer would be yes, but it's more of just competing for Google search
Leroy Hite:terms, um, and things like that.
Leroy Hite:But.
Leroy Hite:they're not as good as, they're worse than we've ever been.
Leroy Hite:And really, they're like an off brand, and by that brand,
Leroy Hite:slightly stale version of us.
Leroy Hite:You'll see a lot of logos that have an act in it.
Leroy Hite:They have similar colors.
Leroy Hite:Their website just so happens to be, exactly laid out like ours.
Leroy Hite:And when we update our layout, it seems like several other websites update
Leroy Hite:theirs within about six months after us.
Leroy Hite:Um, there's a firewood company.
Leroy Hite:I know of that.
Leroy Hite:Their tagline is we edge off the competition.
Leroy Hite:And then there's another we offer racks of firewood and we're the only firewood.
Leroy Hite:I own the patent.
Leroy Hite:Um, and that, a, another one that their tagline is Unwrapped Firewood.
Leroy Hite:And I'm like, have a little bit of originality, like they, it's
Leroy Hite:like they're looking at us when they come up with their branding
Leroy Hite:and their taglines and everything.
Leroy Hite:and really.
Leroy Hite:It's a, it's hard to look at it this way, but in reality, it,
Leroy Hite:whether they definitely don't mean it this way, but it is a compliment
Leroy Hite:because it's the whole, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
Leroy Hite:Um, and.
Leroy Hite:I, if they're going to do it, imitating us is the best way because that means
Leroy Hite:they're always behind us and they don't have the same passion or grit and they
Leroy Hite:don't have the same quality standards.
Leroy Hite:They just want to imitate without putting the effort in.
Leroy Hite:they're not going to be successful.
Leroy Hite:And once again, we're up here and there's.
Leroy Hite:40, 50 down here.
Leroy Hite:They're still Some of the ones down here, but they're right here.
Leroy Hite:Um, and the other thing is, it's interesting is none of them
Leroy Hite:imitate us in our full lineup.
Leroy Hite:you, mentioned that we would talk about the fire pit later.
Leroy Hite:Not even like that aside, there's some that'll ship some wood, there's some
Leroy Hite:that'll do cooking wood, and then there's some that'll do a local firewood delivery.
Leroy Hite:None of them deliver firewood like we do because we own a patent and,
Leroy Hite:and we have our own custom software and, and we spend too much money
Leroy Hite:on the trucks and, and our delivery artisans are salaried employees that
Leroy Hite:get paid well, and they can't do that.
Leroy Hite:They can't imitate that.
Leroy Hite:But yeah, that's the competition.
Tim Winders:just the fact that you call your people delivery artisans
Tim Winders:should tell people something yeah, our guy with the truck.
Tim Winders:He'll be there.
Tim Winders:When's he going to be there next week?
Leroy Hite:I, I got a lot of funny stories on that.
Leroy Hite:Mostly from what customers have told us.
Leroy Hite:Like I've, I had a guy tell me that, That he, went with the quote unquote
Leroy Hite:competition and the guy forgot to put the brake, on his truck when he
Leroy Hite:parked in the driveway and it came out of gear and hit his Mercedes
Leroy Hite:and the guy didn't have insurance.
Leroy Hite:Um, there's the bug infestation stories.
Leroy Hite:There's stories that I almost feel bad talking about like pregnant
Leroy Hite:women delivering firewood where the people feel so bad that they do the.
Leroy Hite:The delivery and then, but my favorite is one time a firewood, owner company,
Leroy Hite:and this was many years ago, invited me to come and meet with them and they were
Leroy Hite:just nonchalantly talking about how.
Leroy Hite:Their delivery guy was in jail and they're like, the firewood industry.
Leroy Hite:And I was like, Oh my gosh, none of our delivery artisans
Leroy Hite:have ever been in jail before.
Leroy Hite:they're basically sending like a convict in other people's
Leroy Hite:homes and deliver firewood.
Leroy Hite:That's a
Leroy Hite:interesting.
Tim Winders:appreciate the, the disruption you've done in raising the bar.
Tim Winders:I had a client years ago, not far from where you're located there that was in the
Tim Winders:pool maintenance and cleaning business.
Tim Winders:and there was some similar thoughts.
Tim Winders:There we I mean there was so many things we had to do to get that business cleaned
Tim Winders:up with Delivery people that were smoking dope and just all kinds of stuff So I
Tim Winders:like what you're doing how many what's the size of the organization with people now?
Tim Winders:Where are you at?
Tim Winders:Not that people is a great measurement, but I got just a couple questions here
Tim Winders:I want to ask related to that and then we'll talk about product and be done
Leroy Hite:So we're at about 30 people now.
Tim Winders:Excellent.
Tim Winders:And tell me about your current leadership style, whatever you can
Tim Winders:tell me about it, because I'm sure it's grown from, zero to now 30.
Tim Winders:That's a great sweet spot.
Tim Winders:A lot of the clients I work
Leroy Hite:I'm just a guy that started a firewood company.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:Now, yeah, my leadership style, I'm, I have strong standards that
Leroy Hite:I hold employees to, but I'm definitely a, I'm a hands off leader that will from
Leroy Hite:time to time check in if that makes sense to make sure everything's good and strong.
Leroy Hite:Um, so some of it, yeah, that, employees have gotten used to.
Leroy Hite:Just me being like, coming in and critiquing a random response to a
Leroy Hite:customer or being like, Oh my gosh, I love that message from so and so talking
Leroy Hite:about how much they love the product.
Leroy Hite:like that customer just sent an email, saying that he tried out all the other.
Leroy Hite:cooking wood suppliers over a six month period, and he's donating 3, 000 worth of
Leroy Hite:it to a barbecue competition and a bunch of professionals are going to be there.
Leroy Hite:Did you see that message?
Leroy Hite:And I'm like the first one that saw it because I just, yeah, exactly.
Leroy Hite:and so it's either that or That was a pretty good response
Leroy Hite:to that upset customer.
Leroy Hite:This is how I would do it slightly differently.
Leroy Hite:And, but they're used to it.
Leroy Hite:whereas, if some business leaders did that, their employees would either
Leroy Hite:get really defensive because they would think you were attacking them,
Leroy Hite:or they might have a heart attack that they actually care that much.
Leroy Hite:so it, but I hate micromanaging.
Leroy Hite:And I've over the past few years actually struggled a little bit and it's been
Leroy Hite:a learning time for sure that I've always wanted to just hand off things
Leroy Hite:as soon as they say, I've got it.
Leroy Hite:But in reality, most people, when they say I've got it, they don't quite got it.
Leroy Hite:and you need to stay involved.
Leroy Hite:and give them additional feedback for a little while longer and
Leroy Hite:make sure they've really got it.
Leroy Hite:And then you slowly back away.
Leroy Hite:whereas I want to be like, here, catch this.
Leroy Hite:I'm going to do this new idea kind of thing.
Tim Winders:are you starting to see some leaders in a leadership
Tim Winders:team develop with 30 people?
Tim Winders:You're probably starting to identify that.
Leroy Hite:Yes, yeah, we, yeah, and we, yeah, we have a leadership team and, and
Leroy Hite:it's grown definitely over the past years.
Leroy Hite:and, and we have our director of operations, to be a great people's
Leroy Hite:leader, and with me, can I step in?
Leroy Hite:Thank you.
Leroy Hite:and coach and lead people.
Leroy Hite:Yes, but it's not what drives me.
Leroy Hite:And, I want to be more of I want to come in and give people high fives and
Leroy Hite:tell them great job and, get people excited and then come in and then
Leroy Hite:think about which of my 50 ideas in my head I want to prioritize and do next.
Leroy Hite:How can I reinvent something that's already been reinvented?
Leroy Hite:I constantly go through the business and I'm like, I know I reinvented
Leroy Hite:how to do a local delivery.
Leroy Hite:Are there any other things that I can, and I have ideas how to reinvent it again.
Leroy Hite:but, should I focus on that or should I focus on this other idea?
Tim Winders:That's one of the most difficult things that organizations
Tim Winders:moving from the entrepreneur, the person that's task, get it done to
Tim Winders:now moving in a strategic type mode.
Tim Winders:That's, that's primarily the work that I do now and also, and one of the cool
Tim Winders:new things you came up with, and this is where we're going to transition.
Tim Winders:We're right up at the end of our time here.
Tim Winders:I want you to Tell us a little bit about the wood because we didn't talk a lot
Tim Winders:about what we've talked about the fire, which to me is the most important thing.
Tim Winders:However, I want to
Tim Winders:finish up because I, I know you could probably tell us about the
Tim Winders:breadth of the type wood that you've got, and then I want you to
Tim Winders:lead into this new, cool thing that I'm looking at on your website right now,
Tim Winders:which will include links everywhere to this fire pit that is like.
Tim Winders:some kind of space age deal that looks cool.
Tim Winders:So tell us about the wood and then the fire pit.
Tim Winders:And then I've got one more question before we finish up.
Leroy Hite:on the firewood side, we have premium oak, we have,
Leroy Hite:artisanal hickory, wild cherry, orchard apple, and redolent on the,
Leroy Hite:and we have that in premium, really luxury boxes that ship to 48 states.
Leroy Hite:We have it locally in several cities in the Southeast and what our firewood
Leroy Hite:racks, our delivery artisans deliver.
Leroy Hite:And then we have our ultimate package, which are 5 of those racks.
Leroy Hite:Um, that come and they come with a hand truck so that you can easily
Leroy Hite:move it around and some other goodies.
Leroy Hite:and then that's of course what Terry Bradshaw buys are the ultimate packages.
Leroy Hite:And, in the cooking wood, we have, post oak, we have, hickory, cherry, Apple,
Leroy Hite:maple, pecan, and then we have sabanaheat.
Leroy Hite:Sabanaheat, everybody's what is that?
Leroy Hite:It's a wood that comes from Africa.
Leroy Hite:it's an invasive species, so it's actually good for, baby
Leroy Hite:cheetahs and rhinos if you use it.
Leroy Hite:So just, you can just buy it and burn it just to help the environment.
Leroy Hite:Um, and, and then we have wood for different size pizza ovens and everything
Leroy Hite:when it's fresh is cut down and, put into a big oven where it's dried out
Leroy Hite:and then it's stored inside and then it is literally hand selected and
Leroy Hite:by that every single person that is either stacking the racks or the boxes.
Leroy Hite:it's trained to, know the difference between if something is rotten, if it has.
Leroy Hite:Um, any imperfections, or if it's not quite dry enough,
Leroy Hite:they're all trained in that.
Leroy Hite:And our quality control is without a doubt the highest in the world.
Leroy Hite:and, yeah, so those are the different firewood and cooking wood and
Leroy Hite:pizza wood species that we have.
Leroy Hite:Um, and what that does is it's is it comes back to ultimately is it's the product
Leroy Hite:quality, which goes to the experience.
Leroy Hite:for listening.
Leroy Hite:On the fire pit, so, around a lot of fire pits in my time, um, the number
Leroy Hite:two most common complaint that I always heard was the firewood smokes.
Leroy Hite:So we fixed that with higher quality firewood.
Leroy Hite:Um, and they do, they have the, of course, the smokeless
Leroy Hite:fire pits that also help some.
Leroy Hite:and, but the number one complaint I always heard is my feet freeze.
Leroy Hite:You can hold your hands over the fire for your hands to be warm, but
Leroy Hite:my lower body or my feet freeze.
Leroy Hite:Or even, my kids put their feet up on the fire pit and
Leroy Hite:melt the bottom of their soles.
Leroy Hite:So we.
Leroy Hite:have start started taking pre orders and are launching the world's
Leroy Hite:first thermoelectric fire pit.
Leroy Hite:What that is smokeless fire pits have two layers.
Leroy Hite:This has a third layer.
Leroy Hite:And in the third layer, it circulates the air and, it converts some of the heat into
Leroy Hite:electricity that powers four fans on the bottom of the fire pit, which blows out,
Leroy Hite:that air that's circulating warm air.
Leroy Hite:In a 360 degree area around the fire pit, month and a half, two months
Leroy Hite:ago, we were outside and it was in the mid fifties on my back deck.
Leroy Hite:And my wife jokingly, you can't do this.
Leroy Hite:People, said, I'm trying to figure out how we can bring this fire pit inside
Leroy Hite:because of the ambience, the warmth around the fire pit, basically the
Leroy Hite:whole fire, the whole deck, which is a pretty good size one warmed up a bit.
Leroy Hite:but particularly six to eight feet around it.
Leroy Hite:It's just this envelope bubble of warmth, cause it goes down
Leroy Hite:first and then heat rises.
Leroy Hite:So really like your whole area is warm.
Leroy Hite:Um, so I'm pretty excited about it.
Tim Winders:Very cool.
Tim Winders:probably don't need to bring it in the RV either outside.
Tim Winders:Yes, not inside.
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:we don't recommend that.
Tim Winders:Folks.
Tim Winders:man, that's awesome.
Tim Winders:that's like some cool stuff, but, and I'd love to go into that a
Tim Winders:little bit more, but let's just tell people to check it out.
Tim Winders:We'll include links below so people can check all
Tim Winders:that out.
Tim Winders:The website phenomenal, the experience and all that you stand for.
Tim Winders:Leroy, it's so beautiful.
Tim Winders:I love
Tim Winders:it.
Tim Winders:I know there's a lot more to the story, but I think I caught the essence of what
Tim Winders:you and the company are trying to create.
Tim Winders:and I do want to mention the website, which is go and tell us the website.
Tim Winders:And I think LinkedIn is the best place for people to find you, right?
Tim Winders:What's the website
Leroy Hite:Yeah.
Leroy Hite:If you want to connect with me, Leroy Height on LinkedIn, on the
Leroy Hite:website, it is cuttingedgefirewood.
Leroy Hite:com.
Tim Winders:Very good.
Tim Winders:We'll include that down below.
Tim Winders:Leroy, we're seek, go create.
Tim Winders:I'll let you pick one of those words just means more to you or
Tim Winders:resonates or jumps out at you.
Tim Winders:Seek, go, or create.
Tim Winders:Which one and why is my last question.
Leroy Hite:Create, um, even though growing up, nobody thought I was
Leroy Hite:a creative, as an entrepreneur.
Leroy Hite:I love creating new ideas, thinking outside the box.
Leroy Hite:And, And building upon it.
Leroy Hite:So just building something.
Leroy Hite:so that's what I really enjoy doing.
Tim Winders:Awesome.
Tim Winders:Says the guy who just invented and could be disrupting the fire pit.
Tim Winders:Industry now is a creator.
Tim Winders:And I definitely agree with that.
Tim Winders:Thanks for joining us, Leroy.
Tim Winders:We're Seek, Go Create.
Tim Winders:We have new episodes here every Monday.
Tim Winders:Continue supporting us.
Tim Winders:You could go to seek, go create.
Tim Winders:com forward slash support, and you can buy me a coffee or a whiskey,
Tim Winders:or you can contribute some funds and I could get me some high end
Tim Winders:firewood and maybe that fire pit we just talked about when it's released.
Tim Winders:So anyway, you could leave as little as a buck or all the way up.
Tim Winders:To, whatever you would like and leave comments there.
Tim Winders:So listen, I appreciate you being here.
Tim Winders:Check out everything that Leroy talked about.
Tim Winders:That is a phenomenal business.
Tim Winders:We'll include some links also to some other episodes where he's gone in deeper
Tim Winders:detail on the business and things.
Tim Winders:I just wanted to catch some of the high level things that he's doing.
Tim Winders:And I think we did a great job of that.
Tim Winders:Thanks again, until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.