Hello and welcome back to season three of Rooted in Reaching where we talk with dreamers, doers and difference makers building an innovative future right here in the South Bend Elkhart region. Entrepreneurs know that where we're rooted matters and where we're reaching matters even more. Today we're talking to Chad Masto, developer of Rides2U, an innovative, reliable and guaranteed rideshare service started right here in South Bend. So let's dive in. It is my great pleasure to have here in the studio today chad mastow from Rides2U. And he's going to tell us a lot about his entrepreneurial journey, how he got where he is today and where he's going, no pun intended, where his trail is leading him in the future here. So, Chad, thanks for being on and let's start, start at the beginning of your journey just to give us some context. Well, okay, let me do this. What is Rides to you?

So we're a reservation based ride share company. Thanks for having us today, Marty. Appreciate the opportunity. So a reservation based ride share company that focuses on reservations and safety, high reliability and guaranteed rides.

Okay, so do you have like a one liner? Like we're the Uber of blah blah, blah? No. Or you don't do that.

We're every. Like I always say, we're like, we're like a tweener, right between black car service and traditional rideshare companies. We're kind of in the middle. We're giving you the quality of a black car service with the white glove touch.

Got it. Okay, perfect. That actually helps. That's great. Okay, so that's where you are today. That's what Rides to you is. I'm assuming there's a long story behind how this company got started, where your passion came from to do this kind of work. So why don't we rewind all the way to tell us a little bit about yourself. What's your background? How did, what was your background leading up to when you were going to start a company?

So I never thought I was going to start a company. So let's just start with that. I've been at the fire department in South Bend for a little over 21 years. I worked at Ryder Truck Rental in the sales and rental office for 23 years, roughly eight years ago. As you could parent does. You know, you want to give your kids every opportunity to advance their life you can. My daughters were in college. My son was playing travel baseball in Indianapolis. I needed a way to make more money.

Okay.

And so you're like, how do I do that? Right. So a guy I worked with, that rider was like, hey, come drive Uber. Okay, what is Uber? I had no idea 8 years ago what Uber was. And he just wanted me to come drive because he got a hundred dollar bonus if I did six rides.

I see. Yeah.

And so I'm like, okay. So I sign up, you know, which is still the same way today. You just get on the app, submit some documentation and consent to a background, and boom, you're driving. You quickly learn though, like, hey, there's zero help. I have this app, I don't know what to do with it. What buttons do I hit? Where am I supposed to go? Yeah, how do I operate it? And so you're out there on your own and you start learning how to drive. And of course, you know, I'm very competitive person, so I get out there, I start driving, I'm like, okay, this is not fun. I don't have any help. When I call support, it's somebody reading off a card.

Yeah, sure.

And they don't have any real idea what my question is or my problem is.

Right.

And then as a dad, you know, you're out on the street and you know, I started driving mainly at night because my kid and family, my kids and family were asleep and didn't take time on bar night here in order. And I quickly learned that, you know, hey, there was a lot of sketchy drivers and a lot of sketchy cars. You know, that made me feel uncomfortable, let alone I couldn't imagine my daughters at their school riding in or getting rid of the airport.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think everyone's experienced that, right? You're on a dark street, you called an Uber or a Lyft or something, and you're kind of nervous. Right? Like.

Right. Especially when you're dealing with your daughters. Like, it's different when you have boys and girls. Girls just scary. Another level of scary. So, you know, I wasn't happy with that and started driving. And I met a bunch of drivers on a local Facebook group at the speedway up on campus, and they were given tips and tricks, you know, on how to basically get the most of your trip from Uber and Lyft.

Okay.

You know, hey, go this way. Keep your app off, get it. You know, only cherry pick. A lot of drivers in the gig industry will take every ride that comes across your screen. Yeah, there's different methods to that. Right. Some feel like they have to take everything to be successful. Some cherry pick and only drive at the prime time. And some value their time, you know, like hey, to me it's less. Less rides, more money. It wasn't more rides, more money. It was less rides, more money, less wear and tear, less time. So.

So you were looking to optimize, right? Yeah.

And I guess I'm hyper competitive. So I took these tips and tricks and said, I'm gonna test them. And I tested them. I'm like, well, they work okay. So I started, you know, going certain ways, playing games. Like, I always thought it was fun because, you know, if I go a little different route than what's on it, didn't tell you which way you had go. Whatever. They give you a recommended route.

Sure, sure.

But you know, when I pull up, I'd be like, oh, Marty, I see you're a five star.

Yeah.

Customer. Well, here's the aux cord. Let's see how this goes. If you keep your five star rating just to make a game out of it, right now, everybody's, oh, wow, what are you gonna play? And I go by a little like a block difference. And it makes a difference in pay.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, became popular. Everybody wanted to ride with you. And then it's like, well, what do you do? You're. You're. A lot of people don't understand when they talk about rideshare, you can't pick your favorite driver. With Uber Lyft, you ride with somebody, you can never ask for it back. So what happens a lot of times people say, hey, I really liked you, Marty, as my driver. Can you. I give you 25 bucks to take me back to the airport tomorrow.

Yeah.

Because I like you and I feel like you work for Uber. You got a background, you must have car insurance.

Right.

You seem like a good person and they want a reliable, safe ride. So they say, Marty, here's 25 bucks. And you say, okay, as a driver, I'm like, oh, good, I get all the money.

Right, right, right. So you're kind of offline at that point.

So I could call a lot of legal rights. What people don't understand is, yeah, unless I had a commercial policy, you're not covered if we get an accident. So this happens all over the United States all the time, because people just, they want a good driver and they want it now. They don't want to wait. They want the reliability.

Right.

So what if an accident happens? We're both.

So if you picked up a side hustle job like that outside of Uber, that person would be uninsured. Right.

Unless they get a commercial insurance policy because you're driving for business. So I Got the policy. I built up a huge clientele.

Yeah.

I was driving mainly on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, bar night, to the point where, you know, I couldn't keep up with the texts and calls.

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna ask you, how did you do that? So it must have gotten complicated at some point, right?

So, you know, everybody wanted to know.

You and like you and want rides.

Right? Everyone ride with the firemen.

Yeah.

And I was, okay, cool. And I was just, at the time, you know, I was just beating Uber. I was looking at Uber's price and you could, as a driver, if you, it's another tool to use. You look at the customer interface and they actually hit the customer first. Seems like before they give the driver more money. So you could watch when it's going to be busy by the customer price.

See, I see.

So I'd always be watching that and say, okay, hey, you know, it's, they're charging 33, I'll do it for 32 or 30 bucks. They're like, okay, cool. But I went and had the commercial insurance policy to protect myself, you know, which is super expensive. But I built up a huge clientele and I was working Thursday, Friday, Saturdays till 3:30 in the morning and you know, getting to bed, getting back up at 5:30 to go to work. But I'm, you know, I'm making, you know, 50, 50,000 plus as a side hustle.

Yeah, it's impressive.

And it just got to the point where, you know, more and more parents, you know, when we talk about ideal customer profiles, like who's that? You know, it was more and more parents were reaching out to me and students and they were saying, hey, can you take me to the airport? Can you take me to the doctor? Take me here. Because they couldn't get the reliable ride they needed when they wanted it.

How much of that was because of the. They believed in the relationship they had with you?

Well, I think if they felt safe, first of all. Right. Like yes, firemen, policemen, you know, just trusted members of the community. Like you can tell when you get in a car with somebody.

Yeah.

Like, hey, that's like this person's safe. You know, And a lot of it was they just wanted to guarantee. Right. And the part of the problem is you get into these college towns, non urban areas. Right. Rideshare is already tough. Then you bring in here what, seven to 9,000 students or Michigan, 50,000 or pretty. It really puts a tax on the traditional rides or rideshare system. So the prices surge.

Yeah.

There's no guaranteed Ride.

Yeah.

And even if I book a reservation with Uber Lyft, there is zero guarantee they're gonna show up. Yeah, there's a whole nother game they play we can talk about later on the driver's side of that.

Okay, so, interesting.

More and more parents start asking for rides, and kids were asked for rides, and I'm like, look, I can't keep this up. You know, Covid came and went. I stayed busy.

Yeah.

And I was like, spending all my time giving rides to my friends. I'd be like, hey, Marty, can you.

Come drive for me?

I'm busy. And I got all these rides because parents, like, if you can't do it, who do you know that can?

Okay, so how did that work, though, within the insurance?

So they didn't have. That's the problem. Right. I'm putting my name on the line for somebody.

Right, right, right.

And I didn't know it wasn't gonna fly.

Got it, got it, got it.

And so.

And you're doing all this just via text messages at this point, like, managing all these relationships. Okay.

It's crazy.

Yeah, it's a lot.

And so I got. I had a student say, you should really take this to the Idea Center. And then. Then I didn't know what the Idea center was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I get on the Internet, look up the Idea center, leave some messages, finally get a hold of somebody, and she was Patty Reinhart.

And.

Oh, yeah, props to her. And so I get in there in a meeting, and she's like, hey, you know, we have this pitch competition coming up. And I'm like, pitch competition? She's like, yeah, pitch competition. Like, so we're playing baseball. Like, I have zero idea. What are you talking about, pitching? I'm talking about playing baseball.

Right.

Like, I have no idea what a pitch is. I always say, you know, and Ryan would give you a hard time. I say, I'm a dumb fireman. I put wet stuff on the red stuff. I know how to make money and be successful. But, like, you get into this higher level stuff.

Yeah.

It's a learning curve.

Yeah.

So moved to the Idea center and got into the pitch competition. In 2021, we won the best community award.

Nice.

Kind of got. And that's where I met Ryan Krieger, our co founder and cto. Now met Sarai Hernandez, one of my advisors, and Jack Rotello, another advisor. And really just know anything about business, you know, other than I had this idea of how do I make this better for me and get the right insurance for My. My friends and make a platform that we can get rides on.

Right. Makes sense. So you walked in there knowing that you needed something. Right. And you did you have a rough idea of like what you needed to do in the work that you were loving doing.

I knew what Uber and Lyft had and I knew all the things I hated as a driver and all the things I hated as a passenger.

Got it.

And I'm like, how do we bring the things that I hate? And I'm not just the only one. Right? You can go to these groups and say, you can go right now. Driver discontents at an all time high across the country. You can go anywhere and say, like, what are the same things? Yet they're like, you don't show me where I'm going. You don't show me what I'm getting paid, you know, unless you accept every ride have these weird rules to follow. So I was like, how do I get the things I hate and bring them together that make for my customers easier for them. I'm not having to collect Venmo, you know, and they're having a good experience as well.

So. So how were you collecting payment before on Venmo? You were using Venmo. Okay.

And it kills you on taxes, by the way. When you report it to taxes, which I did. It does hurt.

Yeah. No, that makes sense, right? Cause then it's all coming to you pre tax. Right. So then you owe a big bill at the end of the year. So you wanted a system that would.

Allow payment through payment and booking and scheduling. Right. You know, like I'm managing 10 drivers schedules and I'm the one that's kind of like, hey, it just became a lot, you know?

Yeah. So. So what? I mean, what happened? You went into the. You. Patty introduced you to somebody. You're the Spiderman who walks in the door to the Idea center and says.

Right, I want to.

I want to invent an app.

We got in there and I just, you know, there was another student at the time that was interested and we partnered up with McCloskey.

Yeah.

Like I said, we won the best community award. We got out of there. And I still remember one of my first conversations with Ryan Krieger, and probably gonna kill me for saying this, but we get in there and I'm like, I knew the day, that first five minutes that I wanted this guy to work for me.

Okay.

I'm like. And I told him, I said, dude, that's fantastic. I need you to come work for me. Yeah, you can't afford me.

Yeah.

I'm like. And I still tease him about that today, you know, you can't afford me. And I was like.

And the reason that's funny is because.

Now he's working full time.

Now he's working full time for you.

So, you know, I knew just the way he talked about things and like, he had been successful in earlier startups and had exited him and, you know, been where I wanted to be. You know, it's the same thing at the same time. You know the guy who owns Roll Excursion, Shannon Kayser, you know, I, I reached out to him. I worked with his cousin at the fire department and I asked him to mentor me. You know, I'm like, hey, you started from nothing and got to where you are today. That's what I want to do.

Right.

So, I mean, I reached out to him.

Cole, that's the journey you're on. Yeah.

And so when I met with him the very first time in a Rourke's. I don't think it was Rourke's then it was something different.

But yeah.

So I, you know, and I was like, dude, like, here's my plan. And you know, I just remember she was probably like, whatever, but, you know, I'm like, hey, man, I remember how you started in that van with just water bottles and yeah, I want to get there.

Yeah.

So. But yeah, so I met Ryan and they said, okay, you got a concept, but is this just a work at Notre Dame? Only because it's, you know, a lot of. What's the word I want to use? Affluent or higher income students.

Right.

Is this the fluke or is this a problem bigger than Notre Dame?

Yeah.

So we put together Google sheets. A couple of my friends were starting to track all of our rides. You know, like, hey, okay, what kind of, what kind of, what kind of business are we doing? Where are we going? How many students? Time of day? Okay, so just a quick little Google form.

Yeah. That's why, I suppose before this, you were doing this kind of off the books, but you, you weren't tracking the data. Right, Right. Because you didn't have an app that was tracking the data for you. So it was all kind of ad hoc. So.

Yeah.

Until you put it together, started tracking.

The little Google sheet and.

Yeah, yeah.

Next, you know, like a year later, there's like half a million dollars between all these people, you know, like, like, holy moly, that's a lot of rides.

Yeah.

And so that was where it was like, okay. I think that's where it got the attention of the idea center a little bit more where we started to. Hey, how do we get money in the door to actually. Yeah, get this going.

When you won the community prize, that was. There was some cash involved with that. What did you do with that money?

Basically use that money to kind of formulate the concept a little further. Like, hey, if we're going to put an app in place, there's. I can't remember the exact word you use today, but when you're trying to. All the stuff you need in the app, put it all. Laying it out and saying, hey, how do we get from point A to point B with this and develop something. Yeah, get an MVP out the door.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what was that like for you? Because I'm sure that was like, outside of your traditional wheelhouse.

Yeah, I mean, I. No idea about app development time. I still am. Not a lot. I know a lot, but I don't know a lot. Like, you know, I can't code for sure.

Yeah.

So, you know, we went. I went to an entrepreneurship meeting and I met a girl from Notre Dame and that did coding.

Okay.

Ellen Joyce.

Ellen Joyce. I don't know that I have ever met her.

So I met an entrepreneurship thing.

Okay. This was at camp on campus.

No, this was actually one of the events down at Hibbert.

Okay. One of the startup happy hours.

Yeah, one of the happy.

Which we still do. Which I still do.

Yeah. I was at a startup happy hour and I ran into a lady there named Ellen Joyce.

Okay, fantastic. That is what we want to have happen at those events.

And then, you know, we were just talking about what I'm doing, and I said, hey, I got this rideshare app I want to create. And we're talking about using Bubble. And only reason I was talking about using Bubble is because Ryan mentioned, hey, we should look at Bubble. It's a low code, no code.

Yep.

She goes, well, I'm a bubble expert.

Oh, you were like, well, yeah.

And I showed her that when we spent the money before on how to, like, really lay this out, and one thing led to another and she developed her mvp.

That's fantastic.

Yeah. We still use Bubble today, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So was that a game changer having the app?

So, you know, I found her and it was like, okay, we're going to pay you some money. And we had no money, so how do we get money?

Right.

You know, I'd been talking to a lot of parents like that. I gave a lot of rides to that. I knew I had money.

Yep.

And, you know, they seemed interested. But you hear as you raise money, and I'm sure you're. Well, you hear a lot of times, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm in, I'm in.

And yes.

Okay. When it comes time to put the ink on the. On the paper. Yeah, it's their story. So, you know, we tried to raise money. Had none. And at the time, the Idea center had. They had like a grant or not a grant, but it's money. $24,000 warrant, they called it.

Okay. This is the pit road fund, I think. Or was it a different one?

It's just the Idea center thing.

Okay.

So, you know, we came to terms to get the 24,000 and there was some, you know, additional money that could come on from the bridge fund.

Okay, great.

And they said, hey, but we need to see some progress, right? We need. Can you actually get people to book on app, or are they so used.

To texting you that they make a little bit of a transition period there? Like, will it stick? Right.

So we got the 24 grand. We said, hey, look, we're going to give Ellen X amount to develop mvp. And then we. You don't just call State Farm and find rideshare insurance for a company. That was one of the major hurdles was how do we get rideshare insurance? You know, and it took probably four or five months to actually get the right place and the right connections out in LA to actually get rideshare insurance.

Okay. And because at this time, you had multiple cars, multiple drivers.

No, everybody was on their own again.

Like, everybody was on their own.

Most of my drivers had commercial insurance.

Some did. Okay.

You know, but it was like, hey, look, I encourage everybody because again, it was just me. And I'd say, hey, I'm busy. Marty you want.

Right.

Marty's available if you want to connecting with Marty and work it yourself, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we want to bring it all together, you know.

Sure.

So we had the 24,000 committed to us. And that day, Ryan and I remember distinctly at the Idea center, got on the phone with three parents, raised 110 grand that day in a half hour, like, boom, hey, Notre Dame invested.

Yep, we're in.

You know what I mean?

So was that. That. That was like the turning point, critical piece there. Notre Dame was willing to put some money in and that helped those. Help loosen up those.

Gave them a little confidence. Right.

There's no cold feet. That's a mixed metaphor there. But yeah, so it gave them the confidence that. That this was a safe Place to put their money or a worthy investment.

See, that's one thing you still got to like today is what you got to be able to convince people to say, hey, why would I take my money out of a savings account where I'm guaranteed money to give it to you, where I could lose it all.

Yeah. Although there are plenty of folks out there with money who want to diversify. Diversify what they're doing with it.

There is. And so once we had Notre Dame, that money, that 110 came in the same day. Committed, Committed. So we're able to pay for the insurance. You know, again, that's. We're paying still about 100 grand a year.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you go home that day and crack open a beer and say no?

To be honest, I don't remember that.

What, $110,000?

Well, you think it's like, a lot, but money goes so fast.

Well, yeah, I'm sure it does.

I mean, it's just so. But that money was all accounted for. That was basically, hey, look, we can. If we can get the app up and running by February 1st of 23, you know, like, we just got enough insurance. We got. That's not enough to go.

Right.

So, you know, it was just to.

Get you to the next benchmark, basically.

Ellen developed a beautiful app of MVP on bubble, you know, and I still remember this. The cool story about that is I was sitting in my car, Trader Joe's, February 1st.

Okay.

23. And there's like three of my friends in the car.

Okay.

And we're sitting there in Highlander, and I got my laptop on my lap hotspot, and kids start texting. And I've been promoting on my own Instagram at the time. Like, hey, we're gonna use this app.

Okay.

Here's the instructions to make a shortcut. So.

So the app had gone live.

It was a web based app.

It was a web based app. Okay. But it was a. It was in prototype phase, but it was usable at that time.

So we're like, hey, download the app real quick and we'll come get you. You know, I'm having to set the price for on demand ride to the bar and manipulate the price to be competitive with Uber.

Right.

And then I remember, like, the first ride comes in. Boom. You know, like, the driver's phone's all ding in the car. And that was just cool, right? Like, wow, it. It worked. And then, you know.

So the other guys in the car were also drivers.

Yeah, they were my friends that were driving. They were just Waiting for that first ride. So boom, you know, take the ride and that's beautiful. I'm looking at bubble on the back end and it's not pretty. You know, it's like drivers on the way. Drivers here.

Yeah.

Driver ongoing. Like, I know. Okay. They're on the way to the destination and then it's like, okay, they're done. I'm like, okay, we did our first ride, you know.

Okay.

So that was fun. You never forget that, though.

I bet, I bet. Well, that's a big benchmark, right? A milestone there, like that first ride on the new app. Oh, yeah.

So then we did that for a little bit and Notre Dame had told us, hey, look, if you, you can get some money and start showing progress there, there's more money potentially. In the meantime, Ellen and I went and pitched Elevate.

Okay.

Go down to Fort Wayne.

Yep.

You know, we got rejected once before. Was me and she's a great pitcher.

Okay.

And we went there and pitched and we won the $80,000.

Yeah.

The money there.

Did they take any equity?

No, it was convertible note that.

Convertible note. Okay.

So we raised 80,000 there and then kept, you know, I think it was maybe March or April, we had done, I don't know, like $50,000 on this app.

Okay.

Rides. And Notre Dame came back through the bridge fund and put 100,000 additional.

Got it.

So that first year went up with like 3:14.

Yeah. Okay. Between Elevate Notre Dame and the private investment. Yeah.

So, you know, then we're off and running and it was like, okay, how do we make this better?

Right. Yeah.

How do we. The goal was to eventually get the Apple and Android, like have actual app.

Got it. Obviously you started, you were catering to college students, Right. Notre Dame students, folks. And you built relationships over time with, with students and their parents, which is interesting. I'm wondering if like at this point did you start thinking, were you, were you thinking bigger at this point, like we need to expand to Purdue or we need to. Or were you thinking of other customer segments that would benefit from this kind of in between service?

Right. I knew the parents said one of me and the kids take the reservation rides, which fit better into my life. Right. It's hard to run nights, but I still at that time thought we were going to be a big on demand service like Uber and Lyft. You know, we were going to offer this safer, more reliable late night rides with the reservation piece as well.

Right, Right.

So, you know, we developed the app in a manner that catered to our Parents and catered to our customers because I knew that mom is like 95% of our rides are by mom. You know, just in today's world, you know, a lot of parents still help, you know, with their students education, which is great. And you know, sometimes little Johnny and little Susie aren't the best at booking a ride in the airport at 4 in the morning.

So my mom's thinking ahead, don't miss your flight. I want you home for Thanksgiving.

Right. I mean the kids thinking about school and everything else and parents are help, you know, organize these things. So we built the app in that manner like we created it where mom or dad can build a ride for their kid. They both see it on their apps.

Yeah.

And then the kids still have the privacy to go, hey, I'm going to go to the bar, I'm going to do this. And they order their own rides.

Okay. Can the parents see that?

They don't see their rides unless they order it for them.

I see.

But they obviously most of them pay the credit card bills.

Right, Right. So those rides to Corby show up.

Well, they don't show them as charged rides to you. Just like it would show for Uber, but it doesn't show you where they were went.

Yeah.

So that was where we started, you know, and it was like, okay, well I didn't think about Purdue. I didn't think about any of that at the time. Trying to remember how I actually came up with Purdue, to be honest with you. Is this the next closest Indiana?

Yeah. Big, big college. Similar.

Well, you have to get permitted in the state to have a ride share permit. And then it was like, okay, where can I go that is close that I can find my way in.

Right.

And we'd raised that first money and it's like, okay, well you see the Runway narrowing?

Yeah.

The term you have to learn in entrepreneurship. Like Runway.

New language. Right?

Yeah, you know, like Runway. What are we talking about here?

Yeah.

So.

And runways.

Yeah. There's all kinds of ICPs I can go up for days. And we get there and I'm like, okay, where are we gonna need more money?

Sure. I mean was that, was that the thing? Like Purdue is our. My next target. Right. Like you felt like you, you were doing, I don't know, saturation is the right word, but you were doing good business.

I just knew that. I started thinking about like what is what? Why does not work. Right.

Yeah.

Well, we have a local airport, which is great, but it's a lot of cancellations. But again, we're A long way from o', Hare, which is where? In Midway, where a lot of kids fly. Right. And if you look at Purdue, like 78 miles away.

Yeah.

To 90 to Indianapolis or Chicago.

Right, right, right.

So I was like, well, it fits the demographic. Right. So, like, still today we focus on college communities that are 50 miles or 200 miles from major airport. I see, like, we got some that aren't, but that's like the idea. Right. It's far away. Again, rideshare is not prevalent here.

Right.

And then you bring an influx of kids or football weekends. It really taxes it out. So that's how we get to Purdue.

So, I mean, it seems like so much of what you did was based on personal relationship and trust, at least at the beginning. Right. That's how like the parents calling you and saying, hey, book a ride with Chad. Right. Like, we trust him, we know who he is or his friend. Was that hard to translate to a different community where you don't live.

Right. So I didn't know anybody. I got in. Like I said, there's driver Facebook groups across the United States. So I got into the Purdue one. And you have to reach out to the moderator and say, I see. Like, are you. Of course, everybody thinks that it's just a scam, you know, and it's like painting the picture. Like, look, I'm another driver.

Yeah.

I've been through the pains. I'm just trying to provide something better, you know, and of course there's always a skepticism, like, yeah, are you really going to do it? You know, do you have insurance? How are you going to pay me?

Yeah, yeah. But I realized at that point you had a model that was already working.

And that was what I was able to share. Like, look here, I'll be happy to connect with any of our drivers that you want to talk to without me.

Right.

And so we reached out to Purdue. I got there, I said, look, I'm happy to come down, put on a dinner for everybody on. Just hear. Just hear my story.

Yep.

That's all I want to do is share my story with you guys. And so that's what I did. And then that day, I think we had like eight or 10 drivers that produce, say, like, I'm in. You know, there's other startups, not even startups or actual full blown rideshare companies. One that was down in Miami just closed. They're prevalent overseas, but we're trying to model them there. And you got to get the right drivers that understand it takes time.

Yeah.

Because you're Building a two sided marketplace, very hard to do.

Tell me about that. What does that mean, a two sided marketplace?

I got to get drivers and I got to get customers. So if I go get all the customers, which is what a lot of drivers were, you know, in, down in Miami, they're talking about, well, you gotta get the riders first. Well, that's not how it works. This might get you as a rider and you order a ride and nobody.

Shows up, you don't have a driver.

You'Re never coming back.

Yeah.

You're just another Uber.

So you're working both sides.

So you gotta have.

Concurrently. Really? Right.

The way I see, you gotta have the drivers first. Right. And it's getting the right drivers. Like we don't take every driver. We talked about earlier how you can just sign up on the app for Uber Lyft and you're approved probably by.

The time this podcast, I was wondering about that, and that was a follow up question I was gonna have for you, is like, how do you quality control as you, as you grow.

So from the beginning again, it's always about, would I put my daughters in your car?

Yeah.

End of the day. Right. So as we got there, like we said, hey, we do it here. It's like, okay, that's not good enough. Right. We want the best. Everybody's had. Good, good, it's good. Uber's bad, Uber's moderate. Okay.

Right.

Like try not to hop over. What's the magic of Uber?

You're asking me that? Oh, yeah. I mean the magic of it is that you can pick up your fingers and pick up your phone and someone will come again.

Major cities.

Yes.

Most of the time, right?

Yes. And that's a beautiful thing. And you can, you can.

What is, what does it take to do that? Takes thousands and thousands of drivers.

Yes.

So you take anybody and everybody and you're just a number.

Yeah.

And there's very little retention because of that.

Yeah.

So you're just a number. You have thousands of thousand drivers. Well, it's like, you know what, that, what does that lead to? Every now and then you have a great ride. Most of the time it's just, okay, I got there. Sometimes it's like, oh my gosh, how are they driving?

Yeah. So yeah, that's true. We've magic, we've all had that experience.

The magic to us is we don't have to have that main drivers. It changes the dynamics for us because of reservations. We know it can predict the busy times in these college towns.

Yeah.

So we know it's busy. We know. And even for the community, when they need rides to the airport, they can book in advance. We know when people need rides. So we though, however want high quality drivers. Right. We want great people, you know, pastors, policemen, firemen, mothers that are, you know, just good people that you would be trusting the community. So we say, hey look, every driver comes in for an interview, you know, a. It gives us a chance to explain what we're doing and say, hey look, we're building a two sided marketplace. It's going to take some time, but I need driver supply before I get the customer supply. So if you just be patient, doesn't cost you anything.

Right.

You're, you're one of our first people.

Well, I imagine. Are, are they still allowed to drive for Uber during this time? Right. Like so.

And if, you know, any good gig worker is Uber, Lyft, doordash, Grubhub, postmates.

They'Re doing it all.

They're picking the best thing if they're a full time driver.

Yeah, right.

They're scanning all those things, which is why they like us. Because they know they're getting the guarantee.

Yeah.

They're getting treated. Right. They're getting paid fairly.

Yeah, yeah.

So we call the drivers that are interested. Every driver comes in for interview.

Okay.

And then we say okay. We explain our side, how we're paying, how, how everything works and then we say, okay, let's go walk around your car. Right.

Okay.

Because we've all had that experience, man. It's freaks like cigarettes or is this not very. Why is the bumper taped up and hanging on?

Yeah.

So. And then we also ask our drivers to alternate a 50 point mechanical inspection, you know, because sometimes our pricing is a little higher than Uber Lift.

Okay.

But it's less than, you know, a private car service. But yeah, you know, we want to say, hey look, we're doing additional layers of vetting. We're making sure they're great people, they have a clean car and it's safe and reliable.

Yeah.

So those are the differentiators that we also add to every driver.

How do you communicate that to your customers?

It's basically it's on if you go into our website, it's listed there. But we also tell us you. It's usually not. It's word of mouth. We have high virality. So it's usually just those first early adopters that spread the word.

Right, right. Yeah.

Another early adopters.

They're another term.

Right.

Lots and lots of good terms.

Better point those out today.

Every term No, I mean, it makes sense, right. Especially since the relationship is based on trust. And so once one student uses it, hey, mom, I use this great service. And yeah, it's usually moms because there's.

Facebook groups at every college class of 26, 27, 28, and family pages. And they share. Like everybody's always asking how do I get a ride here or there. And oh yeah, I use this place. Some of those are people who don't have insurance.

Yeah.

That they're recommending, you know, so it's, that's just when you see those things.

It'S how, like I can see how you were here, but like when you went to Purdue again, like, how did you handle marketing?

So we really.

Did you get into those Facebook groups or were you. Was it just word of. Like, how did you, how did you instigate that word of mouth to start building up your.

So we went to Purdue, we got a few drivers, started online, had no work at all. We're just zero work. And it's like, okay, where do I still. To date we've only spent about a thousand dollars of ad spend.

No kidding.

Yeah, period. But we are on some of those Facebook pages, you know, and your post and you're watching them and hey, we're available, we're available. What a lot of it is, is drivers are so dissatisfied with, with rides. They're doing Uber, they're doing Lyft, and instead of saying, hey, come ride with me, which usually students or parents are always asking, you know, when they know. Especially on a football weekend, like, it's hard to get a ride.

Right.

Or on a bar night, it's hard to go, hey, are you doing rides? Can you pick me up later? Yeah, they're giving out our card and say, hey, book me on rides to you. Yeah, you can ask for rides. You, I'll be out doing rides to you. So just that word of mouth. Somehow we ended up in Purdue and became a vendor at Purdue. And in 2024, we ended up getting connected with the Purdue grad student Union. Did about $100,000 worth of rides taking students from campus to their off campus apartments. On a pilot program they're using, they're doing something a little different now, but it actually, we'll get to that later. Remind me.

Okay, so that was an actual partnership with the student union. Yeah, got it.

And then just more parents started talking about on Facebook, some of the students we were doing. And then, you know, we don't do a ton. I call it. We're still kind of Like Beta phase at Purdue and then the same thing at IU and Ole Miss. You know, we're kind of just getting.

Those two campuses, IU and Ole Miss.

We're already at. We're already at iu. Ole Miss is probably Ole Miss and Purdue about, you know, close to equal right now with a lot of rides. We do. We're actually launching Ann Arbor here with a different model.

Go blue.

Same model. But just how we're bringing a business.

Yeah. Tell me about your team right now. Like, it was you and then you recruited friends to start driving for you at some point. You're now you're interviewing drivers. Right?

Right. So I'm doing all the interviews and.

Then you're still hands on when it comes to that right now?

Not as much. Some. I still recruit drivers. I'll ride around like an undercover boss in an Uber.

Nice, nice, nice, nice.

Because they don't know. They don't know you from anybody. And it's a good way to get a true see of the car and a person.

Well, it is good. And actually, that does remind me, like, one of the more frustrating experiences I've had with Uber is when the Uber driver complains about how much they hate Uber.

Right. It's just common.

Which is. Which has happened several times. Right. So I guess since you're taking better care of your drivers and you're curating the experience a little bit better, your drivers are probably not complaining to the. Their customers about how much they hate rides to you.

No, they're not. They're talking about it all.

They're probably talking about how good it is. Right.

So, I mean, that was the thing. We got to Purdue or. And, you know, we. I met them and I came across a girl there named Brandy.

Okay.

Who just had a really good logistical mind for booking rides and doing these things. So I got her to come on board and kind of be my customer service coordinator down there. I can't be a Purdue every day.

Right.

But she could do the interviews, she could manage the rides. And at the time, we're doing a lot of rides for Purdue, and it still at that time was a heavy lift on the back end, like assigning all these rides.

Yeah.

So, you know, and we had to build them, like, because they were just sending this list.

No kidding.

We're like, putting in 20 rides a day, you know, like, okay, we got to build this ride.

So has the app been able to scale up in that way?

Yeah. So we still use bubble on the back end. We're actually finishing up a New backend server right now, a new service dashboard that we can use. I don't know a lot of companies. Another piece of what we're doing, use what's called Uber Central, where you can, your business can sign up with Uber directly, pay for rides for your client.

Okay.

You know, we've talked to several car dealerships about this and they're interested in that and, you know, hotels. The issue, like, again, if you're a car dealership and you some pick up, a driver comes to get you, a, what are they going to show up in.

Yeah.

And B, we've. They've heard from like, hey, look, they were talking bad about our dealership to our client. And then, you know, they're not perfect. Uber, Indiana, Uber drivers can't pick up in Michigan. We're permitted in Michigan. We do the inspections.

Okay.

So we can pick up Michigan.

You know, you can pick up in Michigan and bring down vice versa.

There's one high end car dealership in town here who is the only car dealership in 100 miles.

Okay.

Like, we have people live in Michigan. They bring in the $100,000 Carver service. We can't get them back because most of them got rid of their shuttle.

Drivers during COVID Yeah, I see, I see. So you can fill that void.

So we're building. We built a whole new dashboard.

Yeah.

We kind of like Uber Central Car Central, where, hey, you can. They can build a ride for their customer and we text them and say, hey, we're your driver. Or if it's a customer that, like, for example, we do a lot of work with different departments in Notre Dame.

Okay.

We just actually met with 16 or 17 different ones last week that want to start using us on top of the dozen we're already doing work with.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, we went to them and said, hey, how can we make this better for you? Because they found that students that were giving them Uber or Lyft gift cards and they still couldn't get their internship. I got it on time or regularly. So we started working with some of them early on. And we built this dashboard also where they can send a code. Now they can just text you a code and they pay for the whole bill. And you put in your app and your app and you're on free.

Nice.

So we're scaling. We went to kind of going back to the app. We raised that original 314.

Yep. Yep.

Kind of got started to Purdue.

Yep.

Need more money.

Yep.

Let's raise another 300,000. Right. So we can get Purdue up and running. We can.

So you did that.

This was in 24 or late 23, early 24, trying to raise money, which is, you know, just in the economy, which still is getting better, but it's still tough time money.

Yeah, it is.

So one of my original investors doubled down. I think two of them did, but it still wasn't enough money. You know, I'm watching one way dwindle, dwindle, dwindle.

Yeah.

And, you know, as a boot, when you bootstrap your company.

Yeah.

Another term there, right?

Yep. Another term.

And so, you know, you bootstrap and, you know, you drain your own savings, like, because you're putting your life in this. Right. Like, hey, this is. I didn't think we'd be here. And now here I am, like, yeah, you know, this is what the Lord gave me. And I'm going to try to.

Yeah.

You know, the best of father's will. And so we're raising money slowly.

Yeah.

And we're running out. And of course, every time you go to the bank or want to get a loan, it's like, I need a personal guarantee. And it's like, look, right. I'm not putting my house in a line. Right. I believe in what I'm doing, but I got to be right, realistic. How many, you know, what percentage of startups fail? You know?

Yeah.

So, you know, I made many mistakes in my life, and I asked for forgiveness every day. Right. You know, I'm not perfect. I made mistakes. I've learned from my mistakes.

Sure.

And, you know, I'm like, I woke up one morning, like, stressed out, right. Like, how am I gonna do this? But I've been praying and praying and praying, and I woke up and God said, hey, look, talk to your wife. Cash out your rider retirement. You don't even remember they're there. I didn't remember. I didn't remember there. I bought all these stocks, and I had all this 401k. I didn't remember, you know, So I talked to my wife and wanted to be obedient to God and cash out and put some money back in my savings account that I drained. And I put 30 grand in the company to get us through the summer.

Okay.

We scaled way back, right, Brandy? I'm like, hey, look, we got to scale way down. And I had Lauren here, who had been with us from the beginning and kind of run our South Bend operations with me, went into cockroach mode, we call it. Right. Where you got to just try to survive the. You know, what did The Iris Hamill told me, what is it when you're crossing the abyss there? The.

Valley of death or the.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, No, I think that's like an Elon Musk quote.

Yeah, well, that's the eating Glass and.

Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah.

But, yeah, there's no. I'll remember it. I'll text you. But, yeah, so I, you know, I give. Turn it all in. Give a 30 grand company, and, you know, it's the crazy. This is the craziest part ever. Like, the next day, we had given some customers, had my personal number in the vip.

Okay.

You know, and some have.

Yeah, yeah.

But I get texts. And this guy we were doing, he was coming for a wedding, and. Okay, I knew he's associated with the wealthy individual.

Okay.

Maybe he might even be considered ultra high net worth, you know?

Okay.

I didn't know this at the time.

Okay.

We just gave him rides. And I was, okay. I ask everybody. You always, always be closing, right? ABCs.

Okay.

And every person I know that I have an opportunity, I'm like, hey, do you know anybody that might want to invest?

Right?

If not, if, you know, you know, please share the word. And yeah, the other thing I learned early on in life was follow up, Right?

Yeah.

Money's in the follow up critical. You know, I learned that back. I mean, back when I was in 14 years old, I was mowing grass with my dad, you know, hustling, trying to do these things to buy my cars and do all those things. But, like, you know, always be closing. So I'm like, man, and I'll hound you until you tell me.

So you mentioned it to this guy.

Oh, I met a lot of times, like, I will text. I have alarms set on my phone. My wife and friends make fun of me because I have a thousand alarms on my phone every day. That's my to do list.

Yeah.

And I keep texting this guy. I'm like, man, I don't want to bug you if you're not interested. Just tell me no.

Right, right. Just give me the no.

And, you know, because, you know, you hear a lot of no's. You got people prepared. And entrepreneurship. Finally, he's like, you know what? Let's get on a call tomorrow, too.

Okay?

So, okay, me and Ryan get on. And Ryan again, one of my first advisors, and we get on the call with this guy, and like I said, I try to be a man of faith. I could be better. And Ryan's like an angel compared to me. So we get on this call with these guys and this guy has his assistant on.

Yeah.

And first thing Ryan says is, Ryan. Ryan's usually right on time. You know, he's early and I'm late.

Okay.

And he's like, hey, is that Daniel in the lion's den behind you?

Okay.

And it just hit off this huge Christian talk for like 20 minutes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and then we. A 30 minute call went two hours. And at the end I hear, I hear Chuck saying, well, when we do this, when we do this, you know, he's already seen us, which is a win.

You know, you were probably thinking, this is a good sign.

But still, you know, you hear, we. This doesn't always train.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

You know, and he's like, all right, you know, let me get back to you. And in the meantime, another investor invested 25 grand.

Okay.

And so, okay, we got a little bit more breathing room. And then he comes back, says, we'll do 195.

Okay.

You know, and I'm like, okay, sweet.

And then like, am I running one of my other.

One of my investors. Other investors I was, you know, kind of going back and forth with. And then you call them, say, look, I already got the money. I don't really. If you tell people you don't need their money, sometimes they just want to give it to you.

Oh, interesting reverse psychology test.

Like, hey, look, I got it. I'm at. I'll over subscribe if you want. You know, I don't need it. Like, I'm closing this up. No, I'm in. So like I say, the Lord opens so many doors, like for being obedient, for that, you know, this is the craziest part. And then that got us into now when, you know, we were getting low and now we just said, hey, we've been trying to raise.

Yeah.

But you know, again, you're putting a lot of money in app development.

Right, right. So the door kind of opened wide up again.

Yeah. And then you got, you know, it's giving Summer's coming and it's like, okay, we got to get there. But now we're getting closer and closer to profitability.

That's fantastic. So let's bring you back a little minute because you mentioned mowing grass with your dad and hustling out there, the follow up piece. And I think you also said early on in this conversation, you never really saw yourself as a businessman. When you look back at yourself, when you look back at your 15 year old Chad what do you think? What would you tell him today about this journey that you've been on?

Bet on yourself, man.

Bet on yourself.

Bet on yourself. Because, you know, like, you can't try. You can't depend on anybody else to bet on you. Like, you got to bet on yourself.

And do you think you wouldn't have done that at 15?

I mean, I mow grass because I don't even know how I got started. Like, I think I started 14.

Yeah.

And then, you know, my. I was doing like 7 to 10 lawns. My dad would drive me around.

Yeah.

Because I had to save them for my first car. Like, you know, I was told, hey.

You want to drive, right? Yeah.

You got to buy it. And if you want to drive, you got to pay your insurance, you know, My sister got off kind of easy, but that was my road. Right. Like, it is what it is. I had to. I had to save up to buy a car. My dad helped me fix it up, and then I sold it and bought another one and fix it up and sold it.

Okay.

You know, and then I was mowing and I started working for a local lawn company in the summers between high school.

It sounds pretty entrepreneurial, but I didn't.

Think of it then. But, you know, I mean, it's just like. I mean, Ryan will say I got all kinds of grit, and that's what, you know, makes a difference.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, I don't look. I'm always trying to be like the grass. I'm a glasses half empty guy. You know, as much as I try to be thoughtful and thankful to God, sometimes it's hard, you know, like, it's my motivation. Like, I don't always want to say, oh, we did it, you know, like. Because, like, it's. There's still so much more to do.

There's more to do. Yeah. Well, continuous improvement. Right?

Right.

Like, it's hard to rest on your laurels when you're building a company and.

Oh, yeah, it's stressful.

Yeah. And you've got people you're taking care of too, Right. Customers and also drivers. I imagine you feel some. Well, again, sort of responsibility towards drivers.

Are the face of the company. Right.

Yeah.

Like, I can't do every ride. I mean, I try not to do rides. Right. That was the hardest part. Like, when you're bootstrap at a company and you launch, it's like, I can't do this. Right. I gotta let you do it because I built a company for you to drive.

Yeah.

And if I go do every ride Then you're never gonna want to drive again. Right. So then now you're taking income away.

Yeah.

You know, for. So for a year, I didn't get any dropping money.

Wow. So hard to give that up, right?

It is when you depend on it, you know, and you're not getting paid. So it's like, oh, you know, what am I gonna do here?

Well, I hope you're paying yourself out of the company.

Well, not back early in the days. I am now, but the time. Yeah, for the first couple years, I didn't get paid, so. Yeah, yeah, it was no money to pay me. It was like, hey, let's just build this thing and take money out of the bank if I have to.

So.

Yeah, but, you know, the cool part now, looking back is, you know, we've done a little over $1.1 million in rides into a little over two years, and roughly 700 grand of that's gone back to local drivers.

Yeah.

You know, so that's. That's the part. And they're the face of the company.

Right.

Like, we're nothing without our drivers. That's why it's so important to hire the best quality drivers, because they're the ones out there getting your luggage, showing up at 4 in the morning, driving you safely to the airport, you know, through good, bad, ugly weather. Weather. So, like, that's why that's the most important piece. Like, you got to have drivers that believe in what we're doing. They believe in the mission.

What does the future look like?

So we're raising $2 million.

Two million. Okay.

Right now. And we're going to do one, but everybody says, get it while you can get it.

Probably good advice.

So we're doing $2 million. We've got 200 in the door the other day, 250 committed and another 500. That is.

What's the goal with them money, like.

Basically to get to profitability.

To get to profitability.

Originally, we were talking about getting to 20 campuses in 26.

Okay. I was wondering if, like, what is the path to profitability? Is it more drivers? Is it more campuses? Is it.

Well, right now we realize it's going deeper. Right. We need to get deeper where we're at, we're barely touching the surface here. And we knew, you know, last year.

We did okay, hence the car dealership thing. And then.

Yeah, more B2B. You know, another term.

Right. Yep. B2B.

So, you know, it's what we want to get deeper here. You know, we did about 550 in rides, 550,000 rides last year and majority. That was Notre Dame, probably 400,000.

Yeah.

So it's like how do we get deeper? We're barely touching the surface. And then how do we get the community around too? That's the next thing. Right. It's not just for students.

Right.

Anybody in the South Bend El Carter area.

Right, Right.

It's like, how do we make that present? That's why marketing like this raise. Marketing is number one most important hire.

Okay. Is that okay? So you're going to hire a marketing person out of the, out of this next raise or. Yeah.

Firm.

Yeah.

So we got 200 in the other day. We got 250 signed, ready to come in soon here. And then they wrote an awesome investment memo.

Yeah.

Which is great. To help close other deals. They have a 32 page investment memo that supports everything. So we got about 350 to 500 soft committed that we're hoping to wrap up here in the next couple weeks. And we're going to continue raising the last million. But that was the goal. Right. We bring in Ryan full time. We need someone that just because we have an app developer in Tunisia.

Okay.

Who develops for us and then we have, you know, Ryan full time's a cto because you know, when you talk about apps, you know nothing about it. You gotta have someone that makes all the buttons.

Yeah.

Someone makes the buttons look pretty, but then somebody has to tie all those together. This is what makes these work.

Yeah.

A lot more stuff than you ever think. I just say, hey, can we do this? It's like real quick and they're like, well, that's gonna be like you wanna go a thousand miles an hour in entrepreneurship. But like things go one.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the hard part.

It must be a wild feeling to be, you know, again, not even looking back to your 14 year old self or whatever it is. But like you just casually said, oh, I have a, I have a software developer in Tunisia. You know, like hard to imagine maybe 20 years ago that you'd be just casually talking about how you hired a guy in Tunisia to do software development for you, but here you are. Yeah.

And if I say him and Ryan and.

Yeah.

And like I said, the marketing person's the big piece here of the puzzle. Right. We want to have a.

Do you have an idea of how you want to market? Like.

Yeah. I mean we've done zero ad spend. Really On Google.

Yeah.

We just done a little bit of testing on Facebook and Meta. So like right now if you were to Google Rideshare, Notre Dame rideshare. Something. We're number one. We're ahead of everybody. We never spend time with Google.

Okay.

We're number three at Purdue, but we're not on the map anywhere else. So how do we, you know, do the right Google spend?

Right.

I always say this all the time. Like, we could be talking about coffee cups, and I'll get on social media later and all I'm gonna see is coffee cup ads.

Yes.

How do we get that right?

Yes.

With the right demographic.

Right.

People that are using us.

Yeah.

So that to me is like, hey, that's how we take it up a level. You know, and then.

Yeah.

The other part, again, the profitability is we're. I don't care about on demand. I remember I told you earlier on, I thought on demand was we got heavy in reservation, like, 95% of our rides.

Yeah.

And we started talking about, hey, well, let's look at our on Demand. We did 1100 rides in two years and we only completed 53%. Well, why? Well, because they were all booked on busy times when we were booked reservations.

Got it.

So we got. I won't give too much to it, but we got what's called loops coming out.

Okay.

We're talking on demand loops, but it'll be running, for example, like here in Notre Dame, they're running on bar nights, subscription based.

Oh, so is it literally what it sounds like? Yeah, if you're just kind of.

We'll run it on busy weekends. Tune from the airport at Purdue. We're going to run it down there with the grad students and Ann Arbor. We're going to run to the airport on busy times. So basically, Wheat can predict when it's busy.

Right? Right.

So we can even do special events. Somebody wants a special event loop, we can close it, make it private. They can just jump, you know, have, like, is your.

Does your. Is your software getting smarter over time because you're gaining knowledge.

Right.

Well, we're learning, like Ryan putting that into it. Like, you know, the busy times. You know the busy routes. You know where the demand is.

Right. And the key to that is he was talking to the drivers. Right. Like, yeah, what do our drivers want? To make them happy, you know?

Yeah.

And I owe a lot to those guys. Like, our driver app's not fancy, like Uber or Lyft. You know, it's kind of crappy, if you were to be honest, compared to Uber. Lyft.

Yeah.

But, you know, like, we don't have mapping. Like, they're like, why Do I need mapping? I have. I know where I'm going here. And I use Waze when I go to Chicago. Like.

Yeah.

You know, but we were able to integrate those things into the Driver app where they can use Waze and things. But.

Okay.

Yeah.

How many kids do you have? Three. Three kids. All girls or girl?

No.

You mentioned daughters. I know you have at least one.

One of my oldest one will be 30 in January.

Okay.

And then my youngest daughter will be 26 in February who just had twins.

Okay.

Yeah. And then my son's gonna be 21 in April.

Okay. What do your kids think?

I don't really know.

Like, dad's crazy.

I mean, I don't know. I was actually just thinking about my son. We just had a conversation about his job yesterday, and I was like, maybe you should be an entrepreneur. Maybe you should start something.

Like. Yeah.

You know, my. Well, my middle daughter's a stay at home mom, and then my oldest daughter works down in Florida.

Yeah. Yeah. Still. I mean, what a. What a. I mean, you're. You're. You're illustrating a role. A role that another person could follow.

Right, Right. I mean, that's the goal is, like, I always tell investors and like, you know, which I just. I'm trying to change my family's legacy.

Right.

Like I said, I made mistakes. I've asked for forgiveness.

Yeah.

I've tried to learn from my mistakes, you know, personally and as a business.

Yeah.

And the goal personally is to. To raise. To be able to change our family's legacy. At the end of the day. Right. I want to give my kids something better. I'm not trying to get Buku rich and just run off, you know? Yeah. But, you know, you can change your family's legacy or something you believe in. And that's the big thing about starting a company. Right. If you can't, just don't just start a company to start something like, oh, right. Because you don't believe in it and it's too hard.

100. I mean, right. That. That sense of purpose or mission behind the entrepreneurial effort.

So many times you could quit, man. Like, it's.

Yeah.

I mean, like I said, when Elon talks about eating. Eating glass and staying in the abyss, I mean, it's tough because.

Yeah.

I don't want to sound like a crybaby, but yet it's.

No, no, I. I imagine you've had days. Oh, it's laying in bed thinking, like, what?

You know, how are you gonna pay your bills? How are you gonna get drivers? How are we gonna launch here.

You know, like, you're taking a lot of responsibility on your own shoulders too, with interviewing.

You don't want to fail. Right, Right. All the guys at the fire department give me crap about, you know, like, oh, there's a millionaire. There's a millionaire. And it's like, yeah, you know what? I don't want to. I want to speak it into existence, you know.

Are you still working as a fireman?

Yeah, currently plans right now to retire in early 26.

Okay, okay.

Once this raise is completed. Yeah, but, you know, like, they're always.

A lot to balance a family.

They're giving me crap every day about their rich guy. Why don't you pay for this rich guy? It's like, man, if you only knew.

Yeah.

Like the hours, like, you know, like, I work a lot at night because that's when our customers like, like moms and dads are at work and they're in California. And at 9 o' clock our time, 10 o', clock, it's like 6 o', clock, and they're like blowing you up on the phone, you know, and then you're just handling all these problems and I'm you. Like, we have this phone we use, you know, just our customers text in and. Okay, that's what made that noise earlier, I see. And I have it on my breakthrough. My phones are do not disturb. So, like, yeah, super stressful. You got three or four a.m. rides, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Phone beeping and people are freaking out for rides. And you always think, man, what if that's my kid?

Right.

That's mentality you want to have with your customers. Like, hey, how do you want others that you want done to you? Right. And that's kind of what I try to do is like a matter of just two or three in the morning. You're like, okay, let me see what we can do.

Well, your grit really does come through in the conversation. I mean, clearly you've put heart and soul into this and you've been working hard to make it successful and learning a lot as you go. Oh, yeah, you're throwing out these entrepreneurial terms like they're candy.

I didn't know anything before.

Yeah.

I always said, I'm the fireman. I put wet stuff on the red stuff.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, as we wrap up here, like, what else do we need to know? Like, if you were gonna. Like, a lot of. There are a lot of folks out there who have an idea and you had an idea and you turned it into an actual business. Like, do you have advice for those folks out there who are just kind of like, oh, I have this idea. I think it's a good idea, but I don't know what to do.

Number one is like, don't give up. You know what I mean? Like, you gotta bet on yourself. Like, that's the most thing. If you have something and you're not happy with life or where, you know, like, do I want to be a fireman forever? It's a great profession, but I don't want to do it forever.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, and then before I was a fireman, I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Okay.

You know, if you have an idea, you should chase it before somebody else comes up with it.

Yeah.

I mean, like, if I watched a ton of Shark Tank, but you're gonna laugh at that.

Like my wife.

No, I mean, I literally fall asleep to that every night at home.

What's his name is coming to rally it in the Rally Innovation Conference in September. Kevin o' Leary is going to be down there.

So I've watched just the ton of that. And you know, like. And I'm just like, you know, like, you see some ideas, you thought, Man, I never thought of that. Like, but if you have something that you think is. It doesn't hurt to do anything, you know, take it to you guys.

Yeah.

Take and say, hey, there's so many resources in South Bend, in Elkhart. Like, you don't know about them. Yeah, it doesn't hurt to go there. And hey, here's an idea I have. How do I formulate my idea?

Yeah.

Because I didn't know.

Well, I'm happy to say that there are a lot of resources here. Put the resources out.

I think sometimes you don't know. Right. It's like, yeah, I would have never heard about the Idea center at that time. Somebody would have told me.

Right.

So, I mean, that's the thing is getting your name out there to people and say, hey, if you have an idea, yeah, bring it here, we'll help you. You know, there's interest, like giving the encouragement, like, hey, we can help you get this to where you want it to be. So, yeah.

Yeah. I love the concept of betting on yourself. And that's not just for young people, for all of us. Right.

And I also follow. I can't think of the guy. School of hard knocks on TikTok. That guy who does all those. You seen him? He does all those.

Yes. I don't know his name either, but.

I know I watched a ton of those and it's like you hear over and over and over, like, bet on yourself. Right. Like, what's the other thing they always say? I can't remember. I was going to talk about that. Like, just. But that, dude, they got incredible stuff on there.

Yeah.

And it's just like, bet on yourself and if you don't do it, somebody's going to do it. And be your own boss. Right. Like. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I'm tired of going to firepower, you know, where's you at? I've had. Last year, I had a ton of terrible calls. Oh, you know, that end of. The end of 25 and in 2024, you know, going this year, and it's like, look, you see so much stuff. It's just.

Yeah.

Some point. You know, some people do it their whole life and.

Yeah, great.

To me, that's just not my whole life. So, yeah, fortunately, God gave me this opportunity. But, yeah, I wanted to be a.

Whole potential new future here.

Right. I wanted to be my own boss and. And like, you know, go to the. When we just moved into the offices over here, it's Momentum Hub.

Yeah.

Chris Primer. I'm giving you a shout out.

Yeah. And I'm looking forward to seeing you there because I'll be in there as well.

You know, like, I get to where it's like, casual day. Like, you know, the other day, I think I saw it. I'm, you know, shorts and a T shirt. Like, you know, it's kind of fun to be your own boss.

Yeah. Yeah.

Work your own schedule. But this becomes stress, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

And lots of sleepless nights and wake up early. But I mean, it's kind of fun to, like, not have to someone tell you, hey, this dress code, like, I tell Ryan, we want to be the cool guys at the Hub.

Right.

You know, and if you want to.

Take a day off, you can technically do it.

Ryan and I work all kinds of crazy hours. It's like, hey, look, if you need to go do something, like, nobody says you have to be in the office every day.

Right? Yeah. That's a beautiful thing. And that is a motivating factor for a lot of entrepreneurs.

Actually.

They're just tired of working for somebody else. Right.

Even if it's just starting your own company.

Construction.

Right.

Yeah.

Take the take. I know a guy that's going to build ourselves there that.

Yeah.

Did the same thing and he's got a successful business. Like, just bet on yourself. Like.

Yeah.

You can be your own boss or have somebody tell you what to do forever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome. What's your and is going to close up here? Just kind of a. A more casual question or a personal question. Like you. You've been driving around the region for years now. You probably know every Nook, Cranny, Road, street, alley. What's your. What. What are a couple of your favorite places? Are there some hidden gems that you've discovered in all your rides that I.

Mean, like, I don't. I never went out and partied, so like.

Yeah.

I never still. I don't. You know, I mean, I like, I don't know. I mean, you still got the pipeline races finnies, which I've never been to Phoenix other than pickups. People say, where do we go in South Bend? Right? You go. You go to Finney, CJ's, Corby's, Ulf, you know, or Linebacker.

Yeah. You know, like those are the big five.

Yeah. Like.

Yeah.

Personally, I just, I've never really been to. I've been to Corby's a couple times, you know, but yeah, I've never been a big partier.

And yeah, you don't have time for it. You're running multiple business, working full time and running an entire business, building an entire thing.

Like.

Yeah.

The one things I don't like in South Bend is smart streets.

Oh, no kidding. Wait, which part of them the.

The speed humps and the bump outs everywhere.

Speed humps? Yeah, they slow you down. Huh.

Which I guess the point but slow everybody down. Even first responders.

Yeah.

They weren't thought about when they drive around. Drive around long fire trucks around. Some of those things is not easy to do.

I see.

Go down, for example, go down the style and try to turn on Niles.

Yeah. I can see that be challenging. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Those are probably the least favorite. Like when they did all that stuff.

Yeah.

Just because, you know, as a driver too, they're always trying to find the quickest route.

Right, right, right, right, right, right.

It's more wear and tear in your car.

Roads that are purposely designed to slow you down.

But it's more wear and tear on anybody's car and a rideshare driver. Right. Like, hey, I'm driving and I got to go over six speed humps each way. Every way now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pros and cons. I mean, probably better for pedestrians.

Right.

A little tougher for the.

Yeah.

Some of the drivers.

I don't know. I've been to a lot of trying to Think favorite place to stop.

No big deal. I thought maybe you'd have something on the tip of your tongue that you're excited about, but it's. It's. Yeah, no problem.

I'm kind of sad about being downtown and getting to eat all the restaurants.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I'm. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better. Well, we're in the same. Same space, so. Yeah. Some cool restaurants you went to La Esperanza, Right?

So.

Which one?

I was there last week, too.

It's pretty. Last week. Yeah.

There today and last week. Maybe Bruno's tomorrow. Are you working tomorrow?

Yeah, of course.

Some pizza.

I am working tomorrow. I got to get that office set up. We ordered some tech, so it's. Yeah.

Next week. Maybe Friday. Yeah, I feel like tomorrow's Friday.

Okay. Chad, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Great to hear you. Great to hear your story. Can't wait to hear your next successes. The 20. I mean, I don't know if you're sticking to that plan, like the 20.

Campuses, but that's still the plan to go deeper here than 26. Like I said, we're very close to profitability. We're profitable per ride.

Yeah.

It's just a matter of getting profitable overall, and we project that early 26, so congratulations.

I love these kind of stories because actually, just the last guys were in here, too, were community award winners at McCloskey, the door blockade guys, so that, you know, scrappy local folks who are building companies right here in the region, and they're growing, and there's a lot of potential, and I love those stories almost more than anything else. So thank you for being that person.

Thanks for being a resource.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great.