00:00:12
Podcast today and every day we’ll focus on issues that are important to small business owners and topics that are relevant to them. And today we’ve got a really special guest, a guy named Tony Trent, who I had the pleasure of meeting. I don’t know, at least six months ago. And we’ll tell that story maybe if we have time. But I’ll let you actually introduce yourself instead of me telling people what you do. So I’ll let you do that. But welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it. And I don’t know if I’ll do this podcast justice, but I’m here in the hot seat. You can’t do any worse than me. Yeah, so as Bob mentioned, my name is Tony Trent, and I am a business developer for a company called HP Legacy.

00:01:00
And we are based out of Brownsburg, Indiana. We also have an office up in West Lafayette. We do a lot of work for Purdue University. But we do commercial buildings. We don’t self-perform anything. In a previous life, I owned my own business for 18 years. I’m an accredited landscape architect and I have a degree from Purdue University. Boiler up. Boiler up. Sorry. Tweet, tweet. It’s all right. We’ll let him in. Chirp, chirp. Chirp, chirp. Is that what it is? It’s not tweet, tweet? No, it’s chirp, chirp. And we may get into the details later about why I sold my business and decided to do something different. Sure. Yeah. So, tell us about HP Legacy. Just tell us about what it is, who it focuses on.

00:01:46
Yeah, so we focus on building commercial buildings either for professional dental offices. We build race team offices and buildings. We do renovations. We just finished a renovation in downtown Indianapolis for a sign company. And we do tenant improvement work. So, if you need a building that you buy and you want to improve that, we are the people for you. And as I mentioned earlier, we don’t self-perform anything. So, we have all of our subcontractors that we use that perform that work. Okay. And I’m actually, I’m at Purdue a lot. And so, I see you guys up there. What kind of work are you doing right now? Yeah, man, we’re doing all kinds of renovations up there. It’s not called the co-rec anymore, but when I was up there, it was a co-rec.

00:02:37
So, I still refer to it as the co-rec. Uh, we uh, we’re renovating that um, we renovate all kinds of uh, the science buildings and all kinds of buildings; they want to improve on or make them more handicap accessible. Um, and you know, the buildings can get older, so they want to improve them, and, and you know, there’s so much expansion in Purdue, and so much is happening up there that you know, there’s need to update some of those buildings, so we’re up there doing a lot of those awesome. What are some of the trends that you’re seeing in the commercial real estate area? I’m seeing a slowdown, especially when it comes to storage. It’s not fair because Indiana is a unique state, right? And we have so much going on in this state right now.

00:03:28
And I feel really fortunate to live in this state. With the multi-billion dollar projects that this state has never seen before. And so we’re in a unique situation, but there is a slowdown in a lot of storage facilities. I think they just over-spec that and built too much. And so we have so much of that on the market right now. Like personal storage? Warehouse storage. Warehouse storage. The big industrial stuff. Near and dear to my heart of Whitestown, Indiana. You can’t throw the rock and not hit the warehouse. One of the things that amazes me, you’re driving between Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis on Highway 70 and there’s multiple, I mean hundreds of millions of square foot of empty warehouse space. Yeah, so the people that have deep pockets will be able to flush that out.

00:04:21
But I think we’re going to see some commercial space when loans come due and the rates get changed. I think that’s going to be a segment of the market that we’re really going to have to figure out. And I think we’re not done with some of the banks not being able to float this stuff. Right. Yeah. So, do you see a different use for those spec buildings? Or do you think that the demand is coming for those with the right use? Or what do you see there? Yeah, I mean, I see some, you know, unique uses for the marsh buildings. I don’t know. Those sat empty for a long time. And now they’re repurposing those buildings, either making them pickleball courts or churches. And so, I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to do that.

00:05:08
I just think it’s going to take some time. Yeah. And, you know, from a small business standpoint, obviously one of the things I always hear is, you know, I’d like a 30,000 square foot building. And at least in Indianapolis Metro, those are so hard to find. They’re almost impossible. But if I’m looking to expand, what would you suggest that an owner think about? What do they need to think about? Well, I think a lot of times owners and people who want to build buildings don’t think about the ability to capitalize on tax abatements or incentives. And also there’s some pretty unique things out there that offer, like even for solar rebates. And I mean, and at one point in time, I don’t know if it’s still the case, but you could probably get your whole roof put on for free if you were to put solar on.

00:05:59
Right. And so I don’t think that people just take advantage of that because they don’t know about it. And so that’s what we are trying to do is we’re trying to be a team that we can offer everything to our customers and to allow them to think through the whole process rather than just say, hey, I want a building and I want 20,000 square feet. Well, hey, let’s think about do you have any other sites that you want to put this building on? Can we capitalize by going into the state and saying, ‘Hey, look, you know, you’re thinking about going to Ohio.’ What does that look like? And and so there’s just so many opportunities out there that people leave on the table that they just don’t know about.

00:06:39
And so that’s kind of what we’re out there doing is trying to educate our potential customers and letting them know: There’s more options out there than they may know. That’s a good way to put it. I mean, we’ve got, I’ve got partners that focus in-you know, incentives and grants and those kinds of things. And it’s shocking that they never get explored. That’s correct. You know, there’s strings, right? Some of them have strings and those kinds of things, but boy. Leaving money on the table when you’re expanding and you don’t need this space, it’s kind of crazy, it is, it is, yeah. So you made a transition from business owner to business development-what that been like? It’s been different, um, and it’s good in many ways and other ways that you’re learning, um, and uh.

00:07:23
I’ve gone from, uh, basically being the man if you will, and having all the responsibilities from the day-to-day activities, sales meetings with customers, making payroll, and all of that, um, and actually going from an industry that I knew a lot about because I have many, many, many years of of landscaping and and what it takes for that industry to make it work, to an industry that I’m learning about, and not having as much responsibility in terms of ownership, but which has been really good because I have less worries. So, what would you say is the biggest change then from ownership to business development? For me, I put a lot of pressure on myself. And I want to perform; I want to feel like the owner of HP Legacy is getting the greatest value of what he’s paying me for.

00:08:27
And so that’s probably, I’m my worst enemy for sure. Yeah, I mean, we talked about when you came in a little bit, just about, you know, just did a bid. Didn’t want it or what that feels like. Yeah. And you, I’m sure you experienced that in the landscaping company as well. However, you know, size and frequency and the dollars involved, et cetera, probably feels just a little different. It does. And you know, elephant in the room, right. Is it for every sales person that’s out there and every owner that sells getting told no? Right. Yeah. It still hurts. Yeah. It just does. For sure. Absolutely. No one likes rejection. Right. I mean, So, you know, you just pick yourself up and you go to the next one and keep working at it and you’re going to land one.

00:09:12
You have to shoot the ball many times for it to go in the hoop. So there you go. Yeah. If you don’t shoot, it’ll never go. That’s correct. That’s correct. Yeah. And just got to get more shots. Right. And that’s, you know, every my good friend, Caleb Townsend, a factor. If you don’t know Caleb, you should, you know, they’re a prospecting company. That’s what they do. And same thing. You just have to keep shooting. Yeah. At some point, you’ll get something in for sure. You bet. So who makes an ideal customer for HP Legacy? I know you do a lot of different things, but just think about what that customer might look like. Yeah, the ideal customer for us is that we really excel in design build.

00:09:49
Okay, um, and for those that don’t know what that means, yeah, yeah, so that means that we go in and um, we help you design the building; we hire the architects; we hire the mechanical people; we hire the civil people; we kind of control that whole project. Hp legacy has a little bit of a different philosophy, and and we’re up front with our customers every one of them; we show them our price; we show them our margin; in fact, we give customers money back if we come in under the estimated amount. And so we, you know, we’re super honest with our customers. And the owner of HP Legacy, Brian Schultz, he’s an amazing guy. Awesome guy. Good friend. Yeah.

00:10:38
And he, I’ve never met an owner like him before, you know, because most owners want to just whatever we make extra, we’re going to pocket it. No, that’s not our agreement with you. We want to make sure that we give you a building that you want and we come in under budget or within the budget. And we really have a unique situation where Brian has so much experience with doing this all really all over the world, building buildings, and he does an amazing job of making banks feel really comfortable because he’s usually right on the target with pricing and there’s not a lot of change orders with our buildings. Which from a banker’s standpoint, they love. They love, right?

00:11:23
There’s nothing worse than getting in the middle of the building, getting it all about three-quarters of the way up, and then you say, ‘Hey, look, we’re off $100K.’ What’s the bank going to say? No, right? And we’ve actually had banks ask us to do this for other construction companies for a fee. But we’ve turned that down. Yeah, that makes sense. But, I mean, obviously, your personal story is, you know, impacted me. I’m a boiler maker as well. And so, the shift from your own business to doing what you’re doing now, there’s a whole lot in the middle, right? So if you want, I’ll just let you share kind of what that journey was like and what was going on for those that don’t know.

00:12:04
I think that, you know, story’s compelling and I’ll let you kind of kick that off. Yeah. When my oldest son, Tyler, was 15 years old, we learned that he has osteosarcoma, which is a rare form of bone cancer. And we went through that journey with him for five years. And I can tell I’m getting emotional inside right now just because the journey was so difficult and so painful. And owning your own business in that timeframe was just, it was so difficult. I tell people, ‘I would go to meet customers with my sunglasses on because I literally cried the whole way there.’ And so, that journey was incredibly difficult. And when he passed away on January 1 of 2019, we; I wanted just to quit. Sure. Right.

00:13:07
But that’s not who I was and how I was wired. And I think some of the the tenacity and the strong wilderness of me and passed on to my son Tyler, and how he fought cancer. But I had a friend tell me, ‘Look, don’t do that. Wait a couple years.’ And it was really wise counsel because I used my work to work through some of my sorrow and pain and hurt. took uh my mind away from um that every day you bet um but in 2020 I had like the highest evaluation um because my business was we had our best year ever awesome um and I told my wife Kelly, I said, ‘Hey, look. I think it’s time to sell um’ and so uh I did and um it was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made um I was able to take about a year and a half off just kind of regroup, get on a sabbatical, if you will, and start to enjoy and love life again.

00:14:20
Because I was in a spot that I absolutely did not like life. You bet. And a lot of good has come from Tyler’s life. I mean, it’s just, it’s been amazing to see all of the good has come from his life. And his vision was to basically raise money for pediatric cancer research and millions of dollars have been raised in his honor. And he has a Dalmatian at Purdue and a research center that’s now named after him. Yep, so I think about how what kind of unique company he keeps up there at the university because there’s not a lot of people have names named after them. And the people that do, you really respect. Right. And so, his book, ‘The Upset’, ‘The Upset’, great book, by the way.

00:15:11
Thank you for sharing that with people. It was hard to read. It really was, but it was so good to read. Yeah, we wanted to be as honest as we could with that story so people could understand, one, the pain and heartache that kids and families go through. We often say all the time that Tyler didn’t get He had the cancer, but the rest of the family got cancer just from him, and we still deal with stuff. Um, but, um, and, uh, yeah. And the book is most people don’t even know he has a book. It’s really interesting. Um, and the book’s won like four awards. You can find it, um, on Amazon or your website or Tyler’s website. Yeah. And the title is called ‘The Upset’. It’s called ‘The Upset’.

00:15:58
Yeah. It’s kind of. Taken from when we Purdue beat number two Ohio State and um, great game yeah, and one of the best games I’ve ever watched, yeah, sure so and so obviously, you know, exited the business spent a little time just talking about even what that was like for you personally, I know you know you had a lot of stuff going on, yeah, but how, what was it like to let go of that um, you know, I I think a lot of people thought I would struggle with it um, and I I still miss it sometimes, but um, not often enough to ever want to do it again, right, yeah, because I don’t think people understand how difficult it is to own your own business um, it’s very rewarding, I mean financially it was very rewarding and it is you know to have your your name on your own business, I mean That is rewarding and uh, to see

00:16:50
projects that we completed and created, you know, I, I drive by the Colts complex and I say to myself, ‘Oh, I, I did the entryway to the Colts complex and I did Jim Jim Mercedes’ private garden there, yeah, um, so that uh that’s that’s fun. Um, but I, I haven’t missed it, I, I do, I’m a pretty high-energy personality and and obviously I need something to do all the time. After I got all the projects completed at the house, I got a little bored. And everybody looks forward to retirement. And retirement can be awesome and fun. But I think when God wired us to do things and to complete things and to be purposeful for our lives. And so for me personally, I need something to do.

00:17:45
We’re coming to HP Legacy was something that I felt like just fell on my lap and kind of where God wanted me to go. Tell us about the rest of your family. Yeah, so I have Kelly as my wife, and we’ve been married 29 years. And she has the privilege and the honor to basically raise our boys and stay at home with the kids all through their years. And then Tyler is my oldest, I should say. And he would be 25. And then I have a middle son, Blake. He’s 23. And my youngest son, Ethan, is 19. And Blake’s on the Purdue football team? No. Yeah, Ethan is. Ethan is. Yeah, yeah. Ethan was a freshman last year and is playing football for Purdue.

00:18:38
And we’re so thrilled and honored to have him be able to do that. And just to be a part of Purdue at that capacity is pretty amazing. It’s quite an honor and privilege, for sure. You bet. And, you know, as a Boilermaker on the outside, to watch how Purdue is surrounded-your family, Tyler, everything, right? It was, it was so good. I don’t care; you know, wins and losses, and all that were, you know, okay. And if people complain about things, none of that mattered during all that time. It was so good to see the Purdue family kind of just come out and surround you. Yeah. And I think for me personally, just, I never experienced Purdue ever at that level.

00:19:18
You know, I was always the student and then I was busy working my career and never got back up quite very often. And I didn’t realize the amazing people that work at Purdue University. And I think that speaks to Indiana in general. I mean, you ask yourself, why are people coming here to spend $11 billion? Uh, for a data center and why are people spending an extra five billion at a research center and four billion in downtown at the hospital, it’s not yeah you know I mean. I think the three largest construction projects back in the day didn’t make one billion when they built Lucas Oil Stadium so um, you know, um. Purdue just to give you an example.

00:20:11
And we took Tyler out there and he said, ‘Dad, I don’t know if I can do this.’ And I said, ‘Tyler, we’re going to take it day by day, right?’ Just kind of life in general. We take it day by day. And so I took him to get a parking permit for his car because at the time he was on a crutch. And I walk in and I’m not sure how this is going to go. And the lady basically said to me, ‘Look, we’re going to give you a parking permit.’ um doesn’t find a spot for him we will make a spot for him and i literally left there crying as a father because you have a child who’s really sick um and people don’t really know how sick he is um and they’re offering a free play and i’ll park for him we’ll make one for you we will change the classes for you if you can’t get into a class we will change it for you and um

00:21:10
And if you need a special dorm, we’ll make it for you. And I’m thinking to myself, what university in the country will do that for you? Right. The level of accommodation. Yeah. I mean, and this is before they knew who Tyler was, you know, before he made the big impact on the nationwide. And so it’s unique. And I think it all stems from the leadership there, you know. Agreed. And who. Who, who we are as users, you know? Um, and so, um, and they, they’ve been phenomenal. They’ve been phenomenal. So awesome. Yeah. Um, back to business a little bit, maybe, but, um, you know, what do you see happening in the rest of 24 and going into the 25? Well, um, you know, I still think you’re going to steal, see a lot of, uh, construction happen.

00:22:01
I think it’s going to be more specialized or, uh, you know it’s not going to be speculative anymore it’s going to be like hey we need this i really need this i need this we need this extra space yeah i know we were talking about one where you know they really need to expand and it’s almost too late but they got to do it yeah sure and i continue to see the housing market i mean it’s it’s this this this economy people think oh we’re in recession well and we’re going to be in a 2008 recession where you look at the the numbers and it’s just not the same yeah it’s different it’s different and there’s an overwhelming need for still housing And so I still think it’s going to be strong.

00:22:39
I mean, of course, people think that the interest rates are really high. And in my mind, I think the interest rates to be able to have a healthy economy overall need to be at least at 5%. Right. The zero, one and two. Yeah, that’s just not healthy. And I hope it doesn’t go back down there again. Right. You know, could they come down a little bit and still, you know, be okay? Sure. But I think. Once people realize that we’re not going back down to that level, or at least I hope we don’t, um, not for a while or not. Yeah. So we’re going to, they’re going to continue. It’s going to, I mean, people need space, right? People need housing. And Indiana, like I said earlier, is in a unique situation.

00:23:18
I still think we’re going to be really strong here, you know, on the coast, East and West coast. I think it’s going to look a little different, but, um, I’m thankful to be a huge part of this. So do you think, I mean, do you, when in all the discussions you’re having right now with potential clients, I mean, are they hesitant? Are they worried about the rates? You know, cost of steel, you name it, right? We hear all the, I’ll call it the hype. And some of it’s real. I get it, right? Just costs are going up, right? But from a business standpoint, what I hope is the growth and hopefully profit improvement and price increases, and those kind of things. All come with a benefit to the owner.

00:23:56
So, what should the owner be thinking about? I mean, you mentioned exploring options, but other things. I think the owner should think about not worrying about interest rates and move forward with their business plans because land is not going to get any cheaper. Correct. It’s still going to land, you know, never depreciates. It always appreciates. We’re not having you can’t make more land more and so if you have a thought about wanting to build a building, I think you could should continue to explore that for sure and we’ve seen steel come down now it’s pretty low it’s leveled out, they did have a a little bit of a a raise in pricing and pricing went up a little bit um in the beginning of the year but I think we’re we’re seeing it modernize out now or level out um sure so um And I think concrete is the one, the killer right now.

00:24:52
Concrete is really high right now. Is it the supplies that go into making concrete that have increased? Yeah, this is, supplies in general have gone up. But concrete is the one that hasn’t really balanced out. But everything else is balanced out. Why is it that concrete is staying where it is? You know, I’m not 100% sure. I think it’s a cumulative effect of the supply chain of concrete. It’s heavy. It has to be moved. Think concrete trucks, diesel fuel. They have to extract the stone to make the concrete. Everything is heavy equipment. Everything. I can imagine that compounding from the moment it leaves a mine somewhere, whatever it is, all the way to the truck. Interesting. What do you want people to think about as they look at the rest of 24, HP Legacy?

00:25:46
What do you want them to think about? What do you want to leave them with? I want to leave them with the whole idea and the thought is that if they’re thinking about selecting a contractor to do the work for them, it’s more than just price. It really is. It’s about the people that are doing the work for you. And we hear time and time from architects, from people that we’re doing work for, how our employees go above and beyond the call and how superintendents will take phone calls at night and how they treat people and respect people and want to pick up do our superintendents are doing someone else’s job for them they don’t have to do that sure and how they want to make sure that hp legacy is left with

00:26:42
all good is left with uh you know doing what we say we’re going to do and so uh you know i tell i’ll tell people all the time that there’s three things that you buy when you buy something it’s price quality and service but you only get to pick two of those so which two do you want right so um most of the time we’re In America, we’re always thought about, You know, it’s always about price, you know, with Walmarts and Costco’s and everything. But when you build a building, it’s a different story. You know, you’re building something that’s going to last for literally possibly 100 years. And just even a different concrete techniques and how to build buildings and making them efficient and how we will.

00:27:31
You know, an architect may spec something out. And because of our experience, we may go back to the architect and the owner and say, hey, have you thought about this? And why this is why we’re doing this and making the building way more efficient. And there’s, you know, examples that we could give you if you wanted to. But I don’t want to get into that. But so, yeah, just think about that. I mean, part of that’s what you’ve said is your secret sauce of doing that up front with the client versus just giving them what they want. Yeah. Because sometimes what they want, they may not be able to afford, and it’s not the right answer. Right. So I love the fact that you do that for clients up front. I mean, gosh, we price the building for free. We’ve offered architectural services for free. Not because we feel like that we don’t have value, but because that’s who we are. And we want you to see the difference you’ll get because you’re picking HP Legacy. Awesome. I love it. Any other questions? No. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thanks for having me today. Really appreciate it, Tony. My pleasure. My pleasure. All right. Bye.