August 14, 2025 • 34 mins
Trent Haston joins Patrick MacIsaac on this solo episode of At Home with Roby to share how working Saturdays for his dad at Andrew Roby—helping a brick mason and picking up life lessons—laid the foundation for leading The Roby Family of Companies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to at Home with Roby.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Patrick mccasac from Roby Commercial and Services on Trent
Hayson from the Roby Family of Companies. We are your
hosts we podcast and now with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Trent. What is going on with you today? Hey, Patrick Man,
how you doing buddy? I'm doing good. I'm doing good good.
I don't know why I can't hear myself too well
in this headset. Can you hear me? Well? Calvin, I
could hear you well. We are rock and roll and
Kelvin's got a fresh cut looking all good today. Yeah,
(00:32):
it's raining outside. I don't know it's gonna rain for
a while. I believe here we're recording. We're recording this
show August the fifth and Charlotte and thank you Kelvin.
Now I can hear myself. It's been raining a couple
of days. Let's be honest. You can't really hear yourself
that great. Typically, I top on my head a lot.
(00:56):
When they start talking to each other.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
That's when you gotta have what you like to come
take a roller coaster ride of my head.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Fun. Do you keep your arms up in there? You
put them on the bar? I mean, what is your
typical style on my hands in the air, like you
just don't care, homie. I heard. So we Patrick and
I have been together for about twenty four hours now,
maybe twenty seven hours. We went on a little trip
with some customers, Mike Modelin and Ryan Laundry.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, Mike's been on the Rent Show before. Ryan says
he's going to get on the Show's coming on. Great
great business partners. I know you and Micro and YPO together,
fantastic business. They have Southeast Enteral really doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
With that drapping and rolling there. Both the lums of
U n C Dental School, So they have a place
in my heart. Mike by way of Belmont, Ryan by
way of NC State and Mike grew up in Chapel
Hill and then went and played basketball at Belmont University
and then came back home and they partnered up. I
(01:58):
think they met in dental school. But they they just
good guys, very very good people. Yeah, it's fun to
spend time with them. And then I had to hang
out with you. I know, it's so painful, it is
just difficult. But I was talking to Chris Maynard. I want,
you know, my homeboy and one of our project managers
for over twenty years, and he said all the jobs
(02:20):
are are flooded because of this rain. I don't think
that's how you make money in the construction business. No,
last I checked, Daddy used to always say you can't
make no money in the rain, and Daddy minute, well.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Then they came out with that song rain makes corn.
So I mean, I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And corn makes whiskey and then yeah, something about a
girl getting a little frisky. I don't really know, but
I know this. In the game of paper Rock scissors,
water always wins because it puts out fire. Think about it. Okay,
you ever thought about that. That might have been a
(03:00):
little too deep for me, but Kelvin got a kick
out of it. I like it so uh so, you
know how, you know, like the rock crushes the scissors
and stuff like that. But anyway, I have a lot
of kids. I think in my analogies are all are
all gesture games now, Monopoly and paper rock scissors and stuff.
But I I got lucky enough last week to go
(03:23):
to uh to Nova Scotia, Canada on a golf trip,
and uh man, those people up there are so nice.
I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you, well, you
must have had quite a time.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You had a hat on, you had the socks on,
you had the littlego on your golf balls.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
That dang, I mean, spons' is about the extent of
what I bought. I might have bought a sweatshirt too.
That's the golfers and the Ricky Bobby. I mean, you
were covered from heat. I don't need any more hats.
I don't need any more shirts. But I felt such
a special bond with these folks, and they were so
nice and genuine that I had a get a. I
had to represent a little bit. The Cabot Cliffs is
(04:03):
the name of the golf club and it's in Nova Scotia,
along the east coast of Canada. I didn't even know
this place existed and went I got to go to
a horse race. Yeah, but it wasn't on Let's Cheriot
Harriet Race. Never never seen anything like it in my life.
Single person riding in a seat behind the horse racing, yeah,
(04:26):
going about fifty miles an hour. Crazy uh. And they
have it every Sunday night and every Wednesday night in
this town. Is kind of what everybody in this town
goes and does. And I got to go experience it
last Wednesday night, and it literally was a cool experience.
And uh, I mean I want to go back and
(04:47):
take some other friends up there to experience. And I
also want to, I mean, take my family. It's pretty
hard to get to though, at a hard time getting
packed because of all the weather.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Well to kind of it almost looked like like a
you do when the Paralympics when you have the folks
that are in the wheelchairs out and they're almost like
that's flipped up and they're leaning back and then connect
to a horse that's more than fifty miles.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
An hour, which really really crazy. But anyway, that was fun.
I just liked going around the world and meeting good
people that I mean literally they called Reagan. I said,
this is the closest I've ever in all my travels.
There's good people everywhere you can find them. But that
(05:33):
place reminded me of the river on Bright Road where
I live, more than any place I've ever from been, truly,
And who would have thunk, I don't know, they were
red neck.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And that's a termative endearment coming from me. Let's just clarify.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Well, let me say this about about twenty years ago,
I was hanging out with my buddies and our wives
were around, and I told I said, I ain't an
old redneck, and my wife said, no, no, no, no,
correct you you're a country boy. And then about ten
years later I said that and she goes, you're right.
(06:14):
Thank god, you finally know.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
No, I mean, were you weren't really an old redneck?
Then you probably went to you about twenty seven. Then
from twenty seven to thirty seven, you went from country
now forty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Goodness gracious. So when I my dad was thirty years old,
older than me always. So when I was eighteen going
to Carolina, working in the summer and hanging out with
all my buddies at the house, dad was forty eight. Yeah,
think about that. I know. So now I have Tatum.
(06:48):
She's seventeen, going into her senior year. Parking spot number ninety. Yes,
so she's thirty. She got her parking spot yesterday. She
was all proud of that. I'm proud of her. She's
a wonderful girl. And then Rowan just turned sixteen while
I was in Canada, and I had the joy of
buying her a car. I got like a little many
(07:11):
used car lot. What I'm rolling with she got a
jeep Cherokee twenty nineteen jeep Cherokee. It's cool.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So let me ask you a question when you how
old were you when you first like officially a W
two employee.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
At Andrew Ruby fourteen years old?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Okay, all right, So your daughters are essentially the same
age as you were, all three of them when you started. Yeah,
and now I think about my daughter the same. My
daughter was fourteen.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
So I'll tell you a story. I'll tell you a
story about a life lesson when I turned before I
turned fourteen. I turned fourteen on June to six, is
my birthday, so that's right when school got out. A
lot of times, the last day of school in Mecklinburry
County was my birthday, so that's when the summer started.
(07:59):
So about a month before before I turned fourteen, my
dad came to me and said, son, you have one
thousand dollars in your savings account. I'm gonna allow you
to work whenever you don't have extracurricular activities like during
the summer. It can't replace sports or something. You're gonna
do something after school, but I can work you on
(08:19):
a Saturday. I always find something you can do. I'm
gonna pay you as a W two employee, gonna pay
social Security and tax and all that, and you're gonna
make four to twenty five an hour. They had them wage.
I remember, so I made four to twenty five. I
probably took home about three twenty five or three dollars.
And he said, you save money, and when you turn sixteen,
(08:40):
I'll buy you a vehicle for how much money you have.
If you don't save any money, I'm gonna buy you
one thousand dollars vehicle. If you save three thousand more dollars,
I'll buy you a four thousand dollars vehicle. So uh, anyway,
that's that's how to create a miser one oh one.
So he taught me to save and I had seventy
five hundred dollars saved when I turned sixteen. So so
(09:01):
I saved sixty five on top of the thousand, and
he said, you can't spend your money until you're twenty one.
So kind of just set that, set that foundation. So
that's how I got my first car. It's been a
little different from my daughters.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
No, you know that it's funny that that that is
a very said when when I was coming up, my
parents said, for every dollar you say we'll get, we'll pitch.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
In a dollar or two.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And my brother and I had a lands lawn lawn
cutting business and he went off to school.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I kept doing it.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
H worked at Chick fil A and then Cherokee sorted
at Cherokee Country Club that you know about when I
was old enough to work there. But uh yeah, man,
that's a good lesson I remember. I mean, it's kind
of cool to be able to buy your own car
or pitch in I mean your case, your Davis sitting
up afterwards. But uh yeah, I mean it's amazing to
learn how to save it at a young age, yep,
because that financial literacy is not really commonplace and taught
(09:49):
like it was, I feel like when we.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Were coming up.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Not to make it sound like the old Crogers over here,
but it's so important to understand this.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, we were just talking about that. You know, when
we go golfing at some of these is you got
these these young caddies and stuff, or my or my
daughter's friends that have jobs, and the first thing I
always ask them on like are you saving money? And
they look a little shocked that I'm kind of infringing
on their privacy, but truly, I mean I want to know,
(10:17):
and I want to see how they react, and I
want them to go home and when they're when I'm
not in their face to think about it, because because
it gives them freedom if they if they're able to
be able to do it and learn it. Uh. I
think it frees your mind a little bit, just to
just makes you feel good. Warren Buffett talks a lot
about that, you know, uh, free in your headspace. And
(10:38):
then and then the other side of the coin is
you live in this world long enough. A lot of
people are scraping by and and you know, doing everything
they can and utilizing every penny to exist and live.
And that's just the way it is, too, so God
bless those people as well. But uh, but just little
life lessons. My dad was real good about uh having
(10:58):
a having free heads space. And I tell people all
the time the gift that I got a lot of
gifts from my father, but uh, don't compare yourself and
don't judge people, and uh, I'm really grateful for that.
Let let people do what they got. More power to you,
big dog. I'm gonna do my thing, and you're gonna
do your thing, and maybe we'll wind up with with
(11:21):
a drink in our hand together, you know, and tell
some stories. But we'll see how it goes. What do
they call that keeping up with the Joneses? I mean,
you know, I'm not into that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I haven't ever been either. Just I want the people
around me to be as successful as they possibly can be,
and we're gonna keep working as hard as we can.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The hell are to Joneses anyway? Must they must be
really rich, really talented people.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
We gotta find these. I'm just joking, But all right,
so tell me about that. Okay, you're fourteen, started your dad,
Lets you say whatever you say, walk us through, man,
I don't think we've done this in a while where
we kind of talked about the evolution of you and
your brother and your family and going through going through Roby.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, well it was a little different. You know, our
business has grown and our kids are God blessed, but
a generation they've they've been able to afford going to
more camps and doing more traveling and stuff like that.
So Reagan used to always tell me when I was
in college, we started dating and got out of college,
she was like, hey, and we were just a small
(12:26):
family construction company. She say, hey, I wanted to be
a big business man. I'm want to sell a business
and do this and do that, which was so young
and foolish, but she said, hey, if you ever did
have a chance to sell your company or to get
out of the business, I always want you to at
least own a small construction company so our kids can
grow up like you grow up. And then then I
(12:46):
have girl, girl, girl, and you really can't put the
girl with the guy. And I mean I sat between
Dad dropped me off from fourteen to sixteen. I'll tell
you two things. Either help the brick mason or I
did labor work with Fred and Leroy and our brick
mason was named Wheeler Perry. And I knew Wheeler as
(13:08):
my whole life. And I say this all the time.
You know, smoking filterless pall malls in his mouth. That
smoked a whole cigarette without touching it because he was
laying brick. And Dad said, listen, Wheeler ain't going to
talk to you much. He said, figure out how he
likes his mud maid and some people like it running,
some people like it thick. Figure that out right, away,
(13:30):
keep his mud made on the left and keep his
bricks stacked on the right, and work him up that
wall and he'll love you. And I say that all
the time because that's really an analogy for life, Like
figure out what people want and need and cater to
it and let him know that that you're doing it.
You don't have to talk about it. All these people
want to talk about stuff. Just do it and they'll
(13:52):
figure it out. If they don't figure it out, then
move on. There's other people out there that'll appreciate it.
So that's that. And then every morning he would dropped
me off at the restaurant at six point thirty and
two old black gentleman friend Leroy, I mean, god man.
I sat between those guys. They treated me like I
was a fifty five year old dude. I was fourteen.
(14:14):
I bet I weighed eighty two pounds, and they cussed
in front of me. They talked about crazy people in
front of me. They talked about women in front of me.
And we worked hard together, and if I wasn't feeling
good or sick or something or hurt, they would stop
the world to take care of me. And I got
(14:37):
to see all those ramifications and talk about other people
that work. You know, I got to experience and all.
It was no sheltering and I'm very fortunate that my
dad allowed me to be in that environment. And truly
it was an example of trust. He trusted those gentlemen
that he loved with his son and trusted that I
(14:58):
would do the right thing by the them. And uh,
Leroy passed away about I guess three or four years ago.
Very special, very wonderful guy. Him and my dad were,
Him and my granddad were best friends. Him and my
dad were best friends, and then and then me and him.
He really, in a lot of ways grew up with
my dad and in a lot of ways raised me.
(15:18):
But when he was sick, Uh, the family was private.
But but I took Ford over there as a young
man and we got to see him a couple of times.
He really appreciated that. You gonna make me cry. But uh,
it's pretty cool. They taught me how to work. Uh,
how to dig. I can dig dig the best damn
foot that there is. Straight up. Everybody's like I know
(15:40):
how to dig. I'm like, no, you don't know how
to dig. There's a process to digging correctly and there's
a process the bust and concrete up correctly. There's a
process the loading the dump truck correctly. There's a process
for senting money properly, every single No. I like that analogy.
So your brother got to do had a pretty similar experience. Yeah,
he did the same thing. He did the same thing.
(16:02):
He was four years ahead of me, and he went
to UH East Carolina and studied construction management. So it
was kind of like he's more he's more of the
hands on I mean, that's kind of his role in
the business too. Uh. I tell everybody he's he's he's
the better contractor builder than I am. Uh. We have
we have our gifts, but if you go to his house,
(16:23):
he's always got some drywall patches or so there's MUDs
sitting and something and he you know, he's perfection. I
will say. I will say, we have a guy that
works for us, Brandon Kinnard. Uh he worked for Hobbs
Plumbing and we purchased Hobbs Plumbing about eight years ago.
(16:44):
And uh he married he married a girl. His wife
is Kelly yar Yan that I went to high school with.
And uh, I remember this very vividly. When I was
a junior. Her parents write town we had a party.
Don't listen to this, kids, and uh, and we were
wrestling up in the playroom and and my buddy's head
went through the drywall wall had a big hole. And
(17:07):
and I had not I had, I had seen a
lot of drawwall be done. My dad was a really
good drywall guy. But I'm the guy that's got to
fix that. That's the contractor. So I went and got
some mud, went and got some stuff, and I fixed
that wall. She never got in trouble for it ever.
I asked her that recently fixed it, painting it and
did the whole nine Dang.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
We could have used you a couple of times. Growing up,
my brother, we did not grow up in a contractor family.
My dad was a traveling business development type person. And
my brother kicked a hole in the wall one time
that came out of his allowance. And my favorite one was,
all of a sudden, there's like eight or nine kids
playing basketball in our basement.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
We had a drywall wall. One of the kids went
through the drywall.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Wow, and my dad came down the stairs and there's
like five kids trying to block it.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Like it. It was like kids flying glad when he
kicked a wall. He didn't kick the stud. That's how
people break their hands. They get mad and hit a wall,
which I don't have any patience for that. Either, take
your anger and contain it. But uh, that's embarrassed. But
if you hit the stud about every twelve or sixteen
inches there that there's a firm piece of wood, so
(18:14):
you got about a chance aheah, it's I mean, can
you imagine kicking that stud? I mean it breaks like
four toes. I feel like my feel like my gout foot.
My goodness, gracious, my toes already busted up and up
we walk up in Nova Scotia. We walked twenty eight
thousand steps a day over undulating ground, and my feet
(18:38):
are these These puppies are tired. They're barking. They are barking,
all right. Critially because of you, I've been eating healthier.
There you go, if you heard our show, Yeah we're right, yeah, yeah,
we both were both hitting the little Mediterranean dieing and
get my calcium levels down, trying to get my cholesterol down. Yeah,
all because of Patrick. So when you eat that kale
(19:00):
salad and you're mad at it, you can think about me.
It doesn't fill me up like a cheeseburger. I'll go
ahead and tell you it's I connotate it to drinking
a non alcoholic beer. I mean, when I didn't put
it this way, I didn't drink beer during Lent a
couple of years ago. Something I did and it was great,
(19:22):
and I turned it off. And I drank a lot
of O DULs and Na beers during that time. And
I had them all. I had like four different brands.
I had them all myfrigerator, and I said, I'll keep
these so that like on a Wednesday night, when I
would normally drink just one or two beers or something,
I'll drink an old Duels and I won't get the calories. Nah,
(19:44):
didn't happen. You like those calories they expired. Those are
good calories. Now, they are good calories. You gotta go
exercise a little bit. But but this is burally.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
But mean, these not alcoholic drinks are supermus like a
You can get a hundred different kinds now, I mean
the beers and the mocktails. It's got pretty popular mocktails. Mocktail,
that's a good word. Well, let's let's let's keep going
down the road of you guys, and you and your
brother are getting you getting out of school at you
and see you come in the business. We talked about
this before a little bit, but to kind of take
(20:15):
us through that trent, like what you guys did from
when you were kids really out of school until kind
of where.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
We are to tell you this. So I went. My
brother's four years older, so he was still at East Carolina.
I go to Chapel Hill. I'm home sick. My first
time coming home. I went to school with David McGuire,
our COO now at Roby since how eighth. We went
to high school together. We were roommates at Chapel Hill
(20:40):
and his dad, God rest his soul, Frank McGuire, a
great man. He us picked us up from Chapel Hill
because we didn't have cars as a freshman, and I
was so excited about seeing my dad. I'm coming home.
We get the Concord meals. It was like brand new
back then. This is nineteen ninety six. I call the
office because you didn't have cell phone in a callie
office to get my dad to come meet meet and
(21:02):
pick me up, and they said he's in the hospital.
Our superintendent Ken Laney, who was always my boss, said
I'll come get you. He picked me up, took me
to the hospital. My dad had had a brain aneurism. Uh.
And he was the first time I ever saw him cry.
And he was crying in pain. He was squeezing on
two PVC pipes and I was crying and he was crying,
(21:23):
and I said, I mean, man, I was eighteen years old.
I said, I'm gonna I'm quitting school. I'm gonna come
back and run the business. And He's like, if you
quit school, I will die. You're not quitting school. I'll die,
and then I'll haunt you. So and he meant it
and he said this through all his pain, and yeah,
I mean that was good. He was so proud that
(21:45):
I was going to Chapel Hill and so proud I
thought I was smart. So uh so I go back
to school. A couple months later, I'm homesick and uh
and I'm struggling. I'm trying to figure out the business
of college and my grades weren't great. And I called
him and I said that, I said that I'm struggling.
(22:08):
I was crying, and I've always told people this analogy.
He said, Uh. He said, son, let me ask you
one thing. Stop. Stop And I'm like what And he said,
he said, are you passing? And I said, yeah, yeah,
I'm passing. I got like a two six. He said,
hell yeah, boy, we're gonna make it. Keep it up.
(22:29):
And I used to tell that analogy for about twenty
years because I thought he was just so wise and
knew how to say the right things at the right time.
But frankly, the last ten years I have it on
epiphany because I'm now him. At that age, he was
a year older than I am now. Okay, he just
wanted to know if I was gonna show up at
the door flunking out of college the next day, or
(22:50):
if I was gonna pass. That's all he was wanting.
He wanted to know if his investment for that first
semester was gonna pay off. So UH said, it gave
me a boost to comps, and then uh and then
once again, college is a business. You learn how to
do it, You learn how to go to the writing center,
you learn how to get help, you learn how to prepare.
I made straight a's my last five semesters coming out
(23:12):
of Carolina. I also got I'm an economics major. It's
what I like, I understand. So I also got kind
of more focused on what I what I enjoyed studying.
I think it's a combination of things aligning, and uh,
I really enjoyed the second half of college, but I
really wanted to get out of school and work. No,
(23:32):
I hear you that mean.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I think that's the cool part about college. You kind
of find out what you like and what you don't like.
If you're lucky, I was a finance major, you know.
I think that's probably what we get in Yang really
well when it comes to stuff like that. But I
thought I wanted to be an accountant until my senior
year at Clemson.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
We had this old fella. I mean his name was
doctor Klein.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
He was real well known in the in the Clemson
community and in the accounting community, and I think he
had me pegged that I wouldn't cut out to be
an account and he rode me like a dog for
a whole semester, and finally it was I mean, thank
goodness he did, because I hate it wasn't for me.
Finance is a lot different than accounting, but you know,
we kind of jump in these classes and it's like
you'd sort of used to maybe just getting through school.
(24:14):
But then you jump into somebody man like Okay, I'm
wondering about a balance sheet and it income saving, Like
this is really cool, this is how business really works,
and I'm with you and kind of like fell in
love with it.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, well I learned. I remember this. I learned. I
had a night ECON class my junior year. The eCOM
was cool and my dad, my dad had always said,
you're not coming into the business. You're gonna go do
something different. You're gonna be educated, you're gonna go be
a He wanted me to be what our typical client was,
a banker, a doctor, a lawyer during that time, so
(24:45):
he had no clue. He just wanted me to go
do things that he didn't get to do. Really, and
but he had he had raised a workaholic because of
the story about the car. Right, and I worked, and
I enjoyed working. I worked with friend Leroy and Wheeler
and all everybody. So I was determined. But he said, hey,
if you ever do come back into the business, you
(25:07):
got to go back out. And no matter where you
come from, what school you went to, what a claim
you have, you got to go back out in the
field for five years full time, so you can get
respect from the from the company because they don't know
that you worked when you were fourteen. So uh. I
learned opportunity cost in my ECON class, and I learned
that it wouldn't be that smart financially if I went
(25:32):
out after coming from Carolina and went out in the
field and worked as a laborer for another five years.
I don't think it had been smart for my dad.
I don't think it had been smart for me. And
you know, times have change. So I said no. I said,
I'm coming to work in the business and uh, and
I'm going to be a project manager and I want
to sell work and manage working. And he didn't know
(25:55):
what to do with me. He said, son, son, this
business can't feed another Hasting at the time, and he
meant it because he was had to wait of My
grandfather was still in the business, my dad's little brother
was in the business. My dad's sister ran the office.
My brother was already in the business. Yeah, and then
like the other twenty employees were tenured employees. They were
(26:17):
like Hastings. He's like, man, you're gonna kill me. So
I said no, It doesn't matter what widget we're doing.
I want to come to it. So I get out
of college. So that summer I started estimating projects and
I sold a couple of projects. I managed Doug Sleepers,
still a great client, the Sleepers, Thank you, Doug and
Kim's Sleeper. I managed a project for them, managed a
(26:39):
project for Susan and Dimitri. Trying to flee these manage
that I didn't have Friday classes. I'd come home Thursday
night and work Friday and Saturday and drive my dad crazy.
And then I call him my week and say you
get that job you get He's like, leave me alone, man, stop,
go back to school. So so I get out of Carolina.
(26:59):
And and I asked, I didn't apply to any other jobs.
All economic major buddies are flying the Texas doing interviews.
They're gonna make forty fifty thousand dollars a year, and
I never even tested the market. So I get out
of I get out of Carolina. So I asked my dad.
I said, I'm in my office. I had the first
upstairs office in our house at Hurting Police. They had
(27:21):
owned this house since eighty four. He finished at first
upstairs office painting at Ralph Lauren Carolina blue textured Carolina
blue polo paint and h And he's in my office.
I said, Dad, how much am I gonna make? And
he said, son, my brother was already in the field
doing kind of the traditional way. He was making fifteen
(27:41):
dollars an hour. Wow, my dad said, I'm gonna pay
you fifteen dollars an hour for forty hours a week.
That's thirty thousand, six hundred dollars a year salary. I'm
gonna pay you as a salary and you're gonna work
seventy and I'm gonna go buy a new pickup truck
and you get my old pickup truck. You get two
weeks pay vacation holidays and a gas card and insurance.
(28:03):
And you say thank you. And he got up to
get leave my office. He didn't like having this conversation.
I said, time out. He poked his head back in.
I think he might have had advantage ultra light sticking
out of his mouth. I cleaned all that shit up
to no smoking in the building. But he poked his
head in and he said, what son, I said, I said,
this is coming from a good spot. This is not
(28:25):
coming from a greedy spot. This is a good spot.
I said, how do I get a raise? He thought?
He said, triple what I'm making. I give you a raise.
Now you best go sell some stuff. That's what he
told me. And God bless, I tell this story all
the time. I know what he was making then he
was making one thousand dollars a week. He's making fifty
two thousand dollars a year. And if you'd have asked
(28:47):
my dumb butt what he was making, I thought, he's
making a million dollars a year, you know, because it's
just all perspective. So about two weeks later, my paycheck
was four hundred net. It was six hundred dollars a week.
Says that was like four hundred and forty six dollars
and ten cent. That's made that weekly paycheck for nine years,
me and Travis both it would go between four forty
(29:09):
six ten, four forty six eleven. And I go to
the I'm at to walk over a branch at dinner
the road. Phillis, who had always been our banker my
dad got She loved my dad. She says, hey, Trent,
you going out on late today is Friday. I'm like, yeah,
going out on late. She comes back, takes my check,
comes back and says, sorry, mister Haston, there's insufficient funds
in that account. I'm like, oh my gosh, if our
(29:30):
and God bless this came from my dad. I said,
if our carpenters, or our masons or our field guys
heard what I just heard, in six months, we wouldn't
have any employees. So I drive down to the office
about eight houses down. I get my granddad's office, get
my dad in there, and I start raising cane and
I said, if they hear this, I didn't say, is
there another bank account? I said, well, do we have
(29:51):
more money? I didn't say nothing. I said, this is ridiculous.
My dad said you done. He let me raise a
bunch of ruckus. I said no, I got some more in.
My Granddad's going, well, I like this, but he's crazy.
He says, you've done yet. I said, yeah, I'm done.
He says, sit tight, I'll be right back, and he
goes into the into the front office, and we had
(30:12):
our receivables file behind the desk and a hanging drawer,
and he brought the receivables files about two and a
half inches thick of paper and he dropped it in
front of me. He says, son, I'm owed. I'm owed
all kinds of damn money. I don't want to hear
you complain about it anymore. I want you to go
collect my money. And that's how you start running the company,
because I said, okay, what I got to do? So
(30:33):
I called our customers that owed us money, and I said, hey,
I'm trying hastening. I grew up in the business. I
might have worked during the summer at your house. I
know you like my father. My father really doesn't like
managing money. He likes serving people. I'm the new guy
to manage the money. Said he can go serve you.
And I went to Chapel Hill. I like to come
meet you. If there's something I need to handle to
(30:54):
get a check, I'll do it if or or can
I have, you know, get a check. And that's how
I got to know all our customers immediately immediately, and
they loved it. They had a twenty one year old
I was twenty one. I was turned twenty two. Yeah,
June sixth of graduate. I graduated in May. That was
June six, two thousand and uh. Yeah, So that's that's
(31:16):
kind of how it started. So then you sleep on
the floor three nights a week, you work about eighty
or ninety hours a week, and I say this all
the time. You get addicted to it, even though it's
killing you and you're unhealthy, and that's what you're addicted to.
So if I drove up Bright Road before seven thirty
at night, this is even in twenty twelve, I had
(31:37):
kids and I was like, I got to break this chain.
I would feel guilty. I'd be like, I'm not working enough.
I need to go back to work. What am I
doing now, buddy? I drive a bright road? Yeah, ten
in the morning, wave it everybody. So now I'm addicted
to empowering people and allowing them to have upward mobility.
(31:57):
And if we do it right, I can polish their diamond,
they can polish my diamond. I can get out of
their way, and then I can spend time with people.
That's how our business grows. So anyway, little little life
lessons from trying. I don't think I've ever told any
of those stories on the radio. Maybe not together, but yeah,
me and here one off here. Yeah, I don't think
I've ever told them on the on the show. Anyway,
(32:19):
I feel like we got you. Blessed Ron Haston.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
This is part part one, and then we can come
back maybe one time and go for and pick up
after when you started to. Because there's some things that
that that I think are really interesting that I don't
have perspective from that far back with you and your
family and in the business, but I do have some
perspective from from twenty ten on. So maybe we can
(32:41):
get to that and then keep going because I think
some things that happened along those ways.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
I'm gonna tell you this, Reagan is a genius. Yeah,
she's smart, she's a wonderful woman.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
She's got a photographic memory. Yeah, she got me out
of school because she wrote all my papers because I
go do the research. So about two thousand and three,
I said, hey, because I think she can do anything,
said you need.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
To write me a book. She looked at me, she said,
you got about three pages, homeboy, you need to go
build a story. So maybe maybe I'll call that back
up with her. See if oh wow, see if we
kind of chapter two.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I think I got a LinkedIn spam notification telling me
that some guy said that we should write a book.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
We should call him. That's the guy. That's the guy
that's in the business of writing books. He gets paid
to do that. I'm just kidding. I promise you this.
Uh name Adam Wittie. I know him. He's in YPO.
I promise you this. If I ever write a book,
I'm not paying for the damn thing. That's a that's
a fact. That's cool. Not hating anybody that's hired a
(33:48):
book writer. Uh No, it's cool, good business. But anyway, Yeah,
you made me cry. Reagan her fault. We're blame on
our Reagan Dad didn't even make me cry. But thanks
Kevin for putting us on the spot. We were supposed
to have a guest today and they didn't have it
on their calendar to call in, so uh yes, good.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
I like.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I like chewing the cut and telling all stories. So
all right, well, thanks for listening today to me and
Patrick Babbel. Hopefully maybe you pick up a nugget or
two or just go tell somebody you love them. H
do you the golden rule? Carry a smile around on
your face. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to at Home with Roby.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Patrick mccasac from Roby Commercial and Services on Trent
Hayson from the Roby Family of Companies. We are your
hosts we podcast and now with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Trent. What is going on with you today? Hey, Patrick Man,
how you doing buddy? I'm doing good. I'm doing good good.
I don't know why I can't hear myself too well
in this headset. Can you hear me? Well? Calvin, I
could hear you well. We are rock and roll and
Kelvin's got a fresh cut looking all good today. Yeah,
(00:32):
it's raining outside. I don't know it's gonna rain for
a while. I believe here we're recording. We're recording this
show August the fifth and Charlotte and thank you Kelvin.
Now I can hear myself. It's been raining a couple
of days. Let's be honest. You can't really hear yourself
that great. Typically, I top on my head a lot.
(00:56):
When they start talking to each other.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
That's when you gotta have what you like to come
take a roller coaster ride of my head.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Fun. Do you keep your arms up in there? You
put them on the bar? I mean, what is your
typical style on my hands in the air, like you
just don't care, homie. I heard. So we Patrick and
I have been together for about twenty four hours now,
maybe twenty seven hours. We went on a little trip
with some customers, Mike Modelin and Ryan Laundry.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, Mike's been on the Rent Show before. Ryan says
he's going to get on the Show's coming on. Great
great business partners. I know you and Micro and YPO together,
fantastic business. They have Southeast Enteral really doing a great job.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
With that drapping and rolling there. Both the lums of
U n C Dental School, So they have a place
in my heart. Mike by way of Belmont, Ryan by
way of NC State and Mike grew up in Chapel
Hill and then went and played basketball at Belmont University
and then came back home and they partnered up. I
(01:58):
think they met in dental school. But they they just
good guys, very very good people. Yeah, it's fun to
spend time with them. And then I had to hang
out with you. I know, it's so painful, it is
just difficult. But I was talking to Chris Maynard. I want,
you know, my homeboy and one of our project managers
for over twenty years, and he said all the jobs
(02:20):
are are flooded because of this rain. I don't think
that's how you make money in the construction business. No,
last I checked, Daddy used to always say you can't
make no money in the rain, and Daddy minute, well.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Then they came out with that song rain makes corn.
So I mean, I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And corn makes whiskey and then yeah, something about a
girl getting a little frisky. I don't really know, but
I know this. In the game of paper Rock scissors,
water always wins because it puts out fire. Think about it. Okay,
you ever thought about that. That might have been a
(03:00):
little too deep for me, but Kelvin got a kick
out of it. I like it so uh so, you
know how, you know, like the rock crushes the scissors
and stuff like that. But anyway, I have a lot
of kids. I think in my analogies are all are
all gesture games now, Monopoly and paper rock scissors and stuff.
But I I got lucky enough last week to go
(03:23):
to uh to Nova Scotia, Canada on a golf trip,
and uh man, those people up there are so nice.
I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you, well, you
must have had quite a time.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You had a hat on, you had the socks on,
you had the littlego on your golf balls.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
That dang, I mean, spons' is about the extent of
what I bought. I might have bought a sweatshirt too.
That's the golfers and the Ricky Bobby. I mean, you
were covered from heat. I don't need any more hats.
I don't need any more shirts. But I felt such
a special bond with these folks, and they were so
nice and genuine that I had a get a. I
had to represent a little bit. The Cabot Cliffs is
(04:03):
the name of the golf club and it's in Nova Scotia,
along the east coast of Canada. I didn't even know
this place existed and went I got to go to
a horse race. Yeah, but it wasn't on Let's Cheriot
Harriet Race. Never never seen anything like it in my life.
Single person riding in a seat behind the horse racing, yeah,
(04:26):
going about fifty miles an hour. Crazy uh. And they
have it every Sunday night and every Wednesday night in
this town. Is kind of what everybody in this town
goes and does. And I got to go experience it
last Wednesday night, and it literally was a cool experience.
And uh, I mean I want to go back and
(04:47):
take some other friends up there to experience. And I
also want to, I mean, take my family. It's pretty
hard to get to though, at a hard time getting
packed because of all the weather.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Well to kind of it almost looked like like a
you do when the Paralympics when you have the folks
that are in the wheelchairs out and they're almost like
that's flipped up and they're leaning back and then connect
to a horse that's more than fifty miles.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
An hour, which really really crazy. But anyway, that was fun.
I just liked going around the world and meeting good
people that I mean literally they called Reagan. I said,
this is the closest I've ever in all my travels.
There's good people everywhere you can find them. But that
(05:33):
place reminded me of the river on Bright Road where
I live, more than any place I've ever from been, truly,
And who would have thunk, I don't know, they were
red neck.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And that's a termative endearment coming from me. Let's just clarify.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Well, let me say this about about twenty years ago,
I was hanging out with my buddies and our wives
were around, and I told I said, I ain't an
old redneck, and my wife said, no, no, no, no,
correct you you're a country boy. And then about ten
years later I said that and she goes, you're right.
(06:14):
Thank god, you finally know.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
No, I mean, were you weren't really an old redneck?
Then you probably went to you about twenty seven. Then
from twenty seven to thirty seven, you went from country
now forty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Goodness gracious. So when I my dad was thirty years old,
older than me always. So when I was eighteen going
to Carolina, working in the summer and hanging out with
all my buddies at the house, dad was forty eight. Yeah,
think about that. I know. So now I have Tatum.
(06:48):
She's seventeen, going into her senior year. Parking spot number ninety. Yes,
so she's thirty. She got her parking spot yesterday. She
was all proud of that. I'm proud of her. She's
a wonderful girl. And then Rowan just turned sixteen while
I was in Canada, and I had the joy of
buying her a car. I got like a little many
(07:11):
used car lot. What I'm rolling with she got a
jeep Cherokee twenty nineteen jeep Cherokee. It's cool.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So let me ask you a question when you how
old were you when you first like officially a W
two employee.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
At Andrew Ruby fourteen years old?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Okay, all right, So your daughters are essentially the same
age as you were, all three of them when you started. Yeah,
and now I think about my daughter the same. My
daughter was fourteen.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
So I'll tell you a story. I'll tell you a
story about a life lesson when I turned before I
turned fourteen. I turned fourteen on June to six, is
my birthday, so that's right when school got out. A
lot of times, the last day of school in Mecklinburry
County was my birthday, so that's when the summer started.
(07:59):
So about a month before before I turned fourteen, my
dad came to me and said, son, you have one
thousand dollars in your savings account. I'm gonna allow you
to work whenever you don't have extracurricular activities like during
the summer. It can't replace sports or something. You're gonna
do something after school, but I can work you on
(08:19):
a Saturday. I always find something you can do. I'm
gonna pay you as a W two employee, gonna pay
social Security and tax and all that, and you're gonna
make four to twenty five an hour. They had them wage.
I remember, so I made four to twenty five. I
probably took home about three twenty five or three dollars.
And he said, you save money, and when you turn sixteen,
(08:40):
I'll buy you a vehicle for how much money you have.
If you don't save any money, I'm gonna buy you
one thousand dollars vehicle. If you save three thousand more dollars,
I'll buy you a four thousand dollars vehicle. So uh, anyway,
that's that's how to create a miser one oh one.
So he taught me to save and I had seventy
five hundred dollars saved when I turned sixteen. So so
(09:01):
I saved sixty five on top of the thousand, and
he said, you can't spend your money until you're twenty one.
So kind of just set that, set that foundation. So
that's how I got my first car. It's been a
little different from my daughters.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
No, you know that it's funny that that that is
a very said when when I was coming up, my
parents said, for every dollar you say we'll get, we'll pitch.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
In a dollar or two.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And my brother and I had a lands lawn lawn
cutting business and he went off to school.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I kept doing it.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
H worked at Chick fil A and then Cherokee sorted
at Cherokee Country Club that you know about when I
was old enough to work there. But uh yeah, man,
that's a good lesson I remember. I mean, it's kind
of cool to be able to buy your own car
or pitch in I mean your case, your Davis sitting
up afterwards. But uh yeah, I mean it's amazing to
learn how to save it at a young age, yep,
because that financial literacy is not really commonplace and taught
(09:49):
like it was, I feel like when we.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Were coming up.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Not to make it sound like the old Crogers over here,
but it's so important to understand this.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, we were just talking about that. You know, when
we go golfing at some of these is you got
these these young caddies and stuff, or my or my
daughter's friends that have jobs, and the first thing I
always ask them on like are you saving money? And
they look a little shocked that I'm kind of infringing
on their privacy, but truly, I mean I want to know,
(10:17):
and I want to see how they react, and I
want them to go home and when they're when I'm
not in their face to think about it, because because
it gives them freedom if they if they're able to
be able to do it and learn it. Uh. I
think it frees your mind a little bit, just to
just makes you feel good. Warren Buffett talks a lot
about that, you know, uh, free in your headspace. And
(10:38):
then and then the other side of the coin is
you live in this world long enough. A lot of
people are scraping by and and you know, doing everything
they can and utilizing every penny to exist and live.
And that's just the way it is, too, so God
bless those people as well. But uh, but just little
life lessons. My dad was real good about uh having
(10:58):
a having free heads space. And I tell people all
the time the gift that I got a lot of
gifts from my father, but uh, don't compare yourself and
don't judge people, and uh, I'm really grateful for that.
Let let people do what they got. More power to you,
big dog. I'm gonna do my thing, and you're gonna
do your thing, and maybe we'll wind up with with
(11:21):
a drink in our hand together, you know, and tell
some stories. But we'll see how it goes. What do
they call that keeping up with the Joneses? I mean,
you know, I'm not into that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I haven't ever been either. Just I want the people
around me to be as successful as they possibly can be,
and we're gonna keep working as hard as we can.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The hell are to Joneses anyway? Must they must be
really rich, really talented people.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
We gotta find these. I'm just joking, But all right,
so tell me about that. Okay, you're fourteen, started your dad,
Lets you say whatever you say, walk us through, man,
I don't think we've done this in a while where
we kind of talked about the evolution of you and
your brother and your family and going through going through Roby.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, well it was a little different. You know, our
business has grown and our kids are God blessed, but
a generation they've they've been able to afford going to
more camps and doing more traveling and stuff like that.
So Reagan used to always tell me when I was
in college, we started dating and got out of college,
she was like, hey, and we were just a small
(12:26):
family construction company. She say, hey, I wanted to be
a big business man. I'm want to sell a business
and do this and do that, which was so young
and foolish, but she said, hey, if you ever did
have a chance to sell your company or to get
out of the business, I always want you to at
least own a small construction company so our kids can
grow up like you grow up. And then then I
(12:46):
have girl, girl, girl, and you really can't put the
girl with the guy. And I mean I sat between
Dad dropped me off from fourteen to sixteen. I'll tell
you two things. Either help the brick mason or I
did labor work with Fred and Leroy and our brick
mason was named Wheeler Perry. And I knew Wheeler as
(13:08):
my whole life. And I say this all the time.
You know, smoking filterless pall malls in his mouth. That
smoked a whole cigarette without touching it because he was
laying brick. And Dad said, listen, Wheeler ain't going to
talk to you much. He said, figure out how he
likes his mud maid and some people like it running,
some people like it thick. Figure that out right, away,
(13:30):
keep his mud made on the left and keep his
bricks stacked on the right, and work him up that
wall and he'll love you. And I say that all
the time because that's really an analogy for life, Like
figure out what people want and need and cater to
it and let him know that that you're doing it.
You don't have to talk about it. All these people
want to talk about stuff. Just do it and they'll
(13:52):
figure it out. If they don't figure it out, then
move on. There's other people out there that'll appreciate it.
So that's that. And then every morning he would dropped
me off at the restaurant at six point thirty and
two old black gentleman friend Leroy, I mean, god man.
I sat between those guys. They treated me like I
was a fifty five year old dude. I was fourteen.
(14:14):
I bet I weighed eighty two pounds, and they cussed
in front of me. They talked about crazy people in
front of me. They talked about women in front of me.
And we worked hard together, and if I wasn't feeling
good or sick or something or hurt, they would stop
the world to take care of me. And I got
(14:37):
to see all those ramifications and talk about other people
that work. You know, I got to experience and all.
It was no sheltering and I'm very fortunate that my
dad allowed me to be in that environment. And truly
it was an example of trust. He trusted those gentlemen
that he loved with his son and trusted that I
(14:58):
would do the right thing by the them. And uh,
Leroy passed away about I guess three or four years ago.
Very special, very wonderful guy. Him and my dad were,
Him and my granddad were best friends. Him and my
dad were best friends, and then and then me and him.
He really, in a lot of ways grew up with
my dad and in a lot of ways raised me.
(15:18):
But when he was sick, Uh, the family was private.
But but I took Ford over there as a young
man and we got to see him a couple of times.
He really appreciated that. You gonna make me cry. But uh,
it's pretty cool. They taught me how to work. Uh,
how to dig. I can dig dig the best damn
foot that there is. Straight up. Everybody's like I know
(15:40):
how to dig. I'm like, no, you don't know how
to dig. There's a process to digging correctly and there's
a process the bust and concrete up correctly. There's a
process the loading the dump truck correctly. There's a process
for senting money properly, every single No. I like that analogy.
So your brother got to do had a pretty similar experience. Yeah,
he did the same thing. He did the same thing.
(16:02):
He was four years ahead of me, and he went
to UH East Carolina and studied construction management. So it
was kind of like he's more he's more of the
hands on I mean, that's kind of his role in
the business too. Uh. I tell everybody he's he's he's
the better contractor builder than I am. Uh. We have
we have our gifts, but if you go to his house,
(16:23):
he's always got some drywall patches or so there's MUDs
sitting and something and he you know, he's perfection. I
will say. I will say, we have a guy that
works for us, Brandon Kinnard. Uh he worked for Hobbs
Plumbing and we purchased Hobbs Plumbing about eight years ago.
(16:44):
And uh he married he married a girl. His wife
is Kelly yar Yan that I went to high school with.
And uh, I remember this very vividly. When I was
a junior. Her parents write town we had a party.
Don't listen to this, kids, and uh, and we were
wrestling up in the playroom and and my buddy's head
went through the drywall wall had a big hole. And
(17:07):
and I had not I had, I had seen a
lot of drawwall be done. My dad was a really
good drywall guy. But I'm the guy that's got to
fix that. That's the contractor. So I went and got
some mud, went and got some stuff, and I fixed
that wall. She never got in trouble for it ever.
I asked her that recently fixed it, painting it and
did the whole nine Dang.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
We could have used you a couple of times. Growing up,
my brother, we did not grow up in a contractor family.
My dad was a traveling business development type person. And
my brother kicked a hole in the wall one time
that came out of his allowance. And my favorite one was,
all of a sudden, there's like eight or nine kids
playing basketball in our basement.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
We had a drywall wall. One of the kids went
through the drywall.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Wow, and my dad came down the stairs and there's
like five kids trying to block it.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Like it. It was like kids flying glad when he
kicked a wall. He didn't kick the stud. That's how
people break their hands. They get mad and hit a wall,
which I don't have any patience for that. Either, take
your anger and contain it. But uh, that's embarrassed. But
if you hit the stud about every twelve or sixteen
inches there that there's a firm piece of wood, so
(18:14):
you got about a chance aheah, it's I mean, can
you imagine kicking that stud? I mean it breaks like
four toes. I feel like my feel like my gout foot.
My goodness, gracious, my toes already busted up and up
we walk up in Nova Scotia. We walked twenty eight
thousand steps a day over undulating ground, and my feet
(18:38):
are these These puppies are tired. They're barking. They are barking,
all right. Critially because of you, I've been eating healthier.
There you go, if you heard our show, Yeah we're right, yeah, yeah,
we both were both hitting the little Mediterranean dieing and
get my calcium levels down, trying to get my cholesterol down. Yeah,
all because of Patrick. So when you eat that kale
(19:00):
salad and you're mad at it, you can think about me.
It doesn't fill me up like a cheeseburger. I'll go
ahead and tell you it's I connotate it to drinking
a non alcoholic beer. I mean, when I didn't put
it this way, I didn't drink beer during Lent a
couple of years ago. Something I did and it was great,
(19:22):
and I turned it off. And I drank a lot
of O DULs and Na beers during that time. And
I had them all. I had like four different brands.
I had them all myfrigerator, and I said, I'll keep
these so that like on a Wednesday night, when I
would normally drink just one or two beers or something,
I'll drink an old Duels and I won't get the calories. Nah,
(19:44):
didn't happen. You like those calories they expired. Those are
good calories. Now, they are good calories. You gotta go
exercise a little bit. But but this is burally.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
But mean, these not alcoholic drinks are supermus like a
You can get a hundred different kinds now, I mean
the beers and the mocktails. It's got pretty popular mocktails. Mocktail,
that's a good word. Well, let's let's let's keep going
down the road of you guys, and you and your
brother are getting you getting out of school at you
and see you come in the business. We talked about
this before a little bit, but to kind of take
(20:15):
us through that trent, like what you guys did from
when you were kids really out of school until kind
of where.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
We are to tell you this. So I went. My
brother's four years older, so he was still at East Carolina.
I go to Chapel Hill. I'm home sick. My first
time coming home. I went to school with David McGuire,
our COO now at Roby since how eighth. We went
to high school together. We were roommates at Chapel Hill
(20:40):
and his dad, God rest his soul, Frank McGuire, a
great man. He us picked us up from Chapel Hill
because we didn't have cars as a freshman, and I
was so excited about seeing my dad. I'm coming home.
We get the Concord meals. It was like brand new
back then. This is nineteen ninety six. I call the
office because you didn't have cell phone in a callie
office to get my dad to come meet meet and
(21:02):
pick me up, and they said he's in the hospital.
Our superintendent Ken Laney, who was always my boss, said
I'll come get you. He picked me up, took me
to the hospital. My dad had had a brain aneurism. Uh.
And he was the first time I ever saw him cry.
And he was crying in pain. He was squeezing on
two PVC pipes and I was crying and he was crying,
(21:23):
and I said, I mean, man, I was eighteen years old.
I said, I'm gonna I'm quitting school. I'm gonna come
back and run the business. And He's like, if you
quit school, I will die. You're not quitting school. I'll die,
and then I'll haunt you. So and he meant it
and he said this through all his pain, and yeah,
I mean that was good. He was so proud that
(21:45):
I was going to Chapel Hill and so proud I
thought I was smart. So uh so I go back
to school. A couple months later, I'm homesick and uh
and I'm struggling. I'm trying to figure out the business
of college and my grades weren't great. And I called
him and I said that, I said that I'm struggling.
(22:08):
I was crying, and I've always told people this analogy.
He said, Uh. He said, son, let me ask you
one thing. Stop. Stop And I'm like what And he said,
he said, are you passing? And I said, yeah, yeah,
I'm passing. I got like a two six. He said,
hell yeah, boy, we're gonna make it. Keep it up.
(22:29):
And I used to tell that analogy for about twenty
years because I thought he was just so wise and
knew how to say the right things at the right time.
But frankly, the last ten years I have it on
epiphany because I'm now him. At that age, he was
a year older than I am now. Okay, he just
wanted to know if I was gonna show up at
the door flunking out of college the next day, or
(22:50):
if I was gonna pass. That's all he was wanting.
He wanted to know if his investment for that first
semester was gonna pay off. So UH said, it gave
me a boost to comps, and then uh and then
once again, college is a business. You learn how to
do it, You learn how to go to the writing center,
you learn how to get help, you learn how to prepare.
I made straight a's my last five semesters coming out
(23:12):
of Carolina. I also got I'm an economics major. It's
what I like, I understand. So I also got kind
of more focused on what I what I enjoyed studying.
I think it's a combination of things aligning, and uh,
I really enjoyed the second half of college, but I
really wanted to get out of school and work. No,
(23:32):
I hear you that mean.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I think that's the cool part about college. You kind
of find out what you like and what you don't like.
If you're lucky, I was a finance major, you know.
I think that's probably what we get in Yang really
well when it comes to stuff like that. But I
thought I wanted to be an accountant until my senior
year at Clemson.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
We had this old fella. I mean his name was
doctor Klein.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
He was real well known in the in the Clemson
community and in the accounting community, and I think he
had me pegged that I wouldn't cut out to be
an account and he rode me like a dog for
a whole semester, and finally it was I mean, thank
goodness he did, because I hate it wasn't for me.
Finance is a lot different than accounting, but you know,
we kind of jump in these classes and it's like
you'd sort of used to maybe just getting through school.
(24:14):
But then you jump into somebody man like Okay, I'm
wondering about a balance sheet and it income saving, Like
this is really cool, this is how business really works,
and I'm with you and kind of like fell in
love with it.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, well I learned. I remember this. I learned. I
had a night ECON class my junior year. The eCOM
was cool and my dad, my dad had always said,
you're not coming into the business. You're gonna go do
something different. You're gonna be educated, you're gonna go be
a He wanted me to be what our typical client was,
a banker, a doctor, a lawyer during that time, so
(24:45):
he had no clue. He just wanted me to go
do things that he didn't get to do. Really, and
but he had he had raised a workaholic because of
the story about the car. Right, and I worked, and
I enjoyed working. I worked with friend Leroy and Wheeler
and all everybody. So I was determined. But he said, hey,
if you ever do come back into the business, you
(25:07):
got to go back out. And no matter where you
come from, what school you went to, what a claim
you have, you got to go back out in the
field for five years full time, so you can get
respect from the from the company because they don't know
that you worked when you were fourteen. So uh. I
learned opportunity cost in my ECON class, and I learned
that it wouldn't be that smart financially if I went
(25:32):
out after coming from Carolina and went out in the
field and worked as a laborer for another five years.
I don't think it had been smart for my dad.
I don't think it had been smart for me. And
you know, times have change. So I said no. I said,
I'm coming to work in the business and uh, and
I'm going to be a project manager and I want
to sell work and manage working. And he didn't know
(25:55):
what to do with me. He said, son, son, this
business can't feed another Hasting at the time, and he
meant it because he was had to wait of My
grandfather was still in the business, my dad's little brother
was in the business. My dad's sister ran the office.
My brother was already in the business. Yeah, and then
like the other twenty employees were tenured employees. They were
(26:17):
like Hastings. He's like, man, you're gonna kill me. So
I said no, It doesn't matter what widget we're doing.
I want to come to it. So I get out
of college. So that summer I started estimating projects and
I sold a couple of projects. I managed Doug Sleepers,
still a great client, the Sleepers, Thank you, Doug and
Kim's Sleeper. I managed a project for them, managed a
(26:39):
project for Susan and Dimitri. Trying to flee these manage
that I didn't have Friday classes. I'd come home Thursday
night and work Friday and Saturday and drive my dad crazy.
And then I call him my week and say you
get that job you get He's like, leave me alone, man, stop,
go back to school. So so I get out of Carolina.
(26:59):
And and I asked, I didn't apply to any other jobs.
All economic major buddies are flying the Texas doing interviews.
They're gonna make forty fifty thousand dollars a year, and
I never even tested the market. So I get out
of I get out of Carolina. So I asked my dad.
I said, I'm in my office. I had the first
upstairs office in our house at Hurting Police. They had
(27:21):
owned this house since eighty four. He finished at first
upstairs office painting at Ralph Lauren Carolina blue textured Carolina
blue polo paint and h And he's in my office.
I said, Dad, how much am I gonna make? And
he said, son, my brother was already in the field
doing kind of the traditional way. He was making fifteen
(27:41):
dollars an hour. Wow, my dad said, I'm gonna pay
you fifteen dollars an hour for forty hours a week.
That's thirty thousand, six hundred dollars a year salary. I'm
gonna pay you as a salary and you're gonna work
seventy and I'm gonna go buy a new pickup truck
and you get my old pickup truck. You get two
weeks pay vacation holidays and a gas card and insurance.
(28:03):
And you say thank you. And he got up to
get leave my office. He didn't like having this conversation.
I said, time out. He poked his head back in.
I think he might have had advantage ultra light sticking
out of his mouth. I cleaned all that shit up
to no smoking in the building. But he poked his
head in and he said, what son, I said, I said,
this is coming from a good spot. This is not
(28:25):
coming from a greedy spot. This is a good spot.
I said, how do I get a raise? He thought?
He said, triple what I'm making. I give you a raise.
Now you best go sell some stuff. That's what he
told me. And God bless, I tell this story all
the time. I know what he was making then he
was making one thousand dollars a week. He's making fifty
two thousand dollars a year. And if you'd have asked
(28:47):
my dumb butt what he was making, I thought, he's
making a million dollars a year, you know, because it's
just all perspective. So about two weeks later, my paycheck
was four hundred net. It was six hundred dollars a week.
Says that was like four hundred and forty six dollars
and ten cent. That's made that weekly paycheck for nine years,
me and Travis both it would go between four forty
(29:09):
six ten, four forty six eleven. And I go to
the I'm at to walk over a branch at dinner
the road. Phillis, who had always been our banker my
dad got She loved my dad. She says, hey, Trent,
you going out on late today is Friday. I'm like, yeah,
going out on late. She comes back, takes my check,
comes back and says, sorry, mister Haston, there's insufficient funds
in that account. I'm like, oh my gosh, if our
(29:30):
and God bless this came from my dad. I said,
if our carpenters, or our masons or our field guys
heard what I just heard, in six months, we wouldn't
have any employees. So I drive down to the office
about eight houses down. I get my granddad's office, get
my dad in there, and I start raising cane and
I said, if they hear this, I didn't say, is
there another bank account? I said, well, do we have
(29:51):
more money? I didn't say nothing. I said, this is ridiculous.
My dad said you done. He let me raise a
bunch of ruckus. I said no, I got some more in.
My Granddad's going, well, I like this, but he's crazy.
He says, you've done yet. I said, yeah, I'm done.
He says, sit tight, I'll be right back, and he
goes into the into the front office, and we had
(30:12):
our receivables file behind the desk and a hanging drawer,
and he brought the receivables files about two and a
half inches thick of paper and he dropped it in
front of me. He says, son, I'm owed. I'm owed
all kinds of damn money. I don't want to hear
you complain about it anymore. I want you to go
collect my money. And that's how you start running the company,
because I said, okay, what I got to do? So
(30:33):
I called our customers that owed us money, and I said, hey,
I'm trying hastening. I grew up in the business. I
might have worked during the summer at your house. I
know you like my father. My father really doesn't like
managing money. He likes serving people. I'm the new guy
to manage the money. Said he can go serve you.
And I went to Chapel Hill. I like to come
meet you. If there's something I need to handle to
(30:54):
get a check, I'll do it if or or can
I have, you know, get a check. And that's how
I got to know all our customers immediately immediately, and
they loved it. They had a twenty one year old
I was twenty one. I was turned twenty two. Yeah,
June sixth of graduate. I graduated in May. That was
June six, two thousand and uh. Yeah, So that's that's
(31:16):
kind of how it started. So then you sleep on
the floor three nights a week, you work about eighty
or ninety hours a week, and I say this all
the time. You get addicted to it, even though it's
killing you and you're unhealthy, and that's what you're addicted to.
So if I drove up Bright Road before seven thirty
at night, this is even in twenty twelve, I had
(31:37):
kids and I was like, I got to break this chain.
I would feel guilty. I'd be like, I'm not working enough.
I need to go back to work. What am I
doing now, buddy? I drive a bright road? Yeah, ten
in the morning, wave it everybody. So now I'm addicted
to empowering people and allowing them to have upward mobility.
(31:57):
And if we do it right, I can polish their diamond,
they can polish my diamond. I can get out of
their way, and then I can spend time with people.
That's how our business grows. So anyway, little little life
lessons from trying. I don't think I've ever told any
of those stories on the radio. Maybe not together, but yeah,
me and here one off here. Yeah, I don't think
I've ever told them on the on the show. Anyway,
(32:19):
I feel like we got you. Blessed Ron Haston.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
This is part part one, and then we can come
back maybe one time and go for and pick up
after when you started to. Because there's some things that
that that I think are really interesting that I don't
have perspective from that far back with you and your
family and in the business, but I do have some
perspective from from twenty ten on. So maybe we can
(32:41):
get to that and then keep going because I think
some things that happened along those ways.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
I'm gonna tell you this, Reagan is a genius. Yeah,
she's smart, she's a wonderful woman.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
She's got a photographic memory. Yeah, she got me out
of school because she wrote all my papers because I
go do the research. So about two thousand and three,
I said, hey, because I think she can do anything,
said you need.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
To write me a book. She looked at me, she said,
you got about three pages, homeboy, you need to go
build a story. So maybe maybe I'll call that back
up with her. See if oh wow, see if we
kind of chapter two.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I think I got a LinkedIn spam notification telling me
that some guy said that we should write a book.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
We should call him. That's the guy. That's the guy
that's in the business of writing books. He gets paid
to do that. I'm just kidding. I promise you this.
Uh name Adam Wittie. I know him. He's in YPO.
I promise you this. If I ever write a book,
I'm not paying for the damn thing. That's a that's
a fact. That's cool. Not hating anybody that's hired a
(33:48):
book writer. Uh No, it's cool, good business. But anyway, Yeah,
you made me cry. Reagan her fault. We're blame on
our Reagan Dad didn't even make me cry. But thanks
Kevin for putting us on the spot. We were supposed
to have a guest today and they didn't have it
on their calendar to call in, so uh yes, good.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
I like.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I like chewing the cut and telling all stories. So
all right, well, thanks for listening today to me and
Patrick Babbel. Hopefully maybe you pick up a nugget or
two or just go tell somebody you love them. H
do you the golden rule? Carry a smile around on
your face. Thanks for listening.
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