Episode 22 - Journey To The Center Of The Earth with Bil Von

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we are gonna

be talking about journeying to the

center of the earth and joining us today

is bill vaughn with fnd peers bill

good to have you with us happy to be

here so uh

he has a company that likes to dig holes

what do you think about that there wolf

uh

well i figured it would be hard to come

up with a lot of questions to ask a man

who digs holes

so what i so what i did um with all our

followers on facebook i sent out

on the messenger app

what can we ask a man who digs holes and

the only people we got replies from were

some mafia people in new york and some

mexican drug lords who wanted to know

how best to dig shallow holes

well that's because of the way that you

constantly promote our facebook page and

you try to promote it to the kind of the

bad people

so you know we we've got our

uh listeners that come in and they're

trying to be good but

you know you're all mixed up with the

wrong crowd sometimes well just to

answer those people

uh bill how much do you normally charge

to dig a shallow grave

well for that type of business it's 80

000 in gold at least here in dallas

oh one grave we can do that we can do

that and typically mix it with two

and then oh i'll do it for a six pack of

beer right yeah

you might be pricing yourself out there

okay

now what no what we basically have

figured out

already i mean we can go ahead and end

the podcast right now we're in the wrong

business well

we are in the wrong business we need to

dig shallow graves if we can get 80

grand i don't think he's selling any at

that price

maybe so he's pressing himself out of

the market

well originally one of one of the first

questions we got

and i had to change this because before

he came in and before we met you in

person

i thought you'd be an older guy and you

know so my first question

that we actually received i actually

self-identify as an old man you do oh

that's

well you are an old man then we don't

want to

miss age you i'm not an old man

at what age did you kind of think well

yeah i don't want to be a lawyer i don't

want to be a doctor i'm going to

dig holes to just kind of fall into the

job sure sure so i actually

uh did want to be a lawyer there for for

a period of time but i was 24 when i

started

digging holes yeah so yeah i was working

in oklahoma

around the 2013 time and i was in an

industry that was dependent on

oil price right and right around that

time oil price

went down and i wasn't productive enough

okay i don't know that i was productive

enough when oil prices were high but i

think they just finally started noticing

and uh so i got laid off okay so i had

to had to make an adjustment

now you mentioned earlier to us before

the podcast started when we were just

chatting that

you've really only kind of had two

careers sure so was that your main

that yeah your main job before the whole

digging the whole thing really motivated

to pay off student loans and do a few

other things financially in my life so

i had a full-time job three part-time

jobs and i donated plasma twice a week

oh okay yeah that's good yeah yeah i

learned actually on

uh beavers and butthead that that was

actually the way to go if you can get

any money donating plasma because there

was one episode where they were carrying

like this huge almost like garbage bag

full of blood they were trying to donate

so much blood right to make money and it

had gone like anorexic because all the

blood had gone out

and nowadays you know if you get the

covid before

and you donate the plasma now there's a

little bit of extra money

oh yeah there is yeah when i when i got

uh

covered back in like either march or

april

i went for the test with a hospital

which is not far from

um our studio here and i must have got

maybe

20 texts across the next month asking me

to donate plasma

and they were paying way more but i just

didn't want to be on

that list sure well you were making more

money on your only fan site

well yeah and plus you know because of

the uh

kind of sperm donation had dried up so

well and that kind of goes back to kind

of dried up literally

yeah yeah but um so how

what made you make that shift into

digging holes i mean i i can understand

like from your previous career

that's really not so much of a jump i

mean if you have been like a lawyer or

training to be a doctor and then went to

jump in her

sorry digging holes that would have been

a big kind of like

paradigm shift but i suppose it's not

that much of a shift given what you were

doing before

but i mean what made you decide

i'm gonna dick's mouse sure so i went to

school for business finance

and uh what i was doing where'd you go

to school midwestern state so d2 college

in wichita falls

uh we're the mustangs yeah so good

mustangs but um

so i had done business finance had a

passion for looking at businesses the

income statement balance sheet statement

of cash flows and trying to figure out

you know is this business worth anything

or whatever

and my father norman vaughn had dug

holes for his whole life and i grew up

around that

right so when i got laid off i came home

and lived with my parents and i started

as a crummer or ground hand

a scum worm whatever you want to call it

chroming for for norman my dad

yeah and uh did that for a period of

time and then as time went on

you know short story long or long story

short i ended up

becoming one of the owners of the

company and just kind of transitioned

from there

now where does your last name come from

because obviously it's german

german yeah okay yeah it is a german

decision yeah because it

it it's bond via win right yeah so i put

it like that on a

on a starbucks cup it's actually

v-a-u-g-h-a

okay and so v-o-n is the same stinking

word

and for quick communication sure that's

what i use

normally isn't there another name on the

end of like that like something

blah blah blah i think you might be

thinking like van

like yeah mobile or something like that

but i was thinking more

maybe more of the dutch names you know

because they normally have

van before their last name and i thought

vonn

was maybe the german equivalent and they

had another it reminds me of back to the

future whenever

emmett brown was saying oh when we came

to hill valley we were the von brauns

and

my father changed it to brown you know

so

i i kind of got that kind of german feel

there but

i wasn't quite sure right now you have

to understand um

normally before any podcasts we do how

many hours of research on the topic on

average which is

point one two five point one two five

yeah

and that's lots of research and that

includes and that includes having a slow

browser because the wi-fi in the studio

here is terrible

yes and you refuse to use anything

outside of microsoft edge

right and and also i mean i've been

trying to like

download illegal movies via bittorrent

and it's so slow

yeah i i mean wait i actually

have to wait till i get home yeah we're

looking at a week to

to download some hallmark movie for

christmas

it reminds me it reminds me of like 1997

when it took 17 minutes to download one

song

yeah and and then you realize it wasn't

even the right thing yeah we're named

the right song yeah

it was in a different language yeah

exactly so um

so digging holes and stuff what type of

holes do you dig because i mean you have

to remember

um that last kind of question to the

shepherd there was

somewhat serious because we actually try

not to over educate ourselves about

things

sure because then you get presumption of

knowledge and you sound like you know

more than what you probably do know

so we like to kind of keep a little bit

in the dark about it because we like our

guests

to actually uh give us the professional

access to things so i mean what type of

holes do you dig

sure well i i'm a phd um a professional

hole digger

depending on who you talk to possibly

permanent head damage right again

depending on who you talk to but uh

we do foundation drilling so not for

water not for oil strictly

okay moving soil that's it so any type

of new foundation we don't do foundation

repair

um anytime someone's putting in a new

slab for

a home a church a theater a bridge

something of that nature oh okay

we'll do appears in the ground for that

right yes sir so on the

on the average month how many holes

would you say you do

i actually figured that out so about 2

800 would be our average

one 28 hundred yeah right at seven right

at seven hundred holes

i was thinking like well maybe twenty

eight max

i was thinking six eight twenty eight

hundred

because i think about going out in the

backyard and grabbing a shovel

and i'm like i i don't even wanna dig

one hole but if i if i was getting paid

i'm thinking okay i'll dig one hole a

day

then i'm not digging any holes on sunday

because the dallas cowboys dig their own

holes right now

and they never do it for you yeah they

never can get out of there so

wow that is a lot of holes right you

need to pass me that pen back so i'm

gonna get back in touch with the mafia

and the mexican drug lords because if

he's digging that many holes a month we

need to come back with some arrangement

yeah we can only afford one pin right

now right we can we need a pin sponsor

you know maybe vic could sponsor us and

send us a box of pins because we have

one free pin that i

found somewhere and maybe some razors

because we know

bit diversified they've got a lot of

different products it's true yeah that

is true and gillette doesn't make pens

well we're not we're not going to use

that remember because i'm sorry

sorry sorry rabbit hole i i know i'm bad

about that yeah so how many employees do

you actually have in your company

ten we we created two more jobs so how

do you do 2 800 holes a month with 10

employees

five five to six rigs two men per rig

and

just try to keep up with demand yeah wow

that's

now do you actually dig any or do you

yeah so uh occasionally there'll be a

specialty hole

or a hole like uh at the dallas water

treatment plant over in carrollton

where it's around some particulars some

stuff that they

they just want somebody that they trust

and so not that i'm better at digging

holes in my guys but they've been dying

with me for a while

and so if i was to go over there you

know and that may be a one-hole

situation now now where do most of your

kind of contracts

come from is it more kind of like

private

commercial government or where do you

know that's a great question

all of them come right here from dfw we

have done a handful to two handfuls of

jobs

outside of the states but generally it's

going to be dallas fort worth area

and we're about 60 60 percent

residential uh 35 commercial and then

five percent government

power or industrial right i'm curious

how do you judge someone in their

ability

to dig a hole you talk to them and then

you listen

so walk me through that like it like i

i'm looking at

you know looking at one of my kids and

they take a shovel out in the backyard

and they can't dig a hole to save their

life right

so so obviously you know you got people

that are trying to be

professional so what do you do when you

walk in you say

i want to see how you can dig a hole so

how do you

how do you walk them through that and

say i'm gonna try to figure out if you

know how to dig a hole

well first thing is they have to want to

dig a hole so i wouldn't go to the

market and try and say hey

i want you to dig a hole for me and i

will develop someone in my community

who has or presented to me the desire to

dig a hole and basically there's two

paths from that point

there's people that are fast and not

smooth and then there's people that are

smooth

and not fast i prefer the smooth not

fast

okay because developing that person into

a high quality producing operator is a

much less expensive process sure but

taking someone who has speed

and thinks that well this machine isn't

doing what i want it to do so i'm going

to make it

do what i want it to do that is a very

expensive so

so when you go so so would you go so far

that i remember the pyramid

when you look at a job there's fast

there's cheap and there's right

sure and you can have two two of the

three sure but you can't have all three

so in the whole digging business kind of

you're looking that

same way yeah there's uh there's a hole

digger for every

version of that model our particular

model it's in our name

f d that's fast and dependable so our

customers will get speed guaranteed

production

guaranteed passive inspection uh the

quality is there because it will be

dependable

whether we run into rock water tough

inspection

variations in the job that'll be fine

our customers are absolutely

absolutely going to give up the price

that's actually the pretty much the same

criteria i used to

pick my first wife actually excellent i

think

yeah have that workout for you no not

good

now now do you have any worms and moles

applying for the job kind of

identifying us humans no no

there's you know in construction you

always have uh

interesting you know people you can come

from any walk of life

and pick up a shovel so to speak right

so um

andrew carnegie said you know sometimes

to mine out the golden people you have

to get past the bad

debt um and i found that to be true yeah

so

sometimes not always but sometimes

ten percent you take someone um

you know who you know at any other time

you may pass

but if they have that's where it comes

back to does this person have a desire

to learn this craft and then stick with

it right and so

if you find that um you'd be fooled not

to develop

it well let me help them along well well

i mean as much as that kind of worms and

molesling was a bit of a joke

i would think that the average person uh

the shep and i

uh included would think it must be easy

to dig holes

but like anything else i'm sure you can

screw it up if you just

don't have an affinity or a passion to

kind of actually do the job properly

you you and i look at digging a hole is

like i said before

grabbing a shovel right and you start

digging and obviously

in your industry it's much different

than just grabbing a shovel and saying

hey go out there and start digging yeah

and there's a lot more to it

right so i mean do you find that

you know people who apply for the job

are sometimes kind of overconfident

because they do think oh this must be

easy i'm just digging a hole

typically the people that are applying

for the job need the job

right so we have a backlog of people

that

need the job and our job is to figure

out who wants it

right who has a desire to actually do

this

the money is is part of it but they need

to have

sort of like a gift right sure in a

fight if a monkey got in a fight with an

alligator which one would win

well are we going to be fighting in the

river are we going to be fighting in the

tree

all right so let's not go down that

rabbit because we're going to do a

podcast on that one later yeah yeah

go ahead and make

we'll come up with about 30 different

animal kind of matching in a fight type

thing if they it was mma rules

everything's

yeah allowable and will decide who would

win out of all of those

how do we figure out a way to place bets

on this

can we get some zoo to come along and

say

hey we need to figure out this because

this is a

pressing item that people need to know

well we're probably getting monkeys and

alligators fighting i i need to know

throw people in there you got gladiator

baby

yeah well we're probably gonna have to

take a weekend down to mexico to

actually make this a reality and

otherwise it's

we're just gonna have to simulate it

i'll see so depressing

it is we we just can't make this happen

right now wait wait

stay tuned purchase epstein's island and

then turn it into what you want it to be

there you go

there you go now i hear it's for sale

imagine so

now now is it actually a dangerous job

are there many risks involved in the job

just like with anything i mean just like

we're driving a car if you don't know

what you're doing it can be

extremely dangerous and so with what we

do i mean you need to understand

some basic rules of you know gravity and

electricity

you know you want to keep your equipment

away from any electrical lines obviously

yeah um but beyond that no it's quite

safe okay well we've actually

um in our very first episode

what do we believe i'm not sure if we've

covered it in that episode but

we're not sure we're entirely down with

the whole gravity theory

anymore yeah we've got some doubts about

gravity what was that article you read

earlier about the whole

yeah so this would be good

for a professional hole digger so we i'm

right here we're not really

awesome come on this isn't the best

question in the world to ask really

are you gonna poop on me already i'm not

going

okay so we were looking at something

that if you

drilled a hole all the way through the

earth okay

one side to the other and then you threw

somebody in that hole

they're gonna fall through that hole and

they're

gonna surpass terminal velocity they're

gonna be going

17 500 miles an hour

by the time they get near the core now

once they pass the core are they going

to

come back out the other side are they

going to slow down

kind of depend on their momentum but if

they're moving down

at that speed well sure what you're

going to have to take into account at

that point is the rotation of the earth

and because of how fast they would be

moving and the way gravity does work

that earth would actually hit them your

your whole would have to be

massively wide like miles for the the

rotation of the earth and then when they

did because of inertia

if the earth wasn't spinning they would

kind of just kind of balance out in the

middle eventually

right right because it is spinning

they'd shoot out the other side and then

as the earth rotated they come back down

and

but doesn't that depend on where you

actually dig the hole like if you dug it

at the poles

would that make a difference as opposed

to digging it at the equator and

expecting it to come out yeah no that's

why but the earth sits on an axis

yeah that centerpiece is actually right

yeah yeah

yeah and what's that it's a tough

question 23 degrees or something like

that

right and my you know when the shepherd

first

kind of come up with this article i you

know had a few

questions about it which neither of us

bothered to look up the answers

yeah because that would have taken 30

seconds yeah we didn't have that we

didn't

we just didn't we just didn't care that

much to be honest but i thought that

like or okay

you know terminal velocity is like 128

feet per second right

so but that's you know taken into

regardless of where say you free fall

out of a plane you reach terminal

velocity before your shoot

opens but as you get closer to the earth

that actually increases slightly but if

you were going through a hole

because the majority of the weight or

mass of the earth is actually in the

center

gravitational pull would actually speed

you up and change from terminal velocity

to whatever speed that gravitational

pull would affect so it wouldn't ever be

a constant speed

past once you actually entered into the

earth past a few miles but then

when you pass the core of the earth the

gravitational effect

of the core would actually slow down

your velocity

exiting to the point where maybe that

speed

that you quoted is only enough to break

through that barrier of that

gravitational pull

so that you could actually get out the

other side of the earth

so uh speaking of terminal velocity

something happened to my prior beer that

all of it just ran out so

uh i'm i'm opening my next beer my alien

beer from uh jason board and mark

martian margaritas one of our sponsors

yeah i i think i salvaged that because

uh other than the

the three people that understand

physics yeah i think you lost everyone

well it's one of those questions

it's one of those questions like will

there ever be a man born

who will swim faster than a shark it's

probably not going to happen

nobody's going to take the experience to

me i i swim faster than the shark

yeah now um what's the biggest

or deepest hole you've ever done now i

know you said you've had like you know

like houses and

big areas but you know obviously the

more

weight you know for the foundation

surely the bigger hole you're gonna sure

so over here in

the fort worth stockyards they're

redoing quite a bit of it and so they're

doing what's called a lift station which

uh

helps the whole area to process uh

waste okay so that was actually a 72

inch wide so about six inches in

diameter

and we went down around 18 and a half

foot deep oh okay

so and they started hitting water over

there they wanted 19 but

18 and a half but yeah six foot wide is

the widest i've ever done

and then the deepest i've ever done was

58 feet and that was over there at the

dallas water tree you see max and i

thought it was going to be like about 9

000

or something no no i'm not an oil i'm

not in water it's a different industry

now yeah

we we had high hopes yes sorry yeah well

we kind of tend to exaggerate a lot of

stuff we're talking about so

i've told you a million times we

shouldn't exaggerate well

exaggerate is anonymous has 9 billion

members so

yes as one of those members just just

i am one of those members to make a

point on that yeah uh the name of our

company used to be bulldog drilling and

i went to purchase

a rig in canada when i was bringing that

across the border because i had drilling

in it

they wanted a 32 000 tariff

quickly much like i explained often oh

it's not oil

it's found it's construction right and

that tariff went away very quickly okay

so uh note to self we need to be in the

tariff business

of machinery coming over from canada

it's gotten worse you'll make more money

now than you did back in july of 2018.

wow it's amazing every podcast we do we

have about three new career ideas that

we're going to follow as soon as we get

off the air but

but based off the fact that we are so

lazy so we're never going to do it

press for time yeah yeah this studio was

almost like next door to the shepherd's

bedroom that's how lazy we kind of got

with that

yeah we lucked out there because i had

that moment of clarity to say

hey let's not do this yeah and and i

actually decided

hey i'm i'm going to work for 15 minutes

yeah now now is the business pretty

profitable do you have a lot of

competition

kind of around so there's competition um

we

everybody obviously you want to kind of

find your niche your main customer base

and then

do everything you can to add value to

them and see them

um so it just kind of depends about six

or seven weeks ago we were sitting at

one percent profit for the year

right and i was looking at laying some

people off and hooking up

with richie brothers auction but then uh

we had a bunch of work come through

and so we're sitting at 17 for the year

okay

that's good so bad it's kind of uh it's

kind of what you make of it

yeah we've had good in and bad but now

how do you advertise i mean or

do people actually actively seek you out

because i would figure

again like the questions we got from the

mafia and the mexican drug lords they're

kind of seeking people to dig holes

rather than you waiting to kind of like

reach out to them so how do you i mean

do you do a lot through social media

is it you know the number one way that

we get customers is through word of

mouth

okay so and the only way to generate

that is to have high quality services

right

okay and and so what we talked about it

before with

you know the fast and correct and

everything but

what sets you all apart what what is

that one thing that if you could sit

here

and you had your uh ability right now

what you do

to explain to everybody here's why we're

different

what would be that one thing that you

would want to say

to one of your potential customers as to

why you're

different than anybody else doing this

sure i appreciate the opportunity so i

mean

drilling the hole and getting a lot done

in a little bit amount of time

is a lot of work and so basically the

way our structure is set

up we reward and keep and retain

and attract people that want to do a lot

of work

and our system rejects

like a body would reject an organ

someone who

wants to come to work act like they're

doing a lot of work

but in the end they're not actually

doing anything to benefit the bottom

line of the company

that's exactly us and so it is

so so we are not getting a job with them

we're gonna have to apply for a fake

name yeah

so um the system being set up for that

it was a big thing and then

number two biggest part and this really

came before that system came

was uh i called a man named chuck denman

out of mount pleasant he's been digging

holes since he's 11.

denman drilling and he's going to be 58

this year

and we were i call him the yoda you're

wearing a star wars shirt but i call him

yoda

and he calls me crumber and uh he really

took me in as kind of a son and taught

me

how to actually do this properly

so we were doing things cheap we were

trying to save money

here and there in areas that you really

should have been investing

right and you know we're just struggling

trying to figure out how to do this

uh a right way for everybody and make

money

and he really helped coaches on that and

he was verbally abusive but it worked

and i'm so glad

yeah so glad he did it does sometimes i

mean

sometimes you got to take a little bit

of abuse to learn a good lesson yeah so

it sounds like that yeah worked out for

you although funnily enough i get a lot

of

cussing and verbal abuse on xbox live

and yet it doesn't

doesn't make me be any better at the

games i'm playing it yeah that's true

because you're terrible at rocket league

i am terrible at rocket league i know

i i hate playing xbox live rocket league

with you yes you're terrible

and you bring my stats down right i hate

that it's like

yeah i mean i'm like a special needs kid

who not the autistic ones who are

fantastic at those games i'm not the

ones who like i don't know

maybe don't have two arms or something i

don't know yeah it

it it's embarrassing it is it made me

almost want to quit

rocket league yeah because i love that

game but when i started playing with you

i i just wanted to give it up yeah and

we haven't played online since actually

have we in about yeah we haven't because

you destroyed my rating and i'm trying

to build it back up yeah

it's been terrible now do you ever come

across sinkholes because again we're

quite sensationalists we did

we did we did one podcast again the one

on what do we believe and convinced

ourselves that the yeti existed

but we also read some articles on

sinkholes and now we think they're

everywhere so do you ever come across

like sinkholes or the equivalent i have

yet to come across one

of those i'm sorry so what would you

what would you do

if you came across a sinkhole you know

you're starting to move backwards

probably

pray that i get to come back to this

show and tell the tale

yeah the only the only time that we run

into something like that is when you're

digging like a 10

to 15 foot diameter hole so on holes

that size you do have the potential for

the rig

to actually fall in wow and so there's a

special type of setup

where you're anchoring your rig and

positioning it yeah and then making sure

the soil can

handle what you're doing to it um but uh

i mean that that's my best answer for

that yeah now does your company own

all of its machinery or yeah you kind of

lease it no no no yeah

my question is my next question was

actually going to be kind of you know is

the majority of the cost

really labor or the machinery when you

average it out to dig a hole

so the machines are run by the people so

the number one cost that we pay on every

single thing that we do is ignorance

um so one of the company i know you're

going to ask that question later but

anyway i'll stick to it here the uh the

number one

cost you may if you looked at our line

items right so

labor will show up as 20 right

of total expense but the stuff that

breaks on the machines is a direct

cause of how it was used sure so

you may not see that that's going to be

in your repairs parts repairs and

maintenance

line item on your expense report but

really what put it there was the labor

right so getting people

who have a desire to dig a hole sure

is really what it comes back now now is

everybody use your own employees or do

you actually have to get some

subcontractors in if you've got

a lot more business so i don't

subcontract anything

okay so it's similar um

i don't want to get too you know you

wouldn't want to share your girlfriend

right

so in high school you're dating you know

you would depends

okay

yeah come on come on there there's a

rabbit hole right

yeah i'm sorry okay remember what

podcast you're on here

fair enough uh so no we don't we don't

subcontract anything we really like to

if it's not something we're capable of

doing we're just going to be upfront

with the customers let them know that

um for us to service them in that area

is probably going to price us the right

job

and we we do offer them i have a list of

other my

competitors who would better serve that

niche right i put them in contact

now we did have um actually a couple of

questions come in

from people who were asking about

fracking now before

obviously when we received those

questions we didn't know kind of what

type of holes you dug or what

to what type of depth because that's how

we

yeah you know we research everything it

would have taken too long to send a text

and

clarify things uh but you know is that

something which would be

an easy kind of jump if you wanted to

diverse around the company or is that

something which is

so why are you kind of out there though

they are completely

different industries yeah um that would

be

as far of a jump as for someone to say

go from being

a medical doctor to an engineer right so

they're just

you have to be highly skilled at both

yeah but they are

the only thing that's similar is the

hole in the ground the purpose of the

hole the depth of the whole

the how you accomplish the task the

amount of people and resources and

engineers

and materials needed are are vastly

different yeah you see

you see um the only thing really the

shepherd and i know about fracking is

that

it's got something to do with oil and we

know how to spell the word so

we kind of figured fracking

okay i'm sorry i misheard you i thought

you said a different word

okay okay okay um

now do you have to have like a lot of

different type of super techie equipment

like radar equipment

to uh you know work out what type of

ground you're building into

you know i mean i should imagine you've

got you've got to know and that changes

the price of stuff

it's going to be a harder job absolutely

so um it's great question

so y'all heard of one one no you know

okay 9-1-1 is if you have a medical

we've heard of 9-1-1 okay so yeah

hopefully you don't have to use it we

have to dial it twice last week didn't

we yes

yeah we did so 8-1-1 is a drilling

service

right that's local they've come out and

they'll check for utilities and things

of that nature before you drill

or excavate of any kind and so they'll

come out and really

survey and they test all that but

anytime someone's going to build a house

or

of any kind of foundation what will

happen is they send out a geotechnical

report all right

sorry i'm just writing down to make sure

we don't misstyle 8-1-1 instead of 9-1-1

because

it's going to be a completely different

uh service coming up

but that's some i mean does that when

when you get whether it be an individual

or commercial or government do they tend

to do that

kind of research of how hard it is

no no they have to do that because based

on what material they find

they will actually drill a hole in the

ground okay one very small hole

you can bring up soil samples for the

geotechnical engineer right

to check out okay based on what they

find then the structural engineer

will design the pier oh okay the pierce

lab for it so

you're able to actually right off the

bat give them a

reasonably kind of accurate cost of how

much it will cost rather than it being a

surprise after you do your own

so yeah that's one of the things we do

differently than some

even just contractors in the uh

construction industry is

there's zero pricing surprises with us

and because we do business that way

we get to collect our money in 11 days

on average which is

six times faster right than the fastest

company

that's not yeah i mean that's not a long

back end for that type of

people that i have friends in this

industry not just drilling holes but in

the construction industry

that if they collect their money in 60

days it's like christmas yeah and i'm

sitting there looking

like bro you're a bank for two months

yeah months that's insane

yeah that's how they do it and that's

and when you when you kind of look at

those deals i i've heard

that the north texas soil is kind of

unique

it's kind of difficult uh can you walk

us through

why it's kind of hard especially with

the piers and everything in north texas

why it's so hard to dig the holes and

put the piers in

what what is going on with our soil up

here

why it's so hard there's absolutely

nothing wrong with our soil

okay so the what makes it hard is people

that are ignorant about how to handle it

properly

that is the okay only so why why are

they ignorant

so so let's dispel the ignorance

explain to everybody why we can get away

from this and

explain to everybody why it's not bad

and what they can do about it so first

thing i'll tell anyone is if you're

hiring someone to do anything

let's say you're dealing with a dentist

okay they're drilling holes in your

teeth to drill out the cavity correct

so if there's something complicated

about that for that dentist

you know right there i need to walk out

the front door

find someone who is incompetent at this

process so

it's very easy to get into a

construction

company there's almost no cost to entry

if you have decent credit you can go

borrow money get a piece of equipment or

whatever and you're ready to go

you can't do that to be a dentist you

got to go to school

to be a hole digger you got to go get

you know

50 to 100 000 loan you can do it on your

house you can do

all kinds of things right just because

you can finance a piece of equipment

doesn't mean that

you know what you're doing and so that's

that's the difference right so i i've

had three calls just today of people

kind of that same concern you can tell

they've been bit

by people who are bluffing about being

able not necessarily to dig the hole but

framing uh concrete electrical conduit

work

drainage you know erosion control

there's nothing complicated about

digging a hole in the ground

well of course you say there's nothing

complicated because you know all that

right

but i can teach someone how to do it too

yeah but well and and we're not

necessarily talking about you teaching

somebody how to do it but how does the

normal person avoid

those problems that the guy that has

equity

in their home and decides he's going to

go do this and doesn't know what he's

doing

what what does what does the normal

person

need to look for when they want to trust

somebody to do this

well if there are if they're wanting to

do it themselves

like i did i would highly recommend not

going out

and just oh i can do this and then start

doing it you're going to burn

five to seven years i've lost 130 000 in

one day

doing this trying to profit 300 000 in

one year right

so getting a mentor i've wrote a book

it's on amazon it's called how to dig

holes profitably the lion the devil and

the man

if you're wanting to do this that you

won't make a lot of money

following that book perfectly but you

won't lose money

and then and then the making the money

will come with customer base upping your

price

proving yourself and a few more

conversations but

and by the way we'll have that link on

our side if you if you want to check out

that book

i appreciate that um but to avoid

you know you talk to an executive right

so how do you get good judgment

well bad judgment that's that's how you

get good judgment

unfortunately that education process of

how you take an average

joe and get them up to speed on how to

not hire someone that doesn't know what

they're doing

will go hire three people that don't

know what they're doing and then you

will know not to hire someone that

doesn't know what they're doing

right and i wish that wasn't the answer

but that's the answer

yeah no it makes perfect sense i can't

believe we've got another

published author on the podcast because

max sorry the shepherd

um has a pretty successful

trilogy of books about black people uh

i wrote a book that got published about

a hedgehog with a flashlight who used to

go to raves

that was a children's book i wrote when

i was in england awesome yeah yours is

probably a little bit more uh

technical than ours but yeah absolutely

yeah this probably has more readers i i

can't imagine

uh writing a book that technical so

thankfully thankfully i didn't have to

do the illustrations

because the shepherd and i cannot draw

for now if you've actually gone on our

facebook group

you you can have some genuine examples

of my artistic ability and the shepherds

kind of roughly around that

and maybe we need to have a pictionary

contest

and see how terrible we would do it it

would be like an hour and a half

to guess it'd be like whatever we spend

two hours for round one

yes yeah it would be terrible yeah um

now you've got to have

some funny stories that that

you know have happened to you because

absolutely you know everybody we

interview it doesn't matter

what you know field of expertise they're

in they all have some funny stories

of stuff that's gone on i mean i spoke

to an embalmer one time and even he had

funny stories about

you know trying to make the dead look

pretty so

yeah yeah get get give us a give us a

funny story about digging holes

well so the oddest thing i've ever

encountered in the ground is we pulled

up a honda accords

door and obviously that was not in the

bid

i'm supposed to be drilling dirt not

scrap metal or cars right so

that was uh that was probably one of the

more interesting ones

um did you put it on craigslist and try

to sell the door was it was it in good

condition

by the time we were done with it no no

what color was it

it was it was red it was oh okay well

that's a popular color

for a honda the only reason we're asking

this is because we're trying to sell a

lot of the stuff in the studio here and

then next door's office

on craigslist and on facebook

marketplace so if you still have that

door

we could maybe add it to our portfolio

yeah i mean we do have that 48 inch tv

from 1998 we're trying to get rid of and

and we've had no success from that so

yeah

we might end up it's one it's one of

those things you're selling where you

start off with like

we're trying to sell it for fifty

dollars and buy a must collect

but it's gonna end up we're gonna have

to give somebody 50

and deliver it right it's gonna be

terrible yeah rough

now do you have any other companies any

other ventures or is this your all-in

thing

yeah so um you know the idea is you work

the active to build the passive

to avoid taxes and get massive so notice

i said avoid

you can you repeat that slowly sure so

you work the active

to build the passive to avoid taxes

and get massive okay so so that sounds

like something

my daughter would do in a cheer back

when she was a cheerleader

yeah because i can just see somebody

dancing around with that because it's so

poetic

it sounds like and i know that's why you

told him to slow down because i was like

man poetic well it sounded to me like an

erect told us

that that could be a cardi b song let's

be honest yeah

that could be a cardi b song maybe

you're in the wrong

industry maybe you should be writing

pops on

that was another adventure so so back to

the question do you have any other

companies

going on absolutely and they all exist

for the sole purpose of maximizing our

our tax credits

okay not to evade taxes which will get

you in jail or prison or whatever but to

avoid them and be efficient

um so the first one is obviously the

drilling

that'd be the active side of the

business and then should that company

turn a profit we want to

eliminate that as quickly as possible by

the end of the year

so we would either buy equipment and

depreciate it or

buy real estate yeah and then uh sort of

venture it that way so

we you know we we don't we own the

company that

are we on the property that the drilling

company is on so we lease

the property for you know all of that

and then lastly we have the education

company called

straight drilling str and then the

number eight

okay and that is for taking people who

want to learn how to drill or at least

say they want to learn

and so we kind of someone applies they

seem to have the spark

yeah the spark of stupidity they don't

know what they're getting

what's the washout rate i mean how how

many people do you come in

that want to learn this and then can't

do it um

i would say 50 50

no 20 currently because okay for for me

or anyone in our company to consider you

we're gonna ask questions um

and it's going to be very clear to the

person that they're expected to work

so before they even get through the 30

minute you know

hiring just the first part of the seven

part hiring phase

that eliminates a lot of options seven

part hiring phase

you realize you and i could never do

this well i was actually going to

suggest he invests in this podcast

because then he can write it off

immediately you won't even have to wait

till the end of the texture

that would be a bad marketing strategy i

mean we could get a plug in there

no now now somebody actually wanted to

get in

touch with about building a hole now

obviously you said you had

um you know you're building like sorry

digging not building

28 i'm pretty sure you don't build a

hole well

you're ravishing the ground taking away

from

maybe the uk yeah you got to remember

we're in america now

we don't subscribe to you

if somebody wanted to dig a hole um what

information

normally up front would somebody have to

get you

i mean because it's like if um the

shepherd said

i want a whole dog in my backyard

because i want to build an extension or

whatever i mean

you know i call you and i say my

daughter has a pet rabbit

and she starved it to death and i'm too

lazy to get out there and dig a hole to

bury the rabbit in the backyard well

because that did happen well so maybe

but maybe i want to call a professional

hole digging company because i do not

want to have to worry about

that rabbit i've known you in life no

i've known one foot above the ground

because you know how lazy i am and i'm

just gonna

cover like a little bit of dirt on the

top of it and i'm like oh it's okay

it's okay the the rabbit is fine no i've

known you too long you're just going to

put it in the recycle bin and put it out

with the trash

stop letting out my secrets too much

we talked about this before but but if

but

no um if somebody did actually want

you know i i guess a whole building for

an extension of the house or whatever

i mean what type of information do they

normally have to get you up front

because honestly if i was asking

somebody to dig a hole i'd just be like

can you come and dig a hole sure and we

would immediately tell that you don't

know why

you're wanting a hole yeah and so we

would work out that

that conversation pretty quick so but

the main the main information is going

to be

uh how deep how wide how many yeah

what's its purpose where is it located

yeah

who's the engineer and when do you want

it done right

now now with them now now with digging

holes as opposed to building stuff do

you still have issue with like city

permits and all this stuff that was one

of the biggest issues during covid

um we would you know on on in general we

have somewhere between

17 to 23 jobs under contract that we're

working to get through

our schedule and we're trying to balance

it out right yeah during covet there was

one point we had 92 jobs under contract

especially over in the south lake

carrollton uh

grapevine sort of area yeah because the

permits were sitting on the desk of

someone who physically was not there

to sign up okay and so but came out of

that

but that's um that's what kind of

leading on from that i mean is

you know covert really affected business

yeah to a negative expense outside of

other people doing their job because i

wouldn't think that there's too many

restrictions on you in terms of

sure you know digging holes that people

want a whole dog they need a whole dog

but

so our business actually blew up during

covid more so

than i mean it was already growing and

we've been making moves

were they trying to hide the dead bodies

and yeah

and that's why everybody's saying the

holes that they're burying the male in

boats man we put them all together

yeah no no uh

it was really a combination this is a

little off topic from kovid but

the forest fires in california burns up

a lot of houses then you have

facebook ibm toyota several other

job creators moving major industry into

texas

to rebuild in california just to get

through the permits cost two years

wow two years and insurance coverage

like homeowners insurance if your house

burns down they'll cover you for a year

now do you get any money up front from

that or do you actually have to wait

till that contract comes into full force

before we actually

they deal with a builder on it okay but

what that's done is it has funneled

hundreds of thousands of human beings

out of other parts of the country

especially even parts that were locked

down because of covid right and here

texas is still

rolling relative to a lot of the rest of

the country absolutely so

people are just there it's just nonstop

i bought i bought two rigs uh not last

week but the week before

to help keep up wow how much is is

this just continually yeah and you

bought one of those from me so i

appreciate that

absolutely anytime next now now do you

have an end game with your business is

this something you want to build

uh like super super like large largest

in the united states larger than the

southern part of the united states and

eventually you're just going to sell it

or do you think this is something you're

going to keep a passion

for you know for decades and kind of

keep up

with i really i do really enjoy it uh

the business more than the actual

digging of the whole but our immediate

goal is to kind of become a regional

powerhouse and start

okay we've got our equipment where we

need it we're going to start buying up

other smaller drilling companies in the

area

right and we have the franchise uh model

which is why we created the education

company first

okay to help teach new owner operators

how to

function successfully in their holding

business so tell us a little bit about

the

education company sure so

i mean basically we teach you the full

spectrum

business side of it which would apply to

any business not just ours

uh and then we teach you the ebbs and

the flow

of how weather is absolutely gonna you

know we had one

day of drilling this week tomorrow

we haven't drilled for four days so

that's absolutely going to impact the

bottom line well

but let's be honest the weather has

sucked here this week

so was it was weather an issue yeah we

didn't drill any you know

uh 2 800 holes a month divided by four

weeks roughly is 700 holes a week right

probably drill 200 holes this weekend

wow so that's absolutely going to show

up financially

but was it weather did weather

you know yeah you can't get a 72 000

pound iron

machine right because it's been rainy

like i i told some friends from new

england i said

you know what hey your weather

is drunk in my front yard will you

please come pick it up

because this is not what we are used to

in texas

sure sure so obviously weather affects

that yeah in our industry that's

absolutely so

helping people understand that they're

not necessarily doing something wrong

and that they do need to save money for

a rainy day and how to do that properly

excuse me what proper looks like and

then

basically getting them up to speed on

any from

hard rodding their augers building their

own augers if they're not in a cash

position to buy a new one

taking care of their equipment upgrading

their equipment when is it time to sell

a piece of equipment how do you properly

manage tax strategies and move equipment

in and out of your business

acquiring keeping and maintaining

awesome

customers you know that whole that whole

thing is like a college education right

i mean but

it makes money not like my college

degree

but so that's that's the value of the

education company rather whether you're

trying to be the best whole man you can

be

the best operator you can be the best

manager supervisor

salesman uh owner operator whatever

their objective is and they can take it

about you know you're not going to get

it all in one bite you know it's

it's going to be a bite at a time yeah

so absolutely now now with them

the weather obviously it's

understandable that you know with a lot

of rain

getting heavy-duty equipment out on muds

kind of almost

even even if i drilled the hole i can't

fill it with concrete right but

you know when you have you know a freeze

does that really affect things too much

because surely that only freezes a

certain depth

that's the out of soil it's a great

question so for us to drill a hole

and it pass inspection they need to pour

it within eight hours

sometimes sometimes you get a 24-hour

window to fill the hole up with concrete

okay and when it freezes one of the main

components of concrete is water

yeah so when it freezes that can not

always but it can cause delays

oh wow so they may if it's going to be

32 degrees at the high

all day they won't they don't want you

to yell because they can't pour today

because i didn't know how deep

you know when you have a frost maybe the

temperature drops to freezing

across the world in texas yeah

now i did actually have um two questions

from a couple of my

english friends yeah here uh i got a

buddy over there his name's so gustavus

i've been playing xbox with him for

years

okay the first one you might not

understand this one but this is quite an

english phrase is is any hole a goal

there's a company there's a company in

oklahoma called

oaky drilling from 1964 to 1987

and their slogan was your whole is my

goal

it's been on t-shirts and hats and all

kinds of different things sure

sure absolutely all right kind of like

the

septic pumpers that say you know that

this

tank is full of political promises you

should laugh at it as septic pumpers

okay but but the other question um and

this is obviously from somebody who

didn't know

like us kind of what type of holes you

dig and everything

else but was a are you going to dig your

own grave to cut down on funeral class

if i've done my job well or do you do

family references so like if

like great auntie nora dies you know

you're going to go in there and kind of

knock 1500 off the uh

yeah money who's already said he's going

to charge 80 000 for a shallow grave so

he's probably not the right person to go

because the purpose was hiding a dead

body and there's a lot of processing

involved and it's not just 80

000. it's 80 000 in gold exactly

massively different

so so before we close uh and

i'm gonna hit you with one that we

didn't talk about here

uh and actually i printed out an article

and i was gonna

talk to you about this uh borehole over

in russia but

i decided against that i want to hit you

with a different one

okay oak island

okay so the the whole story with oak

island is they have

this you know hole that's buried there

that's like whatever it is 130 140

feet deep how'd you bury a hole do you

mean fill in

well now they they have this shot that

they clog the top

they've done it yeah that has all these

traps and everything

as a professional hole digger

you've got to kind of look at that even

if you don't study it that much or

whatever and you've got to kind of

laugh at maybe some of this so have you

looked at any of the

oak island kind of stories

the theories of of what's going on with

that

and whether or not they could actually

accomplish what the old-school

stories are behind oak island yeah this

is the first i've heard of oak island so

let me ask you this okay first off i'm

hearing that it's 120 180 feet that

sounds like a water well

but how wide is the hole nobody knows

and i think this is a beautiful segway

and kind of a beautiful

kind of way to shut this down because

now we've told him about oak island and

what's going on there and now you know

he's gonna go back and

kind of maybe take a look at that

because that

that is one of those deals where what is

it the laginas that

now own all that they're trying to dig

this up

they think the knights templar have this

and it was

all this fantastical thing that was

built

long ago and now you have a professional

hole digger that doesn't even

know about this and could probably tell

them

how to solve it yeah maybe now now

before we kind of sign off

on this bill can you give us uh i mean

i'm sure you've got a website and

everything

else can you just kind of give us uh

yeah yeah yeah hopefully get in touch we

will we'll put it on our facebook page

we'll put it on

the links on our podcast but just if you

want to let people know how they can get

in touch with you

sure well first off i just want to say

thank you guys for letting me come on

absolutely

no no no no seriously thank you we

appreciate you coming on here

absolutely if anybody wanted to you know

reach out to us whether they were

wanting to open a whole digging

franchise or maybe they're tired of

spending all the money

to drill holes they've got a bigger

construction company and they want to go

ahead and bring the halls in-house

i'd love to reach out and talk with

these people and

it's very simple very simple but uh

fndpeers.com

if you're looking for service whether

you're fixing to go into

a new residential area and you want to

do piers throughout there we have our

references with royal crest as engineers

also with whitworth engineering we work

with

dozens of others around here but those

are our primary ones that we work with

if you have anything for bidding

purposes that's going to be

information.fndpeers

gmail.com and then if you'd like to

reach out to me personally my phone

number is 940-255-3719 again my name is

bill and i'd love to talk to you

about digging holes thank you man thanks

for having me on

absolutely thank you bill and uh thank

you for

tuning in to this episode of the wolf

and the shepherd we certainly appreciate

everybody

uh tuning in and listening and

all the links for this will be on our

facebook site

on our instagram all that good stuff

and we'll catch you on the next one