Lavender Brothers, Toby Lavender on Episode 246

No matter your age, follow your passion. That’s what Toby Lavender has been doing for life. Automotive to hunting, Toby excels at all of it, and he’s not done yet. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

8:15 – I always preach to everybody that real formal education in the automotive repair industry is critical these days 

18:17 – We flew in just so green to life and travel and didn’t know what the heck to expect and made the best of it             

24:01 – I remember the first time we did a Million dollars in one year in sales, my accountant said, yeah, but it cost you $999,000 to do it!

29:48 – My first 10+ years in off-road was in desert racing, I learned you better have a lot of money or you better be able to build your own junk.

35:51 – I didn’t set out to do any of this, but I loved it and we just went with it and grew; Lavender Brothers grew into this 99% four-wheel-drive off-road shop 

48:40 – One of my big life passions is hunting and everything related to that

54:19 – the paradigm shift was when I realized my employees were relying on me to provide the opportunity that they were showing up for

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:01.080] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:45.280] - 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis. Tread victoriously.

[00:01:13.020] - 

Have you seen 4Low magazine yet? 4Low magazine is a high-quality, well-written, four-wheel drive-focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4Low is the magazine for you. 4LOW cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4LOW magazine.com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:40.610] - Big Rich Klein

This week's guest on Conversations with Big Rich has been a gearhead from a very young age. He always knew he'd be working on vehicles, going to the shop with his dad, getting into 4x4s, going to Wyotech, to working shops, and then racing off road, then on to Top Truck Challenge, then some Cal Rocks rock crawling, some Super Crawl, and then KOH. The automotive trades have shaped his life, and his newest passion is hunting. Well, hello, Toby Lavender. So good to have you here on the podcast, and looking forward to this interview.

[00:02:18.290] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, thank you, Rich. I'm pretty excited, man. This is a big deal. I've been a fan of your podcast for a while. I actually know a whole lot of people that you've had conversations with in the past in these industries that we share. And so I don't know why you'd want to talk to a schmuck like me, but I'm pretty excited about it for sure.

[00:02:36.290] - Big Rich Klein

Well, you're one of those figures in the industry that people know. You grace the magazines a lot with Top Truck Challenge and different builds that I've seen over the years. And that's what this podcast is about. We're trying to open the eyes of most enthusiasts that if they ever want to get involved or had that dream of getting involved in the industry beyond being enthusiast, that all they got to do is apply themselves. And that's what this podcast does, is show that everybody that's in this industry started off the same way with a dream. Yeah, there you go. Let's get into the first question. Where were you born and raised?

[00:03:22.960] - Toby Lavender

Well, so basically, Central California. I was born and raised in a little country town called Prundale. It's pretty small. It's just next to Monterey. A lot of people... Monterey is a tourist area, so a lot of people know that name or that city, I suppose. Monterey Pacific Grove, Carmel. Central Coast out on Central California, right by the Coast. I'm literally minutes away from the ocean. But it's a pretty small country town. I love it. I'm pretty proud to say I was able to buy the property from my dad years before he passed that I was born and raised on. So I got to raise my daughter on the same piece of dirt that I kicked around on as a kid as a child growing up. I've always been real proud of that. I love this place. It's a great area. A lot of people don't seem to frown a little bit on California for whatever. There's some obvious political reasons for some of that. I love it. It's country enough for me. It's where my love for the four-wheel drive thing started because we were just born and raised in the dirt. My dad rodeoed, so we had a lot of horses when we were kids and things like that.

[00:04:35.750] - Toby Lavender

So it's really cool. It's just like I said, small town in middle of California.

[00:04:40.210] - Big Rich Klein

So your dad was into rodeos, so that means trucks as well. Because, of course, you got to move horses, and you can't move horses with a Volkswagen bug.

[00:04:49.610] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that's right.

[00:04:50.750] - Big Rich Klein

So what was it like growing up in that Prundale area as a kid? If you had horses, you probably had a little bit of property, or Or did they board them somewhere else?

[00:05:03.470] - Toby Lavender

No, it was a couple of acres here. They subdivided the pieces and sold half of it years ago. But yeah, when I was a kid, it was two acres and it was really open just land. So it was nothing big or anything, but it was enough to keep the horses. That was a big part of my life when I was really young was all that. Unfortunately, my parents went through a real ugly divorce and it just things, a lot of that stuff away and changed. Then, I don't get into the real bad stuff, but my dad became a pretty rough alcoholic and a whole bunch of stuff. Things changed dramatically, but it was really cool for a while. Certainly, we had motorcycles and bicycles and stuff when we were kids, and we'd always break our arms jumping on jumps made out of dirt or whatever. When we were young, I had two older brothers. It was a cool house, family situation for a while until things went bad with my mom and dad. But But yeah, for sure, with the horses and with the lifestyle, my dad was a diesel mechanic as well. That was really his main trade.

[00:06:08.230] - Toby Lavender

He got me into wrenching and got me interested in engines and whatever, cars and stuff. I knew pretty early on in life I was going to be a mechanic, and that's all I really ever wanted to do was work on cars. That was definitely the jump off point for me of my interest in engine, I guess, motorsports is really what it I grew into. But that was my start. I was just living out in the country and doing what we had to do and all that.

[00:06:39.140] - Big Rich Klein

So school, were you a good student or were you one of those kids like me that looked out the window wanting to get out of the classroom and go do something else?

[00:06:48.990] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, I think I was a little bit of both. I graduated high school. I went on to a little bit, I guess, advanced education or whatever, trade schools and stuff. But I wasn't a slouch in school. I paid attention. I got decent grades. I think I was the first. I know neither one of my older brothers graduated high school or whatever. I graduated high school, and then I went to, pretty much right after high school, I went to Laramie, Wyoming, to Wyoming Technical Institute, just basically to be a technician, to work on cars. At that point, it's funny, I definitely didn't have any dreams or aspirations of owning my own business. In fact, it was quite the opposite in my mind. I told everybody back then that there's no way in hell I'm going to open my own shop. I don't want that headache. I'm just going to get a paycheck. I think somebody, it might have been my dad, but somebody along the way said, If you're going to do something, if you make your mind up to do something, you do it really, really good. I took that to heart. That plays into the education part of it.

[00:07:52.250] - Toby Lavender

A lot of people that fix cars where they live in automotive technicians, it's a passion, and they learn how to do it the best they can, mostly from hands-on. But the actual advanced education part of it, the training, the in-class training that teaches you things you can't really learn in the field, that's super important, especially today with advance. That's how advanced these cars are nowadays. It's crazy, right?

[00:08:15.090] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:08:15.990] - Toby Lavender

I've always, I've always, preach that to everybody that real actual formal education in the automotive repair industry is critical these days. You just have to have it. I went to Wyotech back in, that was '89. Then over the years, I went to Sequoia Automotive Institute. A whole bunch of actual training courses and classes and stuff over the decades I've been doing this. I'm doing my best nowadays, still today. We take every training opportunity that we can. I have all my employees, sign them up for all the classes and things that we can find for actual formal training. That's important. Yeah, you bet. Education is definitely important. Yeah.

[00:09:02.780] - Big Rich Klein

I worked in the tire industry for a long time with off and on, I should say, with Sears Automotive back in the day and all that. They were really the salesmen and management, they pushed hard on taking all the tire training courses. Since we sold just about everything, the different tire manufacturers would set up trainings, and It amazed me how many people didn't show up to them. And then it amazed me at how many people in the industry nowadays that are selling tires, I mean, that work for the manufacturers at a higher level. We see that in as you're in the industry, and you listen to them talk about their off-road tires, and it's like, dude, you don't know anything except what that piece of paper that came with the tire, the spec sheet told you. It's amazing, and you're messing it up.

[00:10:05.660] - Toby Lavender

It's sad.

[00:10:07.750] - Big Rich Klein

It really is.

[00:10:09.140] - Toby Lavender

Yeah.

[00:10:10.070] - Big Rich Klein

So as a kid, what were your favorite classes?

[00:10:15.920] - Toby Lavender

Probably pretty normal stuff. I sucked at math. I hated history. Yeah, it's funny. I want to say, of course, the auto repair classes in high school, right? Right. I took welding classes in high school. I took auto body, which I never got into professionally, but I actually spent more time in auto body classes than I did the auto repair classes back in high school. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I had any real favorite classes on the normal schooling type of thing, but I was always excited about cars for sure.

[00:10:48.420] - Big Rich Klein

Did you play any sports or do any after-school activities?

[00:10:53.260] - Toby Lavender

I mean, not so much, honestly. It had been a bummer way because like I said, in my grade school time, I I played football and baseball and stuff a little bit, but that was right when my parents were going through a really, really ugly thing. My life or my family was messed up a little bit back then, and so it was rough on me as a kid. I didn't get the opportunity I didn't have a mom and dad to start a dynamic to take me to sporting events or whatever. But I did a little bit of it here and there, but sports never really interested me too much. It's always really funneled back to me for it's got to have an engine or I wasn't too excited about it.

[00:11:32.070] - Big Rich Klein

You said you were the youngest and you had a couple of brothers. How much older were they? Did they go into the same thing?

[00:11:42.950] - Toby Lavender

No, they didn't. My middle brother is about six years older than me, and my oldest brother is about eight years older than me. They just went off and did their own thing. My middle brother lives in Arizona. He does cabinetry now. My older brother We've got to really get into that a little bit because it relates to my business, but we have a really not a good relationship. He went on his way that I don't agree with, and I haven't talked to him in 10 plus years. But I just wasn't going to let him drag me down anymore than he did in the past. And so we separated ways. Unfortunately, it's not a great story, a positive story to tell there.

[00:12:22.680] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's family dynamics. Unfortunately, it's not all the braided bunch.

[00:12:28.270] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it wasn't good.

[00:12:32.140] - Big Rich Klein

So you stuck around... I mean, WIO Tech, was that in... I mean, I don't know where the campus... Do they have multiple campuses?

[00:12:42.850] - Toby Lavender

They do now, yeah. Back then, I mean, This was '88, '89. But so back then, it was only in Laramie, Wyoming. It was the original... Wyoming is a fairly big trade school. Back then, though, it was just only the one Laramie campus. That's all they had. For me as a kid, especially growing It was really, really poor, if you will. To travel all the way to Wyoming was an insane reality. Live out there on campus for six months by ourselves in the middle of winter. I remember the first time I saw 20, 26, 30 degrees below zero. When I was there, I was crazy. Right. Yeah, born and raised in California.

[00:13:20.630] - Big Rich Klein

On the Coast.

[00:13:21.900] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that's right. But no, that was an experience, man. It was great. And it definitely kicked off my career, as I was saying earlier, about If you're going to do something, do it really well. Excuse me. Right.

[00:13:35.260] - Big Rich Klein

You know, Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. And what he meant was the Coast because of the fog and the moisture and everything. And I figured at that point, after I went and lived in Cedar City, Utah, and the first winter we had there, we had a, woke up to a negative 11 morning And since then, I've been in other places, like up in Montana, where we have a house, and it was sunny out, beautiful skies, and it was negative 31 degrees. And I'm like, this is... Obviously, Mark Twain never spent any time in the Rockies.

[00:14:23.590] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that's for sure.

[00:14:25.040] - Big Rich Klein

So what was that like going to Laramie from, you Carmel, Monterey area that is just so idyllic in the views and the lifestyle you think about when you mention those towns, and then you're in Laramie.

[00:14:46.510] - Toby Lavender

Yeah. I was just pretty excited, honestly, to really get out of this really small community for the first time in my life. I was super thrilled. I mean, it was a crazy time. It felt like it was wide open all the time and running 100 miles an hour for everything. Looking back on these things, of course, they go by in a blink, right? Right. But it was exciting. I remember a few meeting people there and talking to them. Of course, Where are you from? I'd say, Prundale. Just blinks there. They have never heard of none like that. Then, Okay, Santa Cruz. Oh, yeah. I know where Santa Cruz is, right? Everybody's heard of that. Excuse me. I mean, that's only 40 minutes north of us. Then we mentioned Monterey, Carmel. Everybody heard of that. But surely nobody had ever heard of Scroondale, California. But it was an experience. I'm really proud of it. It was a good time in life, and it set my life down a better path than it was going on for sure. It really, really helped. I know my mom really struggled to get me there, too, financially and everything else.

[00:15:47.470] - Toby Lavender

That was really good, man. It definitely helped me a ton and put my life on a path that I'm pretty proud of.

[00:15:54.580] - Big Rich Klein

When you went there, you really put the effort in?

[00:16:00.080] - Toby Lavender

I did. Trust me, we did plenty of partying. But I took it seriously, and I learned a lot from it and certainly implement a lot of things I learned there every day still.

[00:16:14.740] - Big Rich Klein

Did the wind blow all the time?

[00:16:17.660] - Toby Lavender

Oh, golly, man. Yeah, they say it was in Nebraska. It was right there. They said that's still windy in Wyoming because Nebraska sucks so hard. But, boy, it was windy, man. Yeah, insane. I remember when it warmed up to zero on weekends, we were out playing football in the snow with tank tops.

[00:16:37.370] - Big Rich Klein

I always tell people that Wyoming is the Indian word for the wind always blows here.

[00:16:43.600] - Toby Lavender

Yeah.

[00:16:45.810] - Big Rich Klein

But I don't believe that's the case. I made that up. But it's the one thing, you hit Wyoming border, and if you're driving on the 80 or anywhere, and it's just the wind is always It's blowing. It's crazy. Yeah.

[00:17:02.550] - Toby Lavender

The first time I've ever seen a semi truck literally blown over on the highway. They're just driving down a straight highway, and they get blown so hard. They just roll over. So, yeah, it's definitely windy there.

[00:17:12.880] - Big Rich Klein

I've seen them blown over in the truck stops, where they're parked. Yeah. It's like, that's crazy. I tried to avoid that whenever we traveled for We Rock, the last 12 years, we had a semi truck. And It was all loaded. It was our house. It was our garage. It was our storage with all the stuff we needed to put the events on. I watched the weather as much as I could from location to location, and tried to stay. I mean, if the winds got above 35, I pulled over and found a place to shelter because I didn't want to end up on my side. It was my house, my truck, all my stuff. It wasn't like I was a lease.

[00:18:02.500] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, you got to protect it.

[00:18:04.680] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. So then when you went to Wyoming and to WIO Tech, did you drive your own car or vehicle out there? And what was it?

[00:18:17.440] - Toby Lavender

No, I flew in there. I had a buddy, my best friend at the time we went on the buddy system, right? And so we didn't have any cars or anything. And we met people from all over the place there. Of course, there was even there. Some guys had cars, and we buddied up with them over the time that we were there. So we flew in just to green to life and travel and didn't know what the heck to expect or anything, and made the best of it, man. It was a really cool time.

[00:18:45.180] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome.

[00:18:46.370] - Toby Lavender

Yeah.

[00:18:46.920] - Big Rich Klein

And so you didn't take a car there. Did you have a car back at home?

[00:18:52.190] - Toby Lavender

Yeah. It's funny. I had always built trucks. That was the thing, man. When I was a kid, I was always in four-wheel drives. My dad was a I don't know if it's maybe a little too extreme to say a hoarder, but there was no lack of broke down junk in the yard to build something out of when I was a kid. I had four-wheel drives and stuff all as soon as I got my license, man. My first truck was a four-wheel drive, But brothers helped me out with that a little bit, I suppose. I always had a Humming down 57 Ford truck and a 57 Chevy pickup four-wheel drive. Of course, they had 40-inch or 44-inch tires or some crazy stuff. But it was always a four-wheel drive gig for But nothing. I certainly didn't have anything that was dependable enough to drive to Wyoming and go to school there. We barely made it out of town in our junk that we built.

[00:19:40.430] - Big Rich Klein

That was pretty much right out of high school, went to Yotech?

[00:19:44.180] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, I I think just a few months after I graduated from high school, we got on a plane and headed over there.

[00:19:51.120] - Big Rich Klein

Did you work during high school? Did you have any jobs?

[00:19:53.940] - Toby Lavender

Oh, for sure. I started pretty young, man. It was cool. There was a shop in Seeside where my businesses are at now. I looked up to these guys that worked at a shop, and it was a shop that my dad worked at. He would take me there, I'd sweep the floors and help out. Then I met all these guys that worked there, and they were just so gnarly Man, they were the coolest guys around. They had the coolest cars and had all the hot checks, and they'd get in bar fights and beat everybody up, and they were just doing burnouts. For me, it was amazing to see all this stuff go down. We were always at car shows or mud drags or monster truck shows. Those guys were always going to something cool, and they always invited me and always brought me. I really, really idolized them and looked up to them. I think, unfortunately, later in life, I realized that they were really, really into drugs and all this other bad shit that I never got. I'm always proud that I kept my nose clean of that stuff. But I was around it a lot and I was blind to it.

[00:20:54.260] - Toby Lavender

I didn't know all the ugliness that was going on behind the scenes. But as a young kid, it was just exciting Man, it was always the coolest cars and the biggest parties and the gnarliest stuff going on nonstop. So that excited me and got me really into going to work every day that I could. All through high school, one of the guys that worked at the shop would come and pick me up after school, at 2:00 or something like that, and then ride with him back to Seeside and put in an eight-hour day at work in Seeside at the shop. That was definitely my big kickoff to getting in When I went into the auto repair industry so much was working with those guys at a shop that my dad worked with at Seeside.

[00:21:35.850] - Big Rich Klein

How did you find out about WIO Tech?

[00:21:40.110] - Toby Lavender

Actually, my best friend Jean, he brought it up to me. I really didn't even know about it. Yeah, he brought it up that he was going, and I'm like, Shit, I want to go. That sounds cool. Let's do that. So, yeah, I don't even know that I knew about it until he brought it up. I think that's exactly how I heard about it first.

[00:21:57.220] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. And so you guys just applied, loaded up, you packed a suitcase, got on a plane and landed in Laramie, and probably went, what the hell did I just do?

[00:22:11.800] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, pretty much, man. I remember my mom put together a big old party with raffles and stuff, and my aunt made dolls. She was selling everything that she could afford for me to be able to go. Just to buy a plane ticket was a hell of a lot of money back then for her to come up with that. She put in all the work to make it happen. I got student loans, of course, and paid that myself, but she put it together for us to get there. It was a small town, so it was a small community. Of course, my mom and his mom, my buddy Jean, that we went together, his mom and my mom were really good friends. We all got along and knew each other. They just put it together somehow to send their kids off to school.

[00:22:52.790] - Big Rich Klein

That's what we did. Yeah.

[00:22:53.980] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, made it work for sure. It was cool.

[00:22:57.100] - Big Rich Klein

You go through WIO Tech, you You get some schooling. You were there, what, six, eight months?

[00:23:03.500] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, it was a six-month course. I could probably get into this later, but I really wish I were to stay for the business courses, too. But the auto repair classes that we took was six months. Okay.

[00:23:14.430] - Big Rich Klein

The business classes you can always pick up later on. But that's one of the downfalls that I know that with the off-road industry, is there's so many good talented individuals that are either welder, some fabricator, welder, mechanic, really know the tech side of things. And then the business acronym is not there, and they struggle and not able to keep the business going. And they always end up working or somebody else, and then they come back and try again. And very, very few make it on their own, even a second or third time. So seeing that you're doing that, and even though you didn't take the business classes is pretty good.

[00:24:01.560] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that's super true in my experience, too. That was my story was like, the reason I wound up owning a shop or opening a shop was because I was really good at fixing cars, but I didn't have a clue about how to run a business. I remember the first time that we did a million dollars in one year in sales, I was like, Oh, I was pulling away. I couldn't believe we made a million dollars. My accountant looked at me and said, It cost you $9.99 to do it. You didn't make nothing. I didn't have a clue what that meant. I didn't know there was a difference between money and profit or any of that stuff. I was years into business at that point, too. But it was just really, really clueless to the business side of it back in those days and in the beginning days. I mean, we've been at it for 26 years or something now. So, yeah, the business side of owning a business was something I was clueless to.

[00:24:55.240] - Big Rich Klein

When you get back from Wyoming, did you go to work for somebody else, or did Did you jump right into hanging up your shingle?

[00:25:05.330] - Toby Lavender

No, I went to work for somebody else right after that. Excuse me, I'm getting over cold here. No worries. Yeah, I went to work for this shop called Rose Automotive in Seeside, which is right where we're at now. That was really cool because the owners... This is a thing that really, really set my life down the off-road path. The owners of that shop were desert racers. That was super exciting to me, of course. I just got hired on as a mechanic, and I was doing tune-ups and whatever I was doing back then. But they had all these cool freaking race cars, too. I basically got to know the owner of the shop really well. Him and I became really lifelong friends because of all this. But he turned me on to desert racing, and that's what really got my passion, if you will, for this thing. I was around I've wanted this dirt and four-wheel drive stuff and off-road stuff all my life. But to get really excited about the racing part of it, that was given to me by a shop that I worked at. That's really where my... I forget how many years, I think about 10 years, I worked for the Bradford's.

[00:26:19.540] - Toby Lavender

They owned a Rose Automotive in Seeside, and we built race cars and stuff on the weekends and raced every chance we could. It was really cool.

[00:26:27.960] - Big Rich Klein

Bradford's. Did they ever Race, Aura?

[00:26:31.060] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, I know you're a big part of Aura. So yeah, you know Steve and Ace Bradford? Yeah, absolutely. I figured you know them, their lifelong Aura guys and desert race guys. So yeah, Steve Bradford was really a mentor to me. He gave me my first opportunity, if you will, put me in a driver's seat of a race car for the first time. They had plenty of them around. They just go out back. You could find an old taxi where you can put enough parts on that thing, make a run, and go peel out. We did. I worked for them and teamed up with them and helped their race effort forever for a long, long time. Then he eventually gave me the opportunity to get behind the wheel. I think literally the very, very first time I drove one of his race cars, he had a little short course out back of his property there. About the third corner, I rolled the freaking thing the very first time I ever drove a car. Fortunately, he didn't kick me out of the driver's seat and let me keep learning and doing it. That was what really gave me my start in the off-road thing on a race level and a professional level, if you will, was working for the Bradfords there.

[00:27:37.870] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, because they raced class 10 or buggies, if I remember right. And so When you drove that car and rolled it, it was probably a swing-axle car?

[00:27:50.060] - Toby Lavender

It was, yeah. Absolutely.

[00:27:51.720] - Big Rich Klein

Those are a little bit more difficult because you got to get them to slide. Because if they don't slide, they ball up.

[00:28:00.120] - Toby Lavender

There you go. That's right. Yeah. That's cool. You know a little bit of history with those guys. I mean, they've been with Vora. I raced Vora for 10 years or so, but yeah, long history there with Vora for sure.

[00:28:11.470] - Big Rich Klein

So that was all Vora before I took over in 2003? The end of 2002, beginning of 2003 then, probably?

[00:28:19.630] - Toby Lavender

Yes. Okay. Yeah, it was quite a ways before that. I think I raced Vora from... I'd have to think about that. It would be Oh, jeez. Long time ago. Right.

[00:28:34.560] - Big Rich Klein

You got a chance to race Prairie City, and did you do any of the desert racing, too?

[00:28:40.420] - Toby Lavender

Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. We raced. I mean, we did. We chased the point of Championship for a long time, whether it was with the reference or... I was mostly behind the scenes. My race effort, I teamed up with a guy who was a dentist. It was Mike Levermore. He had a two-seat class, one car. We raced it mostly in a sportsman vet class, but it was a fast class, one or two car back then. I raced with the Bradfords. I got to do some short course in a couple of desert races behind the wheel at their cars. But then when I've teamed up with Mike Levermore, he That was my first time doing full seasons. We won the Championship, I think twice. I know we were on the overall desert, the desert series. I don't know if we were on the overall thing. But yeah, I raced Prairie City, all those short course races, I think at that time, it was like two in the beginning of the season, then it was all desert for four or five races, six races, and then it was two more short courses at the end of the season.

[00:29:37.990] - Toby Lavender

That was back when Yarrington was 400 miles. It was pretty cool. It was a pretty cool time.

[00:29:44.840] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, That's awesome. I didn't realize that. Okay.

[00:29:48.740] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that was my first 10 plus years of the off-road thing for me was starting out desert racing. We raced Class I, and II, and X, and five out of Class V unlimited Baha that I in Bradford's garage. Basically, getting into this thing racing like this, it was pretty obvious that you either better have a lot of money to do it or you better be able to build your own junk. That was one of the things that really kicked my career down a path of learning fabrication and building your own stuff, machine shop type of stuff. We were machining bearing hubs and shit like that. The things that we couldn't afford to buy, I would go to the store and get a magazine and look at a picture of it and go, Yep, I can freaking build that. I can figure out a way to do that. We got enough of. Hold on one second. I'm sorry. All right.

[00:30:50.020] - Big Rich Klein

So how big is that dog? I'm going to say like four or five pounds. Yes, exactly.

[00:30:56.460] - Toby Lavender

The 200 pound attitude. Yes.

[00:30:59.320] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. Awesome.

[00:31:04.040] - Toby Lavender

So, yeah, that was my kickstart, man. And Vora was with the Bradford there and always been really proud of that time in my life. We had a lot of fun. We did a lot of traveling and saw a lot of racing And it was a really exciting time.

[00:31:18.340] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it always surprised me that Vora, the desert racing, brought so many people from all walks of life. But everybody there was handy. Nobody went out and bought a car and had somebody prep it, and then they'd race it. I mean, it was almost everybody, at least when I was involved with it, was hands-on. Everybody was rebuilding stuff on the trailer, there at Prairie City, or between races, that thing, just trying to keep the action going.

[00:31:56.890] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, for sure. I don't think any of us were rich. You know what I mean? But that's what brought us all together, too. Everybody had the same interest and same passion of building and seeing what you, if you could build something that worked and try it out. That was really cool.

[00:32:13.320] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. It was a great family.

[00:32:15.700] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, for sure.

[00:32:17.400] - Big Rich Klein

So then how did you phase into... Well, let's just find out, how did you jump into the top truck? How did that come about?

[00:32:30.180] - Toby Lavender

Yeah. In '98, I opened my first business. My plan there was just Lavender Brothers Automotive. It was just going to be a regular automotive repair shop. I liked building stuff. I was into the off-road stuff, and so I did that a little bit on the side, but it just took off. I started getting opportunities to build, whether it was race cars or just four-wheel drive-related or whatever. It naturally grew into a four-wheel drive shop or an off-road shop. I only had one or two employees at the time, and so I was there 12 plus hour days and 6 and 7, sometimes 8:00 days a week, it felt like, and just build whatever. With that, though, I got an opportunity to build some cool stuff for some big names. The desert race scene, I built a Jeep for Jason Voss in the Voss family, which was huge in the desert in the trophy truck back in the day. I got involved, just natural, organic word of mouth of what we were building there spread. I got involved with some guys that were bigger names in the industry that just blew my mind that they even want to talk to me thing.

[00:33:44.950] - Toby Lavender

Next day, we were building a rig farm or something. That actually caught the attention of Robin Stover, which I know you've had him on your podcast in the past. He was the feature editor of Four Weeks magazine at the time. Actually, it was even before that, honestly, that I met Robin and we way back. He's my mean man. But Robin definitely is the one that got me in the door, I suppose, if you will, with Top Truck Challenge, but as far as becoming a judge and all that stuff. But I built a Jeep. It's a long story, I'll keep it short, but I built a Jeep that really put us on the map, if you will. It was a 53 CJ3 A or 3 B. It was pretty cool, especially for the time. That's the one I remember. Coilovers and all that stuff. It was a big deal even to have coilovers back then. We were sponsored by King and all this stuff. Back to the desert racing stuff, I knew Brett King from when he was with cuffs or shocks and all these things. We built this Jeep that really was cool. I didn't do it to impress anybody.

[00:34:48.810] - Toby Lavender

I didn't do it to compete with it. I just wanted to build a cool four-wheel drive. I built this Jeep, and my service manager at the time actually filled out the form that Four Wheeler magazine put in the magazine back then to apply to get voted into Top Truck Challenge. For people that might not know, Top Truck Challenge is not something that you just signed up to and you could go there and compete. It was an invitation only. It was a unique and cool format that you couldn't buy your way in. You literally could not... You had to get voted in by the readers of the magazine. The service manager cut out the form in Four Wheeler magazine where they would have you your name and a little bit of information about yourself, a little bit of information about your truck in a picture, and send it into the magazine, and then they would publish that, and then the readers would vote on this form of who they wanted to see compete in the next year's Top Truck Challenge. Long story short, I got voted in and I did the Top Truck Challenge with my Jeep in 2002.

[00:35:51.290] - Toby Lavender

That got me to meet all the guys at Four Wheeler. Robin, I think, was just starting his career there at the time in 2002 with Four Wheeler magazine and Top Truck Challenge. I did the competition in 2002, did pretty good, and really enjoyed the time. Of course, with all the magazine coverage, it really, really kicked off my company name, if you will, and my name and stuff in the industry. It really helped that a ton. I didn't really even set out to do any of this. It really wasn't my desire. Like I said, I just opened an auto repair shop, and we were going to do tune-ups and break jobs and make a decent living. But it just naturally grew into this because I was, I guess, good it and started to become known for it. I really enjoyed it. I loved it. I loved it. I'd much rather build a crazy rock Crawler than put a radiator in a Honda Civic. You know what I mean? Right. We just went with it, and it grew. My company grew into this 99% four-wheel drive off-road shop. We wound up buying lots of welders and machines and lathes and mills and all the stuff that it took to do it over the years.

[00:36:57.810] - Toby Lavender

It just grew into that. But that's how I got started with the Top Trek challenge was actually doing the competition in 2002. I wasn't even terribly in the know about the Top Trek challenge. I didn't know how big it was, and it's so local to me. Where I was born and raised and where my business is right here in Seeside and Prundale, well, Hollister Hills is where they do the Top Trek Challenge or did the Top Trek Challenge, and that's only 30 minutes down the road. Talk about being a local to that unique event, right? Right. And Mr. Hills is where we went and goofed off all the time. That's where we go four wheeling. It still is. It's a beautiful, amazing off-road park. It's really well-run and managed, in my opinion. It was just right down the corner. When my service manager filled out that platform for me to get voted in the Top Truck Challenge, and then we actually got voted in. I was like, Yeah, whatever. I was probably going to go wheeling there this weekend anyway. Sure, let's go do this Top Truck Challenge thing, see how it goes. Holy crap was my eyes opened it at that time to how big that event was and how badass that type of scene was.

[00:38:04.820] - Toby Lavender

It was freaking cool, man. I just was blown away. That really kicked it off. Then I think the next year, I went back and I spectated because once you're a competitor there, they'll let you in the gate to watch the years after because it was a closed event, not open to the public. Nobody could spectate very limited access type of thing because they really wanted to protect their pictures and stuff. This was magazine days, right? Where you could just get this on the internet for free. You had to wait and buy a magazine to see what happened type of thing. They kept it pretty closed gate. I went back in 2003. I think that's when Robin Stover really started getting in with the magazine right about that time. Robin, I think, was the one who invited me back in 2004 as a judge. That was my first year of coming in and judging the event. I was the new judge. I didn't really do much for the year or two, whatever. But somewhere around 2006, I guess it was, Robin wanted me to be the head judge. This is the something that was a little funky, but I'm pretty proud of it, too.

[00:39:14.970] - Toby Lavender

As a judge, I don't want to throw anything under the bus here, but as a judge, I saw some stuff go down when it came to the judging at Top Truck Challenge that I didn't agree with. It was pretty shady shit, to be blunt about it. The judges would go around with their scorecards and witness the event and judge it the way that we judged it, put our notes and all these things. At the end of the day, we'd go in this little camper where all the judges would meet, where the main judges were staying, and we'd turn in our scorecards, and then they'd tell you to get the fuck out. Then the next day, the scoring came about, and it was a little different than what we saw go down. Again, I'm not talking smack about nothing, but it was something I literally witnessed, that I wasn't I'm too proud to be involved with that. When Robin invited me back to be the head judge, I said, Absolutely, but we're going to have to talk because we are going to be transparent and we are not going to change score numbers because somebody is running a tire that is sponsored versus the guy that actually won this event that's running a tire that's not a sponsor.

[00:40:23.770] - Toby Lavender

I, pridefully, and maybe this is just my perspective, but I'm proud to say I brought in a pretty good positive change to the Top Truck challenge that had been going on in years past. It was a little eye-opening to when I came in to be a judge, too, to see this go down, because when I did it in 2002, I know, hands down, John Reynolds won that year, and he earned it 100%. That guy was amazing, and that rig was incredible. But I won more individual events than anybody throughout that competition. I had a strong second miles distance from third. At the end of the judging, I was scored at fourth. It rubbed me wrong. But then I came in a year or two later and I saw how they were actually judging, and I went, That's why. Anyways, to circle back, I was probably going to walk from even judging Top Truck Challenge when I got invited to be the head judge. Then we implemented that. We were putting scorecards up to the public or to the competitors daily. It was super transparent and very, very legit. So I've always been really proud of that, bringing that change into the Top Truck Challenge.

[00:41:35.900] - Toby Lavender

Then I enjoyed another 10 years of doing it with them. After that, it was great.

[00:41:40.870] - Big Rich Klein

You got to have that integrity, especially When it comes to sponsors and drivers that are sponsored, the sponsors, of course, expect expect to win, because they put a lot of effort into that. They pick the best driver or who they feel is the best driver, the best rig, who's going to represent them the best. And if they win outright, that's great. But if there's shenanigans going on to make sure that the sponsor wins or a certain driver wins, that's wrong, in my opinion. And having been a race promoter and rock crawling promoter since 2000, 2001, the one thing that I always prided myself on was my integrity. I didn't care who it was that showed up, who their sponsor was, who was the sponsor of the event. The rules were the rules. The point scoring was the point scoring. And some teams didn't quite get that. They felt that they put a lot of money into it, or they were so and so, and they should always win, or their sponsor was the sponsor of the event, and that any calls should go their way, that thing. And I was like, Yeah, sorry, that's not how it works.

[00:43:18.130] - Toby Lavender

Yeah. I will say that I've been around and followed your career for quite a long time, been around you probably a lot more than you know, and that is absolutely your reputation. That's It's something to be proud of for sure.

[00:43:31.800] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And I'll die on that sword every day.

[00:43:36.570] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, you bet. That's cool, man. So yeah, the top three challenge thing was cool, man. I've been involved with that a lot for a long time, and a lot of different levels. It was really a great, great experience.

[00:43:48.900] - Big Rich Klein

So that first rig of yours, that was the Mister Twister, is that correct?

[00:43:53.050] - Toby Lavender

Hey, there you go. Yeah, it was actually just a license plate on it. It was registered originally, It was a little bit for the street. So that was the license plate on it. Back then, we named our rigs. I'm not sure everybody does that anymore, but everybody had a name for the rig. Yeah, it had 16-inch king coil. It was on it. It had a crazy amount of articulation. And which is a little nickname was Mr. Twister. Put that on the license plate.

[00:44:18.620] - Big Rich Klein

It was white and had like, colored ribbon down it or something, if I remember correctly?

[00:44:24.690] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, exactly. I rolled it really, really hard at the Super Crawl in Farmington one year, and then we repainted it the same scheme, but different colors. The second half of his life, I'd say it was silver and red, but originally it was white and blue and gray. Okay.

[00:44:39.520] - Big Rich Klein

How long did you do the rock crawling competitions?

[00:44:45.570] - Toby Lavender

Well, so it was... The top track challenge competing in that opened up a lot of doors for me, right? So that was really when we started on that. I never got big into rock crawling competitions as far as chasing points and going to every competition or anything. I was really selective because I was running a barely making it business. I didn't have a lot of time or money to travel. We've done Cal Rocks at Moon Rocks, and I did the Super Crawl. We did the Extreme Vendors Challenge up in Oregon a couple of times. In fact, we even got invited to what they call the Southwest Top Truck Challenge thing in Florida. We went and competed all the way in Florida one time. Robin and I did, which was a huge deal. So, yeah, The rock crawling thing, I think, went on from 2003 to probably 2010 or so, somewhere in there. Then that was when KOH started getting big and everybody was transferring from going real slow to going as fast as you can on those big rocks. That transformation has just started blending together like it does now with the ultra four cars.

[00:45:54.100] - Toby Lavender

I don't know, sometime around 2015 or something like that, we started racing King of the Hammers and stuff. But the rock crawling thing was a lot of fun back then. I think I heard you talk about it in probably more than one of your podcasts, but the ingenuity and just the trying this and trying that in the beginning of building these rock crawlers and stuff. It was always just exciting. You had to try things. You had to build things in a certain way to see if they worked. If it failed, well, you cut it off and try something else. That was, to me, the most exciting thing. It's grown so big now. So almost cookie cutter in a way with most of the race cars that are out there.

[00:46:37.020] - Big Rich Klein

It's that way with the racing or the rock crawling. There's a couple of a couple of chassis builders in the rock crawling, and a couple of chassis builders in the the K-O-H that are, or even into trophy trucks. It's not like, especially at the the pro level, or what we consider the pro level, that guys are still one-offing a chassis or a car to try things, or to build something a little different. It's gotten to be Like you said, a little more cookie cutter.

[00:47:17.930] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, for sure. Throughout the 2000s, basically, I don't know, all the way up to, say, 2015 or so, it was a real fun time for me. We were doing some competing, but I never got really, really big into the competition in it. I met this guy, Derek Somers. It's Somers Racing now. He's really big in KOH. He's getting really well known, doing really, really well. But he was my best friend, or still is, really, but best friend for a long time. We would hit every trail. We were up at Fordyce and Rubicon and Bear Lake. We were up in the Sierras on some trail every freaking weekend. Most times, if we didn't break something in half, we wouldn't even take the rigs off the trailer. It wasn't even a... Let me call Derek and see if he wants to go to the this weekend, we both naturally knew we were going. We found ourselves up just wheeling all these trails, hitting all these trails that we could for a long time. That was super fun. I really, really enjoyed that for quite a long time. The competition end of it is just a whole different deal than just hanging out with buddies and going and hitting trails and barbecuing on the tailgate or whatever.

[00:48:25.170] - Toby Lavender

I just really, really enjoyed being up in the mountains and up sleeping underneath the Jeep and shit like It was just a lot of fun back in those days.

[00:48:32.470] - Big Rich Klein

Do you get a chance to go wheeling now? Do you get out and get some dirt therapy?

[00:48:40.420] - Toby Lavender

Yes and no. Not as much as I want to. I don't even have a really gnarly rig anymore. I got a Jeep Gladiator on 37s. But my life has changed a lot. Actually, probably 10 years ago or, I don't know, 8 years ago, I got my guide license. So I do guided We do for deer and bear and Buffalo and elk and all these things. I'm a licensed hunting guide. That's always been one of my big life passions is hunting and everything related to that. But I put that on the back burner for decades because of the off-road stuff. In the last handful of years, I found myself… I don't guide much. It's very limited stuff. I just do it when I walk I went to, taking guys on hunts and stuff. But that is a huge life passion of mine is hunting. In the last 5 plus to 10 years, no, I haven't done much wheeling at all. We actually restructured the company, too, back to the business. The original location, we opened that in '98. Then, I don't know, six or eight years ago, I opened the second location, which is literally three quarters of a mile down the street from in the original location.

[00:50:01.450] - Toby Lavender

That's called the Automotive Service Center of Seeside. Then about four years ago, we opened our third location, all on the same street in Seeside. We have three pretty good size auto repair shops now. But I have moved all my fabrication stuff up to the third location. I've got a nice, probably, I don't know, 1,500 square foot place where I do fabrication personally whenever I choose to. It's a good thing. My companies are in a really good place. They're really, really profitable, multimillion dollar auto repair shops. That affords me the time to do some fabrication projects for myself and/or clients whenever I choose to. It's grown from having to work 12-hour days to barely pay the rent to, I pick and choose what I want to do and when I want to do it. But I don't do a lot of big builds anymore for decades. We were and some crazy off-road shit, some of the really cool stuff, at least I think so. A lot of it got a lot of attention in the magazines and media in the years past, but I don't do much of that anymore. I'm real selective on what projects that I'll take on, which is really nice because I really, really enjoy it when I get the time to do it now.

[00:51:22.510] - Toby Lavender

Whether it's hunting and/or fabricating or whatever, I'm proud and happy to say that I pick and choose what I What do I do when it comes to that stuff. Now, the business side of it with the auto repair, that's a mainstream business. It's action-packed, it's fast-paced, it's we got to get these jobs done. We do a large, large volume of auto repair now. But I get to carry around with cool projects in my little space. And I love it. I love it. I love the Lash South built for it.

[00:51:50.410] - Big Rich Klein

Cool. We talked earlier about things were rough, the business side of it. When did that change and how did you make that change?

[00:52:03.420] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that's a good question. It took a long time to open my eyes to lots of things. I think we talked a little bit about it, that it's a common reality in this industry that a lot of the shop owners, off-road shop owners, are not necessarily businessmen. I think that we all grew up in the dirt and we love playing in the dirt. As we grew up, that turned into our toys have engines and that evolved into our motor-powered toys had four-wheel drive. And then here we are. Some reason or another, we wind up owning shops and building cool stuff but don't have a clue how to run a business. The business side, the profitability of it on all these things. Of course, I think there's a lot for me. Just personal growth was a huge one, no doubt. I matured and I grew up. I opened my shop the first business when I was 29. We talked about the name Lavender Brothers, but my brother didn't have anything to do with it. It was all on my shoulders. I was alone on this. I had some really cool employees that helped out as much as they could, but I was alone.

[00:53:15.050] - Toby Lavender

I was just figuring this out as I went and making a whole lot of mistakes along the way. That was certainly a part of it. My personal growth, right about the time I was maturing in life and other things was really about the time that I really turned it on with the business, but there was bigger things in play. We've talked a lot about Robin Stover, for example. He was a huge part of it for me. He came on board more as a friend. When he lost his job at Fourwheelers magazine because of changes in that industry. The physical print industry was changing because the Internet and all that stuff. He was so connected in this industry. That guy could get a job anywhere, and he will put his mind to things like nobody I've ever seen. So I know that there was lots of opportunity for him out there. And I always felt like he wanted to help me, knew that I needed help in this thing, and wanted to help me as a person. We were really, really good friends. So he came on board and cleaned up a lot of stuff. He made a lot of changes that were positive.

[00:54:19.550] - Toby Lavender

But the big moment in my mind, the paradigm shift, if you want to call it that, was I realized that my employees were really, truly relying on me to provide the opportunity that they were showing up for work for. And for a long time, I had friends working there and guys working there that we just didn't need a lot of money. I didn't have a house, I didn't have a ranch, I didn't have kids, and I didn't need to make much money. A lot of the kids that were working with me along the way, they didn't care much either. We were building cool stuff and having a good time, and that was awesome. But times have changed. Now Robin, for example, he was single when to work for me, and then he got married. Then not too much longer, he's got twin boys, and he needs to provide for them. That starts with me. That starts with the foundation of this business, being able to pay him well enough to where he can live the life that he wants. Robin's such a loyal guy. I swear I would hope I'm wrong in this, but he probably would.

[00:55:21.020] - Toby Lavender

I always thought that he will just continue to work for me forever and sacrifice things in his life because I can't pay him well enough like he deserves because I'm not running the business When that reality sunk in, it hit me hard. From that moment on, it made a lot of changes, man. I just knew that I needed to make this thing very substantial. The opportunity was there. I just had to run it and manage it properly. There's a saying that I really, really like, and it's when the tide rises, all boats rise. I realized that if I'm the Harbor Master here, I'm going to raise the freaking tide. We all Anybody that's going to take this ride with me is going to thrive. We can also do this while being really good to our clients and providing a really good quality product with a huge nationwide warranty. All of these things that we provide, we can also make money. I didn't know that along the way. It took too long to really realize that. But when I started really... Another thing I did is I started working on the company, not for it or under it.

[00:56:29.400] - Toby Lavender

When I turned that on, it was really, really rapidly the changes, the positive changes that came in, especially when we started really, really focussing on profit margins. We had endless amounts of work, endless people out there that trust us to build their stuff, or even if it's just regular routine maintenance and break jobs on their Honda Civic or whatever. Just endless amounts of opportunity. We just had to do it right and design these jobs before we do the We got to design them so that there's going to be profit in them or just don't do them. I often say, I can go broke sitting at home. I don't have to get up and drive to work and work 12 hour days and bust my knuckles up and do all the things that we do to barely scrape by to go broke. I can do that sitting on my couch. Why work really hard if we're not going to really, truly benefit from this? Robin is just one example. I have 20 something employees now, and each one of those have families and have life desires. Each one of those, I take it really serious that if they're looking to me for a paycheck, well, I'm going to be in a position where I can provide that, and I can provide a good one for a long time.

[00:57:43.290] - Toby Lavender

Make sure it's sustainable. And there's just so much to that. But I really wish I would have thought this way 20 something years ago because I'd be financially pretty good right now, not complaining. But holy moly, all the years I wasted building cool stuff and not making any money, where I could have been building cool stuff and making money.

[00:58:02.410] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, hindsight is 2020. And that's one of the things that, like we said, is you see in this industry is there's a lot of great fab guys out there that just haven't been able to do it on their own because of that lack of business knowledge and how to make things, how to be successful. Everybody wants to make $125 or $140 an hour shop or whatever. But how do you justify that when you're doing a build and you may have how many hundreds of hours into a build? You look at it and say, well, I can't charge this guy $100,000 to build this big.

[00:58:45.800] - Toby Lavender

Three or four, $400,000. Yeah.

[00:58:47.880] - Big Rich Klein

But it is. That's what has to happen to be successful.

[00:58:53.430] - Toby Lavender

Yeah.

[00:58:54.420] - Big Rich Klein

If the guy isn't willing to pay for it, then he should be going to rough country and getting a cheap bolt on kit.

[00:58:59.730] - Toby Lavender

That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. The reality of that, like you said, especially in our area, our base labor rates $2.49 an hour.

[00:59:08.860] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:59:09.870] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, and our diesel rates were a diesel specialty shop. One of the locations we specialize in diesels, I mean We have a variable labor rate, but some of it's over $260 an hour. Diagnostic, $300 an hour. That's the going rate in our area. It's crazy to think, but if you try to make even $150 an hour building some full-tube chassis, four-wheel steering thing like we did for years, I built dozens and dozens of those. Lord, if you tried to make 50 bucks an hour, it would be $150,000, $200,000 build. We don't have that clientele. Southern California, lots of places across the country now does, but we never really had that opportunity for those real high-end clients. I know Joe Rugen had a Barracuda built. For example, it was three quarters of a million dollars, and that's a drop in the bucket to him. We didn't have that clientele. But I was fortunate. We did I have a lot of guys that spent a good amount of money and we got to build some cool stuff. But back to the point where it really, the tide changed for me was just when I put my mind to it.

[01:00:12.590] - Toby Lavender

I just made up my mind, this is what we got to do and we can do this and provide a good service to the clients, too, at a fair price. I just got to make sure there's fair profit in it or we're not going to do it. That was a huge turning point for me. Robin called it out. He helped there. There was another guy, too, that was a big influence to me, and his name is Mike Herlins. He's a naval officer, so he had a lot of free time on his hands, but just an amazing guy. It's funny. He opened my eyes and taught me how to design products and parts and stuff in CAD. He originally gave me a bootleg version of SolidWorks, and I learned how to do all that. That's when we started manufacturing products and stuff. But I remember being blown away that you could design this stuff on a computer. I was out there with a piece of cardboard and a razor blade making four link brackets in the beginning. Hand cutting it with a grinder. It was a big deal. When I got a band saw, I could cut through metal.

[01:01:10.480] - Toby Lavender

I was like, wow, that was huge. Mike helped me out a ton and taught me CAD and all that stuff. That's what really kicked off triple extraction when we started manufacturing products. I spent a lot of years designing stuff in 3D CAD programs. Again, mind was blown when there was this thing called a laser that could cut through metal. What the? Are you kidding? Which is so common now, but it wasn't back then. He opened my eyes to that. So I owe him a lot of credit there. He helped me a ton on his own time and on time. Again, selfishly, like Robin did a lot of, it just helped me. There's a lot of credit that goes to a lot of people beyond the hard work that I did, that I did want to mention. There's a couple of key guys that really, really helped me. When we turned it on, man, it turned on. Each company is a a million dollar annual thing, and we got three of them now. It's really, really cool. We turned the corner and things financially and business-wise, they're all legitimate corporations. Things are really good.

[01:02:14.970] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. Excellent. We always want to hear those success stories. They're far and few between, especially this last 15, 18 years ago when When we got into that housing downturn in the depression here in California. Most people thought it was just a recession. But 2008, 2009, 2010, that was a struggle. I mean, It's like all of our drivers, a lot of them were involved in construction trade. And all of a sudden housing, everything just blew up. And bank foreclosures and everything, and everybody lost so much stuff because they were handing out free money in 2005, '06, '07, and it had caught up.

[01:03:09.250] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, it did.

[01:03:11.150] - Big Rich Klein

Being able to survive that was key for everybody.

[01:03:15.830] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, for sure. It was tough for us, no doubt. I remember those years, and it was not easy. I think during that time, we didn't do a lot of custom stuff. It was just... We lowered our rates, and we barely scraped by, but we were helping people with broke down cars, and so they could get to work and stuff. But we figured out a way to survive through it. Covid was another one for the recent. It was pretty gnarly, man. There were some tough times along the way, 26 or 27 years in business now. And of course, over those years, you see a lot of changes and a lot of struggles and a lot of things go by, right? Right. But we're still here, man, and stronger than ever. So I'm proud of that.

[01:03:53.460] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I went through a couple in different businesses that I had that I've talked about on the podcast here and there. And When I did the first Cal Rocks event in 2001, we had just had a big trauma in the US. I thought, here I am, two months away from getting going with the first event, and now the US has turned upside down. But we came back from that really And that was a different situation than an economic turndown. That was just a big slap in the face of US. But we were pretty strong at that point, going into the early years of the thousands.

[01:04:46.420] - Toby Lavender

So let's talk about what you're doing now, and any cool builds or the stuff that you're doing.

[01:04:58.310] - Big Rich Klein

Triple X is still thriving?

[01:05:03.170] - Toby Lavender

No, actually, we shut the triple extraction down years ago as far as the manufacturing side of it. It's still a little, I don't know, I call it more of a nickname than anything nowadays. I mean, we still run the logo and we make some stickers every now and then. Everything that I do design and build, we laser-cut the 3Xs into it just to carry on the tradition for the stuff that we still do build. But on the custom fabrication side of it, I think I mentioned it, but I a little corner in one shop, like a thousand square foot, where all my fabrication stuff's at. And I keep a little project going where I'm out there welding and grinding and doing my thing. But day in and day out, all three shops are just ripping. They're busy as could be. At two of the locations, we're known for suspension and four-wheel drive. Really, at any given time, there's a dozen or more Jeeps and Broncos, and of course, JLs and JTs that we're doing lift kits. We do a lot of metal cloak. We do a lot of Dynertruck, actual upgrades, lockers. I guess relatively normal mod nowadays, it seems fairly common, but we still do a lot of cool stuff.

[01:06:10.720] - Toby Lavender

We're building, at any given moment, there's three or four Jeeps in there getting built up from bone stock to 37 and damn good suspension. Mostly street-driven stuff, some trail ready, ready to go down the Rubicon builds. We do a lot of those every single day. It's really cool, too, because back to the Robin thing, he He's such a free spirit, too, man. I love the guy, but he is so passionate about the off-road industry, and he's helped keep that passion in me, too, because he's just so into it. He gets to design and work with our clients. Now, he's really taking the reins on that. He works with every client that we build a Jeep. These customers will come to us with the dreams of this and that, and Robin will inform them and help them and walk down this path with them of, Well, if this is what you want and this is the budget that you have, this is my recommendation how to do it. Robin manages the shop and the boring auto repair and clutches and break jobs and radiators and water pumps that we do day in and out every single day.

[01:07:13.220] - Toby Lavender

But he also gets enough to keep him in his heart happy, too. He designs these things and we build these Jeeps and Broncos now. Broncos are starting to be pretty popular out there.

[01:07:25.540] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, they are.

[01:07:26.720] - Toby Lavender

Yeah. Then we're always lifting trucks and putting lockers in them or steering upgrades. Again, of course, JLs and JTs, that market is just enormous right now. It's still a ton of JKs. Most of the JKs are in getting head gaskets and oil coolers and stuff like that now. We go with the flow, whatever comes in the doors. But yeah, as far as what we still do daily, we don't do full tube, chassis, four wheel steering, crazy buggy stuff anymore. I've built a lot of those, man. I spent 12, 14 hour days, six, seven days a week in the shop, building just dozens and dozens of those for Tema. And I don't know, it was always Easter Jeep safari. There was always these time crunches and these budget crunches and all these things, and it just drove me nuts. I loved it, but it was tough, man. We don't do any of that really crazy, exceptionally cool builds anymore, but we still build a hell of a lot of really nice Jeeps and four-wheel drive stuff every day.

[01:08:23.980] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's awesome. As long as you still have the passion for it and you're out there doing what you love to do, then it's, like they say, it's never really work if that's what you love to do.

[01:08:40.600] - Toby Lavender

Yeah. I'm really thankful for that for sure. You bet.

[01:08:45.830] - Big Rich Klein

So the name Lavender Brothers, obviously, there's three of you, but it's just you, correct?

[01:08:55.410] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, that's another book to the broken family foundation here. The original plan was my oldest brother was going to come in as a partner to open the business. I'll circle back to the Bradford, right? When I worked at Rose Automotive just shortly after getting out of Laramie, Wyoming, and all that stuff for the first 10 years, Well, the Bradford sold that business, and they sold it to a guy that turned out to be an absolute drug addict, just a piece of shit. I stayed on board and worked for that guy for a couple of years until my eyes were opened to what an enormous pile of crap that guy was. But I stayed at that company. I I was proud of that. I was proud to work for Rose Automotive. Things went bad between him and I because I don't like being around drugs at all. I've never... I just hate that stuff. I've seen a lot of people... I've seen a lot of bad shit around drugs, and I've never even messed with it myself. But so anyways, once I realized how foul the dude was that bought Rose Automotive from the Bradford, a couple of years into this, I left.

[01:09:53.240] - Toby Lavender

But I always felt like he took something from me. It was right at that time that we decided to open the business, and my brother was supposed to come in as a 50/50 partner because he basically could come up with the money. I had the clientele, I had the training, I had the tools, I had everything to do, auto repair business, but I didn't have a penny in my pocket. He assured me that he could come up with the money. I went out, I found a building, I leased the building, I got all these things in motion, and it turns out he couldn't come up with the money. At that point, it was too late to change the name. We were already basically open for business in a weird way, so I wound I ended up getting a loan from my grandparents, basically doing it 100 % on my own. My brother never contributed to anything. I think that he fell into drugs, too, back then, and it just went sideways, but it was too late to change the name. So I always just ran with the name. But from Basically, from day one, it's always been just me.

[01:10:50.150] - Toby Lavender

The name is a little confusing, but that's how it started.

[01:10:54.230] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Okay. Fair enough. Where do you see Where do you see your future?

[01:11:03.710] - Toby Lavender

I want to circle back to a lot of things like getting out on the trails and wheeling and keep building a cool project here and there. It's interesting time right now because I'm in the process of selling our second shop to one of the employees, which is a hell of a lot of money and a really good thing for my life because owning and managing, and I still work on cars every day. I'm still in the shop, diagnostic cars working on cars every single day for one or all of the shops. Logistically, it's really hard. Even though all three shops are only three quarters of a mile apart, logistically, it's absolutely insane to run three of these things. My My plan is the original location of the Lavender Brothers shop, that's the strongest shop of all of them. Well, the second one that I opened about eight years ago, I'm selling that one right now. Hopefully, that deal will be closed within the next six months or whatever, and then I'll just have the two. That'll allow me to focus my attention to the third location to build it up to be its own standalone entity.

[01:12:09.730] - Toby Lavender

Hopefully, within five, six years, I can sell that one-off and I'll reserve it back to the original location.

[01:12:15.910] - Big Rich Klein

Very good.

[01:12:17.160] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, and that's my plan to start to end my career. If I wind up selling the second and the third shop, that'll put me in a really good spot financially and time-wise, too. Free up a lot of time. I can put more time into the the hunting business. I opened a company called Rinn Con Creek Outfitters. I think I mentioned that earlier. But I want to resort back to doing a lot more hunting, a lot more guiding. There's good money to be made at that, and it's just something I'm really passionate about. I really enjoy the hunting thing. So I want to get back to more of that. I definitely want to get back to fabricating some more, but on the terms that I don't have to do it to pay the rent. That's where I see my future going. I never lost the passion the off-road thing. I never got out of it completely. We still do it every day, but on a very small scale compared to what we did for decades.

[01:13:07.340] - Big Rich Klein

And family, are you married?

[01:13:11.280] - Toby Lavender

No, not technically. I mean, Tracy is my life partner. She's amazing We were both very happily unmarried. Perfect. Yeah, it's fantastic. I've got a daughter who's just turned 20. She actually works at the shop. Tracy runs all the books and all the management of the company. So we work together every day. Works out fantastic. I think that you and Shelley do the same thing. You work together every day and live a life together, too. We've managed to keep it pretty strong that way. We talk about work at home, but it's never about the bad stuff. We'll deal with that on Monday. But so, yeah, we found a way to work together and still survive in a relationship. But that's cool. My daughter is taking some auto repair classes at our local community College, and to get the basic foundations of how cars work and stuff with the idea that someday she might own one of these shops. Nice. Perfect. So that's cool. She works there now, and Tracy's there every day. The family is strong, man. I'm really happy with that.

[01:14:21.800] - Big Rich Klein

Getting out on the trail, you said you have a gladiator on 37s. Are you hitting the Rubicon anymore, or are you just locally down there at Hollister Hills?

[01:14:37.010] - Toby Lavender

Yeah. Well, no, I haven't been on on trails in quite a while. But here's the thing with the hunting side of this. I don't know, close to 10 years ago, I bought a ranch just outside about an hour, hour and a half from where we live. It's 20 miles of dirt roads from the first gate just to get to my cabin. I bought 640 acres outside of Hollister. It's It's 20 miles of dirt road just to get there. They're seasonal, but there's six river crossings. You go through six different private ranches just to get to mine. We're way up in the Diablo mountain range. It's super rocky and gnarly. I have to winch in the wintertime when it snows just to get to the cabin, even with lockers and 37 there down to 10 PSI beat locks, the whole deal. Sometimes you got to winch just to get to the cabin, right? It's freaking rad. Nice. Yeah. In that way, I get a little wheeling in almost every weekend when I go work at the ranch, whether we're going up there just to relax or hunt or whatever. So I'm off road, out in the dirt, in the rocks, down there every weekend, just going in and out of the ranch.

[01:15:40.950] - Toby Lavender

So I get my taste for that, just doing that. But No, unfortunately, I haven't really had a lot of time in the last, I don't know, 5, 10 years to get out on the trails like we used to.

[01:15:52.830] - Big Rich Klein

And you're guiding, are you doing that at your ranch? What game do you have there? Are you doing it? Are you going Montana, Wyoming, Idaho? Yeah.

[01:16:03.040] - Toby Lavender

No, we network with other guys. Most of the guiding is down south in the King City area. There's 200,000, 300,000 acres that this company called conservative Game Management. They're a pretty big operation. But then I lease... I've got access and I make leases or deals with other properties. It's waterfall season right now. It's just dabbling in a lot of different things in a lot of different places around central California, mostly. I did some bear up in Oregon for a while that was cool. It's really tough to pin that down as a business, if you will, so far, but who knows what it might I'm going to in the future, right?

[01:16:46.220] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, perfect. Perfect, especially if it's such a passion.

[01:16:50.920] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, I do enjoy it for sure. Excellent.

[01:16:55.630] - Big Rich Klein

Tobi, I want to say thank you so much for spending a Sunday morning here with me. I know you got a house to finish up, and you got hunting and cabin and all that stuff, and spending the time talking with me and letting our listeners know more about To be Lavender is awesome, and I really appreciate it.

[01:17:19.550] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, thank you, Rich. It's been a lot of fun, and thanks for having me, man. Like I said, I'm not sure who would be too interested in this, but it was a lot of fun doing Doing this with you. People listen. That's great, man. I dig it.

[01:17:35.240] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, and next time I go through the seaside area, which I do probably once a year, I'm going to make sure I swing by and say Hello.

[01:17:46.160] - Toby Lavender

Yeah, please do, man. You're always welcome. Stop in anytime. We'll make some fun for sure.

[01:17:53.460] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. All right. You take care. Have a great Sunday. It's the holiday season. Be joyful, be safe, and enjoy life, buddy.

[01:18:04.870] - Toby Lavender

Right. Thank you, Rich. You, too. All right.

[01:18:06.600] - Big Rich Klein

You take care.

[01:18:07.940] - Toby Lavender

Bye-bye.

[01:18:08.390] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have, or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.