Transcript for Hustle & Heat Episode 12
00:00:04
What’s up, guys? And welcome back to another episode of Hustle and Heat Podcast. This is episode 12, where we bring the community together—one entrepreneur, one public official, and one business owner at a time.
On today’s episode, I’d like to welcome a special guest. He’s the owner of Trux Preferred Construction, and he’s a Charlotte County Commissioner. Without further ado, it’s an honor to welcome Mr. Bill Trux.
Bill, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, George.
00:00:30
It’s good to be here. Appreciate you asking me.
Thank you, man. It’s good to have you on here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, I don’t know how deep we want to go, but I moved here 35 years ago with my wife. We actually met in Englewood, Florida, in 1984. She was 16 and I was not… we’ll leave it at that. I was a little older.
And how old?
I was 21. I was getting ready to graduate from college.
Sound bad. That’s not bad.
00:00:56
Yeah. Well, you know, it’s not bad today. Her dad didn’t know my age for a while. Her mom did, but…
That’s usually how it goes.
Yeah, yeah. So… it’s been a great 35 years. It was a rough start down here for me. I got into real estate, got my broker’s license, and started down that path. Of course, we had a not-very-good economy for a while.
Then I went to work for a builder, and that particular builder went under. I think we had 43 clients that got affected one way or another.
In 1998, I got my construction license and started working for another builder and also had my own thing. Then in 2005, I started Truexpert Construction, and we’re over 20 years in business now. We do anywhere from 7 to 10 million worth of business a year, and it ranges from modest remodels to very extensive remodels—residential, commercial, restaurant work.
We’re getting ready to go vertical on a church not too far from here actually. It’s in Charlotte County, over by West Port. And we’ve done a lot of rebuilds after the hurricanes.
00:02:03
Nice. So what is it about construction that really grinds your gears—what makes you interested in it?
I love to see something come out of the ground. I love to see something created. My grandfather was a very good carpenter, and I didn’t get his full skill set. I can do carpentry work, I can do trim work, but when it gets into extreme detail or furniture making, I don’t have patience for that.
So for about the last 12 to 15 years, I’ve been more in an administration-type position in my own company.
You have to be as an owner.
Yeah. When you get to where you have that number of jobs, you’ve got to have somebody to manage staff, manage money—planning, budgets—all those kinds of things. It does take time. I usually range between 10 and 12 employees. As we grow, we’ll have to grow that because we’ll need more superintendents.
I have two field superintendents right now. I have four skilled labor in the field. We self-perform all of our high-end custom trim and door installation and things like that. When we get into big projects, we bring in help for that.
I’ve got a good team, and the team has been strong and has done a great job over the years.
00:03:38
We’ve had more changeover recently. I had two long-standing employees who left. One wanted to start his own business, which I’m always proud to say—they learned from me, and now they can go out and do their own thing. I don’t feel like they’re competition because they know how to do things the right way. So I respect that.
I’ve had two people do that on me.
Yeah.
And honestly, I take it as a compliment.
Yeah, I do too, because they feel strong enough now that they can go out. I also told the gentleman, if you ever need something, call me. We’re still friends. There’s no reason we can’t work together.
I respect good competitors that are in the field because they do it the right way. They treat people fairly. They don’t cut corners, and they don’t steal money. And we’ve got too many people in our industry that have literally taken families down—by not finishing homes, by not paying their trade contractors.
00:04:30
That is something I’ve tried to work on in Tallahassee—with the past President of the Senate, Senator Passidomo, who’s out of Marco Island/Naples area, and now Senator Albritton, former Majority Leader Mike Grant. We just can’t quite get there where we can get the right kind of legislation in place to hold the bad guys accountable, because there’s always these little glitches and unintended consequences that get found. We’re trying not to hurt the good guys with language that might tie them up.
It’s ongoing and fluid. There’s some legislation up in Tallahassee this year that may be addressing it. They’ve made modifications, and we’ll see what it ends up like—because how they start out and how they end, they never look the same.
00:05:29
So what does accountability look like to you? What’s your vision on accountability?
Everybody’s different. I created an organization and have the reserves that I’m not a guy who goes to get a bank draw where I get advances. I’ll take a reasonable deposit.
In new construction, on the residential side particularly, you can take 10%. Well, I’d rather not take 10% because I’d rather take money up front to start the planning process. And as we get through that, they can see how the money’s being spent and how they’re getting results.
So I’m not taking their money to use on another project. And that’s what happens with a lot of builders—they take money from Project A to cover Project B because of cash flow or they didn’t charge enough.
We bill in arrears. So once we get through the deposit, we’ll go so far and we’ll say, “Okay, we’re at this point. We’re going to permitting. Here’s where we are. You gave me a $5,000 deposit, we spent $15,000—pay us the other $10,000.” Then once we get the permit out, we pour the slab, what have you, we’ll bill you at that point.
So we’re always doing the work, performing the work, paying the subcontractors, and then collecting from the owners. It’s a bit of a risk. I’ve had some slow pays in my life, but you try to work through those because those are usually exceptions to the rule.
00:06:59
Okay. What about the customers that don’t pay? You ever experienced that?
Oh yeah. I’ve got one now that’s been paying over years—so that one’s been a slow pay. That’s the only one I’ve got currently.
I’ve got a couple no-pays on finals. They’re little amounts of money and they just kind of disappear. So I probably have about $12,000 that’ll be written off this year at this point. There’s always something going on. Some people hit bumps in the road.
And the one guy that owes me the biggest chunk of money, quite frankly, got taken by another contractor. That guy was arrested for two counts of felony fraud and put in jail. Then they had a settlement agreement—I believe it was somewhere in the $200,000 range, but I never heard final numbers.
There’s always some extenuating circumstances. I try to work with people. There are laws in place that I could utilize, but I try to be fair and understand where they are. As long as they’re making payments along the way, then I’m good.
00:07:58
I’m sure you’ve done many projects in your career, right? What’s the proudest project of your career?
Oh, wow. We did a major renovation to a Methodist church in Englewood several years ago, and that was a pretty big ordeal for us. We won the opportunity in a competitive bid process. It was a very intense project and it turned out very well. Then we did other smaller ones for them after that, so they were pleased.
And then the restaurants I’ve done—I’ve done a lot of restaurant renovation work in Englewood. Magnolia’s we just finished up—they’ve got a Bay Bar out there now that’s beautiful. We’ve done Lock and Key. We rebuilt it after the storm after we remodeled it the first time. We’ve done Sandbar, Farlows on the Water, Mama’s Restaurant, the Waverly Restaurant.
That’s all really neat stuff because you can go in and see your work after it’s done. You get to talk to people who sit there and say they love the restaurant, they think it’s beautiful, they like how things were put together. My entire team—we’re very proud of those moments.
I typically take the administrative staff and superintendent staff, and we go to their reopenings—not just to support them, but for my folks to be able to enjoy the work they’ve done.
00:09:46
In many cases with a restaurant, you know this—you need to be open to get money. To make money, you’ve got to be open. When a restaurant is closed, it’s truly all hands on deck. Everybody gets in there.
I was even out—I believe it was over a long weekend after Thanksgiving—Friday, Saturday, Sunday—we stuccoed out the building, and I was out there with my team mixing mud and helping put stuff on the wall. We all get involved when we have to, and we want to make sure we get people back up and running.
00:10:16
You’re 100% right. As a restaurant, you have to be open all the time. When I closed for five months to expand and renovate this place, I was struggling because there was no income. I tried to do caterings here and there out of a kitchen or whatever, but it was a struggle.
And I was paying all the staff I had from Little Dubz to stay on staff while we were closed. So that was an even bigger struggle on top of all the construction costs and stuff like that. It definitely is hard, but thank God—we did well. Everything happens for a reason, right?
Yeah. And you’ve got to keep your core staff to come back hard and fast when you can get the doors back open. You’ve got to have that core staff.
00:11:08
That’s what every restaurant owner I’ve worked for had to do—they had to continue to pay people to keep them going or help them find jobs.
There was even a fundraiser effort put together in Englewood where other restaurants helped raise money through special cocktails they came up with to help the servers and all that kind of stuff through the hard times.
Wow.
So it was a big community effort. That’s one of the things we see in this area—when things go south through storms or other emergencies, disasters, people pull together.
00:11:35
It’s unlike any place I’ve seen before. I think Florida’s more and more like that because of the number of hurricanes particularly that we’ve had.
And because it’s sunny. Everyone’s happy.
Yeah.
You go up north, it’s all gloomy and you’re…
A great point.
People actually say hi to you here.
Yes. As a matter of fact, they do.
Up north, they’re just…
Right.
But yeah, that’s cool, man. So, are you a foodie?
00:12:00
I consider myself a foodie. I’m probably not as educated as I should be, but I love good food. I love different kinds of food. I like to cook.
What’s your favorite thing to cook?
It depends. I find different things that I make that are good that people may kind of say “blah,” but I make a smoked deviled egg that is out of this world.
Yeah.
I made it on a whim. I just said, “This sounds good,” and I did it. My entire staff begs for me to make them.
They have a special—it’s like a wing barbecue sauce, but it’s not even really a hot sauce. It just works very well. That’s kind of the secret ingredient.
00:12:57
Another thing I do that I get asked to make every holiday season is a sweet potato casserole. My sweet potato casserole has Grand Marnier in it.
Oh, God.
So I put the Grand Marnier in the potatoes, and then I also drizzle it on top with the pecan and brown sugar. It is amazing. I think the first or second time I made it, it was a little too much, but yeah—it’s something people really like.
And you know, I do steaks, I like to smoke scalloped potatoes, I do a smoked mac and cheese. I do different things that I think are fun. They’re not real difficult. I do a lasagna that comes out very good, and I also do a really good chili.
00:13:30
There you go. Do you find yourself cooking more or dining out more?
Cooking.
Cooking? Probably easier for you.
Well, in season it’s not always easy to get in. And during the week, I’m an early-to-bed guy because I get up early like you—not as early—but the point is I can eat on my time and what I want.
If we want to go out to eat, it’s usually on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon or something like that.
00:14:26
No, I get that. And it’s funny you say that because when season hits, I see a lot of customers disappear.
Yeah.
When I first started, I started getting nervous. I’m like, “Man, did we do something wrong? Is the food not as good?” Then the second season is over, you start seeing them trickle back in.
Yeah.
I always say we’ve got two seasons here—the resident season and the snowbird season. A lot of residents still come out during season, but some don’t.
00:14:52
Yeah, I agree. Restaurants like to have their regulars there because people know that’s a good place to eat when they have locals there all the time. But it gets to the point where there are so many people, you either have to eat really early—which I don’t like to do—or you have to eat really late—which I’m not supposed to do. So that’s why we kind of back it off.
And with the places we’ve worked on, we can usually text ahead and they’ll get a spot for us.
Yeah, that’s true. That’s part of the hospitality aspect, right? Especially if you’re a good customer. A restaurant is not a restaurant without its regulars—especially when you have a bar and stuff like that.
When you have regulars, they make the difference. They make life fun. They make it interesting. You can joke with them. You feel comfortable with them. They bring other new customers into the conversation and stuff like that.
00:15:40
Which is cool. So you’re a Charlotte County Commissioner. Tell us a little bit about that.
Well, in 2011, I was trying to figure out what our district was going to do. We had a representative that—quite frankly—his character was not something I was comfortable with, and I had supported him. So I felt like I had made a major mistake and needed to figure out how to fix that problem.
We had a gal running who had been on the school board that I was fine with. She would have done a great job, but she got a job in Tallahassee with the School Board Association running it, and so she withdrew from the race.
00:16:44
The other two gentlemen that were in—one was looking for a part-time job, the other one wanted to incorporate a neighborhood—and I didn’t feel like that motivation for running for office was the right motivation.
I started talking to people in the community about who they felt should run, and they kept pointing at me. Finally, after I spoke with people who’d been in office and people who’d helped others get in office, I went home and spoke with my wife about it because it’s a major decision.
To be honest, it was the shortest conversation. I’ve had longer conversations about buying a vehicle than about running for office.
And they never like it when you buy a vehicle, man—unless it’s for them.
So anyway, that’s kind of how that happened. I ran in 2012. I won that election.
00:17:14
How old were you?
That’s going to give away my age, isn’t it?
You can tell me after the cast.
No, I don’t mind. I really don’t care. I was 48 when I was elected.
48 when you were elected. Wow. Good for you, man. Anyway, keep going. You were elected in 2012.
00:18:15
Elected in 2012, and I’m in my fourth term now. The second and third term, I had no competition—nobody ran against me.
The last one, a county employee ran against me and I won the race relatively significantly. I think it was 58% of the vote.
I’ve tried to think thoroughly through everything, make sure we make data-driven decisions. Our board has been very conscious of the growth in our community. We’ve been planning for years on where our road systems have to be improved—and it takes years.
00:18:45
Harborview Road, for example, it takes years to get these things done. We’ve been working with the state on that one for many years. It’s north of $50 million. I don’t know how much north of $50 million.
You guys expanding it?
Yeah. We’re expanding it, and Babcock International Services is going to pay for a bunch of it because when BIS comes in, they’re going to do a lot of the work out at the intersection of the interstate and Harborview and all the way past where their facility is. Then we’ll pick it up from there. We’ll continue it on. It’ll be a four-lane road. It’ll be straightened out. Harborview needs it.
00:19:11
It needs it very, very much.
We also have Edgewater and Flamingo. Those are going to be finished, and that’ll go four-lane all the way from 41 all the way up to 776.
Wow.
That’s been in the works for a while, and we’ve got money set aside. Those projects are in design. We’ve got a lot of the right-of-way acquisition accomplished in that area. We’re still doing right-of-way acquisition on Harborview.
These are major arteries, and having that bypass around 41 will help relieve pressure on 41. I don’t know if the state’s ever going to do more with 41 or not, but for right now, we know we need an ancillary arterial avenue to get around the city—get around Port Charlotte—so you can get to Punta Gorda and you’ve got multiple ways to get there.
00:20:09
It’ll help alleviate some of the stress in the traffic.
We’ve done a lot with our one-cent sales tax. We’ve built firehouses, improved parks, libraries—you name it—all around the county.
All that has been vetted through our sales tax advisory committee where presentations are made on the projects the community feels are important. They’re community representatives that sit on that committee and participate, and they’re the ones who tell us: here’s what we think are the first-tier projects, the most needed.
Then we do a second tier because we try to conservatively budget. We used to budget $24 million a year in sales tax. We’re running at about 34 to 35 million.
00:20:43
Wow.
So it did go up, and our tier-two projects are getting done. We still have projects from our 2014 sales tax and our 2020 sales tax. Now we’re getting ready to have another vote in November of 2026.
We’ve been looking at doing six, eight, and ten years. We like to give people the option. But the goal is: with the sales tax in place, our visitors are also contributing to the infrastructure needs we have. That’s a help to our residents.
00:21:51
We analyzed at one point that about 20 to 25% of the sales tax money came from people who didn’t live here. That’s the supplemental income for the infrastructure we need to improve and increase.
It’s also quality-of-life issues. We want to have a good quality of life for people—good parks, nature trails, those types of things.
The Pioneer Trail for biking is one people love. People walk on it. We’ve got other areas with trails, and things down in the Harborwalk. All those things are important for people who want to get out, walk, be safe, and get exercise.
00:22:21
We’re trying to improve the Port Charlotte Beach complex that got destroyed from the storm. We’re building a new facility there. A new pool is going in. That park’s getting improved. It’s not a regional park, but it is a big park, and there’s a lot of participation from the community and visitors because of the amenities there.
00:23:22
The other thing we’ve done: utilities is an enterprise fund. Charlotte County Utilities used to just kind of be talked about in a board meeting—not really intense. Several years ago, this board said, “We need to have our utilities meeting separate. It needs to be all about utilities.”
We need deep dives on the financial side, deep dives on repair and maintenance, where expansions need to be. We need to figure these things out in the future.
So instead of just having the capital needs assessment for the county in general, we have a general capital needs assessment and then a six-year CIP. In utilities, we do the same thing. We have a 20-year needs assessment and a six-year CIP.
00:23:54
We have areas where we’re having to increase and improve our wastewater treatment. The state is coming around to where they’re going to force advanced wastewater treatment onto utilities, and we’re trying to get ahead of that—so we don’t get behind the eight ball. We can be in front of it, plan for it, pay for it, and move on.
Of course, we’re always looking for money from the state and federal government to assist in these projects. We have gotten some help from DC on our septic-to-sewer conversion. There’s always work to be done.
00:24:22
So you say from septic to city. Do you think in the near future everyone’s going to be on city?
There’s a major environmental issue with septic tanks in Florida. People think—initially I did too—septic tanks in Florida sand should work very well, right?
What happens is it doesn’t clean it. It lets it go through too quickly. It gets into our environment.
One of the things I saw when Englewood Water District did Manasota Key, and they started doing the Englewood Beach area and north—that’s all now sewer. The bay used to be where you could see the fish in the bay, to where you couldn’t see anything. A lot of those nutrients got into the bay—some fertilizer runoff and some nutrients from wastewater.
00:25:50
So those are things we try to monitor. When we started our program in Charlotte County, we looked at the most highly affected areas and that’s where we dove in first. We’re trying to clean up the worst first so we can make the largest impact in the beginning. We’ll continue to spread that out.
00:25:50
Is there like a 10-year, 15-year plan or is there…
We’re in phase five right now.
How many phases?
We’re still going. We start another phase before we actually finish the last one because the connections take a year or so once we get the system in. They have a year to connect. They can connect earlier. For somebody who’s got a failing septic system, they want to connect early. People who have a septic system still working may want to drag it out, but typically we’re rolling the connections for them.
00:26:16
We make it part of the package. That way they don’t have to find their own plumber. It’s all one thing. They’re paying over 20 or 30 years, depending, because costs keep going up, and it gets put on the MSBU on their tax bill.
So they only pay, I think, between $550 and $750—depending on the area—per year. It gets paid out over time so they don’t have to pay it all at once.
Whereas if you replaced it with a new septic system, you’re paying that $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 up front—or going to the bank for a home equity loan.
00:26:50
What’s your main goal as commissioner? If you were told there’s an end date to being a Charlotte County commissioner, what’s the one thing you’d want to get done before you hit that date?
A lot of the things we’re doing are things I had as priorities early on. As I said, these things take so long.
It was clean up the environment. Another goal I have: there’s a very sensitive land in Placida. We bought 4.4 acres and we’re working with a conservation organization for grant monies to buy the rest of the property next door. It’s on the estuary. It’s zoned for mobile homes in an area where you really shouldn’t put mobile homes.
00:27:52
They have to be elevated—and who can afford it? If you’re going to buy a mobile home and you have to elevate it 11 or 13 feet in the air…
That’s something I want to see accomplished—that we get that purchased, and we start planning how we can use it. From the beginning, I’d like to see it be a passive park.
Grand Tours used to operate out of a building there—kayaks and all. I’d love to see us have a vendor there to provide that opportunity. There’s a kayak launch right there. No motorized boats back in there. If you want an electric motor or a kayak, something like that—it’s a beautiful backwater area, and good fishing back in there too.
00:28:21
The bank needs to be cleaned up. People had used broken block and broken concrete tiles to stabilize the bank. We’ll have to look at how we clean that up and stabilize it.
But that’s a very sensitive area that I think would be in good hands with the county and the public to utilize. It’s down by our big boat ramp in Placida that’s getting expanded. We could use the stabilized grass area for overflow parking. It would help if we can organize that.
00:29:18
We’ve got fire stations planned for. Parks improvements—most of those are in place. Libraries—we’re scheduling those out. We’ve got to replace the one in Port Charlotte. It’s a highly used one. It’s up and running now, but it was damaged from the hurricanes.
Our mid-regional library—Midpoint Library in Port Charlotte—is getting ready to open back up. It’s a very large former grocery store that we took over that had to be rebuilt after the hurricane.
My priorities are infrastructure and quality-of-life issues that we’ve been working on for many, many years. I want to leave it better than I found it. That’s the most important—stay conscious about the decisions we make, make it based upon data, not drama, not emotion, and leave it better than we found it.
00:29:47
I respect that. I think you guys are doing a good job. I moved here in 2007, and what Charlotte County is now compared to 2007—it’s grown a lot, man. I really enjoy living here in this area.
I just recently moved to North Port—moved in March—but before that I was living off Kings Highway since 2007. I love it. Sometimes I miss it. I love Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte—all of it. It’s a good area to live in. It’s definitely growing. It’s definitely looking nicer and nicer as the years go on. Traffic’s the same, you know.
00:30:48
As far as you—are there any other organizations or things you are a part of?
Yeah. If you look at my list online, you’d wonder how I do this stuff.
I am the past president of the Florida Association of Counties, and two years removed, I’m also the past president of the Florida Home Builders Association. Those are organizations that sometimes compete on items and issues.
That was an interesting hat to wear when I was FHBA president. We had some county angst about some of the things builders were trying to change in Tallahassee. They would always want me in the conversation because they knew I saw both sides. This is a two-sided coin. I know both sides. Let’s sit down and have a conversation about how we can make this work better together. Typically, we did.
00:31:48
I’m also involved at the national level. I serve on six committees or task forces at the National Association of Counties. I serve on four or five at the National Association of Home Builders. I serve on budget and finance, audit committee, compensation committee, land use policy committee—and I can’t remember the other one right now.
I cross the world in a lot of ways. One of my biggest passions at the national level—which is also international—is immigration reform.
00:32:22
I’ve been involved in discussions on immigration reform for eight years. During the Trump administration, I had meetings with the intergovernmental affairs staff and the author on the bill he was having written to push forward for legal immigration reform. It was amazing to work in that environment.
Things were looking really good. I got invited to the White House, to the Rose Garden, to hear the immigration reform speech. After the speech, I got a phone call from William Crozier—the intergovernmental affairs guy I was familiar with—and he asked if I could come back to the White House to have a conversation, which is the Eisenhower Building right next door.
I went back in there and they wanted to know what I thought about the speech.
00:33:25
I said it was okay, but I told them where they missed—and they missed a huge opportunity. There was no discussion about hospitality, construction, nursing, farming—how we reform immigration for the areas that we don’t have enough workers.
When I met with Theo—Theo Wolff was the author—I told him this stuff and gave him detailed information about how many open, unfilled construction jobs there were. Problems in the hospitality industry. I had a specific example from Caesars Palace from the general manager. Examples about the farming industry and how you can’t use migrant programs when you have a dairy farm and you operate 24/7/365.
He started to rewrite the bill. He was also trying to get it where the application could be done from a library in the native country so when they got to the border, they’d go through a port of entry. They already had their information, already had a number, already in the process.
00:34:24
This made me smile. I got to go back a second time when he made adjustments and showed me what he was doing. I smiled and said, “You guys are trying to get rid of the need to have an immigration attorney every time somebody comes across the border.”
He said, “That’s my goal.”
I think they were on a very, very good track at that point. Unfortunately, COVID hit and everything in the world stopped. That got put on a shelf, and now we see the focus is on enforcement and not reform. I’m hoping reform comes in this coming year at some point.
We need to have a discussion on reform. We need to quit using this as a political football and get to a resolution on how we can bring people into this country legally, let them go to work, make them productive, give them opportunity for life here.
00:35:22
If they want to become a citizen, let them go through the coursework. If they want to come and work and go back and renew, let’s figure it out.
I also told Theo we need a gas pedal and a brake because the economy fluctuates. There are times we need more workers coming in for construction, and there are times we don’t. How do we do that? Maybe we set a cap, but if unemployment starts to creep up, we tap the brakes.
We need adults at the table to have the conversation. That’s the only way we make a difference and fix the problem.
00:35:52
I 100% agree with you. Those immigration workers are the backbone of our country. They help us a lot—not just in construction and the restaurant business. They work hard, man, and without them, a lot of things would not be possible.
No. And there’s been a push in this country to make every kid go to college—and every kid’s not made to go to college. We have to identify with that.
There are jobs out there they can learn. That doesn’t mean you have to stop going to school, but as you learn a trade or you get into the restaurant industry and you really like what you’re doing, you can learn how to do this and make a very good living.
Not everybody wants to own a business and not everybody wants to go to college. There are places for people to fall into good positions around this country.
00:36:43
One of the things I push right now: kids that don’t want to go to college but are very skilled with their hands—it’s like, you need to think about becoming an airplane mechanic. You can go two years and come out and make 60 grand, 70 grand. You can work on commercial jets and make a lot more.
We’re having a lot of experienced people in that industry retiring and we don’t have enough to backfill. It’s going to create grounding when we can’t keep up with maintenance on airplanes, and it’s going to shut down a lot of commerce.
I know we can do a lot of things with the internet and Zoom, but there are still people you need to get and press flesh and say hello and sit down and look them in the eye face-to-face and have conversation. I don’t want to miss those opportunities for people in life either.
00:38:06
I hope—and I hear more and more people talk about other opportunities besides a four-year degree. There are two-year trade schools, two-year degrees. You can get a two-year nursing degree and then pursue your four years. There are a lot of windows.
I had a conversation with somebody from a nonprofit this past week, and the comment was: they can’t be what they can’t see. So we’ve got to expose kids to a lot more things in life so they can see what’s available out there and find what makes them excited.
I want to see that in Charlotte County. I want our kids to be able to stay in Charlotte County. I know too many people leave—
And they always come back though. They always come back.
They do.
I came back.
Yes. And it’s great to go out and see how the world operates for a while too. But it is nice when they come back home.
00:39:01
As far as college, I was pushed to go to college by my parents.
Oh, me too. Big time. Go to college. Go to college.
But I didn’t want to. Let me go to trade school, let me do this, let me do that. No, no, no—go to college.
I went to college. Most depressing time of my life, man. It took me hitting rock bottom to just say, “Screw it. I’m going to do what I want to do.” I’ve been happy ever since. This is what I love to do.
Yeah. And I think trade school is the new college because we need a lot of it. We need plumbers, construction workers, airplane mechanics, chefs—we need a lot of people.
00:39:45
I’d love to see them get interested enough that they want to take courses that help them in the future run businesses.
One of the things we used to do when I was in high school: they taught us how to use a checkbook and a checking account in accounting class when very young. They showed you: here’s a checkbook, here’s what you have. The old joke of “I still have checks, I must have money.” People have operated that way. They don’t understand it. Just because you have a blank piece of paper doesn’t mean you’ve got money—you’ve got to know what’s in your account.
I don’t think it works that way.
It certainly doesn’t.
00:40:12
My point is: kids need to be trained well so no matter what avenue they pick, they’re prepared in life. We need to be there to support them.
As I’ve brought on some young people in my business, they’re learning different things. I have a guy in the field—we brought him in because he’s on the creative side. He’s helped with some of our content on social media. Then I have another gal that schedules it to go out.
What’s your social media page? Plug it real quick.
TruexPreferredConstruction.com.
Yeah.
That’s our website. If you put in Truex Preferred Construction, you’ll find Facebook, Instagram. We have Facebook—I don’t even know if we have Instagram. I think we do. I don’t think we have a TikTok account though.
00:41:00
You need to make one.
Yeah. Here’s the thing—it took me forever to make one, but TikTok is the new wave.
It is, it is. I know it’s something I need to get more comfortable with because you can put out a 15-second blurb and that’s what people want to see. They don’t necessarily want to see you go on for two minutes.
00:41:24
So you have a lot of things going on in your life, man. What drives you to be so involved in the community—so hardworking? I’m sure you don’t have much free time in your life. What’s the drive that makes you this person?
It comes from in here. When I was in school, I had three music classes. I played three sports. I worked on five farms and worked at a hospital. I have always been made this way.
I want to be doing something. I want to be involved in something. I want to be producing something.
00:41:58
As I age, obviously, I need a little more downtime to recover. I was the healthiest of my life up until COVID. I worked out as many as 23 days in a row—always working different parts of my body. Very healthy. Body fat was very low.
“How was your leg day?”
What leg day? I’ll talk about my leg day. I used to leg press over 1,000 pounds. Squat—yeah, I was squatting 345.
There you go.
Which is a lot for me. I’ve got a bad back. I had to quit that. Highest bench I ever got to was 219.
00:42:27
So those are kind of my highs. Did a lot of cardio. Hate cardio, but it was always good to be in shape.
I had back surgery in 2022, and I broke my foot in two places and dislocated it in 2024. So it’s been a little hard to get back on the wagon because everything aches a lot differently than it used to.
Yeah.
But I have a rower at home, a recumbent bike at home, and a bench at home. So I do light weights and some of that stuff right now.
Good for you, man.
00:43:03
Yeah. We’re going to wrap this up. Is there one last message you’d like to give out to people?
Yeah. I’d just like to thank you for watching—those that do. Take part in your community. Be a part of the solution. Get involved. Give back. That’s it.
Thank you, Bill. And guys, I appreciate you watching. Please like, comment, and subscribe, and we’ll see you on episode 13. Thank you.
