Dan The Road Trip Guy
Join Dan the Road Trip Guy as he explores the adventures, memories, and life lessons of diverse guests from all walks of life. This podcast goes beyond the road to celebrate the journey of life by uncovering stories of passion, resilience, and the pursuit of happiness. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or simply love a good story, Dan the Road Trip Guy will leave you inspired and ready to embrace your own adventures. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
I hope you enjoy the episodes. You can find me at https://www.dannyneal.com.
Dan The Road Trip Guy
A New Chapter for Kevin Rains after Failing at Retirement
Get in Touch with Dan by Texting Now
Join us for an exciting journey with Kevin Rains as he shares his transformation from a pastor to a successful business owner to retirement and then back to business. Discover how he scaled and sold his family's auto collision repair business and hear about his so-called "failure" at retirement, which led him to new ventures like writing his book "Profits and Purpose" and becoming an EOS implementer. Kevin opens up about the entrepreneurial lessons he's eager to pass on to his children, showcasing how the core principles of entrepreneurship extend beyond traditional business settings into everyday life.
Explore the charming expansions at Dappled Light, a retreat designed for a luxurious outdoor experience and learn more about the innovative KidStrong franchise—a family business committed to empowering children through fitness. Kevin also shares insights on publishing and promoting his book, available on Amazon, and we discuss the importance of capturing memories and stories with loved ones. This episode is brimming with inspiration, wisdom, and entrepreneurial spirit, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in embracing new chapters in life.
You can find Dappled Light at https://www.dappledlight.com
Kevin's book "Profits and Purpose" at your favorite book seller
You can find more information on all the Rains Legacy work at https://rainslegacy.co
You can find me at https://dannyneal.com
Welcome to another episode of Dan the Road Trip Guy. I'm your host, dan Neal. Here we'll dive into conversations about cars and road trips, careers, businesses, life lessons and sometimes even a little bit of advice. For me, there's nothing better than a great road trip, except maybe hearing the incredible stories of my guests. So for the next 30 minutes or so, buckle up and enjoy the ride with my guest. It's been over two years since my first drive with my guest. Today my guest is Kevin Raines.
Speaker 1:Back then Kevin had just recently sold his multi-site auto collision repair business. Before that he was a pastor for a number of years and now it seems he's embarking on the next chapter in his life. You might think at where he's at he would have slowed down a bit, but that's just far from the truth. He told me he had failed at retirement. He recently released a new book. He joined an organization called EOS as an implementer and we'll dive into that. He's involved in a couple of family projects businesses. He also has a family foundation to help people with adoptions. I'm thrilled to catch up with Kevin as we take our second drive on Dan the road trip guy. Welcome to the show, kevin. Welcome to the show, Kevin.
Speaker 2:Thank you, glad to be back. It's been a while.
Speaker 1:It has been a while, a couple of years actually, and we'll just call this On the Road Again with Kevin Raines. Love it Well. You've been busy, guys since our last conversation, but some of my listeners may not know who you are, so why don't you take a minute or two and just tell people who is Kevin Raines?
Speaker 2:I began my career in ministry. I was the pastor of a local church in Norwood. Probably about I don't know 10 or 12 years into that deal I decided I needed to jump back into the family business and I was trying to be a pastor and a business owner at the same time. I worked with my dad for a while, started to scale our family business from his one location of an auto body shop, bought my own location with his help and then eventually scaled that to four more, so we had six in the family at that point, brought my sister in so that was number seven. So over probably about 18 years we scaled that business 40X.
Speaker 2:I decided that things were going really well and I was just going to kind of ride this out and private equity came knocking on my door completely unexpectedly and I said I was not interested in selling because I had the business set up just how I wanted it. Things were going great and they showed me their number and I said well, you know what? Maybe I do want to take another look at that. Decided to use that as my springboard out of that industry, pivoted away from that probably, I'd say about a little over three years ago now Thought I was going to retire, failed as a retiree and here I am Now. I have about 14 entities in our family enterprises again. So that's just with me and my kids essentially running those 14. But it's been a blessing very busy but only doing things I love. So it feels great I can stay involved in my kids' lives.
Speaker 1:That's great, and we'll dig into some of these things that have kept you busy the last few years. Great, so I follow you on LinkedIn and, of course, a few months ago I guess now it's been you released your book called Profits and Purpose. Yes, what was your driver for writing that book?
Speaker 2:You know, once again you may hear a theme develop here, but it was for my kids I really wanted to collate the last previous 18 years of my life, all the lessons I'd learned from starting and managing a business and then scaling it and exiting. So it talks about kind of what's it like to be an entrepreneur in the early days, all the way through scaling and then exiting a business, and I just want to kind of have a marker in the ground and say, hey, here's the things that I learned as a way to pass that on to them. And the more I wrote I really enjoyed the process of writing, eventually got an editor and a proof reader and somebody helped me design the cover and voila, it turned into a whole book and it's now a real life thing for sale on Amazon as a Kindle, hardback, softback, get it all. So, yeah, very excited about that. But the genesis of that was definitely just wanting to collate and capture lessons that I wanted to pass down generationally into my family.
Speaker 1:Well, I know from me reading it, it was a great book to read. I'm not an entrepreneur, so, would you say, others can take things away from this book besides being an entrepreneur or a business person.
Speaker 2:Definitely, and I often speak about being an entrepreneur. It's not just somebody who's, you know, the Steve Jobs or the Elon Musk, but it can be any small business owner or anybody with an idea that they want to grow something, or even somebody inside of an organization. The original word entrepreneur it's a French word and it basically means to leverage something from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. So it's all about leveraging things that we're doing and helping them kind of grow and be fruitful and multiply. So it's really, it could be really for anybody in for-profit or non-profit world.
Speaker 1:I think it was in the first chapter. There was a question I'm an entrepreneur with a unique ability to blank, and that was kind of a thought-provoking question.
Speaker 2:I got that from Dan Sullivan's course in the strategic coach that I went through many years ago, and that's how he would open. All of his coaching sessions was with that question. It would make everybody go around and kind of declare that they number one weren't entrepreneurs. So that kind of created a sense of like hey, I'm in the room with other entrepreneurs, but then we had to share kind of the unique side of what we do. So that was a little bit of what made us different or unique, so brought us together and also shared how we were unique in one sentence. So yeah, that was a fun exercise then and I love doing it with my groups now as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I thought what was interesting, because I was kind of sitting there thinking it over and you gave a kind of a helpful tip of if you're struggling, then send an email out to some folks who know you and ask them what they think, and that's exactly what I did. Oh nice, where did they come back with? I'd be curious to know where you landed?
Speaker 2:Well, that's exactly what I did. Oh nice, what did they come back with? I'd be curious to know where you landed.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a mix of things. I think the one thing that continued to come back was serving, being a servant, and I took that with a great deal of pride, not from an ego standpoint, but made me feel good, and I've tried to spend my whole life doing that, just serving others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sounds like it's working, if other people are recognizing it, so congratulations, that's great.
Speaker 1:Well, we wish you continued success with that, and I just encourage people to pick up a copy of it.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, it's called Profits and Purpose. You can pretty much find it anywhere, so thank you so much for the shout out on that.
Speaker 1:Well, so we'll move to another thing that you've taken on, and I don't know much about this other than I looked at their website. You are what's called an implementer for EOS. Tell my listeners what is EOS.
Speaker 2:So EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and it's essentially the framework and the tools that I use to help scale my business without losing my mind. And so we talk a lot about bringing order out of chaos or clarity from chaos, and it definitely helped me and my business do that. I had an implementer. His name was John Herman. It's one of those deals where I learned so much and loved the framework so much that after I quote-unquote retired, I decided I was going to pivot back into helping other business leaders do what I'd done or attempt to do what I had done. I thought I could be kind of a guide for them and the EOS framework what I had done. I thought I could be kind of a guide for them.
Speaker 2:And the EOS framework it's an international framework. There's now over 800 people doing what I do, which is we install this framework through quarterly sessions into companies that range in size from two people to several thousand employees. So it's kind of agnostic on size. It's agnostic on industry employees. So it's kind of agnostic on size, it's agnostic on industry, and it's really all about just helping people order what they have, clarify their vision and get alignment, figure out how to get traction and bring that vision down to the ground and then make sure that their teams, their leadership teams in particular, are very healthy through open and honest communication. So I try to instill all three of those things in each of the sessions that I run quarterly with all the companies that I'm working with.
Speaker 1:So as a company, I would meet with you quarterly.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right. So the first session is they're usually a couple sessions that are spread out by 30 days just to kind of get the ball rolling, understand the whole framework, and then from that point forward it moves to quarterly sessions. Yeah, and it usually lasts about two years. My goal is not to be a consultant and insinuate myself into someone's business and have a job with them. My goal is always to graduate my clients. That usually takes a year and a half to a little over two years, and then they keep me around after that point as long as they want, or kick me out at that point. But by then they've really grasped everything and can kind of take the ball and run with it, with or without me. So the goal is always to graduate my clients.
Speaker 1:And I saw you post the other day on LinkedIn about the cost and I didn't know, do people get scared off when they think, oh my, this is two years? I didn't know, Do people get scared off when they think, oh my, this is?
Speaker 2:two years. Part of that post was just trying to correct a misunderstanding, at least in the market that I'm in in the Cincinnati area, that it costs, you know, $100,000 a year to implement EOS and that is just absolutely not true. We don't know if maybe one of our competitors was saying that, but it's not true. You know it's not cheap and it's definitely for companies that want to grow and have some level of resourcing and ability to sell the product or service into the market. We're not a sales organization but once that kind of flywheel is turning, we really specialize in helping people order what they're doing, get their teams aligned, get everything healthy and tuned up, and it's an absolute blast. I love being an implementer. It is so much fun. I can't imagine doing anything else with my time at this point. I absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure with the success you had in business you can really bring a lot to these companies that, as you said, maybe they have some chaos.
Speaker 2:You know they're all so unique. So it's not a cookie cutter thing but it is. It's fun to figure out, kind of, what their needs are and then build around that Versus me being the consultant where I come in with an answer. I'm the coach that comes in with just a bunch of questions and then facilitating the discussions with that team, Helping them arrive at their own answers and conclusions and then teaching these simple tools. So it's like I said, it's an absolute blast.
Speaker 1:Has there been one implementation or engagement that you're particularly proud of? That you just kind of walked away going yeah, that's the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 2:Oh, Dan, now you're asking me which is my favorite kid. I can't answer that. I thought I'd ask anyway. I can say a couple of things. You know, one of my first clients I believe it was my first client was a group called the Folling Warehouse. They're near Norwood.
Speaker 1:Sure, I've been there.
Speaker 2:Oh, have you? Okay. So they're clients of mine. They're scaling and they're going to be buying other Folling warehouses and the owner of Folling is also an owner in the Pickle Lodge, which is a pickleball court up in Westchester. So, very pleased with how they've grown. They've grown their team. Very pleased with how they've grown, They've grown their team, They've grown their revenue. They're getting ready to buy another location and eventually more than that. So I mean it's just been fun to watch them. You know 2, 3, 4, 5X their own business just in the last year and a half. Very proud of what those guys are doing. Another one is One, Tom Plumber. They were voted by the Cincinnati Business Courier as the fastest growing local business. The Cincinnati Business Courier has the fastest growing local business. It's their franchises of plumbing companies that bolt on to existing plumbing companies and they add on like an emergency service plumbing and they have over 100 franchisees now and it started right here in Cincinnati region and they just have exploded over the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:So I'm very proud of them and for winning that award with the Cincinnati Business Courier One. Tom Plummer is the name.
Speaker 1:Well, I wish you much success in that, and I know these businesses are going to be better for spending time with you.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:We'll skip on to family projects, and the last time we talked you uh had one of those going down in red river gorge which I've, I've kept, uh kept a watch on uh give us an update on that. It's called uh, dappled light, I believe, if I'm correct that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right. Dappled light uh, the website is dappledlightadventurescom, but more than you just keep an eye on it, we want, want to get you down there and get you in one of those tents. Man, I think you'd love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, linda, and I go down there. I think I told you that last time and I said, well, if we go to this, and then when? Then we saw some little cabin with a shower outside and it was like, well, that looks kind of cool.
Speaker 2:We now have two cabins and nine tents and we're building. It's really like a clubhouse area. We're calling it the Rookery. Now Rookery is where birds congregate, so it's kind of a bird theme. Our tents are all named after local birds down there.
Speaker 2:The goal there is that we're shifting our model a little bit from short-term rental which we're still doing and we're getting good traction this fall, for sure but we really want to move into this retreat space, providing a space for families, couples, small businesses, church groups, weddings, like just a variety of different folks who might want to get out and have a group experience, but in a very comfortable setting while still being connected to the outdoors. So we've decided to invest another million dollars. I have an investor partner helping me with that and we're very excited. It should be ready spring or early summer next year. The foundation is in. It's going up quick. It's going to be a beautiful, beautiful structure and we can't wait to have that. It's right on a cliff edge. It has a sunset view. You can't see anything man-made for miles I mean literally nothing man-made from the back porch of that building. So very excited to see that come to life. And we've grown a lot, I think. When I last talked to you, we might have had a few tents and one cabin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you had a few tents and no bathhouse and that's what scared us off. I think the first time.
Speaker 2:Both of the cabins have indoor plumbing, with showers inside, and we have a bathhouse for all the tents, with heaters, showers, flush toilets. So again, it's very comfortable. It's more like being in a hotel room, but kind of liminal space between inside and outside. It's such a nice vibe to be in these tents but also feel like you're outside throughout the whole time. Or if you want something a little more like a walled structure, then the cabins would work too. But, yeah, super excited, my son's been running that. I barely do anything for that outside of coaching him and coaching the leadership team. Not surprisingly, we use EOS to run that business, so I'm kind of the coach and the dad on that one. But it's going fantastic and my son Isaac is just doing just a great job. So proud of him.
Speaker 1:Well, that place is so popular down there, we started looking for a last minute place this fall and was like, okay, there's nothing to rent.
Speaker 2:We can hook you up, dan. You just hit me up directly, I'll take care of you.
Speaker 1:All right, I'll work on Linda, we'll get down there for sure.
Speaker 2:Is that?
Speaker 1:open year round.
Speaker 2:It is, it is. We have heaters for the winter, gas heaters. These are legitimate. You can almost heat yourself out of any of the structures, including the tents, even dead of winter I've been down there. And then air conditioning for the summer, so pretty much four season at this point, completely climate-controlled, handicapped accessible bathrooms, a near commercial kitchen, stone fireplace like 3,000 square foot, including indoor outdoor deck. So yeah, very excited for that as well. But everything is getting more and more comfortable. So you and Linda definitely want to take a trip down there, hopefully in the next six months or so.
Speaker 1:We'd love to have you Now. Do the tents have any sort of cooking or refrigeration?
Speaker 2:They have a stove oven. One of them even has a microwave and a dishwasher, full electric. Yeah, I mean, it's anything you can think of that you would need. It's pretty much it's already there, like silverware plates, cups, I mean like not paper plates, like real legitimate, you know plates, wow.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's a very comfortable. We started when we started it was a little on the rougher side, and we've increasingly tried to create what we call the effortless experience for our guests so they can just feel comfortable the entire time that they're there. Everything they need is already there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, one of my filters is a hot tub. So what do we got there? It's coming to be. Stand by, it's coming. All right, I can live without it, but that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll definitely get down there and once you have the other facilities, we have a couple groups that we would love to get down there smaller groups.
Speaker 2:Is there a target size on the group? You know it's going to be designed for anywhere from 5 to 30 for group retreats, and then if it was like a small wedding it could be even larger than that. You know, 50, 60 people could fit in the space. 50, 60 people could fit in the space, so yeah, so it's kind of like we want to create like a flex space where if you only have five or six, it's going to be reasonable enough on the cost side. It still makes sense to do that all the way up to 30.
Speaker 1:Well, your latest post was hey, I'm doing something else new and you were running from that tonight, I think, or running over to this podcast from that business. What do you got going there?
Speaker 2:So we just closed on another family enterprise. Myself, my dad and my sister all invested in a company called KidStrong, and then my daughter is really she's the largest shareholder, she owns 51%. So it's another woman-owned business in our family portfolio and it's really like. It's like, if you can imagine, a CrossFit gym, but for two to 12-year-olds so kids that can walk up to about 12 years old got you know tires to flip over and mats for kids run and little obstacle courses, monkey bars, ropes to climb on, nets to climb on you know little things that you push at a CrossFit across the floor with weights on it. So it's really designed to be like a CrossFit slash obstacle course indoor space for young kids and then we group them by age and ability and there's classes.
Speaker 2:There was four or five classes tonight. In fact, we just bought that on Friday, we went there briefly on Saturday and then tonight was the first night. We got to meet several of the new staff. So it's been great. I mean, it's still new to us, but a couple guys had built it up and decided to move on from it, and so we had the opportunity to take that over and hopefully leverage that and grow on from it and so we're kind of we had the opportunity to take that over and hopefully leverage that and grow that from here. But again, very excited about that and my daughter is just going to do a great job with that. I'm very excited for her.
Speaker 1:Is this a franchise then?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I know the. I know the people who started the franchise. I was friends of theirs when they lived in Lexington, kentucky, when I bought my first shop in Lexington. They lived there. We hooked up and talked and went to their house and they were just kind of talking about this concept they had for a kids CrossFit, and then some private equity people got behind it and now they have 135 locations across the country in two and a half years. So just explosive growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, where's their corporate based out of then?
Speaker 2:They are near, I want to say Dallas near Dallas Okay. Not Dallas, but somewhere in that area of Texas.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's a lot you got going on. What else you got going on?
Speaker 2:Well, we have a family foundation. I don't know where we were at with that last time.
Speaker 1:I think you were just getting that started actually, when we talked, maybe.
Speaker 2:I think we've done 15 or 18 grants this year now to help other people get over the hurdle of adoption the adoptive parents and help them financially and then help them tell their story, to keep raising funds and then get across that line, bring their child home. So we have I think it's 18 now that we've done this year and we wanted to just do 10. So we're actually above goal. We did a fundraiser, had some really generous friends give extra money, so we're kind of combining that with some of the money that we carved out from the sale of my businesses years ago and it's just been fun to start to distribute that money. We don't have any staff from our family that takes any money out of that. It all goes right back in and to support adoptions. So it's called 117 Foundation or the 117 Foundation, based on Isaiah 117 about caring for widows and orphans. So that's kind of, you know, full disclosure. That's kind of like what all our other businesses are pointed at, like we see that as kind of the driving purpose for our family.
Speaker 2:We adopted our third child, our daughter, who's now in college. She was 40 years old. We just know some of the challenges when we were in ministry and I was just starting back into business trying to raise that money to bring her home. So just through that experience our family decided to kind of rally around other families who are adopting, and that was the genesis of that. It was actually started by some friends of ours and then when I sold my businesses, they asked us if we wanted to take it over. So we're building on their wonderful foundation that they had started previously. But it's been a great season to be able to be generous with some of the ways that God has blessed us and then distribute that to others.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for that, I'm sure these parents appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Well, we feel very blessed when we get to review the applications. It's kind of just we share a meal and then cry and pray and give money away. It's a fun way to spend a night once a quarter. There you go.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, here's a question for you before we wrap up, and this has been fun for me to catch up with you. What advice, life advice, business advice, what kind of advice would you leave with my listeners?
Speaker 2:I would say to go for it. That's kind of generic, but I had a mentor who's told me once that faith is spelled R-I-S-K, so that we should not be the kind of people that run from risk, but we should run toward it and just trust our instincts, trust God, trust our communities to guide us, to lead us, to get us to the places that we need to be. And it's okay to take risks and it's okay to fail as well. You know as many good things I've had come out over the years. I've also had my share of absolute failures that went nowhere or fizzled out or even cost me money rather than made me money or zero fruit.
Speaker 2:So but I don't regret any of those. They were all part and parcel of kind of building what we have now and everything went into just lessons learned and things you know, I know not to do now and kind of understanding who I'm wired to be and who my family's wired to, be Grateful for all the successes and grateful for all the failures as well, because all those things combined have got us to where we are right now. So I would encourage anybody who's listening to take a risk, you know, to not shy away and if you have an idea or if you hope to do something. Now's the time. People tend to regret what they don't do more than what they do do, so just encouragement to go for it.
Speaker 1:Great advice. Well, this has been a lot of fun for me. I'm glad you came on this second ride with me.
Speaker 2:Thank you, my pleasure as well, dan. I really enjoy this and enjoy your podcast. I think you're going to need KevinRainscom and then you can just umbrella off to all these things.
Speaker 1:How do people find the cabins? Let's start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that would be dappledlightadventurescom.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:We have an umbrella website. It's not done, it is live. But it's not fully designed, but it's raineslegacyco, so raineslegacyco. And then there's links to most of the enterprises there. We don't have the latest couple up yet, but those are coming.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Okay, we'll make sure we put those in the notes and then people can find the book on wherever they buy books.
Speaker 2:Yep, amazon's a great spot. The hardback is through a couple other outlets, but yeah, it's available on Kindle, hard or paper.
Speaker 1:Well, Kevin, thanks again for coming on this ride.
Speaker 2:My pleasure Dan Thank you.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode of Day on the Road Trip Guy. You can find me online at dayontheroadtripguycom. I hope you'll follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes. I'd love your feedback, so message me, and I hope you'll share the show with your family and friends so that they can enjoy the conversations I have with my guests. And be sure, when you're with your family and friends, so that they can enjoy the conversations I have with my guests, and be sure, when you're with your family and friends, to record stories before it's too late. And for now, remember, keep driving and keep having conversations.
