Reid Garcia - The RVing Texas Aggie and Founder of Helpful for Life

06/29/21 • 76 min

Reid Garcia of McKinney Texas speaks with Brent. Reid is an electrical engineer, entrepreneur and RVer.

Brent and Reid talk about:

Growing up in Texas and attending Texas A&M University, his involvement with Engineers Without Borders and the discovery of how important it is to volunteer.
Working at Boeing as an electrical engineer. How he found his center amid very different cultural influences from all over the country and the world. Discovering what made him feel valued and the work that he did actually mattered.
Developing his entrepreneurial interest and Helpful For Life website which is based on the best education you never get. A deep dive into life skills that starts with Kick Starter Kitchen course. Encouraging people to suggest topics which will help steer the helpful for life course offerings.
Find out how he and his wife, Danielle, decided to become full-time RVers. What was the hardest part about the RV life that they experienced and what were the terrific aspects of RV life:
Acadia National Park in Maine
Slot canyons in SE Utah
And finally how does Reid define success.

Check out our affiliate link of Reid's program Kickstart your Kitchen and help support the show.

Reid Garcia of McKinney Texas speaks with Brent. Reid is an electrical engineer, entrepreneur and RVer.

Brent and Reid talk about:

Growing up in Texas and attending Texas A&M University, his involvement with Engineers Without Borders and the discovery of how important it is to volunteer.
Working at Boeing as an electrical engineer. How he found his center amid very different cultural influences from all over the country and the world. Discovering what made him feel valued and the work that he did actually mattered.
Developing his entrepreneurial interest and Helpful For Life website which is based on the best education you never get. A deep dive into life skills that starts with Kick Starter Kitchen course. Encouraging people to suggest topics which will help steer the helpful for life course offerings.
Find out how he and his wife, Danielle, decided to become full-time RVers. What was the hardest part about the RV life that they experienced and what were the terrific aspects of RV life:
Acadia National Park in Maine
Slot canyons in SE Utah
And finally how does Reid define success.

Check out our affiliate link of Reid's program Kickstart your Kitchen and help support the show.

Chris Riley and Brent discuss Chris’ entrepreneurship, his interest in sailing and mountain biking.

Entrepreneur

After graduating from college Chris, while working at a school for outdoor education, he forms his first business with his brother, photographing weddings and other events
While doing that he and his brother worked on developing programming to improve the photo editing process and it became an important part of the digital photography explosion.
He also saw an area of need supplying summer camps and campers with gear, that becomes another leg of their business. With the covid pandemic closing summer camps there is a possibility that the business will not reemerge in the same form.
While he was looking for more warehouse space he found a business that interested him which was looking for new direction, Fabric Warehouse. They purchased it expanded it so now has both a retail and online component.

Sailing

Sailing has always been an important part of Chris’s whole life. He believes that sailing does not have to be an elite sport. He looks at his form of sailing as “dirt bag sailing,” a non-pejorative term that refers to doing things that you love the cheapest possible way. He and his wife have retrofitted and flip sailboats.
How he and his wife planned and budgeted for years for a 6 month sailing trip.
Chris shares the adventures and experiences they had while sailing the Bahamas and how they grew as a family.
Unfortunately the trip didn’t end as planned due to a violent weather event. Chris shares the lessons learned from dealing with adversity and the importance of being flexible.

Mountian Biking

Chris is also an avid mountain biker and works hard on supporting mountain biking in Maine.
Currently president of the Central Maine Mountain Biking Assoc, working to create trails improve the sport. He also loves to ride the Augusta Trail and Bondbrook Trail system and is impressed with the challenges of the Carrabassett NEMBA trails.

Jennilee Morris speaks with Brent about her journey to becoming a coffee expert and successful business person. Jenni Morris, an entrepreneur and chef. She owns a coffee roasting company, 2 coffee shops and a catering business on Long Island.

Brent and Jenni talk about:

Her first experience on an extended road trip in a camper. They discuss the type RV she and her partner, Emma Ballou, used and why and how they were able to find the time to travel. They had challenges of not finding camping spots under covid restrictions. Their most used app to find camping spots was AllStays.
Why Tucson AZ was her WOW experience.
How she is a workaholic but gaining a better work life balance. Why working for inner peace doesn’t mean more is better.
The universal issue of the effects of the labor shortage because of limited housing for service workers. They discuss how it is affecting the atmosphere on Long Island and especially the North Fork area of Long Island.
Jenni’s businesses that include the North Fork Roasting Company which roasts coffee for her two coffee shops with locations in Southhold and Westhampton Beach, NY.and online customers. An important part of Jenni’s focus is the art of coffee and what makes coffee so special. She is also part owner in a catering company called Grace and Grit.
She values education even though she initially dropped out of high school. After she got her GED, she tried lots of different businesses including real estate, financial services and the hospitality industry where she found her place.
They discussed the challenges of learning to turnover parts of a business to others so you can concentrate and grow a business.