Energetic entrepreneur, Greg Higgs, has traveled many routes around the world. Join us as the Fab Fours founder talks about bumpers, soapboxes, and supply chains. Episode 82 of Conversations of Big Rich.
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3:18 – we bought that money pit
13:26 – drinking a beer around the same exact fire
17:27 – just the terrain and humidity changes
23:48 – a motto I’ve half-lived with – if you can dream it, I can build it
35:57 – what is the aspirational element of man?
41:37 – perfect segue to my soapbox!
53:01 – real beauty to fabricated sheet metal
1:02:31 – the whole world is connected
1:11:43 – we’ve actually found a way inadvertently to engineer a moment in time where nothing is right to do this cataclysmic challenge
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:20.370] – Big Rich Klein
On today’s episode of Conversations With Big Rich. We have Greg. Higgs. Greg is the CEO of Fab Fours, an old school rock crawler with We Rock, a graduate of Texas A and M. And I believe from Houston, Texas. But we’re going to talk to Greg about his history. But first, Greg, thank you so much for coming on board and having this conversation with me this morning.
[00:01:45.870] – Greg Higgs
You got it. Thank you, Big. And you gave me a little bit of background. So if you want me to just start from the beginning, I’ll let her rip.
[00:01:55.230] – Big Rich Klein
Yeah, let her rip.
[00:01:57.930] – Greg Higgs
Okay, well, I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, so I was born in 79. I think that puts me at 42 years old now and lived out on the west side, Bear Creek, Katy area. Great place to grow up. Sports, outdoors, scouting. Luckily, my folks forced me to stick it out all the way through Eagle Scout and those early days. Just growing up, my dad kind of had a woodworking shop, called himself a wood Butcher just in our normal neighborhood garage just for building shelves and things like that.
[00:02:37.110] – Greg Higgs
And I had my own little workbench where I build PVC guns and spray paint them black and modifying my little three wheelers and all sorts of things. Just growing up liked driving or riding, whatever that may be such that I got lucky. Folks were able to get me one wheel drive go cart. And it became kind of my obsession anytime they take me driving that that grew to a dirt bike and then another dirt bike. And then eventually, before him being 16, my dad had found an old 77 Renegade CJ five on the side of the road.
[00:03:18.750] – Greg Higgs
We bought that money pit, which I just broke constantly mudding, but having a great time, just reinforcing that passion for offroad, camping ,outdoors. And then after graduating high school, I’ll admit to this, I had wanted to go to West Point, kind of following my dad’s footsteps, the military Academy with the mindset that I wanted to just play with tanks and Hummers. The army seemed like a likely fit for the stuff I love doing, problem solving and offroading. While I had some apprehensions around the discipline that also came with that which I knew I wouldn’t like, I have no tolerance for hazing or bullying or that type of thing.
[00:04:12.310] – Greg Higgs
So that piece worried me a little bit, but it seemed like the fun was going to outweigh it. Unfortunately, I had managed to limit my options, if you will, by not making good enough grades in high school.
[00:04:25.210] – Big Rich Klein
I was going to ask about that. I was going to ask about that.
[00:04:28.990] – Greg Higgs
Okay, not a good student, honestly, just enough to get by much rather sports and fun and just suffered kind of through school as needed. Thought I kept it enough in line to not limit the options. But I was wrong. So despite getting the you have to have a congressman vouch for you and all these things for the application and the Eagle Scout, it had me close, but not quite there because of the academics. So I ended up using a program called the Civilian Prep Scholarship, which was you can go to, in my case, Texas A and M for a year, prove that you can make the grades and then transfer in to West Point.
[00:05:18.610] – Greg Higgs
So it seemed like a good plan. A lot of my friends from Houston were going to A&M, and so off I went. And in that first year almost immediately because my eyes are always peeled for cool cars and trucks. Saw a truck in the parking lot with a Texas A. M. Off road windshield banner on it and managed to track them down only to find out the club had been started two months ago and there was maybe three members that seemed perfect for me. So I joined and in short order we started going on trips as a local within 6 hours type of thing as you could.
[00:06:00.490] – Greg Higgs
And one of those was Fort Hood Fort Hood huge base in like, Kileen, Texas or something. And we’d go there, we play and rock crawl and get in the mud and do all the stuff we were doing. And so then the combination started to happen. One, I’m not going to deny the fact that I don’t think I brought my grades up much. But second, I kind of came to realization like, man, I’m already going to Fort Hood and I’m playing with trucks and I don’t have discipline.
[00:06:30.370] – Greg Higgs
So I just bailed on the whole idea, never even turned in. The rest of the paperwork stayed at Texas A and M. READ MORE
