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
TRANSCRIPT
[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. READ MORE
