#02: Making Propane Sexy: A New Era in Energy

Steve Gasser (00:01.43)
Welcome to the Remarkable Podcast. I’m Steve Gasser and today my guest is Freddie Ridler, the head of business growth at RCC. Freddie is an idea powerhouse with a passion for transforming the propane industry. His bold theme, making propane sexy, is driving innovation and excitement in the propane industry. Now, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Freddie on marketing strategies, workshops, and his ability to connect and come up with creative solutions.

is what I feel really makes him remarkable. So let’s dive into his vision and learn how he’s reshaping an industry. Freddie, good to have you here.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (00:40.627)
Hey Steve the gas man Gasser I absolutely love saying your name because we are in the propane industry and The first time I introduced you at our one of our seminars I said Steve Gasser so my come on you’re the gas man and you’re like, well, let me let me tell you how it’s pronounced I’m like, nope, you’re always be a Gasser to me. But this is exciting, man I’m so excited to talk to you on this podcast

Steve Gasser (00:44.632)
Ha ha ha!

Steve Gasser (00:54.456)
Yeah.

Steve Gasser (01:06.008)
Just a term of endearment when I talk to you.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (01:07.633)
Yeah, yeah, it’s like life just brought us together.

Steve Gasser (01:13.344)
So for our listeners, tell me a little bit about your background and your journey. We’ll begin to business growth there at RCC.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (01:16.967)
Yeah, yeah Absolutely, so cheaper is 20 years i’m coming up with my 20 year anniversary man, that’s crazy Wow, know what got me in this this industry was a chance I I saw an ad in the paper. They’re looking for software support for a software company i’m like, yeah, Bird Island, Minnesota i’m like I really don’t want to live in Bird Island like I had dreams of living in big cities and big lives and

Expanding and I’m like and my wife says just go check it out and I went and I remember it’s clear so clear of me going to the office and sitting with Brian and Sue and Kevin and them telling me about RCC Rural Computer Consultants and and the service they provide in the propane industry and I left they’re going wow, this is a big deal This is a big deal in a small town and I went home I talked to Monica and I’m like you’ll never believe how incredible this company is

Steve Gasser (02:12.792)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (02:13.061)
And when I left, were like, they were so excited. mean, if you ever met Brian Sheehan or Susie Sheehan or Kevin Sheehan, I mean, they’re excitable people. So it just radiated into my body. And I drove back home going, I really want this job. And that was very 20 years ago and I was persistent and I got it. And my journey has been just incredible ever since.

Steve Gasser (02:29.646)
20 years.

Steve Gasser (02:38.454)
So what really inspires you to dive deep into the propane industry?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (02:43.197)
You know, so once I started learning, once I started here and I started the software role and I wore many hats, software converting, project manager. I was one of the head, not developers, one of the head people that got mogul or handheld going with the trucks. But what I, what kept me driving to be part of the propane industry is the family. It’s incredible how many marketers out there are propane companies and vendors.

It’s all family. Like we work with customers across the entire nation, even Canada, Mexico, even outside of the nation. And everybody is a family to us. There are, it’s so awesome that it’s a big industry, but it’s very small because wherever I go, I see the same people and it’s, I love to sit and share stories with them. And another reason I love this industry is everyone has a story to share. And if you just listen,

and you learn, it’s awesome to hear what they’re doing. And it’s very impactful. They do community events. They serve a heating source or energy source for fairs and, you know, US Bank Stadium. We had a customer that delivered propane to the US Bank Stadium for the Minnesota Vikings. And when you hear about all this stuff, it gets you excited and it just builds inside of you. And I think that’s why I’m so hooked.

because mother propane grabbed onto me and I can’t let her go because every day I’m always excited to see what the next big challenge or next big thing is with propane.

Steve Gasser (04:24.472)
You know, what’s excited me about you and RCC and actually a lot of your clients is you not only care about your products and services, you treat your employees like family, and you’re engaged in the community. mean, RCC, you guys are really engaged in your local community, but also engaged in the propane community. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about your engagement in the propane industry.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (04:50.707)
Sure, so I’m going to start with the office first and I’ll get to the industry because I feel like it’s it’s that’s where we start. Our staff plug in every one of them over 75 employees. It’s awesome to see how much excitement all of our employees have with the propane industry. I tell them every day, you know, we’re not just servicing a software. We’re not that company. We’re not you buy it off the shelf, install it and we’ll throw a few updates on here there.

We actually care. are people. We are the ones on the other end of the phone saying there are hurricanes, there are fires, there are, you know, unfortunately deaths and families. And we’re the first ones to call these customers to say, we’re sorry, or we care. We want to hear if you’re struggling with something, we want to know about it. We are that company that from top down, it’s always in, in, embodied us to say families first.

And we treat our customers like they’re part of our family. So shout out to all of our staff to making working at RCC a great place to work at. And then it goes to our community. We do walk in the park. We do meals on wheels. lot of our staff are on EMT, fire departments, coaches. We have lots of assistant coaches on our staff. And what’s great about RCC is they give time to employees.

Every year they get so much time allowed to be part of the community. Our owners, great ownership at RCC. Every year we get Christmas coupons. Above and beyond everything else they give us. But these Christmas coupons are very special because it’s take a day off to recharge your mind. Take an extra hour off in the morning just in case you woke up on the wrong side of the bed. You want an extra hour at lunch to go with your spouse, your family, or

whatever you have going on, we have all these little coupons that we use. So when you walk in the doors at RCC, you feel like you’re part of something. We have a lot of remote site workers that work at RCC as well, and we’re always reaching out to them. It’s, after COVID, we realized there’s a lot of great staff out in the world. They don’t need to be within the 30 or 60 mile radius of Little Bird Island, Minnesota. So right off the bat, the culture of RCC and the family atmosphere is great.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (07:15.367)
Then you take it outside the state or outside of Bird Island and the engagement of the industry. And I just recently started being more engaged in the propane industry. And I found a lot of mentors that helped me get there. And now we’re, mean, I’m on the board of directors for the National Propane Gas Association. Jess says, yeah, thank you. Jess, one of our co-owners, she’s part of the Women in Propane Council.

Steve Gasser (07:38.53)
Congratulations.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (07:45.459)
Paul is part of the Propane Pack Council. We’re seeing that the more engagement we have with the industry, our customers see that and they say, wow, you care about the future of our business. We’re not just, again, we’re not just the software company. We care about the future of your business, whether it’s our software or the industry that you’re serving. So we really go above and beyond and I give all the kudos to our ownership again.

because ownership says, you know what, take this band with Freddie and run with it and see what you can go after. And when you tell me or a person like me that watch out because I have, I’m the biggest blue sky thinker you’ll ever meet. And my vision’s never died out.

Steve Gasser (08:33.398)
Endless energy, the creativity. Yeah, you’re absolutely remarkable.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (08:36.979)
call it undiscovered energy.

Steve Gasser (08:40.61)
I like that. I’m going to use that. And I’ve seen some of that undiscovered energy. You do seminars once a year where you bring all your clients together. And I’ve felt that family feeling the last couple of years I’ve attended.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (08:49.693)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (08:54.611)
Yeah, watch out with that one. And I love giving shout outs to the staff because this entire company, you don’t get anywhere alone. So I’m going to give another shout out to Nancy. Nancy Matheson, she’s one of the MCs for our RCC customer seminar. I’m the other one. Or you might know us, Francie, Team Francie. You know, that got coined years ago and it just stuck.

Steve Gasser (09:12.142)
Francie. Yeah. Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (09:20.583)
because everything we do is remarkable. And I’m gonna steal that from you. And what we bring to our seminar is education, a lot of fun. We bring networking, laughter. It’s a four day event that when we start, we’re at this level and we don’t drop the energy until the last day. And man, we just…

It’s like drinking 50 cans of Red Bull and you just crash. That’s Thursday afternoon for Nancy and I and don’t tell her I said this, which she’ll probably watch it anyway is her and I actually meet with a psychologist because we work so closely together that to bring out the best of both of us for events like this, we have to know how we both work and what triggers certain things that we shouldn’t be triggering.

We do that and we do that for our CC because we want to bring the best to our seminar were we understand that 150 to 200 attendees or a hundred companies they’re giving up a week’s worth a week’s worth of work to be there and I don’t know. I I have no words to say. Thank you because they give up so much family working, I mean running a business

and they come to the seminar and they focus on us. we have to bring as much entertainment and excitement and education to every single seminar.

Steve Gasser (10:49.038)
They’re engaged for four days.

Steve Gasser (10:59.558)
You and Nancy, beautiful compliments. know, some could say, you know, you’re like nemesises, but it’s just, it’s a compliment. You two together do such a nice job.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (11:04.387)
We are.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (11:09.703)
Yeah, it’s challenging, but I think that’s what brings out the best of us because we push each other in areas that we don’t feel comfortable in. And when you can do that without trying to murder each other at the end of the day, you really get to see the end result. And I know it works because we hear from our customers how great of an experience it is. So yeah, it’s a lot of hard work, but we get it done.

Steve Gasser (11:40.652)
Let’s dig into this latest theme you come up with, making propane sexy. What does that mean to you and how do you bring it to life through some of your marketing campaigns?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (11:50.387)
Boy, I still remember that conversation I had with our leadership team about this idea that I came up with. But let me go back to where it all started. I was at the MPGA Southeastern Expo in, I don’t know, whatever city was. I think it was Tennessee and Nashville. And I remember sitting at this keynote presentation and the lady, Kathleen Quinn Votow, was talking about retention.

Steve Gasser (11:55.854)
Hahaha

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (12:18.763)
And she was talking about retention about keeping employees or hiring new employees. And this lady stands up and says to the crowd in the middle of this presentation says, it’s not easy hiring and keeping drivers and service techs and staff on on board with our company. this, their present, this keynote present Kathleen, she says, well, why? And she goes, cause it’s, it’s, it’s propane industry. goes, so what, why? And she’s like, because it’s not fun. It’s not exciting. And she goes, why?

and this lady says because it’s freaking not sexy and Kathleen Quinn volt all set that make propane sexy and Everyone started laughed at laughing and the excitement of that room energized me because I’m like wow if we can get hundreds of people to all Engage in one slogan. What could we do? What could I do with that? And I remember

calling you up because you said, Freddie, I’m going to be doing a keynote presentation at the RCC customer seminar. And I’d to pick a brain of what I should talk about. And I remember telling you that story and you’re like, I’m going to run with it. And I’m like, do it. Because it scared the hell out of me because I’m like, I don’t want to use sexy in our slogans or presentations. Like I was so nervous about it. And you brought the making propane sexy to our seminar.

and you did such a great job with that presentation, I started seeing our customers talking about it and mentioning it that, you know, RCC brought making propane sexy to a seminar and it started to like grow these little seeds in my head. And when that happens, there’s no holding me back. And I remember I was at a board of director meeting and I was sitting next to Holly.

one of the co-owners at RCC and I said, Holly, I’m gonna present something to our leadership team and I’m really nervous about it. And she said what? And I’m like, I’m gonna bring that we hashed or not hashed, we trademark and we run with making propane sexy. I said, team Vivid I call them team Vivid, Vivid Image. I said, they gave me a bunch of artwork.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (14:36.555)
And because we were branding 2023 at the time, think it was 2024, sorry, 2024. So this is over a year ago. And they gave me all this branding, this artwork that I want to put in magazines and I want to bring it to column wraps and I want to bring it to to like pull ups that we have at all of our shows. But I’m so nervous because I don’t like failure. I hate failure. And I was so passionate. It was bubbling inside of me.

Steve Gasser (14:40.59)
Okay.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (15:02.993)
And I want them to feel this energy and my direction with it. And she said, Freddie, do it. I have full faith. I know it’s going to work. And I brought it to our leadership team and it wasn’t unanimous. Yes. It was risky. was again, sweating through my clothes, but Susie, our CEO at the time, before she retired, said, I think we should give this a chance. And they said, Freddie run with it and see what happens.

And I did in 2023. I had it in the LP Gas magazine, the BPM magazine, the Oil and Energy magazine, the Propane Canter magazine. It went with us to all of our state association shows, went to all of our trade shows. We had the NPGA Southeast Expo. We brought it there. We brought it to all of our clothing. We brought it to everywhere. And I last year at our seminar, everybody, all our customers would stop talking about it. Making propane sexy. This is the

Steve Gasser (15:50.935)
Wow.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (16:02.525)
company that’s Making Propane Sexy. I’m getting text messages now of people saying I’m wearing my sexy socks. I’m getting text messages now of companies that do company outings like there’s a company down in down south. They had a company barbecue where they brought all their customers in and their service tech come walking up with cutoff jean shorts, sandals and making propane sexy socks and the owner of the company sent me that picture and said look at this guy.

the reason for the making propane sexy is It’s something to laugh about and get excited about but then really tell the story and the story isn’t the Looking the sexiness of looks or the lingerie look. It’s let’s get excited about our industry. Let’s stop making this the Old Propane not very exciting just something I fill a tank up to keep my house. It’s not

Steve Gasser (16:51.074)
Mm-hmm.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (17:01.491)
Perk is doing a wonderful job and NPGA is doing a wonderful job and our associations are doing a wonderful job, but we gotta make it exciting again. And that was my goal to have people talk about propane, not necessarily RCC. Yeah, it came from RCC, but they’re like, I’m wearing my propane sexy socks. I got my propane sexy scramble ball picker upper. I got my sexy, making propane sexy dice. We’re starting a revolution of

Steve Gasser (17:20.035)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (17:31.823)
Something exciting and I I’m so happy that I fought for that and it was it wasn’t easy But our company said Freddie we decided we’ll stand behind you and run with it so yeah, I get goosebumps telling that story because It’s it’s it’s so much fun to see people smile. It’s it’s it’s contagious man. Yeah

Steve Gasser (17:43.566)
They have the trust in you. Yeah.

Steve Gasser (17:56.494)
It does put a smile on your face, just saying that. Well, I would have loved to be, I would have loved to be in the room with you when you first presented this. We’re to make propane sexy. But you know, everything you’re saying, you know, the idea of remarkable is people are remarking about you. And it’s so easy to remark about RCC and especially making propane sexy.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (18:04.733)
Yeah, no you didn’t.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (18:11.24)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (18:17.821)
Yeah, it’s it’s a hot topic man and and this year we actually trademarked it and It’s funny because we’re actually gonna have an online store. So we’re gonna co-brand with companies to making propane sexy store So yeah, stay tuned for that one man. That’s that’s exciting. I can’t stop smiling. But yeah, it’s gonna be a lot of Awesome I do want to give a huge shout out to Heidi and Britt and Cegi and everyone at Vivid

Steve Gasser (18:37.998)
I’ll be the first one buying something off that store. Love it.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (18:46.599)
because I think what really got, what really put it over the top of my idea for making propane sexy is when they came to our seminar last year with the making propane sexy t-shirts and how many of our customers that were there were like, where do we get these shirts? We want one. And I’m like, go talk to Heidi. This isn’t my clothing, go talk to her. And when I saw that and I saw the excitement with that, I’m like, all right.

Steve Gasser (19:00.291)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (19:14.951)
We gotta keep moving with this. There’s a great idea. Let’s keep moving forward with it.

Steve Gasser (19:21.358)
The first seminar that I did with you, we were dipping our toes in the water with making propane sexy. And I introduced that in a presentation. I think that evening, somebody had already created a t-shirt with making propane sexy.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (19:31.379)
Yep They did we had a lot of our customers that we’re at the Mall of America Right. I think we’re at the mall Yeah, so they were going to the mall itself because we’re at the Radisson blue and they were making shirts during the seminar for their entire staff and then they come back with all matching making propane sexy shirts like random

Steve Gasser (19:39.896)
Yeah,

Steve Gasser (19:53.87)
That was pretty cool. Yeah. But you’re really good at listening and kind of anticipating what your customers are going to need. I want to change topics just a little bit. Let’s talk about how do you stay engaged? What are some of the practices you use to develop maybe your leadership style?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (20:00.755)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (20:12.211)
Yeah, that’s great question. There’s a couple ways to answer that. How do I stay engaged with what’s going on? Are you talking about the industry or just me personally?

Steve Gasser (20:24.172)
I’d say with the industry, but also you personally.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (20:26.835)
We’ll start with the industry again, huge shout out to ownership at RCC to say, Freddie go. they, they w when Mike Sheehan was still, around that was Brian and Susie’s brother, Kevin’s brother. He was the industry guy. He was a guy that went to the different associations, industry meetings to kind of see what’s all going on and bring that information back to our company because we are a back office software company. We need to know what’s happening in the industry. Cause if there’s something we can do with.

With programming wise, we could do it. If there’s some integrations out there, we can do it. If there’s like a natural disaster going on in a certain area, we have a way to reach out to those customers. But to stay engaged, it takes a lot of hard work. It’s not just reading newsletters. It’s not just flying to meetings, but it’s actually sitting at the right table. And that’s what I have been doing. I don’t just go to the board of director meetings. I’m on the board of directors. I don’t just go to the convention meeting. I’m part of the convention committee.

You know the scholarship committees. There’s just there’s so much out there and all you got to do is just go get it It’s not like you have to have an invitation just go get it and so what I do at the arts at RCC is I go out and I’m engaged with everything and I bring that back and I do follow-up emails and it’s funny because every time I go to a meeting There is a handful of people here in the leadership team

that are just like waiting for my email. And it’s funny because if I don’t send a recap that night and send one the next day, I’ll get comments like, we’re wondering what was going on. We didn’t hear from you for a whole day. I’m like, my gosh, I’m sorry you guys. But that’s what I mean. That’s the energy that I can send back through a simple email. So that’s the part of the way I stay engaged with the NPGA. Now myself, I burn a lot of energy every single day, Steve. And I create energy and I burn a lot of it. So I, you know,

What I do just to keep my personal strength going is I keep reminding myself that I’m in control of my own mindset. And a way that I continue to let that grow inside of me is I listen to what’s called the quote of the day by Sean Cruxton on Spotify. It’s about a seven to 15 minute inspirational message. He goes and finds different keynote speakers, grabs a little chunk of it and plays it every single day. Brennan Bouchard.

Steve Gasser (22:39.086)
Okay.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (22:51.635)
You know, there’s John C Maxwell, Steve Harvey, incredible list of people. And every day, it’s like weightlifting. Every day on my drive here, I force myself to listen to it. Even if I’m having the worst day, the worst morning, if I have thousand things on my mind, if I’m nervous about this, have anxiety about something that’s going on in my life, I stop when I get in my truck and I say, I gotta listen to it.

because I am in control of my mindset and I’m going to work and I want to have some type of inspiration before I get there and I listen to it and I take notes of it and I take that message and I try to do something with it that day and I’ve been doing that for about a year and a half, two years now and it’s incredible. I try to boost our staff. If I see somebody walk by with their head down, I’ll message them. If I see someone not showing up for a day, I’ll message them, if they’re all right.

you know, I try to bring that energy to people because if I can pass on some type of inspiration and It gets rewarded with a thank you That’s my recharging moment and that’s one thing I learned in life is if you surround yourself around people that are inspiring You will be inspirational. I don’t like drama. I don’t want to be around it So if you don’t have nothing nice to say about something don’t bring it in my office and if you look around I got

Animals with glasses. I got group behind me. I have my daughter whenever she’s in my office She does a news quote for me. This one says work hard in silence. Let your success be your noise So Maddie is always doing stuff for like this with me. My boy is give me inspiration my family so Personally, I just surround myself with just all this positivity and I bring it in office and and it’s funny because sometimes I bring a little too much

Steve Gasser (24:33.038)
Very nice.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (24:47.751)
People can’t handle that. So sometimes they’re like, Freddie, you’re too much today.

Steve Gasser (24:52.546)
Yeah, you have, there’s so much energy you bring. Yeah, so I love, I love some of those habits there. Now, if you could go back in time, what is, what’s one thing you wish you knew before you started your career?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (24:56.179)
Yeah, I have to, you know.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (25:06.429)
Failure will only help you grow I struggle with failure and rejection. When something gets turned down like an idea, a project, I just feel like it’s so self-defeating and I used to beat my head, what did I do wrong? What didn’t work? Why didn’t it work? What could I’ve done to make it work? And that overtook my mind years ago.

The last few years I said I’ve been working on it. It’s a real challenge. But I take failure now as, well, you know what? I’m gonna try it again. And if it fails a second time, I’m gonna try it again. Because if I truly believe in something, I won’t give up. Because back in the day I’d be like, well, whatever. I tried, didn’t work, moving on.

I there is thousands of examples I could give you. But the biggest one I’ll give you is just the whole making propane sexy thing. Years ago from that, from the, when the meeting first started out of it, like, right, I see like it’s causing a lot of questions. A lot of people are kind of getting anxiety anxious about it. I’m feeling uncomfortable, but I didn’t. And I kept on

I’m explaining my idea and saying this is what I want to do giving them the big picture so You know failure it only continues to make me grow and it does it truly does because I don’t look back at things that didn’t work I look forward to things that are going to work and Yep, yep, and I heard a quote once that said do you realize when you drive a car that the rear of your mirror

Steve Gasser (26:54.862)
We fail forward.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (27:03.609)
is really small but the windshield is really big that’s your mindset you can peek behind you with that small rear view rear view mirror but the big picture is in front of you and i heard that and i’m like yep that is exactly my motivation for that day

Steve Gasser (27:24.43)
I love that. That’s got to be a sound bite out of here. I love that, Freddie. You know, what I found with you is when you are in, you are like all in, 100%. And you can drive just about any idea forward that you have. So with that, where do you see the propane industry heading kind of into this next decade? And what role do you hope RCC plays in creating that future?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (27:26.855)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (27:33.789)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (27:46.291)
Yeah, I think, you know, the message of propane is clean, affordable, reliable energy. And the excitement behind it is they’re doing more than just heating a house. It’s running your lawnmowers, it’s running car washes. There’s so many more ways to use propane than just the tank that’s on your house that keeps your house warm, cooking, you know, there’s a

solution for that, campers, RVs. And what they’re really pushing the message is it’s not part of the carbon footprint of every other fossil fuel. And the message behind all of that is let’s extract propane away from everything else because it’s its own heating source, it’s its own product. I’d like to see what they’re gonna be doing with that message in the next 10 years. Energy for everyone.

And what I really enjoy, what I really like is they’re going to third world countries too and seeing like people burning garbage to cook their food. Can you imagine that this keynote guy that came to one of the board of director meetings was showing pictures and telling the story about this very, very poor country that as they walked around, they saw it because they burned all the wood. So then it went to garbage.

to heat and cook their food. And that’s what I’m excited mostly about is going out and trying to do more impactful things in the world. And that’s just remarkable. That’s what I get excited about. What was the second question?

Steve Gasser (29:29.39)
What role do you see RCC playing in that?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (29:32.339)
Yeah, yes. So yeah, okay, then there’s there’s there’s safety. We want to make sure it’s safety It’s it’s it’s a product that obviously burns and heats homes. So with RCC perk propane education research council perk they did a fantastic job creating this learning center this resource page online and You need to make sure safety is part of your everyday procedure So what RCC did when no one else is done?

And we actually did a podcast with Eric Huster from Perk and we said, give us your access to our making propane, making propane sexy page. It was like, really? I’m like, yeah, we’ll put your logo on our landing page. When they click it, it goes out to your learning center and let’s work together. Let’s collaborate. Let’s use us to get more people on your site for safety learning. And they don’t just do safety. They

They do like a day as a driver, a day as a service tech, a day as a CSR. So it’s more, so like if you’re sitting back on, I might want to work for Riddler Propane. I wonder what that’s like. Go to this resource page. It tells you what your job responsibilities are. And that’s where we go above and beyond. Again, Rural Computer Consultants, that’s a software back office for a propane or energy company. But we’re more than that. We’re gonna offer you a product.

Steve Gasser (30:57.198)
Yes, you are.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (30:59.729)
And then we’re also going to tell you how you can hire and keep your staff engaged in the industry and, and, and, know, keep that retention high. Let’s keep those employees. Let us help you with that. And here’s what we’re hearing about in the industry. That’s just a small percentage, not, not to mention like there’s all of these awesome, great industry specific vendors out there that want to integrate with RCC because we’re a great company.

So we’re constantly bringing them into our product. So it’s kind of crazy. If you think about RCC as a software, we employ over 75 families. Okay, well, we also have integration to our product that keeps their company going and their staff going. So there’s another, have no idea how many, hundreds and hundreds of family. Then we have a product that services

2,000 propane locations out there that we have underneath our company and all of their staff. So can you imagine our software that is supplying so many families out there? It’s crazy to think about. It’s wild. It’s mind blowing. It’s like, think about like the impact we’re making.

Steve Gasser (32:16.11)
to the impact. Yeah.

Wow. I’m so glad we had a chance to talk and sit down. So I know there’s going be a lot of propane companies that are watching this. A lot of family-owned propane companies. What is your biggest advice with all your experience? What’s your biggest advice for propane companies?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (32:21.885)
Yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (32:35.931)
My biggest advice, don’t be scared of technology. Yes, there’s a lot of things to be scared about, but don’t be scared about technology. Drivers don’t want to use computers because they just have been handwriting things for all these years. Office staff, they like to have the paper in front of them and hand key stuff in. Your customers, yeah, our customers are part of the older generation. They’re not going to use web services and apps.

You would be surprised at all of that. Build yourself a nice website. Get some of this, I’m gonna say this, working at RCC for 20 years, I have seen a generational shift. It’s crazy when you work for a company for so long, when I first started, it was the first and second gens. Now it’s the third and fourth and fifth gens. If you have a propane company or a fuel company or cylinder company, get a good looking website.

that’ll track that younger generation, put information on there. They don’t want to call you for answers. They want to just get it on their own. Grab some technology, bring it into your company, whether it’s RCC or anybody else, go get it. There’s a lot out there. You would be surprised on how many of the older generational drivers that sit like this during the training sessions of MoGo. And then after a few weeks later, they’re like, you couldn’t take this device from my cold dead hands.

Steve Gasser (34:00.206)
They’re leading into it, yeah.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (34:03.155)
Don’t be scared of technology. It will help you grow your business. It’ll help you know how your business is running. It’ll save you a boatload of time from hand keying stuff in and you don’t have all that human error of mistyping something in. So go get it. Go get the technology. Embrace it.

Steve Gasser (34:20.43)
I love it. I love it. So Freddie, people want to find out more about you and RCC. can they go?

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (34:27.301)
MakingPropaneSexy.com that’s where you need to go. We actually have a landing page It was an idea Steve said we’re gonna you should get this landing page. So we did Making it is awesome MakingPropaneSexy.com is where you can reach out to us or RCCBI.com All of our information is on there. Feel free to reach out

Steve Gasser (34:37.934)
It’s a great demand.

Steve Gasser (34:49.87)
Freddie, thank you so much for being a guest. You and RCC are truly remarkable.

Freddie-#MakingPropaneSexy (34:52.039)
Yeah.

Thanks Steve, I appreciate it man.