Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Brock Waldrop: It was chaos. I mean, it was, hey, you want your furniture delivered right now? It was just that time and era back in the day, skipping delivery fees, giving out an accent chair for free just on a whim.
Customer complains enough. You do whatever the customer says. And there's no structure. Absolute chaos all the time. And my dad brought a lot of that structure and consistency to the company.
[00:00:23] Taylor McAlpine: So.
Hey, y', all, it's Taylor with local LBK recording another episode of In Good Company.
Today we're going to have Brock Waldrop on the podcast talking about their fourth generation family furniture business, Miller Waldrop. Thank you to our sponsors, Camindorado Family of West Texas. We are here at the Lexus dealership and we can't wait for you to join the conversation. So remember, when you're with local lbk, you're always in good company.
Howdy, Brock.
[00:00:55] Brock Waldrop: Hi.
[00:00:56] Taylor McAlpine: How are you today?
[00:00:57] Brock Waldrop: Doing good.
[00:00:58] Taylor McAlpine: So glad you're able to join us today.
[00:00:59] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely.
[00:01:01] Taylor McAlpine: So welcome to In Good Company, a low quality K podcast sponsored by the Camera Auto Group. We are here at the Lexus dealership driving their new G. And so I've been a big fan of this car. Have you seen it before?
[00:01:13] Brock Waldrop: No. This is a beautiful car.
[00:01:15] Taylor McAlpine: It is gorgeous.
We can probably drive it around a little bit if you want to give it a check. All right, so this is great. For our guests who don't know who you are, can you tell us a little bit about Brock and Miller Waldron?
[00:01:26] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely. So my name is Brock Waldrop. I am part of the Waldrop family.
We've owned and operated Millwall Furniture in the, let's see, southwest and southeast Texas for a while now.
And it's been a great pleasure to serve the community. And we've been doing it for quite a while now. I think we're coming up on 75 years. Oh, my goodness. And yeah, I've been bouncing around, done a lot of jobs at the company. I've been a salesperson, sales manager, now director of marketing and sales, and I also help in the service department. So if something goes wrong with your sofa, I'm usually the person you talk to.
Just kind of all across the board, doing a lot of things, wearing a lot of hats.
[00:02:18] Taylor McAlpine: Oh, I believe it. That's how it goes in family business usually.
[00:02:21] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely.
[00:02:22] Taylor McAlpine: So what's the origin story of Miller Waldrop?
[00:02:24] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, no, that's great. So once upon a time, my great, great granddaddy, Barney Waldrop, four generations ago got with a guy named Alex Miller and they got out of the military and they Decided they wanted to own their own business and do something that they've ever done before. So they got into furniture, and they're both really good at repairs, and they're both really good at selling.
But Alex Miller ended up going away from the business, and then the Waldrops took over, and we bought them out. And we've actually upheld a pretty good relationship with the Miller family since then. And I haven't hung out with them in a while, but when I was a kid, I hung out with his great grandchildren, I guess.
Yeah. Some really fond memories. And they've owned some businesses here in town in Lubbock.
The Jay's Creamery. They. They own and operated that for a little while. I think it was called something else, but Sheridan's was. That's what it was. Yeah. Yep.
So, yeah, really have a lot of connections to Lubbock and just this area of the world.
[00:03:43] Taylor McAlpine: Oh, my gosh. So did it start off with the same brand? Same. How different was it when it started?
[00:03:50] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, so when it was just Miller Logic Furniture, my. The company actually expanded quite a bit.
We had a store in Midland, Odessa, I think. And then we were in Carlsbad. We were in Hobbs, Levington. We were kind of spread out all over the place. And then where was location one? Location one was Lovington.
[00:04:16] Taylor McAlpine: Okay.
[00:04:17] Brock Waldrop: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, we had another place in Roswell. I can't remember all of them off top of my head, but we opened and closed a lot of stores, at least my grandfather did, after he took it over from Barney.
[00:04:30] Taylor McAlpine: Okay.
[00:04:31] Brock Waldrop: And so they. They had several stores. They closed them down.
They decided to get more local. We kind of had a quality problem.
You know, like you see in the movie, the Founder, they have that quality problem. And so we never quite figured that out. So we got it reduced, and now we're getting better at that quality issue. And it's gotten a lot better. We have a lot better staff and really, really proud of our current staff. But before all that, it was kind of.
It was chaos. I mean, it was, hey, you want your furniture delivered right now?
And it was just that time and era back in the day, skipping delivery fees, giving out an accent chair for free just on a whim.
Customer complains enough. You do whatever the customer says. And there's no structure.
Absolute chaos all the time. And my dad brought a lot of that structure and consistent consistency to the company. So.
But I'll tell you what. My. My grandfather, I call Pop Ops, or Bill Waldrop.
He. He's probably one of the best Sales people I've ever met. Man, he can.
[00:05:45] Taylor McAlpine: He.
[00:05:45] Brock Waldrop: What do they say? They could sell the shirt off your
[00:05:48] Taylor McAlpine: back kind of thing?
[00:05:49] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, sure. Off your back. Yeah. Ice to an Eskimo.
So, yeah, we have a really in depth history there.
So.
[00:05:58] Taylor McAlpine: And then what's the operation look like currently?
[00:06:00] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, so right now, my dad and I are really taking on the sales department, and we're. We're kind of forefronting that as well as the marketing end of things. So it's good that we're over both, you know, kind of able to communicate the marketing message with the sales people. So they're on board with what we're putting out in the world, which is big. But the.
And then we have a whole operations team, and they're. They're doing great. That's ran by Dan. Did you ever meet Dan? Yeah, yeah.
And he's doing great. And we have amazing, amazing service coordinator that come on the last two years.
[00:06:44] Taylor McAlpine: Love it.
[00:06:44] Brock Waldrop: And he's pretty. I'm almost hands off on service nowadays, but beforehand I was very on hands, and he's really made my life a lot easier. But. And then my mother, Becky, she. She's doing all the buying for the company.
She also controls all of our pricing and making sure we're as aggressive as we can be every single day, day in, day out.
[00:07:08] Taylor McAlpine: Trying to get the best deal for your customers.
[00:07:09] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah. So we don't have AI doing that. We're doing that all by hand.
And it's. It's been pretty good recipe thus far.
[00:07:18] Taylor McAlpine: All right, then how many cities do you all operate in right now?
[00:07:21] Brock Waldrop: So right now we're currently in, well, kind of four, but it's three.
So we have Lubbock, and then we have Hobbs, New Mexico. And then in Hobbs, we have our furniture store and our mattress store, Mattress first, which in Lubbock we do have our mattress store. It's just combined with the furniture store.
We have two separate entrances, and then we have the Ruidoso store.
And it's much the same as Lubbock. It has the furniture store and mattress first combined in one. It's a real small little boutique is probably the best description for it.
And then we just opened up a mattress pro store that carries a lot of mattress brands that we didn't carry before.
And we're really excited about that. We opened that up in September or August of last year, and we're having our grand opening on Memorial Day the 23rd. Oh, really excited about that. Been planning on it for about six months. So I hope it goes well.
[00:08:23] Taylor McAlpine: And that's in Rio do so as well.
[00:08:25] Brock Waldrop: Yeah. And that's in Rio do so. So the mattress. The furniture stores in Ridoso Downs, and the mattress store. The new ones in Mattress are just Ridoso. So technically four, but really three cities.
[00:08:36] Taylor McAlpine: I love it. So what was it like moving into Lubbock? Because y' all had had a presence in Texas before, so.
[00:08:44] Brock Waldrop: Right.
[00:08:44] Taylor McAlpine: Coming back into that market.
[00:08:46] Brock Waldrop: Yeah. So coming to Lubbock has been pretty great. We.
We had a decent amount of business coming out of Lubbock, even with just our Hobbs location. And there's many times where we would come out to Lubbock to help design a house.
It was very common practice for us, and we. We recognized that Lubbock didn't really have a niche that we. Niche, sorry. That we fit in perfectly, too. And that is, you know, affordable, special ordering.
And so anything you see on our floor. Well, not anything, but a lot of things we can change in several different ways. Whether that's the fabric, the leg nail heads, changing a sofa to a love seat, a sofa into a chair.
It just. The possibilities are endless, and we can definitely find the right affordable style for you. So. So, yeah. Guess you can tell I work in our marketing department.
[00:09:48] Taylor McAlpine: I was about to say, the amount of product knowledge you have to have to know all the lines, the fabrics, the styles.
[00:09:53] Brock Waldrop: Oh, it's overwhelming, man.
And so before I worked at Miller Logic, I actually worked at La Z Boy and in San Antonio, and I got pretty good at selling furniture there. And hope this isn't sidetracking too bad.
[00:10:09] Taylor McAlpine: Oh, no.
This is all part of the origin story. So tell me how your involvement in the family business has looked.
[00:10:14] Brock Waldrop: Okay, great.
So, yeah. So I started working for a furniture store in San Antonio after college and ended up falling in love with furniture. It was a time. It was right after Covid, it was really hard for me to find a job. I had little to no experience, and other than working in restaurants, because that was kind of how I made money enough to go through college and be able to have fun as well.
And so that was all experience I had. So I applied, applied, applied, applied, eventually landed at La Z Boy.
And it was a great job, great boss.
But I remember my first few days there, I was. I was like, man, I don't know if I can do this. This is a lot of knowledge. And that was just one line, one brand, one brand.
And there was just so many little nuances to it. And at first, I felt like I was drowning, and then I picked it up pretty quick. My first like two months of sales were a little tough, but then after that I was in the top five pretty consistently.
So I was really proud of my performance there. And so I called mom and dad up and they, you know, obviously they've been aware of that I was working there and my achievements and such at that role. And I was even helping Lazy Boy a little bit with their technology stuff down there, like just Excel spreadsheets, very basic stuff.
But they didn't have anybody that knew any of that stuff. So I kind of helped the sales director there a little bit with those little things, calculating margin, you know, just little things.
And.
And so my parents were pretty proud and they've graciously allowed me to come work for them. And first started as a salesperson and moved up to marketing and special projects and I brought in a lot of technology solutions to some modern problems that we had and with the help of various softwares and such and had some good people from our furniture connections that draw me to those solutions. And really that first two years after sales was kind of more learning the industry, fixing the little things I see that could be improved with technology and stuff like that. And now here I am and I just still do special projects here and there, but just not near as intense as those first few years.
So now I'm more focused on, you know, how can we get our sales up, how can we encourage people, how can we develop people, how can we be better than we were yesterday?
So that's my motto and main goal for now. I'm sure that'll change six months.
[00:13:02] Taylor McAlpine: Well, I can't imagine being. Will you be fourth or fifth generation?
[00:13:07] Brock Waldrop: I'll be the fourth. Fourth.
[00:13:10] Taylor McAlpine: When you've been in a business that long change takes time.
And especially in the furniture industry, it seems a little bit technology adverse.
[00:13:18] Brock Waldrop: Oh absolutely.
[00:13:19] Taylor McAlpine: And so to have to help a company go through a transition like that, that's a big deal.
[00:13:23] Brock Waldrop: Oh it is, it is. We and speak more on that the you know it takes time. It takes time. When you're ever. You're in a business that runs a little slow technology wise like H Vac companies also run into this. You see this pretty can often and when you have employee. We have one employee that's been with our several employees have been here 10 plus years and and then you ask these people that to do more technology things and you know we're talking about people that you know generally are a little older, you know, 55 plus and
[00:13:59] Taylor McAlpine: all your contacts are in your Rolodex not in your CRM.
[00:14:02] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah. And teaching that, you have to teach the concept of what a CRM is and then they have to get buy in on using the CRM and then. And then you have to set up disciplinary actions, which is the last thing I like to do. But you know, sometimes it's necessary for those that are resistant to change.
And there's been several things that I've instituted or put in place that we still aren't doing near to the effect that I wanted us to be at at this point in time.
[00:14:33] Taylor McAlpine: But continual implementation is how I see it.
[00:14:36] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah. It's just continuous talking and continuous improvement.
And you know, the furniture industry, as you said, it's really behind technology wise. So it's very often that I get a call from other people all across the country that are asking, hey, how did you solve this problem with this tool? Or hey, we heard you were doing this, could you walk us through that? And I get those calls, I mean, at least once or twice a month and from all over. I got a call from Hawaii the other day that was kind of crazy. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that one.
Didn't know how to answer the phone. I say, what's the term for hello with Hawaii?
Not Honolulu, but.
Oh, it's gonna drive me nuts at the tip of my tongue, but.
[00:15:25] Taylor McAlpine: Oh, well, I was gonna say ohana, but that's.
[00:15:28] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:31] Taylor McAlpine: No one gets left behind.
[00:15:32] Brock Waldrop: No one gets left behind. We'll leave it at that.
[00:15:36] Taylor McAlpine: Well, how cool. So you get to share your knowledge and experience with other family businesses all across the nation.
[00:15:42] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, and we have various performance groups that we go to. We go to about each group about twice a year. There's one group we only go once a year.
And we get the opportunity to work with others all over the country. I mean, we have some people in our performance group that are from Canada, Thunder Bay, and then a few others that are from Canada. I just can never remember their names, the cities they're in. But it's really great to work with so many people from so many different perspectives and so many different areas of living.
Like here. Our major source of income is oil and farmers.
We're probably the only one in my performance group or in our performance groups that have that demographics in that economy. Yeah, a lot of them are medical, believe it or not.
One of them, one of them lives out in Kansas City and they have an extremely diverse income. And so it's really interesting, you know what, what's going to inspire someone to buy A piece of furniture today, you know, and everyone has a different answ that. And some people, you're like, man, there's no way that works. But, hey, that works in their area, just not yours, you know?
So there's a lot of group wisdom there that's really important to look out for the nuggets of gold, as one person told me once.
[00:17:09] Taylor McAlpine: And backtracking a little bit. Yeah, you said. Called up mom and dad and said, hey, I've been getting this experience, so you had a choice.
[00:17:16] Brock Waldrop: So I gave them the choice.
[00:17:19] Taylor McAlpine: I called them, presented them an opportunity.
[00:17:21] Brock Waldrop: I want to work for you guys. And they were more than ecstatic to have me on board. At the time, my sister was working for them as well, and so they thought, man, if we have both kids in here, you know, we're gonna be okay.
And it was a pleasure to work with my sister, but she doesn't work with the company anymore. But, yeah, so going back to that first conversation, so we.
Yeah, that conversation is kind of funny because I was like, hey, I want to. I want to work for you guys.
How soon can we do that?
It was more of, you know, planning it out, not if they wanted me on board or not.
And so sometimes people are like, oh, you just hired yourself. And then to a degree, you're not wrong. But I've also added a lot of value. I didn't just come in for a paycheck. I've come in to work, come in to learn, come in to grow my skills for, you know, even if I'm not doing this for the rest of my life, at least I'll have a pretty impressive resume when I'm done.
[00:18:20] Taylor McAlpine: Oh, for sure.
[00:18:21] Brock Waldrop: How cool.
[00:18:22] Taylor McAlpine: So at this point and where we are in the loop, I like to ask, what are y' all doing to continue to learn and grow?
[00:18:29] Brock Waldrop: Oh, that's great.
[00:18:29] Taylor McAlpine: So what is kind of the future next five years look like?
[00:18:34] Brock Waldrop: So I already mentioned the performance groups. We got those going on.
Those have been going very, very well.
We once again get to learn from all over the country. It's awesome.
Something I do is I listen to a lot of podcasts specifically around current economics. And so right now, in furniture, an important economic thing to be aware of is tariffs.
They've greatly affected our industry, from cushions to fabrics to metal. I mean, and if, you know, it depends on where the product gets assembled. So when you hear these terms, like 200% tariff, 80% tariff on this one particular part, well, that one particular part is used for a much bigger product. Right. And so that big product end up having like a tariff of like really like 200% from the 80% tariff.
And because then the guys importing it, they got to mark it up and the people reselling it, they got to mark it up. And so when you hear 80% increase, you know, you almost want to triple it or even quadruple it. And that's really what you're going to see happen to your everyday customer's wallet, essentially. And so which is, you know, it's crazy because I was talking to Kent, the owner the other day, my dad telling him, he was like, you gotta have these recliners starting at 299. And I was like, dad, that doesn't exist anymore.
Whereas that was, that was pretty easy to accomplish the last 20, 30 years.
And it's just a lot of change.
Prices are a lot different than what I grew up with, that's for sure.
[00:20:23] Taylor McAlpine: I was about to say, you can't even get lunch for 10, 15 bucks anymore.
[00:20:26] Brock Waldrop: No.
Yeah, that's fun. We were talking about our per diem policy the other day when people travel and dad was like, well, we should just do like 10 bucks. And I was like, well, I don't, I don't know about that. That's kind of.
[00:20:38] Taylor McAlpine: They might be getting kids meal, but
[00:20:39] Brock Waldrop: yeah, they might be going to the $2 menu. Not even a dollar menu anymore.
But yeah. So we're, we're constantly talking about how we can improve things, seeing what other people are doing, what success they have, whether that's opening a new position, certain policy changes or procedural changes.
And I was usually 9 times out of 10 I can find a technology solution in there somewhere. So I'm always involved in these discussions and trying to improve what we know and what we don't know.
[00:21:14] Taylor McAlpine: And then along with that you were talking about market of like tariffs and government policy, things like that. What about in the industry? What changes are you seeing there?
[00:21:22] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, so we're seeing a lot of manufacturers attempting to come to the US to lower their costs and their prices. But honestly the prices stay just about the same with what the tariffs are at. So even a container from China, which is considered the lowest cost item you can get at least was really, it's more of a container from Vietnam. Let's just say that is going to be about the same price as someone manufacturing in the states Now. There are a few people that have been stateside manufacturing for 20, 30 years. Those companies are thriving right now, those manufacturers. And there are several pockets of furniture stores like us Doing pretty well as well. It just kind of depends where you're at and what your economy is in your area, more or less. But yeah, it's, it's. It's kind of real interesting in the furniture world. A lot of people are either staying steady with sales the last five, four years, maybe more like three.
And then others are having a little bit of an increase, and others are having such a downfall that they're closing. I mean, I'm. I'm getting emails every week or two of, you know, mom and pop shop after 80 years, 100 years closed down.
[00:22:44] Taylor McAlpine: Oh, my goodness.
[00:22:45] Brock Waldrop: And it's. I mean, it's every week almost.
This economy right now is very volatile for furniture industry, especially if you're in the resale part of it.
But if you make smart decisions and you're wise and you wait it out, then it'll be okay. But right now, a lot of people are just kind of waiting out these next two years to kind of see, you know, what changes in US Politics. And perhaps these tariffs will go away, perhaps they won't, before anybody starts making permanent decisions about moving manufacturing to the states. But like I said, I mean, the prices are going to be where they're at, regardless. Yeah.
[00:23:27] Taylor McAlpine: I was about to say, even if they move them back, they're not going to drop the savings, more likely.
[00:23:31] Brock Waldrop: So, no, they're just going to recoup that another way or. Yeah.
[00:23:35] Taylor McAlpine: Well, the furniture industry specifically, I feel, went through the wringer post Covid. They always saw a spike in sales. Everyone was home, everyone was remodeling, everyone's redecorating. And then from there hit all those supply chain issues of not being able to get product in. And then after that, now we're in kind of that tariff season. So how have y' all adapted and been able to deal with all that?
[00:23:57] Brock Waldrop: So Covid was awesome. Oh, my gosh. I mean, the most amount of sales we've ever had as a company.
And I think almost everybody in the furniture industry can say that. But the aftermath has been terrible because so you have. You have all these wonderful sales, and then if the manufacturer, all of a sudden they aren't able to produce their. Your purchase order because they don't have their supplies because, you know, everyone's burning through furniture orders.
So what ends up happening is everything calms down, and then all of a sudden we have all these supplies again.
And then boom, you all of a sudden have a year's worth of orders that you have to pay for next week, and then you have occupancy issues. I mean, our warehouse, filling our warehouse space issues. Because then you just cut a year's worth of inventory in one day from one manufacturer and it really put a string on your operations because then think about getting the truck ready and you gotta unbox all this stuff and throw away all this trash. But then you have no space to do it because you have all this inventory. And then you gotta put it on the truck. And then by the time you do all that, I mean, you spent two or three more hours than you really should have.
And so that really caused the strain and you know, a lot of overtime and things like that. But once again, if, you know, if you're just really watching your p. L and you're staying on top of things, staying on top of your management in particular, you're gonna be okay.
[00:25:39] Taylor McAlpine: Okay.
[00:25:39] Brock Waldrop: So. And that's. And a lot of companies that are surviving, that have been around for these 90, 100 years, they're surviving, but a lot of them are retiring, like I said earlier, because they're like, you know, I don't want to do this crap anymore. And I don't have a kid to take this on.
I don't have a lower level employee that really wants to take on this business and make it thrive. And those stories are far and few between, unfortunately.
[00:26:05] Taylor McAlpine: I was about to say retail is a hard enough business on its own.
[00:26:07] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
[00:26:08] Taylor McAlpine: So to be able to get to operating that long. And then from there, the transition plan of how do you pass it on?
[00:26:14] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
[00:26:14] Taylor McAlpine: How do you handle the next level of leadership?
[00:26:18] Brock Waldrop: Yeah. And you know, it's like I said, it's a really tough business. And when you're in your 60s and 70s, you know, there's a lot of pride in keeping the business going. But you're in your 60s and 70s, you want to retire, you want to relax, and last thing you want to be dealing with is 18 year olds in your warehouse, you know, giving you lip over doing something. You know, it's.
It's just kind of the way it goes. So, I mean, I don't blame them at all. I would retire too if I could. I'd retire right now if I could. Right.
[00:26:49] Taylor McAlpine: So next part is, what do you hope your role continues to be in the company? What do you see for yourself?
[00:26:55] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, So I recently got a promotion to sales director and marketing director.
It's been wonderful with marketing. I was able to provide a substantial increase in the amount of people walking into our doors. That's my main metric that I look at.
Of course, you have, you know, cost per acquisition, all that stuff, and that's more office work. But the one I really care about is how many people come in the door.
So I was able to increase that by about 20%, maybe a hair underneath that for last year. So from 2024 to 2025.
[00:27:33] Taylor McAlpine: That's awesome.
[00:27:34] Brock Waldrop: And I was very proud of that.
It was some changes that I've been wanting to make in our marketing for a while. And, you know, my dad, he's on the older side of things, and so he's. He's more used to broadcast and such like. And stuff like that. Whereas I really wanted to bring in streaming, you know, like your hulus and stuff like that. And it took me a while to convince him, but as soon as we got to convince and then we got all of our Google Ads going out, I was able to accomplish that 20%. So I'm really proud of that. So going forward, I just recently got control, or not control, but I've had the availability to lead our sales department, and I'm really hoping to do something similar there.
Thus far, I've made some changes that have worked pretty good.
I still got a lot that are. We're waiting to see how they end up, but all that comes with time, and I'm a pretty persistent guy, so I'm hoping I'm able to get that raised in sales and, you know, keep the business thriving.
[00:28:42] Taylor McAlpine: I was about to say all those sales members, they run a commission, so they probably want to see it too.
[00:28:47] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, that's my thing is being in this position. It's really important to get those that are directly under you, just on your team and ready and excited every morning to go out and accomplish the vision that you set place or the vision that our boss has set in place.
And I got a really good team, and they. They have been doing very wonderful, and they've really been accepting of my changes, which has been few and far between. But as I've been telling them, you know, there's more coming down the pipeline, so watch out.
[00:29:25] Taylor McAlpine: But when they can see, like, hey, it's working, I imagine it makes their willingness a whole lot more so.
[00:29:30] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely, absolutely. Let's just hope it works, because if
[00:29:35] Taylor McAlpine: you stop experimenting, you're not gonna keep learning.
[00:29:37] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah. And that's also the thing is, I'm telling, you know, there's some things we're gonna experiment on, but if it's not working, we'll change it next month. And I've been a man of my word on that. And I think that really helps if you're trying to get somebody on your team is to be a man or woman of your word and do what you say you're gonna do. And the rest will follow, in my opinion. But that's just me.
[00:30:02] Taylor McAlpine: Well, and I want to take the marketing piece that you do and how do you tie in community engagement? How do you bring in the city? How do you get involved and kind of give back?
[00:30:12] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
So we do a lot of donations.
We mostly. It's mostly product related, but there's a few events that Becky really likes to do.
We do a man skin driving.
That bed run thing that was going on in Lubbock.
[00:30:36] Taylor McAlpine: Oh. With Open Door.
[00:30:37] Brock Waldrop: Yeah. Yeah. So we were gonna do that. We were looking into it, but we ran out of time, unfortunately.
But we like to do things like that. We like to donate to silent auctions a lot. Our pieces didn't bring in a decent amount of value and usually are a talking piece, at least that's what they tell us. I think they're just trying to get our money. But we've. We've also have donated our time. We've done service to South South Plains Food Bank.
[00:31:09] Taylor McAlpine: Oh, nice.
[00:31:09] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, we. We took.
We took about, oh, 50 people, which was our whole company at the time, minus one or two people.
And we went and worked there for a couple hours during one of our vision meetings. I'll explain that in a moment.
And it was really awesome. Our staff loved it. They loved it. They said we got two, three months camera. The specific number two, three months worth of work done within a few hours.
[00:31:39] Taylor McAlpine: How cool.
[00:31:40] Brock Waldrop: Because they just don't really get the amount of volunteers that they should.
And so we try to find opportunities like that.
But yeah, most of its donation, we just don't really like to talk about it because, you know, it's. I think it's a little cliche to be like, hey, look at me. I, you know, I donated this. And I just rather do that stuff in quiet. If, you know, we want to chat about it on a podcast situation like this, then that's great. But you can talk about your heart
[00:32:08] Taylor McAlpine: for the community without showing.
[00:32:09] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
[00:32:10] Taylor McAlpine: What that looks like in the details.
[00:32:11] Brock Waldrop: So. Yeah. Yeah.
And we also, we.
We've done events with the chambers in all of our cities.
Lubbock, Rio, do so Hobbs. And we really enjoyed those partnerships. And especially Lubbock, the business after hours event was really, really cool. We did that for about four years.
We just recently had it, like last month.
It's a lot of fun and love being part of the community. And we like hearing from the community through our social media and love to hear people's feedback on new pieces that we bring in.
But, yeah, if we honestly, we could do more, we would. But, you know, a lot of our efforts in that manner are strictly done by donation and events like that.
So that's kind of how we like to roll and involve in the community. And sometimes we do monetary donations to, like, Boys and Girls Club and stuff like that. We just. We're just kind of all over the board because Becky has a lot of these interests of hers that really matter to her, so. And then we also try to do local partnerships.
We most recently did a partnership with Campus Live here in Lubbock.
[00:33:28] Taylor McAlpine: My buddy Marcus.
[00:33:29] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, Marcus Padilla.
Yeah. Wonderful guy.
And we really enjoyed that partnership.
And now we're going on to look for other local partnerships. And we did a little one in Hobbs. Like, we like to do the basketball shirts, do the logos on the back.
[00:33:49] Taylor McAlpine: Supporting your local sports teams.
[00:33:50] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, I like close, because where the money goes, it's going directly to those kids, you know, and I feel really good about those types of donations and then.
But we always have some kind of local partnership going on.
Recently we in Rio do. So we did visit Ruidoso and that. That was wonderful. Did that for like, three months. So.
[00:34:13] Taylor McAlpine: Well. And Rio do. So it's been hit so hard recently.
[00:34:15] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
[00:34:17] Taylor McAlpine: Anything to help that community keep going.
[00:34:18] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely, absolutely. After those.
After the racetracks got shut down, that was.
I mean, that was awful. That was awful. It was like my year's 9, 11.
I mean, that's terrible to say, but unfortunately true. How devastating it's been, it's really affected the community. And spirits are pretty low at the store. And the community as a whole is.
They're trying to be optimistic. And, you know, it's a beautiful place to go in the summer, and there's so many things to do other than go to the racetrack and gamble.
A lot more fun things to do, in my opinion. But.
So we're hoping that the natural local scene will make up for that loss.
[00:35:06] Taylor McAlpine: I was about to say all the outdoor activities, those are huge.
[00:35:08] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
[00:35:09] Taylor McAlpine: Have some good friends over there with an outdoor shop. And so I know they're trying to help spur a lot of that activity of get outdoors, have fun, make those family memories, keep the tourism going, bring in new industry, and then just keep supporting the locals.
[00:35:22] Brock Waldrop: Yeah. And just amazing. And it's a really cool community. Really nice people.
Pretty similar to what you would find in Lubbock, I would say.
But they do got their weirdos and stuff like that too. But so does Lubbock.
[00:35:40] Taylor McAlpine: So we got neighbors everywhere.
[00:35:41] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, that's right. That's right. But yeah, if you haven't been to Rio, do so go check them out.
[00:35:47] Taylor McAlpine: So we're back on the home stretch, back towards the dealership.
What are some things that you're looking forward to within Lubbock? You've been living back in town a while.
[00:35:58] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
[00:35:58] Taylor McAlpine: So what are your places to eat? We kind of call this our fire round. So.
[00:36:03] Brock Waldrop: All right. All right.
[00:36:04] Taylor McAlpine: Favorite dinner date.
[00:36:06] Brock Waldrop: Favorite dinner date. All right, so recently, Chef Sammy, check that place out.
[00:36:11] Taylor McAlpine: John Walter.
[00:36:12] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah. And that beef Wellington I can't get enough of. And then I have to give an honorable mention. The west table. I love Cameron and what he does.
That is a really great spot for a date. But yeah, Chef Sammy, right now, after
[00:36:29] Taylor McAlpine: that, where do you take people when they come to town?
[00:36:32] Brock Waldrop: All right, so we're coming to town. Usually it's a Texas Tech football game.
That's where I brought my in laws.
If I'm not doing that, then we're going to restaurants.
West stable. Is probably that one of the first picks. Chef Sammy's more my date night vibe.
And then if they're paying, we go to Nicolette. So
[00:36:59] Taylor McAlpine: Chef Finn. Love it.
[00:37:01] Brock Waldrop: Yeah.
So, yeah, food mostly. Yeah, a lot of good food.
[00:37:07] Taylor McAlpine: Well, in all local spots. So yeah. Gotta support that chef culture. Gotta keep the creative platings menus. And they all rotate em pretty regularly.
[00:37:15] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:37:16] Taylor McAlpine: After that, do you have a favorite annual tradition event?
[00:37:20] Brock Waldrop: Okay, so one annual tradition is we love going to Nutcracker. That's been my wife's big deal.
She loves a Nutcracker. And we just. We just had our daughter. She's a year old now, and so she'll be able to go to Nutcracker this year. We didn't go last year because she was a little too small and made a little too much noise. So hopefully we go this year.
[00:37:41] Taylor McAlpine: In case you didn't know, they've got a special performance. It's a matinee, and so it works really well for the young ones.
[00:37:47] Brock Waldrop: Oh, it's a little shorter, little earlier, so I didn't know they did that. Oh, that's good to know.
Other than that, really like to do a yearly. There was one other thing I do every year. It's going to drive me nuts, so I can't remember it, man.
Oh, yeah. Carol lights.
[00:38:11] Taylor McAlpine: Love it.
[00:38:11] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, Carol Lights. That's awesome. If you haven't been, if you've never been in the Carolites in Lubbock, it's a beautiful site. You got to check it out.
[00:38:18] Taylor McAlpine: Such a fun tradition.
[00:38:19] Brock Waldrop: Oh, absolutely.
[00:38:20] Taylor McAlpine: And then even if you miss the night driving around Tech campus, getting to see it all on your own face.
[00:38:25] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, just Tech campus during the December is awesome.
Can't go wrong.
[00:38:31] Taylor McAlpine: And then from there, what is something you hope to see in the community? And so what is Lubbock missing?
[00:38:37] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, yeah.
You know, Lubbock has a lot of really good family friendly spots. And I really, I really do enjoy that about Lubbock.
Really good family atmosphere. But when you're, when you're by yourself and you don't have a family, it. There's not a whole lot to do here. I mean you have a lot of. I mean you got drinking, which, you know, we all partake.
[00:39:07] Taylor McAlpine: Got the Broadway Shuffle.
[00:39:08] Brock Waldrop: You got the Broadway Shuffle, but you can't do that every night. And so I would love to see something for our young adults, which I guess I'm still in that category.
Those that are single, more things to do, like business events.
I know. Have you heard of Fiesta down in San Antonio?
[00:39:26] Taylor McAlpine: Tell me about it.
[00:39:27] Brock Waldrop: So Fiesta is a really cool time period in San Antonio.
It's this month or no, sorry, it's in April.
It's a month long. And all these events have a certain part of Fiesta.
And every business, not every business, but most businesses have these little medals that you can collect and during their free events and they'll give out, you know, free guzzies, free beer snack, you know, and you can collect all of them. And some people have all the medals that have ever been.
It's really cool. And then there's also kind of like a prom thing going on. There's a Queen of Fiesta.
[00:40:07] Taylor McAlpine: Okay.
[00:40:07] Brock Waldrop: And a King of Fiesta. There's a certain name for it and I'm not going to even try to attempt it because I'm going to get it wrong.
But that, that's also a really cool event.
These girls are wearing these elaborate dresses. There's a whole mus in San Antonio during fiesta time that completely guts their pieces and does nothing. But the Fiesta dresses.
[00:40:30] Taylor McAlpine: Wow.
[00:40:31] Brock Waldrop: And these dresses, they have like a back cape I guess is what you call it, that goes back 1012ft back from their heels.
So really, really crazy. Elaborate dresses.
I just really think that's a really cool local thing to do and it gets you out in front of people you wouldn't normally talk to.
And I Just, I think Lubbock has a great opportunity to do something like that with the quirkiness of our town. And, yeah, I just think it'd be cool if we could institute something like that.
[00:41:05] Taylor McAlpine: Love it. And then now that we're almost back to the dealership, how can people stay in touch with you and get involved with Miller Waldron?
[00:41:11] Brock Waldrop: Yeah, absolutely. So we're really active on social media. Our Instagram and Facebook are probably our largest, but we also have a TikTok. Our TikToks where we post more fun stuff. We'd love for you to see it and get to know our salespeople a little better. And our wonderful social media coordinator, Tammy. She's great and just does some really goofy stuff, but if you can't get a hold of us there, you can always message us on the website or just stop in one of our stores and say hi. So we'd love to see it.
[00:41:41] Taylor McAlpine: Love it. And where can they find you?
[00:41:43] Brock Waldrop: Find me?
Well, I'm not gonna give out my personal number, but you can find me on Facebook,
[00:41:52] Taylor McAlpine: so. But yeah, love it. And here we are.
So thank you for joining the In Good Company podcast.
[00:41:59] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely. This has been fun.
[00:42:02] Taylor McAlpine: About saying you said your first podcast. Correct?
[00:42:04] Brock Waldrop: First podcast. Exciting. My. Me and my sister were tied one for one. I got to get more podcasts under my belt. So that way I'm like, not that
[00:42:12] Taylor McAlpine: it's a competition, but it's a competition.
[00:42:14] Brock Waldrop: Yeah. Now it is. Yeah. Now that I've been on one, we'll
[00:42:17] Taylor McAlpine: see what we can do.
[00:42:18] Brock Waldrop: Absolutely.
[00:42:18] Taylor McAlpine: Thanks for joining.
[00:42:19] Brock Waldrop: It was great.
