On Air: The Art of Industrial Real Estate — Episode 23
Host: All right, all right, all right — hello listeners, welcome to episode 23 of On Air: The Art of Industrial Real Estate with Team Jensen. Today we have a couple more brothers with us, Jack and Bobby Caffrey. Thank you for coming on with us, guys.
Jack: Yeah, you bet. Thank you guys for having us.
Bobby: Yeah, absolutely.
Host: So I’ll introduce you guys and let you take it from there — introduce yourselves a little bit and tell your background. Jack, you’re the CFO with RX Savings Solutions here in town. And Bob, you’re the president of Chop Air. So two kind of different worlds, you might say, but still really curious to dive into each industry you’re in today. Jack, we’ll let the older brother go first — jump into your background with RX Savings Solutions and what led you there.
Jack: Yeah, so I’ll actually answer that in reverse a little bit. I was born and raised in Kansas City, went to Rockhurst, then Mizzou, graduated from Mizzou with an accounting degree, went to EY for a few years. Left EY for a small company that a buddy and his dad had started that sells and rents semi-truck trailers. They had a really messy instance of QuickBooks, employees literally still punching paper time cards, no health insurance — so I went in and got them health insurance, got them on a cloud-based timekeeping system, modernized their HR processes, moved them off QuickBooks onto the industry standard. Took about nine months, and after that I said, “You guys don’t need a full-time CPA — you have 15 employees.” So I decided to go do something else.
Backing up a bit — while I was at EY, my main client was Blue KC, so I was familiar with the health insurance industry. When I was transitioning out of the trailer rental company, I was having coffee and breakfast with various board members and CFOs around Kansas City who were part of other companies, some startups. One of them was RX Savings Solutions, and I met Frank Bidar, who was CFO at the time, at a Starbucks on College. We hit it off pretty fast. He liked that I had experience at Blue KC — Blue KC was a client and investor of theirs — and my work there was really relevant. He was also on QuickBooks and wanted off it, so a lot of what I’d done at US Trailer was relevant too. Two days later I had a job offer.
I went in as a financial analyst. The first two or three years were about getting the accounting and financial forecasting processes more formalized. Frank had done a good job closing the books every month himself, but we built out more standard operating procedures. When I started, we closed the books at about $5 million in revenue that year — fast forward to now, we’re doing over 100. That was seven years ago, so it’s been crazy growth. We were building the plan as we were flying, implementing new software and processes to keep up with the business.
About two or three years in, I got tapped on the shoulder — Frank said we’re looking at who’s going to own this company next, and he needed my help going through diligence. That’s what kicked off my growth accelerating — talking to executives and higher-ups at private equity firms about the company, and ultimately we sold the business in 2022.
Host: Very cool. Bob, you want to go ahead?
Bobby: Yeah, so everything’s the same as Jack until we got to Mizzou — I went down the mechanical engineering path instead of accounting or finance, which is what everyone else in my family did. Minored in business and mathematics. I’ve always been very entrepreneurial, but when I got out of school I went to work for a company called Ruskin, a Johnson Controls company that manufactures dampers and louvers. Honestly, I didn’t love fluid dynamics in college — probably had more to do with my professors and my drive to pay attention — but I ended up really enjoying the work. I’m a grinder, so I worked hard.
A year in, my boss tapped me on the shoulder — he was going to run a company out of Atlanta and needed to hire 12 sales managers. Asked if I wanted to be one, selling a company called Big Ass Fans. I thought he just meant large ceiling fans. He gave me options; I picked Miami, signed the paperwork. Funny enough, we arrived the week the Chiefs were playing in the Super Bowl. I was with my mom and said I didn’t know if I liked it there, so we drove up to Fort Lauderdale, which felt more like my jam.
I moved there, started selling — this was right as COVID was ramping up, but leads kept coming in, five to fifteen a day, driving around southeast Florida. Every sale gave me instant gratification, and customers were happy when the fans worked. I saw a huge trajectory for these big industrial ceiling fans — most of these spaces aren’t air conditioned because it’s not economical.
I got into the installation side with an electrical contractor named Bob Kik, who did all the work for Costco. He taught me everything — how to read a panel, how much amperage is available, what circuit breaker you need, whether to run MC cable or rigid conduit, and how to price it. I saw a real flaw in the install practice at Big Ass Fans — sales would just log a “one fan” or “four fan” install in Salesforce, lose track of it, and the contractor would show up and say the price didn’t cover the cable run, leading to change orders.
Bob Kik told me to look at Amatic Fans — rebranded as Epic Fans — which he installed in every Costco: easier to install, better value, cheaper, same or better warranties, and just as effective. I reached out to a few people, including my boss, asking what we used to sell before Big Ass converted to a third-party sales model. He said Amatic fans were great, but Big Ass wanted 60 million a year in sales, so Amatic switched. Big Ass was doing that model nationwide. Then there was another company, Greenheck, that had just come out with their own fan and was a powerhouse in the industry. I asked some Greenheck reps the same thing, and they said the same — Amatic fans used to be great.
A light bulb went off: Epic Fans out of Dallas must have lost their nationwide distribution overnight, first from Greenheck’s new fan, then from Big Ass going to the third-party model. I rolled the dice — I was 24 — flying around the country, telling people I was meeting with a marketing company in Dallas just to get in the door. I ended up getting all of Florida while still living in Fort Lauderdale, then told them I was from Kansas City, the mecca of mechanical engineers — Burns & McDonnell, Henderson, Black & Veatch, plus a bunch of smaller engineering firms — and asked for that territory too. They said yes, which confirmed they’d really lost their distribution.
Everything started going well. I moved back to Kansas City, brought my good friend Greg Vaughn from Mizzou to run Florida from Tampa, and ran things out of Kansas City myself. Got a warehouse in the West Bottoms, hired a guy in Houston, which has been a great market. We’ve been expanding our line card — jumped into heating, which has become a big focus of mine, including the technical knowledge, because that’s what sells in this industry. We’ve been in business four years and three months now, so I guess I’m an HVAC guy at this point.
Host: Very cool. Well, your companies are doing very different things, and I know you’re two of four brothers all in professions that somewhat tie together. Has it been helpful, having your brother’s expertise, as you’ve been building your own business?
Bobby: You have the shittiest accounting system ever — actually, you don’t even have one. Let me set you up with a computer in my basement, and you don’t come up until you’ve gone through all your bank statements and figured it out. But no, it’s been extremely helpful having Jack, and my brother Chris, who’s your good friend, Kurt, in that finance role of the business.
Jack: Yeah, I think Bobby’s a founder — he oversees the whole company, sees all the operations, knows how the whole thing works. Being in finance, especially heading a finance department, you get the luxury of seeing how all the cogs move within a business, where the money flows. So if Bobby has an HR issue, I can advise on that; an operational issue, I can help with that too. Even though we’re in different roles and different kinds of companies, we both have that broad view of a business, so we can leverage each other. It’s actually been pretty complementary. At the end of the day, business is business, and people are people, and people run businesses.
Host: To backtrack a bit — you mentioned you’re good friends with your brother Chris, and the four of you were all at Mizzou together.
Jack: I don’t think all four of us overlapped at the exact same time, but we definitely all overlapped, which was a lot of fun.
Host: It’s nice having some Tigers on the podcast — we’ve had a few Jayhawks too. Do you have any “crack it open” questions today? We’re running a little early, so we’re not actually cracking beers, but in an effort for our sponsor, Martin City, we’d still like to crack it open today.
Jack: I have to be honest — I know Chris, but I don’t know the fourth brother, Tim.
Bobby: Tim — I just picked him up from the airport last night. He’s the only one who wasn’t a Beta.
Host: All right, good deal. I think he was a class behind you.
Jack: I’ve been working with little brother here for two, two and a half years now, and it’s been humbling learning the business from Kurt — we’ve had a lot of fun, but we’ve also identified how differently we operate in a lot of ways, which has been a good yin to the yang. There are some good synergies, but there’s also still competition between the brothers.
Host: I was curious if you guys had a bit of that growing up — who was always needling somebody, and who tried to weather the situation. I always like to say I was the least confrontational one, but there was always a lot of contention.
Jack: Chris definitely was the one who weathered everything. I’d say me and Bobby are definitely alphas, and Tim to some extent. Chris might be the only one who’s not a true alpha.
Bobby: He’ll be listening. I’m sure he’ll tune in.
Host: Well, I know your dad’s with Country Club Bank — how has that banking relationship been helpful for you guys in your careers?
Jack: It’s been highly beneficial. When I was moving on from US Trailer, going to meet with CFOs and board members around town, it was really my dad opening up his Rolodex, saying, “Here’s my network of people, go email them,” and he’d make more intros from there. I would not have found RX Savings without him — those people give you the time of day because of your dad’s reputation and connection. Even at US Trailer, when they wanted a new debt facility, Country Club wasn’t quite the right fit for them, but my dad knew the banker in town who handled that kind of business. I think they still have a credit facility with that bank today. When I went to RX Savings, they were with a different bank and needed a new line of credit — we brought Country Club in, and it was pretty simple. That relationship has definitely been good for me.
Host: That’s cool. Bob, do you bank with Country Club?
Bobby: No, I’m not with Country Club — he makes sure family and business stay separate. Jack’s situation was different because he didn’t own the company, he worked for it. For me, I think it was 2021 when I got my first SBA loan with a bank — I’ll leave their name out of it. We kept growing, and I said, “I need a line of credit, access to capital to buy inventory.” They said all they do is 7(a) loans. So I said, fine, I’ll go work with this other bank — but they said I’d need the lien release from the first bank before I could even start. So I was totally handcuffed: I didn’t have the money to pay off the loan, but I couldn’t work with another bank until I did.
Sure enough, David Caffrey said, “Go talk to this guy, this guy, this guy — I’ll warm it up.” That started going really well, and I’d also made some of my own relationships with bankers. When it came to deal time, he said, “Now go do this, go do this,” and wrote up the loan memo for me. I delivered that to the bank, and they said, “Wow, you just did what would normally be our next step when someone applies for a loan.”
Host: That’s awesome — sounds like he’s that kind of consultant on a pro bono basis.
Bobby: Frankly, I think it’s why I live in Kansas City. Timmy and Chris, who live in Chicago, are doing great on their own, but when I was thinking about whether to move back home or look for jobs elsewhere, I thought, why would I? I have this great network in Kansas City, my dad has this incredible network — why would I go somewhere and build a network from scratch? The foundation’s already laid here.
Host: Absolutely, that’s kind of how I felt too — especially coming to work at K Hunter with my dad. Part of me was defensive early on, not wanting people to think it was all handed to me. But you learn that anyone in that role who really wants to build on it still has to go do it themselves. It sounds like you guys have both leveraged that relationship — and his reputation in town — really well. It’s a wise thing to take advantage of the opportunity and network you have. And Kansas City’s been trending up for the last decade, which has helped at the same time.
Bobby: It’s been a lot of positive reasons to be here — a fruitful place to live over the last 10, 15 years. Wasn’t exactly like that when we were little kids.
Jack: As I drained my bank account getting the business started, I figured, well, they don’t have a bed in Florida — I could always go sleep in Kansas City, roof over my head. Never lived here before, so if this thing goes south, I have a little fallback plan.
Host: Well, I learned something Kurt probably already knew — I ran into your dad Dave at a development day last week, and he told me the Caffrey family history goes way back to the Union Station Massacre, and that affected your family directly with your great-grandfather.
Bobby: Yeah, that’s right. Our grandfather was only six at the time, I think Dave said.
Host: That’s wild — it’s funny to think about the spiderweb of it. It sounds like your grandfather moved out of Kansas City for a while, but he and your grandmother came back from Omaha — that’s the railroad, right, that’s what got us here.
Bobby: Yeah, that’s how long ago it was. My great-grandfather was murdered in the Union Station Massacre. There’s still a plaque out front of the station with his name on it, and there’s a conference room named after him at the local FBI headquarters. I went to that — really cool. The FBI had us out for the grand opening of their new building by the airport.
Some context: my great-grandfather, Special Agent Raymond J. Caffrey, was transporting Pretty Boy Floyd — or Frank Nash — from Union Station to Leavenworth prison when his gang showed up, and it turned into a firefight. If you look up the Union Station Massacre, there’s a famous picture with a bullet hole blown out of the glass of a car — that was our great-grandfather driving that car. We got to go before the ribbon cutting, they showed us the whole thing, the conference room named after him, and we sat with Director Christopher Wray for about 30 minutes.
The thing he said was most monumental about the whole story: FBI agents weren’t allowed to carry guns at the time, and after he was killed, that’s what led to agents carrying guns. I asked him, “That happened 91 years ago — why are we still sitting here?” He said, “Because we want everyone who serves at the FBI to know that if anything happens to you, we’ll take care of your family for the rest of your life.” Which was incredible to hear.
Jack: Pretty sure the Bureau basically raised my grandfather and took care of his mom.
Host: It’s wild to think, too, knowing how many Caffreys are running around Kansas City — your grandfather came back to Kansas City and had eight sons, all boys. Thank God he was six years old when that happened and not older, or we wouldn’t be sitting here — the butterfly effect, if you will.
Jack: It’s a really cool story. I had no idea.
Bobby: I remember Chris mentioning it back in college at one point, and I was like — you feel like you read about that in a textbook, and then to hear it directly ties to your family is wild.
Host: Just to go down a different path — talking about Chris and Tim, do you guys ever think you’ll pull them back to town and create a monopoly of Caffrey-run companies here?
Jack: We have talked about starting a firm called Caffrey, Caffrey, Caffrey, and Caffrey — we’ve even talked about bringing in one of our cousins and adding a fifth Caffrey. But Timmy’s deepening his roots in Chicago, so I’m not sure that happens. And Chris is about to get married to a St. Louis girl, so we hope to bring him back to the right side of the state at some point. Time will tell — brewing some things.
Host: I hope you keep brewing them. I always thought Chris would end up in Kansas City, but with the future St. Louis bride, it might be tough to win that battle.
Jack: You never know — I won it, my wife’s from St. Louis. But the success rate there isn’t always great. Tim and Molly were planning on it too, but Molly’s family is from Winona, Minnesota, which is close to Chicago — she’s got a brother and family there — and Tim got a really awesome opportunity to take over a guy’s book of business in commercial mortgage there. As you guys know in sales, once you build a book of business, you don’t just walk away, especially in a big market like Chicago. So they bought a house there, and they’re having a baby soon — that’s why they’re in town, for a baby shower.
Chris, on the other hand, loves his company, RT Specialty, but they don’t have a location in St. Louis, which is odd since it’s their home market. I think they’re having fun in Chicago right now — if you visit them, it’s a good place to visit, and they’ve built a good community there. Mizzou exported a lot of talent to Chicago, especially around the time we were there, and a lot of those good folks are still up there.
Host: I feel like there might even be more Mizzou folks in Chicago than St. Louis. Our sister and her husband lived there for seven years — it’s kind of the big city of the Midwest. So we touched on the last decade Kansas City’s been on — what do you guys think about the horizon over the next several years, as we get into the World Cup and, weird as it sounds, approach 2030?
Bobby: How could you not feel optimistic about Casey right now? The new airport is so awesome — I think that doesn’t get talked about enough, it’s been huge for us. Then you look at what’s going on along the river — for the longest time we were the only city not utilizing our riverfront, and now it’s exploding. In the West Bottoms, we haven’t even seen what’s happening there yet — once the Rock Island Bridge opens up, there are so many cool pockets of the city emerging. I think what really caps it off is the I-70 cap — that’s going to be so cool. You just saw the streetcar line extension announced, and once the cap’s built they have plans on both sides of it. It’s becoming a really cool downtown. Then you’ve got the Plaza taking new ownership, which needed to happen, and I’m hearing they’re having the right conversations to bring in a good anchor store and really make it that local flavor again.
Host: Are you distributing all over the country at Chop Air?
Bobby: Yeah, Texas, Florida a lot — we’ve got some national accounts, but Kansas City’s our biggest market. I’m hearing from our customers and mechanical contractors that things are starting to slow down a bit right now, but I think we’ll see it pick back up as interest rates come down — though if you start penciling projects now, you won’t see the impact for two years. Right now I’m mainly hearing about build-to-suit lease activity, and we’re fortunate to be getting some of that action. I drive down the highway and think, “That’s a good spot for industrial” — sure enough, it turns out to be.
Host: No doubt it’ll keep growing. I think the revitalization of the Plaza is critical — seems to be moving in the right direction — and then obviously the talk of the town is where the baseball stadium is going to go.
Bobby: Hopefully somewhere in the plane of view I have in front of me right now. I think the key to continuing the economic and development success in Kansas City is continuing to have successful businesses grow here. We run a bit of a risk with Cerner moving on from the area, but there are a lot of people who learned how to start and operate a business at Cerner that have already fueled the startup tech industry in Kansas City. RX was part of that — our founder Mike Ray didn’t work at Cerner, he was a pharmacist, but we’ve brought in a ton of talent at all levels of the organization from Cerner along the way. Another company in town that’s done well, Payit, I believe was started by a Cerner alum. As long as that startup industry keeps going and those startups mature into legitimate companies, the city will continue to thrive.
Host: That’s cool, I hadn’t heard that. I lived at One Light for a couple years, probably six or seven years ago, and felt like everybody I ran into around our age was working for Cerner. So that was a major announcement — not shocking that their leadership decided to go to Nashville, but that’s an interesting point I hadn’t heard anyone vocalize — that there’s still all that young talent from the Cerner world with expertise and ideas that can start something new and stay rooted here.
Jack: That keeps a lot of the Cerner talent here.
Host: You guys know this from construction and engineering too — a lot of these engineering firms in Kansas City exist because people once worked at Burns & McDonnell or Henderson. Cerner’s the same kind of anchor, and people leave to start competitive businesses or build on it. What’s cool, too, on a similar subject — a lot of the design firms here in Kansas City, even smaller ones, are actually experts handling projects all over the country, which I think is really cool. Kansas City punches above its weight for that.
Bobby: No, absolutely.
Host: I think the reach Kansas City has is one of the things that isn’t a secret anymore. When we were growing up, it felt like a secret how great Kansas City was. Now I think everyone in the country knows about us, and it’s not just because of Patrick Mahomes and Bobby Witt Jr. — it’s because of what we have going on business-wise. Cerner, or Oracle, leaving is going to change the dynamic, but I’m optimistic that the next group will step into that.
Bobby: Honestly, it’s really a Missouri thing — Kansas City is engineering, St. Louis is construction, huge GCs out of there. On a nationwide scale, it’s almost always a Missouri company involved one way or another.
Host: Leaning into sports a little bit — I think it was 10 years ago today that the Royals clinched their first playoff berth since 1985. A win today, if they can play in Atlanta — I’m not sure the Royals’ magic number is one, but I watched anywhere from 60 to 70 games this year. It was part of my job — get off work, maybe go to the gym, throw the game on while making food. One of the best parts about baseball when your team is good is that it’s on every day; one of the worst parts when your team is bad is that you have to play every day too.
Jack: To your point, I love having it on in the background — you can do other things, unlike football where you have to be locked in. But then it’s like, oh, Salvador Perez, let’s go — though he went on a slump. Ever since Vinnie… I mean, we were a few games from having the best record in MLB, right there a game back from the Guardians, and then all of a sudden Benny got injured and we had the worst offense in all of MLB. I saw a stat that Salvy had one RBI in his last 39 at-bats. I’m like, what — he’s always been lightning. But I’m happy to see it — I knew this was going to happen, with Salvy in that locker room and Bobby Witt, they weren’t going to let the season go to waste.
Bobby: The Royals have an interesting stat — I think they’re the only team in baseball where the last three times they’ve gone to the playoffs, they’ve gone to the World Series. Not sure if they’ll keep that up, of course they have to make the playoffs first, and there are a lot of good teams out there, but we’ll see.
Host: It is funny, now that you say that — there are parallels to previous years, like, “Oh, we made the World Series that year, so that makes sense.”
Bobby: It’s happening because that’s all we do — boom or bust. That’s kind of Kansas City in general right now — we’re all in.
Jack: Tim had a crazy stat — our pitchers went 25 scoreless innings, but our hitters went 27 scoreless innings.
Host: That’s brutal. Fingers crossed they figure it out — and the Chiefs certainly have a long way to go, but it feels kind of like last season, hopefully the luck doesn’t run out.
Bobby: It’s off to the right start.
Host: Winning cures all. Well, I don’t want to keep you guys too long — anything else with Chop Air or RX Savings Solutions looking toward the future? Anything people should keep an eye out for, or positions you might be looking to fill?
Bobby: We’re actually starting a tenant improvement to expand into 2,600 square feet in our current warehouse — taking on more inventory. One thing people overlook is that we do a lot of pro bono engineering — we’ll calculate ventilation needs, heat loss, for those warehouse spaces. We’re actually building a heat loss calculator that’ll be on our website in about two to three weeks, so engineers and contractors can just put in their building information and we’ll help with selections, layouts, and even write up the scope of work you’d give to subcontractors to bid the project.
Host: You guys have a website?
Bobby: Yeah, chopair.com.
Host: Simple and sweet. Nothing specific to my own business, but I’d just encourage people in or from Kansas City to keep your own talent here — invest your sweat equity in this town, and if you’re fortunate enough to have wealth, invest it here too. Continue to grow businesses here — that fuels the flywheel for the success of the whole city. We’ve seen that over the last 10 years, and it’s critical that it continues.
Host: Absolutely, for sure. Well guys, appreciate you coming on — it was fun having another set of brothers on. Until next time.
Jack / Bobby: Thanks, thanks, Jensen.
