00:28  Hey, welcome to another episode of the Growth and Skilling Podcast. Today, for any of you parents out there, this is the episode for you. Norbert, tell us who you are and what do you do?

00:38 Thank you, Todd. Thank you for having us on the podcast. My name is Norbert Sygdziak. I'm the co-founder and CEO of RideAlong. We are a managed services student transportation company really trying to resolve the transportation issues for students in a much safer way of carpooling. We launched the business in 2019. Ride Along started in 2019. The company really was founded out of a personal need. My fiance and I have two kids. Back then, our four-year-old, our youngest, was lost on a yellow school bus. It was an unfortunate incident.

01:15 Shut up.

01:16 Yeah, it was an unfortunate incident when we just could not find him for over four hours. And what became really scary for us as parents was the fact that, that the school that had no idea which bus he was on too. And what really opened our eyes more is the fact that

01:33 That's insane.

01:34 Yeah, the fact that as we go to work and we place our kids on the yellow bus, there's this assumption of they're safe to go to school, but the reality is that schools are under budgeted, under funded, under staffed, and they really have no visibility where the kids are once they go to school. So we decided to do something about it.

01:51 That's scary.

01:52 Yeah, it was a very scary thing. And we decided to kind of make a change for our own kids and launched a company, initially what meant to be for our own community. We talked to a lot of families and realized everybody had similar issues with the system. And we launched initially, what was a small carpool of six, seven students in Jersey City, New Jersey. And within the first few days, the word just started spreading and our company and our system just started to grow from there.

02:24 That is so incredible. So you're telling me that your younger of your two kids ends up getting lost on the school bus. I can't imagine what the older sibling was thinking. Like that had to be traumatic for the whole family.

02:38 It was very traumatic for the whole family. You know, I think what makes it worse is that as both of us working parents in New York City, we rushed back home because our, you know, childcare tells us that, you know, that our son isn't there and we're getting no answers from school. And that four hour period was probably one of the longest four hours that I've ever had in my life. And thankfully the bus driver noticed an extra student on the bus and brought him back to school. Nevertheless, you know, my child comes out of the bus and he's scared. He's crying and he doesn't want to get on the bus, you know, the next day. So we had to find a solution for us. 

03:12  Ever again.

03:13 Yeah.

03:15 Oh my gosh, and especially at that age, it's like, I mean, they're just getting used to going to school, everything is so new, and separation anxiety is already there. That is a horrible experience.

03:32 That is, yep.

03:33 So, I mean, obviously you probably thought like, okay, Uber works, and some of these other rideshares work, but not really catered for kids. What was going through your mind when you thought, how do I solve this problem?

03:43 Well, you know, that's exactly right. You know, Uber, Lyft, and some of the rideshare companies out there are great and they've changed the way transportation works in this country and the access that we have throughout the world, but it doesn't work for kids. You know, you're not allowed to put your child in there and you don't know who's picking up your child every single day. So really the option that was out there for families is, do I hire my own private driver? But the reality is that majority of families in this country can't afford that extra cost, right? So, we started to dig deeper and say, well, what's the next step? Well, what if we hired a private driver, but shared the carpool with four or five other kids in the car, you know, that go to the same school. And next thing you know, we realized it's actually a model that works. And we started to grow it from there.

04:28 And I gotta think that a lot of your recruiting of drivers are likely other parents, right?

04:35 Well, 100%. So our entire model operates on you get the same driver picking up your kids Monday through Friday. So it gives a comfort level to your families and kids to know who is there. It's the same carpool of kids going to school and from school Monday through Friday. The same driver. Our drivers are fully vetted, background checked, drug screened, and we do it multiple times each year. In addition to that. We provide the technology that allows the parents to live GPS their kids while they're in the vehicle.

05:08 Awesome.

05:09  So you can have an app that you can track them on the way to and from school. We took our own challenges when we couldn't find our son for four hours and apply them to the business to say, what would a parent want to see and how would this system help schools in general?

05:24  That's so cool. And so this happened when? 18? 2018? 2019? Somewhere there?

05:31 So this happened in the May, my son got lost in May of 2019. We launched the business September of 2019. So,

05:41 Love it. Oh my gosh. Dude, congratulations. I mean, honestly, that's a, it's a great story. Sad story, but what a relief you're giving parents because I mean, I rode the yellow school bus to school and you know, and to at least through elementary school. And so I know what that feeling is like as a kid. I've got, I've only got seven kids, you know, and they rode the school bus for a lot of years. But I mean, this is something very, very different and something very comfortable. I gotta believe, apparent adoption of this is pretty easy to get, right? I mean, this is a pretty easy sale, I would guess.

06:22 Absolutely, you know, the sale for us is the easy part. You know, our revenue really comes from multi-sources. So, you know, the parent is the one, you know, revenue stream. The other, you know, solution that we provided to schools, you know, across the country is that we actually partner with schools, 

06:42  That's awesome.

06:43 Schools who used to use yellow busing systems. Just realize that, you know, maybe putting 30 kids into a bus is not the right way anymore, maybe because someone in that bus has to be there for an hour and a half to two hours and that's a very long trip. So we're able to come in with our, you know, with the model and we're able to change the, you know, the system for schools. We work with public school districts, private schools throughout the country. We also work with major sports teams, you know, we've partnered with Major League Soccer and USL Soccer and we help provide youth, you know. You know, youth transportation to those teams who are training young players to become pros. A lot of these players are from different countries, from different states. They don't have their parents with them. They are placed into a home where they live. So we provide the stability of having that transportation to them from training through Friday.

07:35 Norbert, I love this business. Again, it's called RideAlong. For those listening, it's ridealongnow.com, and this is a very, very awesome model. I honestly am so excited to hear about this. Tell us about the growth now. Now that we know what your business does and who you're serving, what's happened in the last three years? And what's happening this year? I guess I should ask.

07:59 Yeah, so absolutely, absolutely. So our growth, our demand for our model, for our service is just, is continued to flow in nonstop. You know, we went from being the company that operated in our own, you know, community to start operating in new states pretty much 90 days after we launched the company. We to this day have not really spent any money on advertising or marketing. It's an old word of mouth. We currently have over 11,000 clients on our wait list all over the country who are waiting for us to start service with them. So the sale for us is the very easy part. The harder part about scaling your business in general is understanding how you grow and how you scale, but also staying in touch with the community that you've been working with that you are part of. We seem to, you know, we tend to look at ourselves as helping much more than just the students. We hire our drivers, you know, locally from the communities where we drive the students. You know, our drivers are W2, you know, employees with us. They are part-time, but they can earn, yeah, but they can earn a salary of anywhere from 25 to $40 per hour, depending, you know, how many students they can drive each day. So being able to provide those type of jobs, to the communities where we do business is also helps to grow that side of the community. And we have stay home moms and dads who've been out of the workforce for a very long time, who are looking to make an extra $500 each week. We've been able to provide them with a, exactly. And they've been driving kids in carpools for generations anyway. So it's nothing that they're not used to. They just have a chance to earn extra money.

11:25 I think that's such a great thing, because even, you know, I've seen the school bus signs around our neighborhood, you know, they're offering like 12, 15 hour, you know what I mean? To drive our kids to and from school, which is insane. And what you're offering is such a dramatic increase. It increases the quality of the driver, I would think, as well as provides an opportunity for the parents of these kids to say, hey, you know what, I've been driving kids to this school for 10 years. I got no problem driving other kids to school and making some extra money. That's awesome.

11:56 That's, you know, that is absolutely right. And Todd, I'll tell you that the first thing we should probably talk about is, you know, we should accept the fact that student transportation is actual crisis right now in this, you know, since COVID, over 75% of school districts across the country are short on yellow bus drivers. That problem is not going away anytime soon due to the fact that yellow bus drivers are not compensating what they should be. You know, a lot of that market.

12:24 Well, and the cost to maintain those buses.

12:27 Absolutely.

12:28 The buses are, I mean, those buses are typically 15, 20 years old anyway, and they're all breaking down all the time. Not a great business model the way.

12:40 Absolutely. And what is actually happening is that schools are realizing as their budget cuts are made every single year that transportation is the first thing that takes a hit. So what is actually happening is a lot of school districts throughout the country are notifying parents that they will not be providing busing anymore, especially to students who live in certain zones, areas, etc. That's a problem because you can find yourself with hundreds of thousands of parents over a single night who just find out that they have no service starting September or August. Now they have to find out how to get their kids to and back from school. This was probably much easier as we were coming out of COVID, but things have changed.

13:23 Well, it's an interesting... Yeah, I was gonna say it's an int- Well, it's an interesting thing to see with schools, as well as cities. You know, we've found that just in our, we're in a very small kind of rural area outside of Park City, Utah. And we saw the city of Park City completely eliminate all of their bus system, because it was so expensive to maintain, and move towards a rideshare that they actually sponsor. And so my teenagers are doing rideshares all over the city.all over the town because they can. It's better than the bus system. It's crazy. So,

13:57 You know, that's exactly right. And, you know, I think it's time to kind of realize and we've noticed that and we're pushing that, you know, with our service that just like we innovate everything else, student, you know, transportation has to be one of those things. I think there's a lot of talk in the market about bringing buses that are cleaner and newer. But for us, the way that we view it is we have a smarter mouse trap, but someone starts to, you know, be, you know, in that bus to drive. And that's not gonna change anytime soon.

14:22 Right, right. Well, Norbert, this is, again, awesome. What are the highlights have you seen in your growth? I mean, you've exponentially, you said within 90 days, you're already going into other cities, other states. What are you projecting over the next year or two? What kind of growth do you see happening with your business and is it hard? Is it awesome or is it hard? Well, what's going on?

14:50  I think it is all of the above. It's awesome, it's hard and it's scary. I think when you start, what we're projecting is we're going to go from being a $2.2 million company to now providing service to our over 11,000 clients that are on our wait list, which will take us in the 10 million plus revenue, if not more.

15:11 Woo! Love it!

15:14 The problem always becomes for a company that scales and that scales fast is you have to do it in a smart way. Too many companies are driven by just revenue, but when you start being driven only by revenue, you take shortcuts. And we are in a service that provides the service to the most, yeah, kids. We take a look at that business side as we have to be smart about every market that we get into. We have to continue being smart with how we scale. So there is that war of, okay, I have the clients, let's make it happen quick to, okay, let's slow down and let's make sure that we do it smart. And as I mentioned earlier, one of the hardest thing in that growth process is to stay connected to the communities that you're scaling your business through. We are there to provide them the jobs. We are there to talk to them. You know, we are there to be part of the process for them. We need to make sure they feel that no matter whether we're a hundred thousand dollar company, two million dollar company or a hundred million dollar company. And I think that's what gets lost too many times in businesses who grow too fast. So we are trying to do it in a very smart way so that our parents are part of that process.

16:35 I love it. Norbert, what have you found to be your biggest challenge so far in this growth journey? Because, you know, obviously someone who's working in a law firm downtown New York doesn't always think of the challenges of a small business and a growing small business. What have been some of the biggest surprises you've hit?

16:55  You know, there's actually a couple of challenges. I mean, the first biggest challenge is that when you're kind of creating a new lane in a, you know, a business that there is the education part of things that, you know, we have for such a long time since 1902, I believe is when the yellow, the kind of the yellow busing system has been, you know, introduced. Uh, but it's been the same system since then.

17:16  Is that rice? It's 1902?

17:17 Yeah, yeah. You know, it's been, I think it's somewhere, you know, around that time. I could roll, but I believe the first system was set up in 1902 by Scoob. And, you know, what becomes really hard is, you know, for so many years, for 120 years, we've been running the same system. The buses got newer, some of them did, you know, but the system is the same. So we have to, we are not here to say that yellow buses don't do the job anymore, but we believe that schools and parents need another option layer of doing so. So there is an educational issue where you have to educate everyone of, hey, there are better options than what you used to have. The second kind of a challenge that growing as fast as we're growing has is, you've got to put together the right team in the right places throughout the country in order to meet that service that's there. So, we kind of, we live in a world right now where I think companies want people to come back to work. We want to stay home a bit more and there's this kind of a battle back and forth and businesses have to change the way they operate a bit because of that. So as we are scaling up, finding the right talent and finding the right kind of system of giving everyone a fair chance to be able to have kind of best of both worlds, that could be challenging sometimes. But yeah.

18:45 I love it. Yeah, I just love it. I love your mission, I love what you're doing, I love the effect it's having on the communities. This is a great story. This is a great story that needs to be shared everywhere. And for those of you listening, honestly, you've gotta think about what you've just heard, what you're listening to right now, and that is a need arose, a solution was there, it was not there, and so they created, I mean, every good business starts with solving a good problem. And this is a great problem to try and fix. And for you is a very personal problem, gives you more passion. Every parent gets behind this because what's more important to a parent than their kids? Hopefully nothing.

19:30 Absolutely, Todd. And I think too many, you know, as we take a look at the business market in general and new businesses starting up, there's been this rush of trying to invent a new service or, you know, a way of doing it. But we sometimes have to focus and look at services that's been in place for hundreds of years that need reinvention because they might not work the same way. Our, you know, our ecosystems are changing and the needs that we have are changing. And we think that you know, our students who are going to be the next, you know, presidents and the next, you know, musks and the next, you know, Steve Jobs, we need to make sure they have a system in place where they can thrive. And by providing smaller card pools for us, for students, you know, we hear from teachers every day. They get to school more, you know, more focused. You know, there's less chaos, you know, as there is, you know, on the bus. They tend to do better on tests. So,

20:25 There's a lot of there's a lot of drama and teasing and I mean bowling going on in the buses I how many how many dashcam videos have we seen about school buses having fights break out and the whole bus is in a frenzy You know what? I mean, it's crazy

20:38 Absolutely. And look, and as our cities are changing, our infrastructure is changing, these buses can go everywhere. So if there is really bad traffic on a highway or on a main street, these buses are not able to take a turn right or left and try to go through that. They have to stay on that road. That causes our kids to be home an hour and a half, two hours after school is done. That's a very long time. So we think there is a big solution to actually using data to understand how you go from school home and providing the best solution for the kids.

21:18 Norbert, fantastic, fantastic story. I hope your kids are just loving watching you grow this business too. It's gotta be pretty exciting for the whole family to see that one problem is now turning into our family business and other, it's affecting other people around them. This is fantastic. What, who's kinda been there in your corner? Have you had a mentor, someone who's been able to guide you through this whole process?

21:39 Yeah, so, you know, my mentor is actually, you know, three people. It's my fiance, my partner, and my kids, to be honest with you, because entering kind of a market where we knew nothing about, it took, you know, education and getting to know how things operate and being part of the system. And I think having the team at home behind you who supports you and says, these are very long days, but we enjoy what we're doing is key. I gather a lot of advice from people in the industry every single day, but the people that motivate me every single day to do better are the people at home in your house. And that's why we think it's so important that our service is really family-based and we understand what the families need.

22:28 Fantastic. I love it. I love this story. This is a great episode, Norbert. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us and sharing this with our audience. And for those listening, leave some comments below. I know that he'd love to hear from you. I know that you're probably wondering when is it coming to my town? That's a very valid question to ask. And please ask it, because where there's demand, I'm guessing Ride Along is coming, Ride Along.

22:55 Yeah. We will go. Yeah. In our, in our current model, we need 10 business days to be set up in your city or town. So just let us know where you are and we will be.

23:04 Oh my gosh. Amazing, amazing. Dude, I love it and thank you so much for taking the time. For those that are listening and wanna know where to find it, it is ridealongnow.com. So check it out. I'll leave links in the comments below and I look forward to catching up with you soon. Thanks so much, Norbert.

23:20 Todd, thank you so much for having us. And you know, this is an amazing podcast that you do and we're proud to be part of that. Thank you everyone.