We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cody Wagner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Cody, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
I believe “success” is a relative term. Each individual needs to define what success means in their own lives. Many on the business side equate success to financial wealth. I believe there must be a balance of happiness and fulfillment in what you do to truly feel successful. That balance has really defined my time as an Entrepreneur.
Creating and operating my own business has been one of the most difficult challenges of my life. Our naive societal view of business ownership is that of a path to independence and great personal wealth. The reality is that very, very few companies started from nothing become tremendous financial successes. There are a variety of statistics about failure of private companies, but most seem to agree that at the least 2/3rds close within 10 years of starting. My views on success have developed over time with that in mind. In all honesty, the financial benefits of my beer truck company have not been worth the time invested into it. I could have utilized my Chemical Engineering degree in the workforce and made significantly more per hour than what I’ve made with this business. And that is despite many “wins” in the development of my operation. The costs of doing business (taxes, licenses, insurance, etc.) are difficult to overcome with limited revenue, even when you make every effort to control costs.
What I have developed is happiness that goes along with my work. Wouldn’t everyone be happy just serving beer on the weekends? It almost sounds like a dream job, right? The reality is that tremendously more goes into it, especially with trying to be successful in the mobile bartending industry. Loading trucks, unpacking trucks, hauling hundreds of full kegs and thousands of pounds of ice over the course of the year, constantly cleaning, maintaining vehicles, running my own bookkeeping and website and social media…this list goes on. At first, much of these behind-the-scenes workload was overwhelming, especially while also working another job and having a full family at home. But the biggest thing for me is that I’ve learned to embrace and appreciate the labor side of it (and I’ve improved the efficiency of it all). Our lives are all a series of relative feelings. The grunt labor and constant organization going on in my mind have really made me appreciate the times where I do just get to pour beer, when an event goes really well, when I have a summer day at home with my kids without those responsibilities, times when I’ve had the ability to utilize my business to give back to nonprofits, and other aspect of my life where I am compensated for work that is not as physically exhausting. At the end of the day, my success as an Entrepreneur is more about the satisfaction I attain with my work than the end-of-the-year profitability. And I recognize how lucky I am to be able to have that outlook with my business.
Cody, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Cody Wagner, and I am the owner of a mobile bartending/beer truck business called The Tap Wagon out of Reno, Nevada. The reality is that my business is a small fraction of my full story. I graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with both a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering and immediately jumped into full-time employment in the private sector manufacturing foam insulation. I had a good experience with that first career-type of job, but after 6 years decided it was time for a new pursuit.
In 2017, I had recently married and helped develop a level of financial flexibility (thanks in large part to my wife) to be able to start thinking about other passions. A friend and I had kicked around the idea of starting a brewery, but the initial capital investment was prohibitive. Instead, an opportunity presented itself to purchase a “beer truck” (think food truck but for adult drinking). A couple that we knew through some friends ended up selling me their business, The Tap Wagon, which included a 1958 Chevy Panel Truck equipped with 3 beer taps on the side. And I was off (at least I thought)! I crafted a business plan that included a few partners and had revenue projections that would make enough to supplement stepping away from my job. I was determined that this was my future, and that it was something I had passion for and was going to enjoy and make a ton of money.
But that ended up being a short-lived dream. Reality quickly struck that this truck was NOT magically going to be able to get into all these events I had found that I thought needed a beer truck. And pouring beer out of a mobile unit was not nearly as straight-forward as it seemed. It took about a year to do some significant upgrades on the truck, find some events to get the business going, and figure out how to move forward. In that time, I found a flexible part-time job with a nonprofit called the Nevada Community Health Worker Association, which in retrospect was a huge godsend for me. I am still employed with that organization and am now the Program Director, which is a lot but has also been the perfect job with the perfect amount of flexibility to complement my business.
Once my truck was up and running, business was still hard to come by. I wasn’t losing money, but there wasn’t enough business to really justify the time I spent on it. And I welcomed my first child in 2019, so that added some additional time constraints and uncertainty about what the business future looked like. Then COVID hit, and everything seemed to shut down in the event/beer truck space. I tried to get a little creative in doing some home deliveries for beer, which helped but didn’t make enough to significantly move the needle. And there were a couple pandemic-relief small business grants which significantly helped keep my business afloat (thanks City of Reno and State of Nevada!).
Coming out of the pandemic, things changed. People were anxious to get back out to events and spend money. A few small events I had been doing suddenly became big days in beer sales. And I was overloaded with calls about private events. Things were so good that I invested with a group to buy a big tailgating trailer and another truck – a 1965 Dodge that I started working to turn into the second Tap Wagon. I had also created some great brewery partners in the Reno area and was enthusiastic about serving their products – several have remained valuable parts of my business still today.
Right around July 2023, things seemed to turn again. I still haven’t found an exact reason. Some combination of the economy slowing, more competitors launching beer trucks in the area, and people having less enthusiasm to come out for events quickly changed that upward trajectory. Very quickly, business levels came back down to the level of one beer truck. And license and insurance costs continued to climb, some of which doubled between the time I started my business to now.
My story now is that of accepting what my business is in my life. I don’t think it will ever turn into a full-time job. I have two young kids at home now, so it is nice to not be away from them every weekend throughout the summer. I’ve been able to filter down my beer service calendar to the more worthwhile events, make my time much more efficient. I have also been able to continue some volunteer work for the Fernley Community Foundation, Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows, Lyon County CASA, and City of Fernley Planning Commission, as well as helping to coach the varsity boys basketball program at Fernley High School. My biggest breakthrough as an Entrepreneur has been to appreciate the slow down in business and what it has meant for the other aspects of my life. But I balance that with still having tremendous motivation with my business, always searching for the next great opportunity for our beer truck!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
As business owners, I think we tend to take things personally. My example is that one of the best days of sales I did every year over the summer suddenly decided they had another beer truck to use and did not want us back. I still am unsure if it was a decision related to my business operations or not. I still make it a habit to ask about the event every year, even though we have been rejected now for three straight years. In the service industry, things like that can really eat at you, especially when you don’t know if it’s something that you could have controlled.
As any successful Entrepreneur knows, you can’t let losses of business like that control your outlook. Everyone loses key business at some point. I’ve concentrated on strengthening the relationships with key events and hosts that I currently do have. And we are always looking for new opportunities, which have presented themselves in the last few years. Resilience and persistence are absolutely key to operating small businesses.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
Although I don’t have an official cofounder or partner, I do have many friends who have been instrumental in building my business. These connections have all come from two key parts of my life: my college fraternity and current volunteer work. Having a strong network is so instrumental in building small business. When I started, I had two friends who helped me immensely with operations, marketing, and legal work, another who helped me navigate insurance policies, and two others who invited me to a networking group to greatly assisted in building initial business – all of these were fraternity brothers who I shared my college experience with. As things have developed with business, whenever I need help with an event, I have a group of incredibly reliable friends who I have met through my various volunteer activities in my hometown of Fernley who are always available to come help.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thetapwagon.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetapwagon/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheTapWagon
