We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Patrick Bolanos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Patrick , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One thing we always find fascinating is how differently entrepreneurs think about revenue growth and cost reductions – both can be powerful ways to improve profitability. What do you spend more of your time and energy on?

When we began seeing the increase in demand after the pandemic, we focused all of our energy on growth. This meant getting a new facility, hiring more people, investing in more machinery etc. It was important to sustain the growth. Then it shifted, the economy slowed, interest rates increased, financing our clients became more difficult. Our energy shifted to cutting costs. So we have been in 2 different economic scenarios less than 24 months apart.

This question is important because knowing what we know now, I would 1000% always focus on costs without sacrificing quality or service first and then figure out if there are growth opportunities.

This does not mean that we would eliminate growth all together but we would allocate our energy to controlling our cost, increasing our profits to fund a sustainable level of growth.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Im originally from Nicaragua, I had been in Corporate world for decades until december of 2017. The restaurant I was a CFO of decided I wasn’t a good fit and was let go a week before Christmas. This launched me into my entrepreneurial world. I was given an opportunity to sell concession trailers for a company, making commission only, this led us to see an opportunity in the marketplace and start building our own. I raised some capital from friends and family and was able to start Trailer King Builders with my partners. We started one trailer at a time in the front yard of my business partners house.

We help people start or grow their mobile food business. Everyone that walks through our door dreams of being a business owner, more importantly a food truck owner. They are investing their hard earned money to start a business with a high rate of failure, so we focus a lot of our energy in makings sure our startup customers have access to resources that will help them succeed in this cut throat industry.

Every client gets access to our food truck startup course, which includes educational content from how to navigate the permit process but also how to read financial statement and run social media ads.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

As a former CFO of 2 diiferent restuarant groups I was responsible for helping the businesses raise capital for their projects. This meant documenting the stratergies to raise money, either through conventional lending or raising capital from private investors.

When I found myself without a job I decided to take control of my life and part of that was using the knowledge I gained to help other people’s businesses to help my own.

I prepared a pitch deck, financials, etc and was able to raise $75K to help fund our new business.

We paid off the investors in 2 years and now have a multimillion a year business.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

It was may-june 2020. We were about to get shut down. It was the middle of a work day and the following day every business was instructed to shut down and keep everybody home,

In that moment I dropped everything I was doing and drove to the health department. We drove there and were able to get designated as an essential business.

We were helping food truck owners open and operate during a time where everything was getting shut down.

We were committed to staying open and we did.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://trailerkingbiulders.com
• Instagram: trailerkingbuilders, patrickbolanoshtx
• Youtube: trailer king builders