Southwest Flavor Ep. 177 - Randal Funch, Wesley Perry, Phillip Williams

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

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Ron Arenas (0:13)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Tuesday to all of you. We have a fantastic show for you today.

Bunch of great guests and even a co-host. And he's kind of great.

Ron Kirk (0:25)

Sometimes. Well, today's Tuesday. So yeah, I could be OK today. You can be OK.

Just OK.

Ron Arenas (0:31)

Put you in the OK category.

Ron Kirk (0:33)

I appreciate that.

Ron Arenas (0:34)

How are you doing, Ron?

Ron Kirk (0:35)

I am doing well.

Ron Arenas (0:36)

I'm glad that you're here.

Ron Kirk (0:39)

Yeah. September 11th was a little emotional for me. Right.

So I'm glad it's over. I'm glad it's done. You know, we did our thing. So it's time to move on to next year. All right.

Ron Arenas (0:49)

So sounds good. Well, hey, we have a great guest this first half an hour.

Ron Kirk (0:53)

Okay.

Ron Arenas (0:54)

Good friend of mine, Randal Funch.

Randal Funch (0:55)

How you guys doing?

Ron Arenas (0:56)

Well, how you doing?

Randal Funch (0:58)

You know, I'm doing all right.

Ron Kirk (0:59)

Yeah.

Randal Funch (0:59)

Fun morning so far.

Ron Kirk (1:01)

How was your weekend?

Randal Funch (1:02)

It was nice. I got to see some rain in Tucson for the first time, which is really weird.

SPEAKER_5 (1:06)

I've been living here for a few years.

Randal Funch (1:07)

And every time it rains, I'm either asleep and I come outside and I never get to see it except on TikTok. So rain was an Internet thing for me out here.

Ron Kirk (1:16)

But I finally got to see- You didn't believe Israel? Yeah.

Randal Funch (1:18)

I saw a flooding road on my way here today. So I was like, wow. And it was closed also. But I was like, huh, it actually happens. I thought it was just something AI did online.

Ron Kirk (1:27)

So yeah. We get it every once in a blue moon.

Randal Funch (1:30)

Yeah. You got to get the right time. And I just found out you have to leave the house at 7 a.m. before you see the rain.

Ron Kirk (1:35)

There you go.

Randal Funch (1:36)

Otherwise, I guess it dries up before noon on leave.

Ron Kirk (1:39)

Yeah, pretty much. It does.

Ron Arenas (1:43)

So you have a bunch of stuff going on, but we're looking at talking a little bit about what you do for trips and travel.

Randal Funch (1:52)

Of course, yeah. So I wanted to look at, well, when I started my original business, I said, how can I add value? And one of them was to be able to provide travel concierge services for people.

And so I myself, I'm big on trips as opposed to Christmas and things like that. So instead of those things, I make memories and travel places with my son. Everyone's like, how can we do that same thing? Isn't it expensive? And so I literally started my travel agency with the idea of showing people that traveling is accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy folks. So I look for ways to do weekend getaways on a budget. So I'll ask someone, hey, what's your availability?

And then let's just build a trip around it. It may not be, we're going to go to Disney next week. It might be a guy I talked to a couple of days ago, we're going to go to Bozeman, Montana. And he's like, what's there? And it's like, well, there's a go-kart track and a dive bar. Otherwise, let me be jealous. So he's like, well, how do you know that? It's because I actually went there for two days because it was a cheap flight I found. And so, you know, yeah. So it's always nice when I could tell someone, hey, I just found a trip for my son and I for the weekend for $70 round trip.

Ron Kirk (2:59)

Wow.

Randal Funch (2:59)

And then I just got a cheap Airbnb and a rental car. And, you know, for 300 bucks, two of us are going somewhere to see something we may not ever see just hanging out in Tucson, for example.

Ron Kirk (3:08)

Yeah, yeah.

Ron Arenas (3:09)

And all the different climates, and you actually get to see like trees and water and different things like that.

Randal Funch (3:15)

And we love food, obviously. I like to eat, too.