Tour Bus CEO: "I Bought 12 Buses In COVID. Now Beyoncé's Crew Rides With Us" | Ep. 451 with Rich Thomson Founder of Dreamliner Luxury Coaches

Rich Thomson (0:00)

I put pretty much everything we had in our life and savings into this business. We have the buses that take the people, we have the trucks that take the stages, we have the trucks that take the rest of the production equipment.

Daniel (0:10)

Rich Thomson went from working his parents' yogurt shop to owning the biggest entertainment transportation company in the industry. Over 225 coaches, 70 plus trucks, 600 employees, Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Drake, and he built it in 6 years.

What made you think that this was going to be a good idea?

Rich Thomson (0:32)

Because everyone's afraid to spend, invest, and think the world's going to end. That just leaves opportunity out there for someone willing to invest. The real way you prove yourself is what do you do in my...

Daniel (0:46)

Rich, you went from as a kid helping your parents in a yogurt shop to then working with names such as Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, Drake, and IShowSpeed. What's the feeling you get when I say that?

Rich Thomson (1:02)

I mean, it's pretty cool. It's pretty fun. It's pretty cool.

Daniel (1:05)

Did you ever think that you would buy a business in Covid time, which is wild. I mean, that's only less than six years ago, to now growing it to what it is today?

Rich Thomson (1:17)

No. I mean, it's all been... I've been very fortunate and very blessed and I had no idea something like this would happen. I was actually focused in a whole other direction, starting a whole other company when I first learned of the industry. And I've just been, like I said, very blessed.

Daniel (1:32)

So the live entertainment business, I imagine, was almost completely shut down. What made you think that this was going to be a good idea?

Rich Thomson (1:40)

Well, I learned about the industry in 2019 when I looked at a company that needed some capital and my fund that I had started in 19 was an opportunity to invest and unfortunately I did not invest then.

But during Covid, I got an opportunity to buy 12 coaches and because I had spent a couple months doing diligence and learning about the industry in 2019, I was familiar with it. I really thought it was an interesting business, had a lot of kind of investment parameters that I thought were intriguing. And so to me, it was a large risk to buy 12 buses and spend that kind of money, but it was what I felt the world would start again. And I thought it would be a great kind of side hustle or investment to buy some buses and then just lease them out to the music industry.

Daniel (2:29)

Do you find that that's when you get the biggest opportunity is when the market is down, everyone thinks whatever it is, it might die or it might not come back, but you can come in and get a better deal?

Rich Thomson (2:43)

Yeah, I think that, I mean, that's where a lot of big businesses and huge opportunities are, right? Because everyone's afraid to spend, invest and think the world's going to end.

And that just leaves opportunity out there for someone willing to invest. Now, it's a game, it can be a gamble and it can take, it's a higher level of risk to take. But I've kind of lived most my life in the risk reward game. And so I looked at it as, yeah, high risk, but it could be very high reward. And it's turned out that way.

Daniel (3:12)

What type of due diligence did you have to do to really ensure that you were comfortable with this?

Rich Thomson (3:17)

Well, not a lot when I bought the buses, but I spent a good amount of time when we were looking to invest in a tour bus business back in 19 So we spent a lot of time with how the business works, supply demand, the manufacturers, competitors, and what the industry looked like. So I was pretty familiar with it. And it was definitely rare to have an opportunity to buy 12 of these things, because even if you could buy one or two, you need some to be able to actually run a business and start a tour. You need to actually have enough coaches to do that, and 12 made sense.

Daniel (3:53)

So you went from 12 to over 225, and now you have 70 plus trucks.

Talk to me about the scaling process. When did you realize, okay, we need to get more buses, and then we need to get into trucks. We need to diversify it among, obviously, different revenue streams.