Welcome to the Social Capital Podcast, where we dive into social relationships and how the investment you put into them establishes trust, reciprocity, and value within your network and community.
Our host, Lori Highby, will connect with top professionals and dive into their best networking stories and techniques to share with you!
Robert Cruess is an original Founder and the President of ZeroNox. Mr. Cruess is an Entrepreneur and Businessman, having obtained a Business degree from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2009, and also holds a Real Estate License and Mortgage License. Mr. Cruess’ experience and expertise include starting and running several businesses, sales, product development, real estate, loans, youth outreach, and community growth. Mr. Cruess’ Business contributions include patents for products he has designed, starting multiple business’, and doing Multi-Million Dollars in Real Estate transactions through his Real Estate Investment Companies: Rico Property Group, Invia Investments, and HCS Investments. Mr. Cruess was born in Spokane, Washington but has lived most of his life in Porterville, California and the San Joaquin Valley, is married and enjoys time with his wife and 5 children, volunteering in the local community, and is an avid sports fan.
Meet Robert
Robert Cruess is an original Founder and the President of ZeroNox. Mr. Cruess is an Entrepreneur and Businessman, having obtained a Business degree from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2009, and also holds a Real Estate License and Mortgage License. Mr. Cruess’ experience and expertise include starting and running several businesses, sales, product development, real estate, loans, youth outreach, and community growth. Mr. Cruess’ Business contributions include patents for products he has designed, starting multiple business’, and doing Multi-Million Dollars in Real Estate transactions through his Real Estate Investment Companies: Rico Property Group, Invia Investments, and HCS Investments. Mr. Cruess was born in Spokane, Washington but has lived most of his life in Porterville, California and the San Joaquin Valley, is married and enjoys time with his wife and 5 children, volunteering in the local community, and is an avid sports fan.
What is ZeroNox’s Mission?
The mission of ZeroNox is to empower a clean, higher-performing and innovative future without compromise. Everyone’s for clean technology and sustainability, but our mission is a lot more than that. It’s a more holistic approach to sustainability because most of the time when people refer to sustainability, they’re just talking about the environmental impact. The holistic approach to true sustainability considers the performance and the economics and so our mission envelops all those into a true ecosystem of sustainability
How is ZeroNox different than other EV-type companies?
We’ve created this platform for clean technology to come to market. We’re not just specifically focused on electric vehicles. Although that’s a huge focus of ours, it’s not our only focus. When when we evaluate a project or a product it certainly isn’t about getting it cleaner, but it’s also about the performance, and the cost benefit. So that’s a horizontal market that we have, but there’s a lot of other layers to it. And so we’ve taken EVs and we’ve added in, for instance, the micro grids, which is a big part of EVs. A lot of people don’t realize that if you get an electric vehicle, a lot of people think, “Well now my carbon footprint on for that is zero,” and that’s not the case. You’ve got to go one step further and look at where are you getting the electricity to power that EV. If that grid is just as dirty as an internal combustion engine, then you haven’t accomplished anything if you’re looking at it from an environmental impact standpoint. So we have multiple vertical markets to take all this into account. So we are in EVs, but we’re also in micro grids, we’re also in these other clean innovative technologies and so I think that’s where we really differ from a lot of other EV type of companies out there is that our focus is more broad, it’s more about this platform and bringing whatever innovative technologies are available and not being so specific, because there’s not a one size fits all. We want to be a player worldwide nd when you talk about what the solution is going to be here in the US versus in Africa, or Europe, it’s going to be different and so when you’re coming up with the solutions and the innovations, you have to have a broader approach in and that’s what we’ve done and why we’re different.
What other products is ZeroNox developing?
We started out with what we call proof of concept. So we’ve been building out a electric power train for off highway vehicles. That’s like your forklifts and utility vehicles and heavy equipment and such. And so when we initially started the company, we’re in the San Joaquin Valley, which is a huge agricultural Center. So that’s when we started the company, it was to help the agricultural community and those off road vehicles that they use, and be able to bring them clean technology that could perform at the same level that they were used to with an internal combustion engine. Now we’re developing these e-kits where we can go to an OEM and and electrify their vehicles. So we’ve brought to market multiple products. For utility vehicles, we have the ion brand which is the most upgraded battery you can get on the market right now. We’re also coming out with a lot of forklifts and at the same time, we’re developing the next generation of technology. So we’re working on a proprietary motor, we’re working on upgrades to the battery systems themselves utilizing graphene, for instance, to increase the longevity of the battery. We have a pretty robust r&d department and then on top of that, it’s not just electric vehicles, we’re also working on technology to assist anywhere that we can make cleaner, higher performing economical technology. So we’re really excited to be able to bring that type of what I would call “bridging technology” as we move to full electrification, especially here in the United States, right? I mean, certainly you can see from here in California, especially the electrification movement is coming in, it’s close. But until we get a larger range from those electric vehicles, there’s going to be some bridge technologies that are cleaner and still higher performing, like we’re talking about. And so we’re working on both those aspects. We’re working on those bridge technologies to lower emissions and increase performance while at the same time developing the next generation of electric powertrain and that’s what we believe the future is going to look like.
Can you share with our listeners what of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you’ve had?
So my background is in real estate and entrepreneurship and my partner is a Harvard law grad. So we certainly don’t have the backgrounds that maybe you would expect for an EV type of company. And I think that was kind of a blessing in a way because we really knew what we didn’t know and it became that important to build a team around us. One thing that we both had, especially here in the San Joaquin Valley was relationships and that networking ability is how we built this company, and the idea for ZeroNox was to assist the agriculture community here. To start the company, we invited a bunch of business contacts in the ag community to a local restaurant one evening and had a slide presentation, and pitched them this idea for ZeroNox and that night, we raised $750,000, from that group to start this company!
How do you stay in front of and best nurture this community and this network that you’ve established?
I love conversation and talking with others, but there’s different ways of staying in touch and showing what we have going on. So in these business relationships, we are constantly in communication with them. Obviously we want to get what’s best for us, but at the same time, you need to take into account that there’s also somebody else’s business and livelihood on the line. That’s the approach that we’ve tried to take with our partners so that they know that they matter and that we want them to be successful. It’s the whole Win-Win approach and I think in business, you can tell your partners who take that stance, and to me, the way you can tell is, when some difficulty happens, those partners who are willing to kind of give up something just to help you out, knowing that the relationship is more than that one time event. I know we’ve done that for multiple partners, we’ve had partners do that for us multiple times and that kind of level of generosity in the moment kind of goes to show me that these guys are about the long term relationship, and it makes you trust them more because they’re not just in it for the one sale or the one deal. They’re looking at the bigger picture and those are the relationships that you want to keep and hold on to because those are extremely valuable.
What additional advice would you offer to business professionals really looking to grow their network?
So we’re very involved in the community and that is really important to me because when people see you in the community, your involvement in the community, it just shows that you care. I think the easiest way to break that barrier is just to create long term relationships are community service type of events because they are wonderful ways of networking and finding those types of people. A lot of the relationships that I’ve been able to get over the years have been through that.
If you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career?
I think I would have told my 20 year old self to go and take those chances. I had these ideas and as an entrepreneur, you need to have the courage to just to test things out and to fail. I think if I could have instilled more courage to get moving on some of the ideas that I had, I think that’s what I would share with myself.
Do you have any final word or advice to our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network?
I guess one quote that I really like is, “Don’t let what you want now get in the way of what you want most.” There’s gonna be a lot of sacrifices, you’re gonna have to maybe give up things that that you want right away for the bigger picture type of thing, and it’s totally worth it. If you can stay self disciplined, if you can hold off for the big game, I totally believe it’s a much more fulfilled life, I think it’s totally worth it. So self discipline, courage, that’s another big one, don’t don’t be afraid to take risks. We only get one life and so make it worthwhile.