The Happy Hustle Podcast

Hike & Pod! 23 years of Building a Business using this 1 Concept with Founder/CEO of M&M Quality Solutions, Brian McMaster

September 18, 2026·17 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

There's a version of success that looks amazing on paper and feels completely empty on the inside. I know because I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who chased the number first and the meaning second, and most of them will tell you they got it backwards. This episode is a gut check on that exact thing, recorded on one of our favorite hiking pods out here in Montana.In this episode of The Happy Hustle Podcast, I hike &amp; pod with Brian McMasters, founder of M&amp;M Quality Solutions, a third party logistics company headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri with operations in Salt Lake City and York, Pennsylvania. Brian has been running M&amp;M Quality Solutions for 23 years and has been part of our Happy Hustle community for three of them. He's built his business on a simple, unfashionable idea, that real people beat bots every single time, and that the fastest way to grow a company is to actually care about the people inside it. He's also a husband, a man of deep faith, and someone who's about to release a book on the lessons that took him decades to learn the hard way.What makes this one matter is how honest Brian gets about the cost of chasing money for money's sake. He's not some guru talking theory. He's a guy who built a real logistics company from the ground up, hit the wall that almost every entrepreneur hits, and came out the other side with a totally different definition of what winning actually looks like. If you've ever felt like the hustle was starting to hollow you out instead of fill you up, this conversation is for you.A few things stood out to me that I don't want you to miss.Persistence beats talent every time. Brian says the number one reason he's still standing after 23 years is that he never quit, plain and simple. He calls himself a survivor, and when you remember that most businesses don't even make it past year one, that word means something.Your business should reflect what you actually care about. M&amp;M Quality Solutions started as a pick, pack, and ship operation, and Brian is now steering it toward health and wellness products because that's where his own passion lives. He's not interested in being another faceless 3PL with hidden fees and confusing invoices. He wants his team to care about what's inside the box, not just get it out the door.You cannot build a real business alone. Brian talks about how lonely entrepreneurship gets without a community around you, people who've actually done the work and not just read about it. That's a huge reason he's stuck with Happy Hustle for three years running.Giving beats getting, in business and in love. His advice on relationships hit hard. Don't go in looking for what you can get, go in looking for what you can give, and it comes back to you tenfold. He said the same thing basically applies to how he leads his team.The biggest regret is almost always the same one. Brian was honest that his one regret is spending too many years chasing the money instead of investing that time in his people. Once he flipped that, everything else started to make sense.We also get into his rapid fire round, which is always one of my favorite parts of these hikes. Steak for the food, A Few Good Men for the movie, Think and Grow Rich for the book, and squats for the workout, which he says he used to hate and now genuinely loves. We talk about his morning routine of fifteen to twenty minutes in silence with God before the day even starts, why he trusts a real advisor over just checking boxes with an accountant, and the working title of his upcoming book, which traces back to lessons from his uncle in some very muddy backyards.This conversation reminded me why I love these hiking pods so much. You get the real version of someone when their legs are burning and their guard is down, and Brian gave us all of it. Faith, family, failure, and the kind of hard won wisdom you can only get by staying in the game for over two decades.If you're ready to rethink what you're actually chasing and why, go listen to the full episode. Brian's story is proof that the businesses built on people, not just profit, are the ones that last. When I asked him for his parting wisdom, he kept it simple. Pray, get a brotherhood, get out in nature, and keep hustlin'.Go listen to the full conversation now at https://happyhustle.com/podcast.Connect with Brianhttps://www.facebook.com/brian.mcmaster.50https://www.instagram.com/mmqualitysolutionshttps://www.linkedin.com/company/m-&amp;-m-quality-solutions/<a href="https://twitter.com/mmqualsolutions"

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