Young business owner seeks to better the world

MOSES LAKE — “You’ll never work harder for less money than when you work for yourself.”

Such is the wisdom of Rod Richeson, 52, the owner of Blue Sky Aviation, as he scrapes paint off a metal pipe.

He is working on a series of repairs on an old 1970 Cessna Skyhawk 172 to get the airplane flightworthy again. The plane sits, kind of in pieces, in the hangar at the Moses Lake Municipal Airport that he shares with his son-in-law Tyler Hamberg.

“We’re doing some upgrades while we’ve got it in the shop,” Richeson said.

Bigger tires. A new fork for the front landing gear. The cowling sits to one side, exposing the plane’s four-cylinder engine. The seats have both been pulled out, and the inside is bare.

“We’ve got a list of things from our inspector we’ve got to address in order to make it airworthy again,” he said. “Then we’ll put it all back together and send it out the door.”

Richeson handles the insides of the planes — the engine, the gauges, the stuff that makes it go — and his son-in-law Hamberg, who is new to Moses Lake, has decided to focus on the outside.

In fact, Hamberg just had a very public ribbon-cutting ceremony for Tyfy Detail, and he is offering a deal on a deep interior and exterior cleaning for an SUV, van or truck. (Hamberg will detail your airplane, but you need to call for a quote.) It’s “The Uncle Brad,” and for every full detail job he does, he will donate 10% to the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation. Multiple sclerosis is caused by the wearing away of nerve coverings in the brain and spinal cord, making it difficult for nerves to transmit signals.

“We call it The Uncle Brad service because my uncle Brad suffered from MS and passed away from the disease,” Hamberg said. “And we used to do the MS walk in Spokane all the time when I was growing up, and it just kind of felt like something that was close to home.”

Hamberg, 30, said he grew up in the Air Force and moved around quite a bit. He learned business by running a Zerorez home cleaning franchise in Spokane and Eugene, Oregon. He was laid off from that job as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Between that and marrying Richeson’s attorney daughter Jordan, Hamberg said he decided to start his own business in Moses Lake rather than look for a job.

“I don’t honestly think there would have been a better time for me to start a business,” Hamberg said. “If I hadn’t been laid off, I would be playing it safe. I’d have found another job. But it gave me the opportunity to set a business plan and go after it instead of really kind of worrying about everything.”

It helps, Hamberg said, that his wife works as a lawyer.

“It’s worked out for us and given me the ability to break ground and move forward, and I don’t think I would have been able to do so otherwise,” he said.

While business has been slow, Hamberg said it’s largely because it’s winter and “it’s the slow season for any business.” Things have been going “surprisingly well,” despite COVID-19 and the cold.

Something he brings to Tyfy Detail — the company name comes from a nickname Tyler said he had as a child — is a commitment to help others as they make their way through the world of business and commerce. Managing and hiring people at Zerorez in Eugene involved a lot of learning what his employees wanted to achieve in life and how he could help them.

“When I got the opportunity to be the leader and help my employees do that, to become successful, it just kind of stuck with me,” he said. “I want to have an outlet, a way that I can help people move in the right direction.”

“Even right now, all the profits go back into the business. I’m not in the business to become rich. My end goal really is to be able to help other people,” he said.

He doesn’t have a good answer as to why he wants to do this, except, Hamberg said, he has received a lot of help himself along the way.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].