welcome to a scrap life a podcast solely focus on the hustlers Grinders operators and business owners who live and breathe the scrap metal industry every day we are the original recyclers no suits required just guts and hard work here is your host Brett Eckhart all right first of all it’s uh it’s a lot easier for me to sit behind my phone and my keyboard and just type my thoughts right then actually get up and stand up and tell you what I’m really thinking but uh it’s just a comfort level thing but I’m gonna give it a whirl and see what we can do so my name is Brett Eckhart um I own United Metals Recycling I’m based out of Idaho I got uh Jake bronstein here with me to talk about the capital component of uh my four pillars of growth and just to kind of shed a different perspective on Capital he went about it a different way than I did but I I think that the goal here is to bring you some sort of value something that you can take away for your own company and so I really like
his his route because it’s different than mine so I want him to just kind of touch on it and speak to it so thank you Jim Keith and recycling today and gie media for giving me this opportunity this is the yard I grew up in this picture was taken in 1983 I was born in 1981. this is the yard my dad grew up in and not a lot changed um in a matter as a matter of fact we actually used to be on this side of the street and we got kicked off because we couldn’t pay our bills so then my dad made a deal to move to that side of the street because the rent was cheaper so that’s kind of how it started for us I grew up in this yard I mean since I was a kid I come down that little Office right there is where I watched on my Saturday morning cartoons uh and as soon as I got old enough I started watching college football when I could kind of understand what was going on um our recycling center was the kind of long building eventually I moved
to the recycling center um I’ve done about every job in there I’ve ran the cutting torch I’ve ran the recycling center I bought aluminum cans um I didn’t know much different I thought that’s just how it was so as I got older and I was trying to figure out you know what my path was going to be and what I was going to do um I knew I wanted to grow the business but I just didn’t know what what exactly how I was going to do it luckily for me I had a my grandfather started in 72 and sixth grade education he got us to that point my dad graduated high school he went to work um worked the you know there isn’t there isn’t a liquid concrete out there other than between those two buildings he went to work trying to build it with his own his own vision I I I’m lucky enough to have a grandfather that had an iron will but not super educated to grow and to build I’m even more lucky that I had a dad that had ambition and was trying to figure out his own way
to build the business so in 1997 after three heart attacks my uh my dad was has had had enough with my grandfather and he was ready to do something different he’s like we need we need to get you out we need to we need to find a way to grow and at that time he had started building a relationship with a company called Schnitzer Steel in 1997 was a privately held company they won a publicly traded company so 1997 two guys from Schnitzer Terry glucoff and Jim Goodrich they made a deal with my dad they had just put a mega Shredder in Portland and they were trying to grow their footprint to grow their business they were they were setting up joint venture Partnerships throughout the Northwest so they came in and they made a deal with my dad they said okay we realize your family is in debt you have no money my dad didn’t make any money my grandpa couldn’t afford to pay him there was no way to really to retire him so they said what we’re going to do is we’re going to buy 50 of your business and you
guys are going to be the operating partner so they gave my dad 500 000 he gave it to my grandfather exited my grandfather then they gave him a million dollars 750 000 to buy a 700 ton Sierra shear and two hundred and fifty thousand to for cash flow to feed the share this is 1997. in 1998 if you guys know your scrap history the market took a all over itself that’s the truth so there I am my junior year of high school going into my senior year this summer I’m out there working in the cutting torch trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life and uh I asked my dad I’m like hey man how do I get one of those office jobs he just laughed at me he goes why don’t you go to college and I was like well you didn’t go to college and I and he’s like I don’t care he’s like go go do something so in my family nobody went to college not my Aunts Uncles cousins grandma grandpa nobody nobody ever stepped foot that’s what we did right there so I don’t know
if my dad told me to go to college because he wanted me to get out and go do something different or if he wanted me to go to college because he thought maybe we could that could help the cause I’ll never I need to ask him I’m gonna do a podcast one of these days I’m gonna ask him that question dad why’d you tell me to go to college so I went to college luckily I kind of caught a little bit of a growth spurt my sophomore year of high school and I was a decent football player I wasn’t very fast but I had a lot of heart so I went to college and uh then I went back to college and you see the rest to a certain extent go through my notes back to I made some notes to kind of go through this uh five years two colleges later I was on my on my Spring Breaks I would go to Schnitzer because that time we were partners with Schnitzer I’d go and do my internship I didn’t know what I was interning I just knew that if I could go
learn something from a bigger business than what I was doing that maybe I could take something back when I actually left I always knew I was coming back there was never a there was never a I didn’t think I was going to go be some geologist or anything like that I knew what I was going to do I was going to go back to the scrap business I just was lucky enough to get paid to play some football and try and get an education so that’s what I was doing I’ve had some successes I’ve had a lot of failures um I love this industry I love what I do um I’d like to think that I’ve had more wins and losses but I’ve I’ve racked up my fair share of losses as well so I’m just going to kind of talk through like my four pillars and what’s kind of worked for me and I at the end of the day I hope I’m trying to keep this session really you know kind of buttoned down so we can ask questions and we can hopefully learn from each other this is what’s worked for
me this is what I call like my basically my four pillars people marketing capital and speed and speed refers to decision making how fast can you make a decision and move forward I have a guy that works for me who’s a real big big part of my company and one day about a couple years he goes man Brett we don’t have a bread problem we have a peanut butter problem and I’m like what the are you talking about Jay and he goes well dude he’s like we have all these ideas we have these businesses but we just don’t have enough people to run them to actually come in and where he’s like we’re getting spread too thin your people are your peanut butter right that’s what allows you the ability to expand and make a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich if you’re spread too thin all you got is jelly and bread that’s a shitty sandwich but if you got the right amount the Right Mix that’s that’s the peanut butter that’s what that’s what it is and so when he said that to me I was like it took me a while
to get it figured out but I was like you’re right I was like we gotta get what what I thought was my strength I said we gotta get better at getting more good people more more people more peanut butter equals more sandwiches a better tasting sandwich so I talk about this working in your business versus working on your business so when I went to college as a freshman um I was in the dorms and I became really fast friends with the fellow linebacker we both played the same position he was from Idaho I was from Idaho we’re playing we were playing ball in Oregon and uh I started recruiting him to come back to the family business which you saw what the family business was right I didn’t know what I was recruiting him to do or what I was recruiting him for but I started recruiting him like hey man I got a business and I want help and I want to grow and we got a good opportunity and I think there’s something there and so he’s and we talked so for five years I was recruiting him in those five years
him and I used to road trip up to University of Idaho and and to meet his best friend which was uh his name is Brett Buxton I started recruiting him I didn’t know what I was recruiting him for I said hey I got this family business out in Idaho I think we got something here we could build long story short like the guy that was recruiting he’s now the president of United Metals I went to college with it took him a while he finally he ended up getting divorced in 09 he called me up said I need a job I said I got a job for you it took me a while but I finally got him the guy that we used to go visit up at University of Idaho he left the University of Idaho and he now is my commercial manager he was managing nurses like nurse schedules or something along them lines he now manages a commercial business for all of our companies I was thinking about starting a storage business a couple years ago I had a banker who was he was he was smart as a whip he’s a
CPA and I was like man I I got this storage business I’ve been hatching on I started recruiting him I’m like hey you know anything about storage no but you know math you know banking you know all the stuff and I said he said yeah and I said I got something for you my CPA I met him at a bar he went to high school with the guy I went to college with he went to high school with the guy that went to University of Idaho he was working at Micron doing like chip checking ships and I said dude you’re good at math like you’re pretty smart and I said I think I got something for you and I was I was in the office with my mom doing the county and I hated it like I’m just sitting there doing math doing numbers receivables payables and I was like dude I I can’t do this but you can said come on Nick Snyder right here I went to high school with him all the social media all the marketing that runs through runs through Nick but what nobody really talks about is Nick
started in the recycling center running cans for a year and he just wanted more we brought him up what was the next step we put a yard in Boise I said you want to run the yard he ran that yard what’s the next step like we started to do marketing we started to buy all those little things I’m like dude you can do you can be good at that like I don’t want to be out buying every day I can I’m willing to I did it for a long time but I don’t want to keep doing it he’s good at it I had an idea to start a tire recycling company the guy that started a tire recycling company with I met him on LinkedIn you guys don’t know why I pound LinkedIn so hard that’s why I started a whole business off a guy I met on LinkedIn and it’s not a terrible business really what it amounts to if I’m honest there’s a certain amount of ego that goes along with you being running your business and saying yeah I’m this is what I’m really good at right I think my superpower
is I don’t think I’m good at much but I know I can find somebody that’s really good at certain things if you’ve never read the book um ego is the enemy it’s written by a guy named Ryan holiday it’s a must read it’s probably a 200 Page book I mean that to me is like one of those next level like makes you think about things a little bit different it’s a great book I highly recommend it um if I always pay my favorite books and my favorite documentaries are watching people build something you know their careers their business or whatever and I always noticed that the guys that built the biggest businesses weren’t necessarily sitting there grinding them doing every day they were working on trying to find people that could help them build it I don’t want to necessarily run a dictatorship I want to run businesses where I can involve my friends people I like to drink beer with people that are just good humans and that we can do business together going through my notes but at the end of the day you have to lead by example you have to
get people to have low egos as well and say because they have to be willing to train more people that’s how you basically create more peanut butter I like to say right is if you have high ego individuals they will never train anybody because they don’t want someone to take their job they’re afraid somebody’s going to take their job but if you keep low low ego individuals they don’t care who gets the credit but they they love to win like we love to win like don’t ever get it twisted I want to win everything I do like I’m gonna bust my ass that’s that’s that’s the truth but there’s a difference between wanting to win and having a high ego and making sure that you get all the credit and you only win time is money you hear people say time is money a lot but at the end of the day you watch what they do throughout the day and it’s really time money how many people do you know that actually spend time doing something that they could either have somebody else help them with or they could be paying someone less
money to do because it’s free up their own time and I look time is my biggest thing money I can make more but I can oh I can’t only create so much time I I value time more than I create than I value money I’ll find more money but I can only find you can’t find more time so how many did people here like to gamble I like to gamble like I guess that’s the nature of being an entrepreneur I appreciate a good bet like sports bets whatever like I’m in not big bets but I like I enjoy it but I’m betting on people that’s probably my best bet I believe the ultimate bet on yourself and I was talking to my my friend Chad ellerbrock he’s the one that helped me clarify this the other day he talked me through it he’s like Brett you you bet on people and he’s like your willingness to bet on people is actually if you twist it around us that’s the ultimate bet on yourself you’re betting that if you can free up that amount of time that you’re smart enough or you can figure some
out to grow your business then you’re you’re your bet on people is actually a bet on yourself you’re saying I’m going to create some time I’m going to figure it out and I’m gonna create more opportunity because my eyes are going to be a little more open I’ll be able to see like from a say uh versus a 2000 foot level I’m gonna see from a 10 000 foot level I’m gonna see where the opportunities are or where my options are or like where my weaknesses are and I’m gonna fix it I’m gonna perfect it so thank you Chad like that really clarified that for me marketing early to bed early to rise work like hell and advertise if you haven’t watched the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary on Netflix the three-part man that’s the one it’s it’s worth the I don’t know three four hours of your time whatever it goes through you talk about a guy that busted his ass any people always like to talk about uh Arnold as a self-made man and he’ll sit there and tell you like I’m not a self-made man I’ve had so much help
along the way right but one thing Arnold was never afraid to do was work that’s why he became a Mr Olympia bodybuilder that’s why he became you know one of the best action heroes ever to exist that’s why he became a the governor of California right because he worked his ass off and he advertised he would talk about how hard he worked on the movies and then he was the only one of the only ever he said a lot of the actors would be like no I did the movie Let the company go advertise for me let them do that what they do except for Arnold didn’t do it that way what Arnold is he’s like I’m I’ll be front facing like I’m gonna do all the work and then I’m gonna go talk about all the work I did and I think that was his probably one of his greatest strengths so if I was to stand up here and basically tell you hey I’m third generation scrap you know my grandfather then my dad then me and then just let you fill in the blanks you’d be like oh that guy you
must be nice all this money to grow your business you went to college you must be like a frat kid you must have just the path must have been just nice for you right but if you start letting other people fill in the blanks for you let them fill in the gaps that’s where you go wrong it’s important for a person like me to tell you my story because I’m a lot more like you than you probably would think right and I’m probably maybe even had it rougher than some or easier than some but at the end of the day like it’s still me it’s still my story it’s still me being authentic to what I’m about that’s why I’m consistent and what I how I tell it don’t allow other people to fill in the blanks for your story don’t allow other people to tell it for you and don’t because one thing about this industry I will say is we’re good at sniffing one out like we deal with them all day long we deal with people trying to pull one over on us all day long whether you’re a meal buyer
or a scrap buyer or a consumer or seller whatever it is like we deal with sales people we deal with people trying to us all the time our radar for that is up here like I feel like at least for me I could sniff it out right so if you start bullshitting and you start trying to tell a story it ain’t your story you start trying to act some way that you’re not that to me feels like one of your bigger detriments because then whatever you say nobody will believe you anyways so then maybe when you start telling the truth they might be like yeah whatever that guy’s full of consistency consistency consistency in 2019 I started posting stuff on LinkedIn I didn’t know what I was doing but I knew I’m just I was going to commit to posting some stuff about my business and this is what I’m doing this is what I’m trying to do and here’s what I have going on that same year John Saco called me up and he said hey man I had bought a couple pieces of Sierra equipment he goes dude I I started this
podcast called pile of scrap I’d like you to be on it and I’d like for you to uh tell your story I think you have a good story and I was like dude I’m not doing a podcast I’m not doing anything with my picture my voice or anything I’m just not gonna do it and he’s like no dude come on I think you I think you would do I think you would be good at it and I was like ah I’m good keep in mind I grew up in a family where we didn’t we’d never took a family picture my whole life my dad refused to take a family picture because I said every time we take a family picture somebody dies and I was like all right so we never took a family picture ever until I had my first son and my grandpa was about to die my dad goes hey let’s take a family picture and I said you’re setting this up like you know he’s about to die like he goes well I know but it’s gonna be four generations so we took the family picture and my grandpa died
he’s like I told you that’s what happens but uh that’s a true story I mean at the end of the day like I decided I was like you know what what do I have to lose I’m just gonna do this I’m gonna do the podcast I’m gonna see what happens I’m gonna have the conversation I’m gonna tell my story and I’m just gonna put it out there right I decided the true fafo if you don’t know what that means it means around and find out see if it’s gonna work I don’t know but I I’m still the same guy that if you told me if I ate that pile of dog and it would grow my business I would say where’s the ketchup like I’m in like I was at that point like I’m trying to build something here right so he I do it 2019 comes around I’m posting regularly and all of a sudden I start to get Traction in my business all of a sudden like I talked to Brian our CFO today and I say I he goes I can tell you exactly when you started doing social media that
are consumers of our scrap tripled which means I sell to three times more people than I did in 2019. I don’t have that much more scrap I just have that many more people looking at the scrap I’m producing and I’m selling I talked to Tom who runs our HR who’s the president of United Metals I said he goes I know when he goes as soon as we started branding as soon as we started going hard at the marketing all of a sudden it came a little easier easier for us to find truck drivers because we were showing off our trucks we were showing off our equipment we were showing off our stuff the labor became a little easier for us to find not that we didn’t fight labor issues because we did but it we didn’t fight it as hard as other people fought it because we actually had a brand we had something we could show people like this is what we’re doing ask Nick Snyder ask him how it what’s happened since 2019 we can get into it later but ask him how much scrap we more scrap we buy since we
did Google reviews we found a Google AdWords hard and then we actually set up legitimately clean websites and doing the podcast we get more looks at out of town scrap out of town contractors coming in looking at our business and and giving us a shot not because we’re the biggest recycling company in Idaho I got a Shredder 20 miles away from my main non-ferrous yard they’re bigger than me but I guarantee you I get the first look I at least at the very least get a seat at the table which is all most people can ever ask it’s like I just want the opportunity to quote it just if I think if I get the opportunity to quote it I can prove out the customer service I can prove out the business model but I just need an opportunity to quote the scrap but I think I can win capital real quick I want to touch on this the what if you don’t I don’t want to leave that out you don’t have to do it I didn’t do it for a long time I probably missed the Instagram boat or the Twitter
boat or whatever that is right but I eventually caught on I started to figure it out you could not do it and you don’t have to do it that’s fine but I guarantee you this if your competitor down the road does it and they’re good at it like you guys know the market right now is tight right our supply is off let’s say 25 30 give or take like that’s just roughing it which means the market share is like this so your your which means you’re a market share if it comes down in sync is you’re buying less scrap the only way to keep your market share like this is to take somebody’s scrap that’s the only way you can you have to you have to widen out your market share within a shrinking Market so if you don’t that’s fine it only takes one person to do it and all of a sudden they’re going to take your market share which already is tight to begin with so I always say fafo it cuts both ways like fafo if you do then fafo if you don’t like maybe nothing happens maybe something does
capital I want to touch on this and I have bronzing here to go through it because he’s done it a little bit differently than me my biggest thing about capital is nobody likes to talk about it but I think in our business because of the crowd we have I mean we got we we have probably the most creative deal makers in the game buying scrap doing what we do is like a is is creativity I mean not every deal is a clean cut you’re not Walmart selling 99 pound bananas like it’s 99 Cents you’re not negotiating like that’s the deal like everything we do all day long is negotiated I mean we’re negotiating our door delivered this price that price you know I mean it it the list goes on right so it goes back to your ability when you’re trying to grow your business whether you’re a small business medium-sized business your ability to be creative and I’m going to walk you through on my end like the deals we’ve done like just give you like the Highlight version because I don’t care if you know how I did it I’d rather
you know how I did it and then hopefully you guys can say yeah that makes sense and I can do something do something with it I’m definitely not a CPA so everything I’ve ever done financially is either I’ve got good advice or I’ve just tried to get creative and find a way to do it capitalize on your network you want to know why I found LinkedIn so hard you want to know why I do social media so hard because I need the network I need to find people that can help me and help me understand and I want to find business owners that are tired of that are third generation if they don’t have someone to come in and step in and fill those shoes I want to find an auto salvage that’s struggling I want to find those things those opportunities is what I’m looking for your network is really what creates your net worth whether it’s somebody to talk to or your ability to build on the back side of it so in 1997 that’s when my dad partnered with Schnitzer Steel so I graduated in 04 my undergraduate came back in
06 I had bought a house in 2005. I went and refinanced my house the housing market was heating up I went and took out a hundred thousand dollar home equity line out of my house and I got the guy in Gooding Idaho to carry the note he was about to retire and I said hey I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars down on your yard and your equipment and you put me on a 10-year note and I want to buy your yard he was open six months a year I said I’m gonna open it up full time that was my first deal I didn’t know what I was doing and the banker probably was wondering why my kitchen didn’t get remodeled but I figured out a way to buy another yard now I’m up to three right 2010 I had an auto salvage across the street from me his son wasn’t very good at his job he ended up kind of getting himself in a position to where he was ready to retire I said hey I want to buy the auto salvage he had 2 000 ton on the ground I said
I’ll give you three hundred thousand dollars down but I need a month to come up with the 300 Grand he said all right so I we made the deal I went in and crushed 250 000 worth of cars out of the auto salvage probably some good that I could sold Parts off of but I needed 250 to match my 50 to get the 300 to get the down payment to get the deal done that’s how we bought that one Boise Idaho when we made the deal with Schnitzer I didn’t we didn’t we didn’t fold the property into the deal they didn’t they they were worried about the contamination or whatever of the properties they just wanted to do the the they want to do the JV based off of the business so I took those three properties that we had and used them to Leverage with Schnitzer to get the Boise facility bought so I’d have to come up with the cash capital to pay two million dollars for the property Twin Falls my banker they had a trucking company that was that went bankrupt in 2013. that was a rough Trucking Market he
said hey I got this building we want to get out from underneath it and I was like Hey I want to put a yard in Twin Falls I’ve been looking at that area for a while he goes I’ll sell you the building for the right deal and I said I’ll take it traditional financing La Grande Oregon I was buying cards from uh I used was a road buyer Nick did the job as well I was became really good friends with a guy that owned a company it was bnk Auto Salvage he said hey I had this guy coming to town he’s moving in he’s a scrap buyer he’s starting to take all my cars he kind of had a captive Market at the time and he said hey man I need help and I said how about this I said I’ll buy I’ll take all the debt off your books he was on an owner carry with the previous owner I said I’ll take the note and then I will bring a scale in and some equipment and we’ll start buying scrap we’ll put that out of business like we’ll go beat him at
his own game we did two years later that guy filed for bankruptcy and now we have the auto salvage and the recycling facility in Oregon 2016 was when we bought out Schnitzer Steel my dad said you’ll never get it done you’ll never get them back out and at this time they’re a private they’re a publicly traded company and I had made good banking relationships I said hey I’ve got this business I think I can get a bot right if you guys know your scrap history 2015 was a terrible scrap Market once again so they were looking to exit Partnerships I raised my hand they said either you buy us we buy you and I was like I’m staying like I know what I’m doing I like what I do I said let’s figure it out Mike Henderson at the time him and I had a relationship I said let’s figure it out Mike I said we both want to win I still want to sell you scrap make me a deal I can’t refuse and we bought him out and I retired my parents the same the same year 2016 another owner Kerry we
retired him retired our competition 2018 I was working on a deal with an existing recycling facility at the last minute he pulled out on me and uh so I was like kind of sitting there like well what do I do so I went and bought an existing piece of property and I knew that market I knew that customer base and a year and a half later he filed for bankruptcy and we still have that yard Payette Idaho owner carry Caldwell Idaho covid the tortilla plant went defunct in our area I bought the tortilla plant gutted all the tortilla gear out of there and built our truck shop traditional financing Caldwell Idaho I took my old truck shop and built our converter recycling facility and right now 2023 I’m building the tire recycling plant traditional financing bank loan through equipment I say that because I don’t want it is what it is like this is how I did it like I’m not a rocket scientist I just tried to figure out a way to get stuff done which is why I want Jake here because Jake’s first generation and he found a way to get
it done with no upfront money on his end but he found a way so Jake I want you to speak to to your side just give him another perspective hey guys I’m Jake bronstein I own Maryville Metal Recycling and bent and metal recycling so you know how we met was in 2019 I I knew I wanted to start a scrap business I worked for someone else in the Chicago market and uh it was a great time I I learned a lot from him and he worked really hard and I learned that business from the ground up but I didn’t agree with the way in which he was running it and it was more like a father-son relationship and you know how those go sometime in the business we definitely had some use and actually got into a fist fight but loved each other at the end of the day and um so I went on my own so in 2019 I just started to write a business plan um and then I went out and I secured Capital before I selected my site and then by 2019 in the summer we bought a
site um and I was still going on through this Capital race um so we weren’t sure we did a conditional use and we had to get the property rezoned in Northwest Indiana I wasn’t sure if it was going to go in but we were going all in so by the time we even did it we probably had a hundred grand into this thing and it was just a bet by the end of the summer we got it we got the conditional use for a recycling facility and then we were all in and we were actually going through the capital raise as we’re going on in this construction process and it was stressful as we had uh you know cost overruns we had a democrite we had to bring in new dirt it was stressful we were probably overcost by 10 percent and land in March of 2020 we opened up and that was the height of covet and I said oh I just lost millions of bucks but the way in which I did it because I went kind of the Venture Capital route and private Equity route was that we just all did
a capital call we put more money in and we did it throughout and we had to do several Capital calls as we grew because what happens when you grow your business you need more money you need more equipment especially as the price started to recover and in in in basically going through the summer as Cove restrictions were released going into the third quarter scrap really started to flow for us and so that ability to to work through these deals and create instantaneous liquidity as we needed to at a high cost of capital allowed us to grow and put us in a position that we were today so Lenin 2022 I was approached in April by Imperial group out of Chicago they wanted out of the retail business they had a yard in northwest Michigan Southwest Michigan excuse me and uh they wanted out they wanted nothing to do with it but I only had until December of 2022 to get the deal done and it was a sticky deal because the site was contaminated so we had Benzene and they had oil spill there was a underground tank and one facility and so again
we had the balance sheet at that time to do traditional financing but in order to get the deal done in order to get it at the right price um we again again raised raised money to do this and closed on time and so our ability to to be liquid and to create Financial structures um allowed us to expand into into basically scale our business and to take advantage of this being able to close the deal and have a timeline on it really allowed us to have some bargaining power because they knew that we had the capital because we did it once before so they looked at us as a serious Capital Partner and a buyer Imperial is a big group they could have said go yourself but they didn’t um and so at that point too you know given the environmentals we we really wanted to get the deal done the operator kind of what Brett just talked about he was 67 years old he was going to leave and get in his RV and go around the country and do his thing so again speed and capital and liquidity helped us you know
really get a good deal on it we got it at a discount we negotiated it down by 1.5 million from what what they originally asked I just said if you want speed you want liquidity you want to close on time you can’t have your cake and eat it too so having the liquidity and the ability to close on deals sometimes at a higher cost of capital is might be this disadvantaged right because it’s going to compound you still have to pay interest right on it it’s a high cost of capital Venture and private Equity so you have to really be able to produce a good return but at the same time if you’re able to be liquid and be able to execute you could get assets at a really good discount at a good price and that’s how you make money in this business is that you need the volatility you need the liquidity you need the capital in order to do something and so I think from our positions I think Brad and I have a similar philosophy is that we really want to have the capital on hand be able to
leverage our balance sheets whether it be traditional financing or making Capital calls or private Equity to be able to grow our businesses I think nowadays as we get into this next cycle 14 to 16 months there’s going to be a lot of distress opportunities you know when you’re talking about fixed costs from a operation right and you’re a shredder you’re a larger facility right if you’re down if your volumes are down 30 40 percent you’re not making money I don’t care what you say and so at a certain point you know whether you’re upside down on your bank loan or that line of credits receding because your inventory um you know assessment’s going down anyways if you’re getting squeezed on both ends there’s going to be opportunities I guarantee it so my advice to you guys you know it doesn’t have to be traditional financing but I would get your balance sheets in order I look at your p l I would understand the operating metrics of your business and get prepared you know make sense of your balance sheets really sit down get your financial reporting right and go execute thank you sir
like I said I mean he did it different than I did right and I think there’s there’s a lot of ways to skin the cat I really believe that it really is just a matter of if there’s a will there’s a way if you want it bad enough and you whether you want to build your first scrap yard or buy your 20th one you know there’s a there is a there is a way every I don’t know how many of you guys sat here and listened to uh Saco yesterday with Adams and that the big boys of of the world of our world right all those businesses started out right here at one point or another and I have no desire to have 200 scrap yards I don’t even have a desire to have 100. I just want the ones I have and the geography that I’m in to be successful I want to build quality businesses especially in the in the recycling industry that I can count on and that I can provide good jobs and I can provide good opportunity for people I don’t need to be the biggest I just want
to be the best so the last last pillar of growth for me is speed I wholeheartedly believe in speed probably because when I was playing football I didn’t have much speed all I had was just a willingness to run into the wall harder and more times than most people did so I had to rely on heart because I didn’t have much speed but having spent 12 years me personally being partners with Schnitzer for 12 years I learned the difference between a big company and a small company your competitive Advantage as a small medium-sized company is your speed Bar None we could do deals as a family-owned company where we would buy the property get it set up and then lease it back to the main entity because we could go get the deal done right now we had that Advantage we didn’t have to take 10 conference calls do four business plans and then figure out for two years because if we would have taken that long that deal would have been gone and that’s our biggest advantage of small operators is our ability to to make it happen right now it’s
how you buy scrap it’s how you buy a business it’s how you hire somebody that you run into you’re like man you’re good like I can hire you right now like you don’t have to wait two week whatever you want to do give your employer two weeks but I’ll take you right now our speed is our biggest is our biggest advantage flat squirrel I was sitting there one day in my office I was looking at the white board I was trying to figure something out my dad who just walks by and he goes don’t be a flat squirrel and I was like I was like and uh and he goes and that was my dad’s nice way of saying like make a decision like go this goes back to speed if you have good people and you have them in place and you could and you take and you’re willing to take feedback because your ego’s not in the way you should be able to make faster decisions so the other Advantage we have a small medium-sized operators is we can make a fast decision if I want to buy something or do
something right now I’m like yes no like I can make that decision because I I’ve got good feedback I know I’ve got the right people in place so our ability to make fast decisions is our competitive advantage the you’re competing with big guys in your territories right the big essays of the world the schnitzers or whatever I can I would much rather compete with those guys than someone my size the big guys I can beat them on customer service I can beat them on a lot of they might be able to out price me but you ain’t gonna out hustle me use your competitive advantage don’t be afraid to say No Deal it’s a tricky balance right like when as soon as you start creating yourself opportunities you’re growing you’ve got people pitching you deals and you got oh I could do this or I could grow here I could do that probably your biggest opportunity for growth is your ability to say no which is like a weird way of saying like not every deal is the right deal not that not that it doesn’t look good on paper and not that it
couldn’t potentially do something for you but I get pitched a fair amount of deals and I’m like no because if it doesn’t fit in my wheelhouse and I don’t have a clear competitive Advantage somewhere along the lines whether it’s geography Logistics people something that I have that gives me like two of the four steps I need to get to the Finish Line already in place I’ll say no you that the ability to say no is as crucial or more crucial than your ability to say yes and a lot of that comes back down into your own personal time right like I told you right now I already I value my time more than I value money so my ability to personally say no to certain things is like me saying no I need that time to do XYZ so don’t be afraid to say no not every deal is right I was gonna do that you know how many guys I’ve ran into that said I was going to do that I was going to build that I’m like oh really yeah you were huh that’s awesome man you know when people like Randy
that said I built that like I mean not take Obama out of it and he says you didn’t build that like everybody in here you guys built your for the most part I have no doubt you built it and there’s a 10 guys lined up that says I was going to do that or I could have did that but they didn’t you did it right and there’s something to be said the reason that you have the ability to do it is because you were willing to take the risk and in this business the biggest growth I’ve seen in any of my businesses the reason I was able to buy our facility in Boise was because I could finally afford the building two years before that when the commercial Market was ripping that building was double or triple the price in 2010 I could finally afford it I finally was like okay I could actually buy that building and put a yard in there I can actually afford to do it so I had to but I had to have the nuts to say yeah I know the market sucks but I’m gonna give it
a shot and the way Reese and I’ve always said I’ll give it a shot because I’m like what are you gonna do what are you going to take from me my birthday yeah you see where I came from like I built it from there to here and it took me 20 years I figure I could probably build it back in five all the lessons I’ve learned all the Hard Knocks to get here like take the from me I’ll come back so to wrap it up I think great people allow you to make fast decisions they you as long as you’re willing to listen to their feedback marketing is a game of consistency it’s not speed I don’t need another job I don’t need more stuff to do throughout the day if I find Value in it that’s why I do it if I didn’t find Value in it I’d do something different like that’s why I commit the time that your consistency is your biggest Advantage not creating some high flute and great looking video it’s just your ability to be consistent this is what I’m doing this is where I’m at this is
why I care this is my people this is you know and then just going going down the list capital is oftentimes you know not who has the most is who can be the most creative who can get the deal done the quickest and I truly 100 believe 100 believe that because when you don’t start with a lot but you found a way to to make it work it’s not about having millions of dollars in a bank account it’s about who can figure out the best deal that’s going to fit in with their piece of puzzle and get it done and get to the finish line and that’s it that’s the end