hmm welcome to a scrap life a podcast solely focus on the hustlers grinders operators and business owners who live and breed 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 thanks everybody for uh coming in checking out another episode of a scrap life i get the pleasure today to sit down with constantino lennis who is the president ceo of cinebogan so a thank you jim keith for setting this up b it’s been awesome to finally meet you we’ve talked a couple of times on the phone trying to connect and make this travel possible but for a guy that travels all over and has seen a lot it’s good to have you over in idaho thanks for coming pleasure being here really appreciate the opportunity pleasure finally meeting you in person and enjoying seeing your yards thank you yankee we’ve got we’re able to tour the boise facility right now and then uh caldwell facility earlier where we have um a couple santa bogans at the caldwell facility and one over here in boise so first things first

like i don’t take money to promote anybody’s on this podcast right like i want to talk to people that i want to talk to that i find interesting or that have some affiliation or some part of the scrap industry so nobody’s paying me to represent senebogen but i’m i’m super stoked to have you here just because everything i’ve ever read about senate bogans it’s a family-owned business so i kind of can um find some similarities to ours in that but also it feels like a like a small business that operates on a you know worldwide scale so can you just give me a little bit of background and everybody’s listening kind of a little bit of background on cinebogen and why it got started you know family owns just kind of the general background of it absolutely it’s a pleasure for me to be here brad i mean senebogen as you said is a family-owned business started in germany in the mid 50s and we’re commemorating 70 years this year 70 years that’s crazy i’m going to just adjust this for you sure that’s good so 70 years so that would put

you at 52 52 exactly 70 years this year we started building small cranes basically for the agricultural field mr eric senebogen senior a fantastic person one of the big influences of my career a man with an incredible vision and he’s kept developing his company got into excavators in the mid 50s continue to build cranes still today we build lattice bomb cranes and telescopic cranes and in the late 80s he made an association of caterpillar where we were building the rubber tire excavators for caterpillar all the way to 2005 and his goal with that was to develop a material handler that was designed specifically for the purpose okay before we develop the green line and start painting green of course we are converting excavators into material handles like most everybody does and basically when the green line was developed was developed specifically for the purpose of moving material and today we are one of the largest manufacturers of material handlers in the world we are run by the second generation eric and walter senebogen how old are those guys how old are they eric is 65 and valtteri 62. do they have uh younger generations

their kids coming into the business absolutely both sons from eric sanebogen are in the business already one is in the controlling area the other one is engineering and manufacturing and we see that the company will continue to be family owned for the next generation at least that’s awesome you said an interesting fact earlier and i was kind of like blown away um and we’ll get into like your origin story kind of how you um came to be with santa bogan but you said that when you started there was would you say 13 was it was it 13 um when i started with sennebogen in 2003 there were 14 machines correct and now today we closed last year at 6 000 machines on the market that’s awesome i mean that’s a pretty big accomplishment yes for sennebogen for yourself for your your sales team out there but i think it goes a little bit beyond i people ask me you know we had this conversation earlier today you know why we run senebugins right and i said it’s the same reason why like we run copper recovery wire chopping lines i’ve never ran anything else

like i i bought one and it was good it was a good machine the uptime was great service was great and so we bought another one and same thing right so we bought another one so i’m not when people ask me what do you think about this material handler versus this material handler like i don’t even really have a good answer for them i just know like my experience has always been good with cinnabon so i’ve never had any reason to try anything else right so i’m like the worst guy to ask like can you compare these two material handlers and you tell me which one would you buy and i’m always like well who’s to take care of you because that’s really what it comes down to absolutely and that’s you know and whether it’s your dealer or the manufacturer or whatever it is you know i mean we have the same conversation about sierra equipment they’ve just always done a fantastic job of taking care of me so i’ve always went back to the well that’s taken care of me and i think you know i’m i was super interested in having

this conversation with you because you guys are kind of tweaking the model of what you guys used to be about going you know going through dealers and kind of going direct so do you want to kind of give me and kind of a little bit of background on you know that change that’s happening and it’s been happening for a while and why it makes sense absolutely i mean at the end of the day brad you buy a piece of equipment doesn’t matter if you buy a sierra if you buy a cineborgan to run the key is we as a material handler we are part of your production chain we are one link in the production chain if this link fails your production chain stops so we see as a very important aspect on our business is to make sure that your machine is running all the time right and what we realized is when we came to north america or when i joined senebogen i was already in north america at that time but when i joined senebogen i look at the market and i had numerous discussions with the owners of the company

and i told them the key to succeed in north america is service and parts right i always say that the best product in the world not properly supported has no chance in the market in the united states a medium quality product well supported will be successful right and we look into that and we said key is have parts in inventory right have a good technical support and throughout the years we realized that going exclusive with the dealer model was hindering us to continue developing the country because of course the dealer has other product lines they serve that are sometimes much bigger than our share of their business so their main interest resides on other products than ours so that’s when we started four years ago we did a run in colorado to test the model of authorized service provider one of the big changes we’re making of the company worked extremely well and we start rolling out two years ago and what that concept is is that basically if you want to continue to operate and buy from your dealer and use the service from your dealer welcome if you’re happy with that go

ahead and do it so keep your dealer if you get your dealer if you have the relationship and you operate other equipment absolutely that they provide then no reason to burn the bridge or whatever exactly but this industry has been dealer centric for many many many years and basically the dealer kept the customer hostage if you want something you have to come to papa and that’s what we are changing basically we are creating outer what we call authorized service providers these are independent workshops that can do exactly the same as the dealer does mean sell parts do warranty work do service the only difference is they don’t sell machines yeah so with that you have the option you can continue to use your dealer but you have other alternatives for servicing your equipment for doing warranty work on your equipment at the end of the day as i told you before today yeah you pay my salary our customers pay our salaries and that’s the way we have to run the company that’s the way everything we do has to be looking at you and how can we be a better partner for you

you know you kind of gave me a good analogy and it makes sense once you explained it but you kind of said it’s similar to when you buy a car from a dealership whether you buy a new ford pickup or a new chevy or whatever it is you you know you have the option at that time to basically you know get oil changes from your dealer if you want to which are expensive oil changes correct or you have the option to go to meineke jiffy lube whatever and go and look for other you know whether you if you’re someone that values cheap you want it done as as little you know as cheap as you can get it done and that’s important to you then you have options if you want someone that’s going to vacuum your mats and watch the window and give you that you know customer support service and do it and look at all your other fluids and a full service oil change you can do that too right correct so it’s kind of a similar concept it is a similar concept and the other aspect is when you look

at dealerships they are generally in the main cities the scrap business is local i mean you have yards that are in major cities but you have yards that are in remote areas yeah so a lot of the cost that the customers were paying were travel time and mileage and by having these smaller authorized service providers that are regional that are local we are drastically reduce the operating cost for our customers because at the end of the day the acquisition cost is one thing but you have to analyze how much it cost me to run this machine throughout 10 15 20 000 hours that’s the true cost to your business yeah right and if every time you call somebody they have to drive 200 miles to come to you right at three four dollars per mile right plus the travel time that drastically increases your overall operating cost for the equipment so how does that relate to like let’s say a uh um like if you buy a new pickup truck and it says guys 100 000 mile warranty on the transmission or the you know the whatever whether it’s the or the motor depends

on the whatever warranty that you either get with it or whatever you buy and add on to it how does that translate for you guys if you warranty a machine for x amount of hours does that mean you guys are then looking for the service provider or does that mean you’re bringing a special technician out to if there’s ever an issue i mean how does that dynamic work differently than just say you know a windshield sensor like we talked about before basically the authorized service provider will do all your warranty work okay right independently if that’s the standard warranty or as you said if you bought extended warranty the service provider will take care of all the warranty of course we are backing the authorized service provider but at the end of the day the authorized service provider is the connection to you to do that warranty work so because i’m ignorant and i don’t know what other you know material handler companies do do they go through dealers do they is it a similar concept or when you guys were kind of going through and developing this was this was this unique to

the to the industry or was this just like something that you guys felt made the most um financial sense and most customer service sense for senate bulletin no that’s unique to senegal okay basically all our competition sells through dealer networks operate the same way we used to operate up to two and a half years ago so what drove that what drove the change like what why were you guys like we we got to change the way this is being done customers like yourself drive the change because we have to look as i told you before or earlier today i am a person that i’m not never happy with status core i think there is always better means and ways to do things so we start analyzing we start talking to our customers and which problems do you have dear customer right and how can we improve that how can we improve our partnership and always the comment that came out was cost of maintenance right time of reaction cost of maintenance time of reaction so we start analyzing the market and seeing how can we reduce that because basically the cost of the part

is the cost of the part but a lot of times you call in a service technician and if you have to pay a long way for the service technician to come in you end up that he changes apart for 100 or 120 dollars but your total bill is 1500 yeah right so when we start analyzing that we start realizing we have to bring the technician close to the customer right and in having meetings with some customers that told me look we love senegal we would buy senebogen everywhere but we buy that product that has local service and when i heard that it was clear to me we are losing market share because we don’t have local service and that is um that was the driver for us to look into that and say yes we have to find a better way and when i met this same customer and we shook hands on an exclusive agreement and i told him i promise to you i’ll have service to you no further away than 30 miles from every yard you have yeah they look at me with big eyes how are you going to realize

that your dealer is not going to be everywhere i said no you don’t need a dealer facility you don’t need brick and mortar you need a technician and what i’ll do is i’ll have a technician that is closer to every single yard you have and that was basically what drove us to go ahead on this concept huh i like it i mean one thing we one thing we hit on it earlier was i’m like i i cannot stand to sit still right like and not sit still like on my butt sit still but like i just if something needs tweaked or if i feel like there’s an opportunity or i feel like there’s something more we can do like i’m like okay how can we figure this out right because i’m i’m very customer service customer oriented we were talking about the tire side of our business earlier and i you know one of the reasons we got into the tire business is because i knew that not only did i have a tire problem but a lot of my current customers had tire problems my potential down the road customers had tire problems

right so it was like i can find a way to generate revenue at the same time solve a bunch of people’s problems like i’m like it we may have to buy a million dollar shredder to get into the business i said but i think it’s a way to solve the problem and generally and take care of our customer which then in turn provides more scrap they feel like that we we’re not just a scrap recycling company we’re actually someone that can take care of their whether it’s shredding their mattresses at the landfill shredding their tires to the landfill all of a sudden we bring so much more to the table than just hey we’re here to bail your scrap and i think that was the turning point once i realized that there was a whole customer service component to it it was like the investment you just couldn’t not not make the investment right so how long did it take you guys to kind of basically switch the whole model around you guys are still in the process of it every day right but i mean and you’re what two years in we are

two years in um and you know i love the expression you used because we are very similar right i mean i’m a kind of a person i’m looking to optimize everything every day and i travel a lot as i told you this morning two three weeks per month i’m on the road i’m in front of customers like yourself because at the end of the day you bring us the best ideas and when we sit together and discuss how can we help you improve your process right like you went ahead and bought the tire shredder to improve the relationship with your customers yeah so we did a number of things like we increase the number of regional technicians we have right as i told you this morning we just put one in salt lake city utah to be closer to the customers in this region right so those are all things we did to improve the relationship with the customer specifically on your question i would say we are probably one third in right we have 125 authorized service providers today we want to get to 250 by early next year and i think that

we will need and time will show i mean we are learning by the process but i think we need 350 to 400 authorized service providers to cover the united states the way we we would like to have covered and that’s something that you know we’ll we’ll end on that like we’ll and we end this podcast i think if you’re if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re you know whether you’re in the scrap business or you’re in affiliate as far as on the mechanical side or whatever i mean some of the best leads for authorized service providers come from the scrap recycling facilities themselves right absolutely i deal with this guy over here absolutely he’s a mom-and-pop shop super good guy he lives you know next door to me or down the road his shops five minutes away like let’s see if we can have make those connections right so i think that’s probably hopefully we don’t want and then all of a sudden now you’re giving somebody else an opportunity to generate revenue for their business but also at the same time you’re probably giving yourself an opportunity to to for

uptime right for being able to keep moving absolutely and it’s interesting that you said because a lot of the leads that we got i would say over 50 percent of the leads we got in the authorized service providers we have today they came from the customer and it’s just going to the customer and asking the question apart from the dealer who is servicing your equipment yeah right and sometimes they say oh joe here on the corner he’s great he’s fantastic unfortunately i can’t have him work on my machine while it’s new because it voids the warranty so we did nothing else then go to joe qualified joe train him at our facility in charlotte and allow him to do warranty and to sell parts yeah with that we increase for joe his revenue because now he can sell the parts now he can do warranty work and for the customer we put an authorized service provider around the corner to service him no that makes sense so i’m going to switch gears a little bit on you so obviously i can tell by your accent that you’re you weren’t born raised here in the

united states right that is right so how do how does and how does it how do you end up a the president ceo of cinnabon here in north america but also like give me a little bit of background on your journey like how did you make it into the the wonderful world of scrap it’s very interesting i’m brazilian okay i went to college in brazil i’m a mechanical engineer and at that time in brazil the colleges had in the last two years the classes either in the morning or late afternoon so that we could work part-time for companies and they drove that to really bridge the gap between the theoretical world and the practical world so i started working for a german company in brazil i mean this was far before internet this was what late 70s and it was a small company brazil 100 employees and i said great what i want a foreign company small i can have the bird’s view perspective of the company and work for them for two years they invited me to go to germany for two years on an exchange program just to realize i’m working

for the sixth largest industrial conglomerate in germany you know when you wake up and you say wow that’s different yeah completely different so i went to germany worked in germany for the first two years and extended my stay i love the country i love the people and what were you doing what was that i was working in larger international projects we were building airports building hotels steel mills different industrial and pleasure complexes okay and i was working in the steel division so basically my job was to sell steel meals rolling meals and other equipment that was my first contact with the steel world yeah right worked for that company for a long time lived for five years in asia and two years in the middle east always going out running projects coming back to germany and in the early 90s i decided to change jobs and i went to work for a company that makes cranes and material handlers okay um worked for that company for a couple of years in germany in germany and in 95 late 95 early 96 i came to the u.s for the first time oh you did

just for work just for work to start bringing that product to north america okay and fall in love with your country i really love living here so at that time i was still living in germany responsible for the us we start very small like everybody starts working for an importer and in 99 the owners of this company was a family owned business decided to start a company in north america so i came to the us back in 2001 to run the company at that time the business had grown enough and in 2002 that company was sold to a very large conglomerate and was the first time in my life that i worked for a public traded company which company uh terrex okay and i haven’t enjoyed working for public trader because you know when you work for a private owned business you sit with the owner you talk about something you make the decision and you move on yeah right sometimes you don’t like the decision because it’s his company right but you have to understand and accept that yeah but the point is either you know very quickly yes or no let’s move

on and let’s strive forward but you have a chance also i will say this you have a chance to influence the decision much you have much more of a chance to influence a decision than you do if you work for a conglomerate because i’ve always said and i was i was partners with the public traded company for almost 20 years we were 50 owned by senator steele okay and so we um we had the opportunity to buy them out in late 2015 and we actually finalized it early 16 but um but at that time you know we were the operating partners so we still had the ability to kind of do for the most part what we wanted um but i’ve i’ve heard it and seen it and i’ve been around it and i’ve witnessed it and you may not like the decision of if you sit down and you’re hanging out with the owner but one thing is for sure is you have a great opportunity if you can make the case to influence that decision much easier than if you do work for a huge company and i i do believe that

that is the big difference absolutely i mean you are in front of him or her yes right where on a large company you present to your boss that presents to his boss that goes to the board and at the end of the day how much of your original idea arrives at that level like the old it’s the telephone game right absolutely exactly i love to use that example that’s great exactly so basically i stayed with this large corporation for 14 months and i didn’t like it because i was distanced from the decision making it was not um really looking into the customer and the customer needs it’s far more looking to the shareholder needs right and that’s when i decided to join sennebogen uh there was a start up here as you said before a few machines on the market and i saw there talking to eric and walter cinneborg and that they were really interested in driving the business in north america in supporting me to grow the business as well as their focus is the customer right yeah most of our machine development is done based on customer ideas yeah and that’s

what helps us a lot or has helped us a lot to get to the position we are today on the market well and it’s awesome like i i made a post on this uh on linkedin a couple days ago and to me there’s no better feeling than building something from scratch right absolutely and when you start with 13 14 machines like that’s pretty much from scratch yes like i don’t care what anybody say that’s pretty minimal amount um compared to say 6 000 today but when you’re when you’re down at the at the base level and you’re basically building the foundation before you even put a brick on top that’s when it’s the most fun because that’s when you know little tweaks here and little tweaks there and like the big decisions are getting made and you’re going a certain direction all of a sudden you know roadblock and you’re like okay go right right here like you pivot quickly and you have you’re just small enough that you can you can move fast and there is no better feeling in business scrap business aside than building something from oh yeah from nothing it’s

it’s incredible it’s incredible you look back and you see all the changes and all all the changes you made and all the right turns and left turns and what have brought advantages and disadvantages and basically when you look today all the systems that we have to support the customer were developed based on trial and error yeah right you create this how does it work it’s like when in 2009 we decided to start training customer mechanics at the same level as dealer mechanics everybody told me you’re crazy you’re absolutely crazy you can’t do that i said why not because nobody did before i can’t do it that’s nonsense yeah right so today when i analyzed the statistics for last year 55 percent of our trainees were customer mechanics 45 were dealer in asp mechanics so we see that the customers have embraced that because again if you have a trained technician you can repair your machine quickly you can get back to work right you spend less money yeah you had less downtime and you are producing and those are the things that looking back so many changes we made that were unique to the

market unique to the industry and we look back and say that was really the right move or hey we mess up yeah let’s correct immediately and do something else and i think that’s one of the very important things in any leader is have the humility to recognize i mess up i put my quote this morning was um show me somebody who’s afraid to look like an idiot and i’ll show you something i can beat every time absolutely right like that was the one i used i’m like if you’re afraid to change or to do something like because you’re scared of what people think or what the competition will say or what somebody else i’m like i’ll beat your ass every time because i’m not afraid and i’ll make the mistake and i’ll say well i tried go to the next one right but because one of them out of 10 might hit yeah and when it does wow it’s going to be good right and we’re have to sit around we’re gonna cheers beers and it’s gonna be a good day right yeah but i’m also not afraid like somebody going that was a

shitty decision yep that was on me right like i i went the wrong way but if you’re if you’re afraid to to look like an idiot if you’re afraid to make a decision because you’re afraid that what the repercussions might be then you’re never ever going to innovate your industry you’re never ever going to get ahead and that’s just the crux of it i don’t care what whatever industry whatever business you’re in i firmly believe that so we we do agree on that one for sure it’s not only businesses in life as well right 100 and reality is the only person that never made a mistake in their life is the only is the person that never did anything in their life yeah right because if you do something you are risking to make a mistake and i think that’s that’s key is have the humility i mess up i’m sorry let’s move on let’s correct that yeah right and and move on to the next step take ownership of it we’re gonna move on i’ve i had this conversation with both of my boys i have two young boys um and i had

especially with my youngest boy because he’s so competitive with the older one right i mean he i mean talk about someone that hates to lose anything like that kid doesn’t want to lose you know a race to eat dinner the fastest like it don’t matter you don’t like to lose anything and i think it’s because he’s he’s gets his ass kicked all the time by his brother like he’s used to losing a lot and or but he’s not used to he and i said don’t ever lose that i said a don’t ever don’t ever be afraid to lose i said but also don’t ever be afraid to try new stuff because you’re afraid because you’re going to lose right and so sometimes they’re like well i don’t do that i don’t think i’m going to be that good i’m like that’s why you should do it because you aren’t going to be that good the guy that go that knows how to ski the guy knows how to snowboard or you know ride a mountain bike i guarantee the first time he did it he sucked oh yeah but today he’s good at it

because he did it for two three four five 20 years like you look at him you’re like man that guy can ski his ass off yeah he’s been doing it for 20 years and and i guarantee the first time he did it he looked a lot like you look right now right yeah but you have to start somewhere absolutely you have to try and the other thing is he only got better because he tried something different yeah if he went down this the slope always the same way he will never improve his skills right but probably he tried a different slope a more difficult slope yeah right or he tried to do a tighter turn and that’s the way we learn right is experimenting is checking the limits how far can i go right what else can i do to make sure that i will improve if i’m just always going the safe lane i’ll never improve in life and if you’re not afraid you’re not afraid to make a decision like oh yes that’s a big you know it’s it’s a make a decision and stick by it you know whether it’s you

know a deal with your customer or deal with one of your one of the people that works with you and just say hey this decision we’re going with let’s go and let’s just stick to it and drive this lane for a while and see where see where we get so looking back on like your your career just yourself what was the uh what was the best the best decision that you made the best decision i made i made a number of decisions that people would look at me and say you’re crazy one of the uh decisions is the one you’re the most proud of right like it makes you smile one of the decisions that make me smile was when i was working for this german company in brazil i was a temp right because i was still going to college and one day i got to the office in the afternoon and there was a a note on my desk dr krause wants to talk to you dr krauss was the company president at that time yeah first thought why is he firing me right first human fault why is he fired he

wants to talk to a champ i made something bad so never forget our office the sales office was on the 10th floor his office was on the fifth so i walked downstairs those five floors thinking about my actions for the last year and a half and thinking why yeah well i got there his secretary opened the door i sit down and he had been in brazil for i think four or five months so his portuguese was terrible my german was non-existent so you can imagine the communication yeah what should take five minutes to clarify took 45 minutes at the end of the day i understood he was inviting me to go to germany for two years on an exchange program now you imagine my position never been in europe before don’t speak german and i’m going to spend two years in europe and somebody else is paying the bill yeah do you have to think about that no that seems like a pretty easy decision it is decision side so i look at him and said dr krause when do i close my suitcase he looked at me like i couldn’t understand right

so i explained to him i said dr krauss i am going he said no no you misunderstood i’m talking to four people in the company you are competing with four people to go to germany i said dr krause you missed the point i’m going i’m the preferred one i know i’m going okay fine fine we’ll talk later he was so uncomfortable i was so sure that he was so uncomfortable well here we go two weeks later he called me downstairs how do you knew that you were going i said because i was convinced that was for me i was convinced yeah this was a big decision for me going to a different country never being there different language different habits different mentality but i think that was a pivotal point on my career and in my life to say try something else right and from there on i always tried things in my life but from there on i was 300 convinced you have to try yeah you have to say yes sometimes things look crazy just try it right be aware don’t be scared but be aware what you’re doing the risks but

try because if you don’t try you never get anywhere i heard a guy say um i was i saw this video and he said the biggest life hack right the biggest life hack you can make is leaving your hometown he goes it will always be there you could leave and come back the same people that never left will be there and they’ll be doing the same thing when you left but you will be much different if you do decide to go back right he said it’s it’s it’s a life hack that everybody needs to explore and you but but when you leave you become different because you at least have the opportunity to see what’s out there so you may just you may you’ll be the same person but you might have you’ll have a different experience you’ll have been able to see another part of the country or another country right it could be either way they said you don’t have to go very far but you have to leave your hometown and leave every comfort that you have and go live to be and learn how to be uncomfortable and then once

you learn how to be uncomfortable then it’s easy to go wherever right because you’re like i know what this feels like i know how to move and make a decision because i’m used to being uncomfortable and it’s just that small little thing but it’s a really big thing being able to just pick up and move so i had this conversation with my wife and my kids i said just so you know when you’re 18 you’re out of here yeah i said i love you but you got to get the out of here like see you later you leave and then my kid’s like nine he’s like what do you mean i have to leave i’m like so you know like you’re leaving right and my 12 year old he’s like geez like are we already having these eyes and my wife’s like you’re already having this conversation i’m like yeah i wanted to be known that when you’re able to leave it’s time to go and i don’t mean like you know stick around i mean it’s time to go see stuff you can always come back i’m gonna be here i love it

here you know your mom she’ll be here we love it here we probably may not even move out of our house right we’re gonna be around but you’ve got to go and then come come see us if you want to right you may decide you never want to live here again i’m okay with that but you at least have to go see what’s out there right i make the suggestion a lot to young people i say finish high school buy a plane ticket to europe doesn’t matter where you go if you go to germany if you go to france don’t go to the uk it’s the same language go to a place that speaks a different language yeah right because today you can see everything on the internet you can but you can’t have the experience nothing replaced you trying to buy a train ticket on a sunday afternoon in a small town in germany and nobody speaks english and you have to buy that ticket yeah right you don’t get that on the internet you can get all the instructions how to buy the ticket but that feeling holy smokes how i’m going

to get to hamburg right because i need to buy a train ticket i can’t board the train without a ticket and nobody understands me even where i want to go yeah and i think those life experiences really change a person they’re like character builders right absolutely well they make and then make you a better um like better employer make you a better employee they make you more well-rounded absolutely i think that’s a that’s a big deal and i mean that’s reflecting business as well 100 right try different things try new things right because if not you’re stagnant i i love to travel right and i i i say it this way i love to travel for two reasons a because it shows you how good you have it right if you go to a second third world country and you’re from here from america especially from over here in idaho you realize how good you really have it and b i realize you when you travel that it’s humbling because there’s some people out there that have it a lot better than you and there’s you you might think you’re a big fish

in this little pond and once you see how big the ocean is it humbles you back oh yeah so if you can look at it from whichever way you want but it gives you like the full broad spectrum like if you go to a small little country that doesn’t have running water and you’re throwing the toilet paper in the waste basket versus the toilet yep very different and then if you go and you go to a high-rise in downtown chicago and you see how some people live you’re like it’s very different right it’s both ends it’s very humbling you might think you’re killing it over here but you’re a little piece of the puzzle and so it doesn’t matter which experience you have yeah positive negative you always learn something you come back from a trip and you always saw something heard something that drives you forward and brings you ideas how to improve yourself as a person yeah but how to improve your environment and your own business as well no i i couldn’t agree more so north carolina we talked about this this is kind of a cool story because i

was always curious and like of all the places you could set up to have your your national headquarters you know here in the u.s um cineben chose north carolina right so just touch on it real quick like why north carolina or charlotte of charlotte north carolina for that matter of which i’ve never been to so one of these days i’m going to go wow yeah i’m going to come visit you why charlotte north carolina it’s imagine we are here right and we have a good overview where to settle in u.s where not to settle as a company yeah but now you imagine a german company out of bavaria in the southern part of germany is looking at the u.s map you can take the dart and try to find a place or you can try to get information about that so one of our owners was at the equipment manufacturers association in germany at the seminar many of those happen in germany doing business in america right and then specifically that one had different regions of the us presenting themselves and charlotte the charlotte region was one of those and this

is driven by the previous mayor we had in charlotte that create a company called the charlotte partnership three offices in the world charlotte london england frankfurt germany the sole purpose of this company was to bring european investment in the charlotte region we have today 250 german-speaking country companies in a radius of 50 miles of charlotte it’s incredible right so they were there at this seminar virginia presented chicago presented charlotte presented they liked the presentation from charlotte went to talk to that person and that person told them look i can talk to you for hours and hours and hours come to charlotte and we’ll show you what we have to offer so they came saw german companies located in the region talked to lawyers talked to accountants saw properties to buy properties to rent was an easy decision right apart from that a great airport direct flights to munich germany twice a day what helps us a lot with the supply of parts as well as um exchange of personnel so it was a easy decision for them yeah so how many um how many square feet how many how many people do you

have there in charlotte i mean what is the what’s the lay of the land what does it look like when we started i was running out of 4 000 square feet rented facility we had four employees in total we currently have 90 employees we are running out of hundred thousand square feet facility a very large stock of spare parts we carry 50 million dollars in parts our stocking philosophy is everything that puts a machine down has to be in charlotte north carolina so that’s one of the main reasons we developed so well on the market and we are just starting a 50 000 square feet expansion where we have more office space we have more training facilities we currently have one training center we’ll build two more but more important than that we are looking about training the technicians of the future so we are building an apprenticeship workshop where our goal is to take high school kids have them learning the company hydraulics electrics and controls as well as parallel to that go to a technical school so we all recognize there’s a huge shortage of technicians in the country right so the

stealing game is over you go and pay x dollars more per hour and you steal somebody and then you lose that person to somebody else so we think that the future is training our own people and the capacity will be such that will not only train for us but we’ll be training technicians for our customers and our dealers and asps i love it i think that to a certain extent um the college um jig is up i think that there’s a you know there’s there’s certain things you have to go to college for and i think that it’s it’s good experience back to like the biggest hack is leaving your hometown if you at least leave and go to school and you know you learn some whether it’s accounting or you know art history whatever that is you’re getting some benefit because you’re actually leaving and going and doing something and being on your own but as far as having to go to school like a brick and mortar college to be successful like i feel like that people are starting to snuff it out and say that’s bs um because it’s because of

lack of trades it’s a lack of people entering the trades and for you guys to do that i mean that’s forward that’s forward thinking you’re not the only company doing that but you guys are you guys are forward thinking enough to say we need we may not be training them for us in-house but we’re training them for our customers or for future you know employees of somebody else but they’ll always have it’s it’s a branding play as well because you’re also you know giving them that um it’s almost like a when you when you go somewhere for a little like when you transfer for two years of germany germany still has a little place in your heart right like absolutely and and but you can build that just in through a company right people remember when their first jobs they remember some of their first careers and like they think fondly back on those memories and how much they grew as a person and whatever else so not only are you teaching them like a technical skill that they can they can be they can use for the rest of their life and

make a decent income and sometimes in certain situations if you’re skilled enough an absolutely great income absolutely compared to you know just having a college degree um but i think i’m curious though why you feel the need to pair it with a technical school at the same time because there are some um technical knowledge theoretical knowledge like basic hydraulic stuff exactly that will help to help them to really be better trained okay right but it’s not the goal to say they have to go to a college right yeah um the goal is to see and we are talking currently to two technical schools in our area how which one of those will be prepared to integrate our program with theirs so that we can have better technicians better qualified technicians by adding everything we know plus some theoretical knowledge coming from the technical school okay and i agree 100 what you said i mean if you realize today how many kids are coming out of college first of all with a huge school huge debt yes right that they have to pay back right and then try to find a job in certain areas

where see how much a technical a good technician is making today it’s incredible yeah i was i tell the story a lot but um remember i was i remember like i was like 16 and and i was i asked my dad and i knew i was on summer break i was out and i was running a cutting torch and it was hot i’m sweating my ass off and i go inside the office and the air conditioner is running and i was like that’s my dad i’m like and i’m just kind of a kid you know i was a decent student but you know i i got in a decent amount of trouble and my dad i asked my dad man what do i got to do to work in this office you know and he goes to go to college and i was like you need to go to i go you didn’t go to college i said mom didn’t go to college i said nobody in his family nobody’s ever went to college and he goes well i don’t care he’s like but if you ever want to work in here then you

got to go to college so whether he knew it was a life hack to leave leave town or he just wanted to see somebody go to college right he’s like if you ever want to work in this office your ass better go to college so luckily i was decent enough athlete i was good at sports and i was able to go to college and and uh and play football well although i know i’m going to school i’m really there to play football that’s what i’m doing and i’m at the same time it’d be like what are you going to study and i’m like i don’t know i’ll study business right like that’s what i want to do i already i’ve i’ve always known what i was gonna do my whole life there’s never ever a question i always knew where i wanted to work and so i’m one of the lucky ones but so i’m like all right i’ll study business and uh so at the same time here i i’m getting education i get my uh i get my college degree and uh so i’m not i’m the first family first person in

my family to go to college and get a college degree and i don’t know that i learned a lot about business but i had a great time i met a ton of good people um but i just learned how to live my life away from my comfort zone but when i came back and i was um when i went to work full time i uh i worked for about a year and then i was like i’m going to go back and get my masters and people are why are you going to get your masters i’m like well i don’t know like hey nobody my family’s ever even went to college so i’m like it i’m gonna go get my masters too and uh just because i’m the guy they i want to go just even a little bit extra and uh and so i went back to but the best thing i did was do that because in order to get into the university of phoenix at the time master’s program you had to have a full-time job so i had to work full-time have a full-time job and then i

went to school at night so it was the it was probably the most learning i got was i was working the business i was at that time i was in sales and we were doing a big demo project so i was managing some people understanding you know pricing and what was going on but i was going to school at night and that alone taught me more about business than going to college and you know getting you know a business degree because i actually had to deal with it every day right i was in the fire every day and that night reading and writing papers and trying to understand the concepts behind it but the combination of you know and i think an online education it used to be kind of pooh-poohed like it was kind of people were like oh you’re not going to get a good education that way right but now you’re seeing that’s like a big thing people can they can basically go to school anywhere at any school in the country from their house wherever they’re at even here in idaho but i think the only way to get

the max benefit out of it is to be working at the same time because you have to actually put the to use daily absolutely absolutely i think that combination is what changed it for me i mean that’s that’s one of the things that helped me a lot at the start of my career was i was still going to college to finish my mechanical engineering degree and i was working part-time and i did that for two years and then it’s interesting it’s very interesting on one side in another area makes it difficult because i knew exactly where i wanted to go i knew exactly what was interesting for me but it was some of the classes that were hard for me to be there because you know when you think oh i could be in the office working for another two hours now i have to go back to college because if i’m not there i’ll be in trouble yeah that was not easy that part was not easy it’s the balance and it also shows you like what you’re capable of right like how much stuff you can actually get done in a

day if you’re willing to like do the work i mean those were long days and i had just met my at the time it was my girlfriend but now it’s my wife and i remember her like i would just stay at work and just because i was already set up my computer was there i would just stay at work until late leave early come home super late but i realized like how much you can squeeze into a day oh yes if you’re just willing to put the hours in like there’s a lot more available than just eight hours oh yeah and i tell people all the time like if you want to work eight hours and you can and you can finance your lifestyle with eight good good for you but there’s a lot of hours in this day that you could actually be utilizing if you really really want something people joking the company when i tell them when i tell to our sales people i want to you to be four days per week on the road in front of customers understanding the needs right it’s here but it’s it’s too much

and so on and i always tell them it’s very simple the day has 24 hours you can sleep at night yeah i’ll rest when i’m done not in the middle exactly exactly well i just want to say thank you but biggest thing i want people to know i mean one of the reasons you’re sitting here today is because our buddy jim keith you know asked us to to uh get together basically introduced us and jim keith is the guy behind recycling today he’s the guy behind the scrap expo and he’s the guy that’s kind of speaking of people that have a hard time just sitting still and seeing something not change right like it i’m i’m probably behind this just because i like to see somebody shake the system a little bit absolutely right and so when he’s like he pitched it at me before he ever announced it he goes brett what do you think he’s like you’re a scrap guy and i’m sure like he pitched it to a lot of people right before he ever asked me and i was like i like it man and and the the concept behind

the scrap expo is to get the equipment out there working like actually moving operators operating it seeing what it can do you know sit in three different material handlers or whatever that you know is or a couple different shears run the shears watch how you know auto again automotive drains rack really works in person like that whole concept is kind of foreign here in the u.s but jim you know who’s pretty well traveled himself says like those types of shows happen in other countries fairly regularly or at least they they’ve done them so he’s like i’m going to bring that to the united states and i was like dude i’m i’m down like let’s let’s see if we can you know whatever i can do to help right and so the scrap expo is coming um it’s it’ll be here before you know it or september 30 14th 14th you know it’s a tuesday wednesday we’re flying monday night that’s when i i’ll fly in monday monday night and then be ready to go on tuesday um but when why is cinnabon involved in this bro i mean what what’s the i mean

what what what you used to like what better i got a feeling i know the answer but i want to hear you say like what what’s the why are you guys so involved in this well um jim talked to me pretty early as well like he talked to you and i was immediately a supporter of that because at the end of the day we want to see the machines doing what they do right it’s nice to go to a show but everything is nice it’s clean but it’s not working so what you really learn there about the equipment not much right you can learn what i can tell you but when you can sit on the seat and operate it’s completely different and you’re right those shows happen in other countries a lot i think is a fantastic idea that jim is bringing that show in that format to the united states to a great place louisville kentucky is easy to tour to achieve it’s easy to get there we are we’re from the beginning an immediate supporter we are bringing there one of the new pieces of equipment we brought to north america

that’s what i show you this morning is a machine that has a quick coupler at the stick so basically you can change from a material handler to a shear immediately sitting in the cab without leaving the cab so people will have the opportunity to do it to see how it works plus we’ll have a second material handler working with a grapple for people just to operate the material handler what we’ll bring there are two pieces of equipment plus we’ll have the opportunity to show customers not only the simplicity of the senebogen keep in mind we’re the only ones that are still hydraulically controlled yeah we don’t have electronics that make life difficult for everybody as well as all the product support offerings and the financing offerings we have right yeah micro we talked before about the asp concept but we have what we call uptime kits these are small tackle boxes that have all electric components in one box so if you have a problem with your machine you can easily repair yourself if you have a trained technician like you have right and save a lot of money save up time all the

way to a new financing concept we brought to the market we call lease by the hour where you pay operating hours and independent if you are running those 10 000 hours in two years three years four years or five years you are paying usage and these are all things we are doing looking at you our customer and seeing how can we be a better partner how can we better integrate in your business and make sure that we can help and support you in your endeavor to better service your customers i love it i love it i think i mean it’s like you go back to what you said earlier you travel you spend some money shipping some equipment it’ll cost you some money but what you might learn and what you’re going to figure out and your ability to get in front of your current customers and your ability to get in front of some potential future customers someone that’s on the fence trying to figure out which uh machine to go with absolutely don’t ask me i don’t know like i’ve only i’ve only ran one so go ask some is ran a

few different ones go ask go talk to him see who’s gonna take care of you i can i can speak to that i can’t speak to the rest of it so thank you for coming in i appreciate the time and uh thank you very much that’s been a pleasure in the travel to idaho yeah it’s been great all right really great thank you very much for the opportunity and see you later i’m gonna make my i’m gonna see you at the scrap expo for sure and i’m gonna make my way over to charlotte and then if i get real ambitious i’m gonna go to germany i had that offer from our last uh dealer modern machinery and i just i never took them up on it and now i kick myself in the butt on that a few times let’s do it let’s do it together and i hope that we’ll see many people at the scrap expo as you said jim keith is doing a fantastic job using that organization check out the scrap expo if you look it up um online i mean jim’s doing a good job promoting it i’m super

excited about it so go check it out it’s going to be a good time great thanks