in this episode of recycled idaho i get a chance to sit down with tom hines founder of odin works check out how they started and i’ve become one of the most respected firearm parts manufacturer in the industry they even launched their own in-house rifle check it out all right welcome everybody i’m sitting here with tom hines ceo and president of odin works and scout technology so thank you for sitting down with us i’ve been really excited to do this one i’ve been wanting to do it for like six months now and we’re finally at a good place where i think it’s a little more comfortable for everyone with what’s going on on the world with covid to do it so we’re a little more comfortable to walk around and talk to each other again and that’s a good sign so i know a little bit of what you guys do probably like the very tip of the iceberg you know and that’s what i love about the opportunity to do these with people i get to learn so much more and we get to share it with people that don’t even know you’re

in idaho like because well share with us what odin works is so we are you almost we’re like an after-market uh accessory company and we were an aftermarket now we’re actually producing complete guns uh complete rifles of the ar-15 platform you know here in boise so we started that up just a few months ago i think october so before that we you know we put out thousands of barrels and thousands of foreigns and flashlight mounts and hand stops and extended magazine releases just stuff for your ar you know since it’s kind of like the the the lego of the gun world so we you know we really started about almost 10 years ago and we came out with some products and gave a couple of things away and we weren’t even ready to start selling products yet we’re filling you know the design of a lot of stuff and we had somebody call up and say hey i seen so and so had one of these and you know there was a gun shop i think in rexburg area um and they made the first order and uh we said we can’t

even take payments yet but it just the ball got rolling and and you know here we are almost 10 years later you know we’re we’re pushing about 45 47 employees now and it’s just getting bigger and bigger and bigger yeah i mean i can tell um how busy you guys are right now i can usually tell a busy machine shop is but if i can park in the front or not and i haven’t been able to park to come see you guys in the front for a very long time now everybody in the gun world right now if they have good products um are you know running at 100 somewhat plus capacity so you know we’re running uh two shifts in the middle of the week a shift on the weekend um you know we’re just really blessed well i love your products um i’ve actually bought some of your products from my dad because my dad’s got a what’s he got i think he’s got three ar-15s so i’ve bought him a few things for little accessories and um it’s a kind of a funny story because he was buying it was

after one of the little scares like the guns were gonna get taken away and all that so my dad jumped online was buying as many guns as he can like a lot of people do when those things happen um i asked him like dad why are you buying like why do you need three of them he’s all i need to be able to hand you one just in case so so i have one too and mine just looks like you know it’s a normal like woodstock pretty bare bones you wouldn’t know it was an ar-15 unless you knew guns and that’s what’s funny about that like people that aren’t that don’t know about guns they hear they wear an ar-15 they think it’s just some big assault rifle that looks you know looks to the part you know but it can look just like a deer rifle yeah you know and a lot of people are using it for hunting purposes yeah so you know now we call it the msr the modern sporting rifle okay um you know there’s just there’s honestly millions and millions of ars in the u.s

oh yeah and you know a lot of them are put together a lot of them aren’t in the way of you can buy your lower and then add the barrel you want add the configuration so you can make a short gun a long gun there has to be probably 15 to 20 different calibers you can put it into um and that’s what the cool thing about it and you can do it in your you know in your basement or in your shop or whatever else you can swap a barrel out in 10 minutes so and they all shoot a lot alike in the way of the accuracy level you can you know build a half inch or less ar-15 which you know a few years ago everybody always thought you know that a semi-auto was going to be a you know a uh spray and prey kind of a thing but you can actually make a really accurate uh what we call gas guns okay so let’s go back so what was it like 20 2011 when you guys started then yeah so you where did you start out of did you

have a warehouse did you have a are you starting a garage like sort of okay so many people start businesses i’m an idaho farm boy okay and in about 2002 um in the farm bill they had a program to re-educate the american farmer so if you owned your own farmland and you know you were actually working at um the government paid for you to go back to school to learn another trade if you wanted to so i took that opportunity went and learned about machining at boise state cool so that was a two-year program and then i went to work for another gun company um and did a lot of design and and kind of like grew my wings and then um i hit my 40th birthday and the day after my 40th birthday i sent my resignation letter and and it was honestly the best thing that i ever did so everybody out there who’s like if my job sucks the people i work with suck i could do a better job go do it you know and it’s really not that hard to do you’re going to make a lot

of mistakes just realize you’re going to make mistakes learn from them that’s the biggest keys just learn from your mistakes and but try i love what you just said there because i’ve told so many people even here or friends or just people i run into that are just miserable um and i’ve told them like hey if you think like if you like if you think united metals is making you miserable as your friend i’m telling you quit you know we’ll survive i’m gonna miss you i wish we could make it work but if we can’t make it work like you know find something that you like like i’m really blessed i don’t feel i haven’t gone to work in years i this is my life i wake up this is part of my life i do it you know i don’t even clock in and clock out you know i do it all day every day you know you got to find a balance with family and you got to find a balance so you don’t go insane right you know but to be happy is priceless it is you know and and not

um making a job out of your job is super important so if it really is a job you know it’s just i’m going to go clock in i’m going to go clock out go do something else go to go figure out what you want to do and go do it yeah if it’s machining you know it’s uh it’s a trade that anybody can learn uh it’s a great trade there’s a lot of technology involved now you know we have robots at uh feeding our machines now and it’s not replacing people you know we’re just it’s a way for us to add on to uh our production schedule can they run all night those robots they can um you know and every robot sales guy will tell you that everything can run all night and completely unattended which isn’t really true i mean the perfect scenario yeah you can do it but there’s always something that happens always a tool that’s going to break and when that tool breaks the next five break you know so um but it’s it’s fun you know that’s the stuff that we grew up playing with my engineers have

a blast because they’re out there playing with you know these robots which are their toys and they give them names good um every robot has its own name good um and it has its own person you’ll have to show me that when we walk when we walk because i’d love to we’ll put it on there like you know bob or whatever the name is uh most of them are stripper names destiny yeah even better i was my mind wasn’t even going there but well that’s an engineer for you so i can tell i go to enough businesses and and most of them have great cultures but some don’t but i can tell you guys have a great culture and just from talking to you right now i can tell why it always starts at the top the person on the top is happy it usually can trickle down you know where you give it to people you know give them some freedom find people that are passionate about that and you’re not going to always find the right fit not everyone’s going to fit in and not every day is like the best day

you don’t have to be you know sunshines and rainbows every single day but if overall you make that culture something that people want and you’re going to retain people longer you’re going to attract other people that can come help grow your company and and i talk about this a lot on this podcast but to me like culture is arguably like the most important thing for a business well it kind of creates itself so good or bad it creates itself right and i am not going to say it starts from the top down because it’s it’s a we thing it is always a we thing you know it’s everybody involved so um you know there’s been times when an employee yells that gets addressed right off the bat you know that whole anger thing it doesn’t happen at odin works um we all have emotions and whatnot but um mankindness goes so far so i gotta you know that all goes back to my parents okay and it’s a big deal of just like around our shop you won’t see any girly pictures and i’ve always said you know my mom can walk into this

shop and not be offended by anything you know so um you know and it’s growing those people it’s we have some great young men and young women working there who are quality people and and we support them you know and um i’ve always told um you know the people that work with us it’s you know if you have an idea about something you know it’s not in the gun world come in on the weekends and won’t work on it and as long as they’re not doing it for profit they’re going to learn so much you know if they have a bicycle idea come in and let’s work on it and i’ll take a saturday and work on it with them and uh one thing has actually made it out to the market you know and he’s not with us anymore because he was able to you know grow that and actually start a business so um but you supported that growth see that you don’t find that a lot like people get kind of fearful to lose people and and i think that’s a really powerful thing to to support that and that just

goes back to your culture and just the quality of the person you are and the people that are working with you like i think that’s amazing i appreciate that yeah because i i’ve it’s just as important to let people leave with as much enthusiasm as when you brought them in shake their hands support them wish them the best you know rather than be like you know screw you you know like oh you’re leaving you’re the enemy and i just have i have a real big issue with that mentality so like like i said earlier that’s why i’ve told people that i when i see they’re upset or not like just constantly everyone’s entitled to have a bad day when you’re upset for six months that’s why i said hey man as your friend i care about you maybe it’s time to find something that makes you happy or you know and usually it’s not where you work it’s usually deeper than that yeah you and i both have had to let people go you know and yeah by the time you finally let him go you should have let him go three weeks three

months a year ago you know and you try to you know help him out and coach him through some of these things but um you know some people will never be happy so yep find your happiness however you have to you know um so going back you’re making parts and you weren’t even ready to sell them yet um nope so let’s let’s step back and okay talk about the the history of how you do it because probably a lot of your viewers are machine people right a lot of them yeah we have a lot of our ships yep a lot of our customers a lot of our viewers are machinists who work in the manufacturing field so um i went out and you know when i was getting a divorce from this other company and finally got everything all settled out the next day you know i i met with a sales guy at haws you know and so hos is an equipment manufacturer made in america um and ordered a lathe and ordered a mail okay and i’m like i got some ideas on paper i’m you know i’m just gonna do it

so i went and found a little 700 square foot shop over on coal by costco yeah i remember that shop and um just walked in and i was broke at that time and you know i was it’s like the my kids always say that remember dad when we were living cheap and we lived cheap you know and just worked just you know there was times where i didn’t leave the shop for you know 100 hours stretch i would sleep there you know and it was about making something out of nothing and then hired a machinist who was leaving his spot because i had enough work and i got a little bit of work farmed out from so in the beginning you were doing it all all by yourself yep okay you know and when you when you’re that super small business guy and you hire your first employee you know it’s it’s hard to do your shop will never be as efficient as when you were running the whole thing but hired them or hired him and then hired a marketing gal who did a fantastic job for being i think she was like

19 or 20 in college and it was kind of a part-time thing for her but she really got the ball rolling cool really smart girl that you know she’s left us now and moved on to bigger things but god bless her because she was she had some talent to her so and you probably gave her the free reign to to to learn how to do things with your company no she got exactly because i couldn’t manage you know and and you can’t manage your people you know they have to be managing themselves yeah or else you’re just one you know you’re just micromanaging everything and if you do that then you’re not growing and never work yeah you know yeah so um yeah so we moved from we went to 700 square feet and then we went to 1400 square feet and then like down the block we went to like 2 400 square feet and you know the whole time we’re bringing more people on and then we went to 4 800 square feet and then i think we’re in like 13 a little over 13 000 now and then we’re building

our new shop out in nampa uh that’ll be 22 000 square foot are you gonna keep two shops both shops open no you’re gonna move to manpower the family needs to stay together okay so um we’re gonna you know slowly bring the other one on because we can’t interrupt production right now you know we’re in we’re in the greatest time that we’ve ever had in the way of just you know sales or outpace and manufacturing you know we’re six months behind at best i saw your website i went on there to just kind of check out some stuff and a lot of it’s like you know how to talk how to talk i was talking and i always say this around here like it’s a good problem to have you know but still like a problem you know you know i’m i’m really good friends with a lot of people in the industry and some true competitors in the industry but we still on the way over here not that i was texting and driving but we were texting and you know with probably my my biggest competitor and you know visiting about things

and we talk about tools we talk about machines um so it’s kind of a brotherhood absolutely just slept at my house and i’ve slept it hits cool i like that that’s how it should be it’s all right to be competitive at the end of the day like for what i saw it was some story on like linkedin or social media some farmer was had this really good crop that he was growing and he shared that seed with all his competitors so they could pollinate together and everyone thought he was crazy at first but then they all just if one succeeds they all can succeed you know same with like i’m involved with uh swima southwest idaho manufacturing alliance with the tow association i do this because i get some real enjoyment fulfillment out of it i like helping people and i like building things i like i’m a builder i like to kind of like see it from the beginning and like help and what i love about both those organizations is a lot of those people in that room are direct competitors but we’re all there to like better you know that industry

and that’s kind of one of my points of doing this like sharing stories like this and getting out there but you know and and the firearms industry is very much that way a lot of us can help each other out um do you ever outsource some of your work we don’t okay you know i look at it like if we need to outsource something we need to just buy a machine and do it and keep trying to keep everything you know we outsource coatings and paint and some of that stuff but not the actual manufacturing of the parts no i really i love making stuff you know it’s i think it’s that idaho farm boy uh-huh that um i love to grow it what kind of farms did you grow so i grew up in cuna and um you know we had cows and when i graduated high school i probably had 100 pigs um you know so it was corn okay the you know the barleys and the wheats and the alfalfa and um not that it made me a workaholic but uh it helped too it probably gave you a good

work ethic oh absolutely we were sun up to sundown yeah and it was no big deal and yeah we you know played you know a lot when we were younger but you know we were eight years old and driving trucks and um out pumping tubes in the morning and so then when you went into manufacturing you working from sun up to sun down wasn’t that big of a change for you no it was and it was great you know we were born to work you know and crete but i remember when my dad came in and i’m probably my first shop and and i had these parts sitting out there i’m like dad there’s a ton of hay and there’s a ton of hey and there’s a ton of a i don’t care if it rains tonight so um you know it’s it’s it’s making stuff yeah yeah and finding that passion can be almost every entrepreneur and owner has that passion now to bring people on that can share at least a part of that passion one thing that’s been hard for me to understand it’s like i shouldn’t expect everyone to have

as much passion as i have for something and it and once i realized that it really put things in perspective for me like some people don’t care as much and they shouldn’t because they don’t have as much skin in the game you know they’re an employee and they might eventually grow to have that passion and to build that team can be really difficult but once you build it and build that i mean we consider ourselves a family as i’m sure you guys do too once you do build that core and that team and then you start to grow it like that’s what gets me going i love it like i love bringing on people and seeing them succeed like i just i love it like um and for every success story unfortunately there’s a guy that you had to let go or the guy that quit and i’ve always you know shook their hand said hey man i just hope you can find that that next thing you know and that’s something that’s really hard um for me is an employee has no problem quitting and going to a better job so we have

to remember that when it’s time to let somebody go that it’s okay to fire them because it’s okay for them to fire you so i think that would be something that you know your entrepreneurs that are out there watching this it’s okay to let somebody go it might be entree leadership without dave ramsey i used to listen to that a lot and he talks about what you’re just talking about says sometimes firing someone does both you a service because then you know obviously if you can recognize it’s not a fit you let them go and hopefully like you never you they might find the thing they’re really passionate about you know because if you keep them on there like i said earlier for six months you’re too late to the game you know um so i think you’re doing each other’s service yeah so that brings me back to interview questions so i interview a lot of people right and uh there’s a few things i always ask them one was what’s their favorite color okay and if you have somebody there who is trying to get a marketing degree or a marketing job

and they go i don’t have a favorite color it tells you a little bit about their creativity and then i always ask everybody it’s like what do you want to do when you grow up and i’ve had people cry in an interview like i wanted to be this and blah blah it’s like why aren’t you doing it well this and that you know so then it almost becomes this counseling service going on and you really try to encourage people to do what they want to do so um you know if you want to come to work for odin works and you want to work for odin works or with us awesome you know i’ve hired people that we didn’t have job openings for because you just meet them and and they’re quality people and they want the job you know and so we fit them in and pretty soon that might have been you know part of really growing the company so fast is people that actually have the passion to to be part of it yeah that’s great so i used to work for voc rehab so i’d help people in interviews interview

questions i’d go to interviews with them do some prep work and one of the questions that threw us for a loop it was at barnes noble this girl really wanted to work there she’s young um we were we were prepped we did mock interviews we were ready and i was sitting there with her and i said if he could be any type of candy bar what would he be and she like just looked at me and she’s like i’m like just tell him you know and she she killed it she said like i don’t even remember but it was like because i’m sweet and crunchy you know i’m like that’s awesome and she got the job long story short but like i love throwing and i don’t interview a ton of people um tom our president or does all our hr so he does most that but i always give him a hard time like where’s the candy bar question like throw something fun in there you know so i like i like that color one because i do interview the people in our marketing department i want to add that well and it’s

not just about marketing i ask it to everybody do you yeah and it really um because no one’s ready for that question nobody’s ready for it it kind of breaks the ice and just lets them be themselves for a moment you know they’re not having to to sign off all the stuff that they prep for yeah you know um but it really shows you who they are you know if it’s black then they’re you know they’re they think differently than i do you know i love orange i love greens um as you can see green and black are my favorite green one and black you could maybe tell yeah yeah so um no it’s something that i’ve learned in the last few years about you know asking some of those just off the wall questions and i let them ask me off the wall questions and i like it so let’s get back into the guns so you start with parts run me through some of the progressions on some changes that went on the company like how did you get how did you get to your self full-on ar-15 we do

yeah how did you get to that point you know it was it got down to last year we’re pre-election and um the gun world’s hot you know um anytime there’s a presidential election there’s always a spike in guns and alcohol being sold yep i don’t know why but it just is people are afraid that something’s gonna get shut down yeah you know so um and the same thing with you know i don’t want to bring up alcohol but alcohol consumption is way up in the u.s right now i don’t know if you’ve ever watched that i’ve heard since the pandemic yeah i don’t know if it’s pandemic with a combination of the election um i didn’t know if the numbers were still up but i i know it was around christmas time we went to the liquor store to buy some crown royal because we have some people over you know family so we’re going to buy that crown royal apple the shelves were like bare it was crazy and i asked the people working like what’s going on like i haven’t been in a liquor store in a long time yeah

and they’re like and they’re like oh we can’t keep it on the shelves and and they can’t make it fast enough and they’re having a hard time like everyone getting employees to work there some kind of it’s like it’s not just like the scrap industry or the manufacturer everybody’s having a hard time getting people to work so anyway going back like all the cells were going crazy yeah so um we were making almost every part to complete it and um we just you know a lot of things i wake up in the morning it’s like this is the direction we’re gonna go so we put a few things in play and it took about three months to get materials in and and stuff you know drawn and and we you know i have the what we call napkin sketches you know and a lot of times it’s i’m drawing at home you know at 10 30 at night watching some dumb show on netflix and um you know making these things become real so you know my poor engineers they get my napkin sketch and it’s like you know here’s what it kind of

needs to look like and and you know there’s the form in the function right the function’s pretty easy to do okay it’s easy to build a box you know to make that the really cool sexy box is a challenge so um you know that’s where i’m blessed with you know the the ability to make that kind of cool stuff so um so your napkins sketch how long do you let a knight stew on an idea before you put it to the team uh robots i woke up one morning and i’m like how come we’re not using robots and i didn’t even know how robots would influence our business you know and be able to feed our machines and within two days i’d bought a six thousand dollar robot off of ebay okay and that seems cheap uh used robots are super cheap okay i was like i would think a lot more chicago okay um so when this is a used robot sales guy okay he said that whenever they get ready to um you know like like the automotive industry gets ready to ramp up for a new car and they need this

space they just clean it out okay scrap everything scrap business and so he gets these things and he tests them and change bearings if he needs to or whatever and he had this one and it showed up and by the end of that day we had it moving and my engineer never had been with a robot because engineers are with robots yeah but he had the thing moving and and then we started you know working on you know how we’re going to feed the robot and how we’re going to hold the robot and or hold the material in the machine yeah and so then we started another company everybody some work holding okay so we have pneumatic vices that uh hold the the work piece and so are you guys making the vices then yeah making them and shipping them all over the world awesome so i didn’t even know that was part of it because i was gonna that was gonna lead into a question later if you make anything besides gun parts yeah yeah that uh company has really taken off awesome the covid has helped it um because of the lack

of labor and you know we’re shipping products to the uk netherlands australia so you’re worldwide and i’m sure you’re shipping your gun parts worldwide or can you you you can you know there’s some paperwork involved okay what not but um the us is just still i want to say low hanging fruit but the demand in the us is so strong we’re not even trying to get it you don’t even need to go there yeah so yeah we’ve shipped to europe and and canada quite a bit but um you know we’ve really backed off those efforts because the u.s market is so strong do you have a pretty big sales team for for like one business isn’t bowman to try to go find homes for your stuff uh we have two sales guys who are very active okay cool and you know a lot of it’s relationship based yeah but uh you know we do trade shows uh we do you know a couple of big shows you know the biggest ones what we call shot show and then the nra’s a big show i’ve heard of the shot show is that down in

vegas yep yep every year yeah in january and it’s a you know don’t you take the whole do you take a lot of your team um i can’t take the whole team you can’t take the whole team uh there’s about seven or eight of us ago cool and we work sun up to sundown and some of them work way into the middle of the night at 4am and they sleep for two hours and they go back and do it again it’s vegas yeah and by the time we hit that point in january you know everybody’s worked through christmas and and they are ready to have a couple hours off they probably didn’t have one this year uh nope this is the first year and i don’t know how many years that they didn’t have it are they gonna do you think they’ll have one this is coming january scheduled okay cool cool um you know with the com the country having you know a lot of coveted cases and shots now um i think they’ll pull it off i think so too it feels like right currently right now the biggest scrap conference israel

is going on virtually for the first time they didn’t have it last year because of kovid which was a bummer because we were gonna have garyvee be or the keynote so i was really excited to see him but anyway got cancelled and this one’s virtually being held but i’ve attended it they’ve done a good job putting it together but it’s just not the same man so i know that first israeli event in 2022 it’s going to be in vegas that thing is going to be a monster you know nothing was probably a bigger party than a scrap convention probably like it there’s a lot of cool stuff there um i keep sidetracking i apologize no that’s cool so anyway get back into your path um you know it’s really um i don’t want to say it’s easy it’s just it’s hard work you know it’s just a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of weekends and um if you’re an entrepreneur and you need to have saturday and sunday off you’re not an entrepreneur you’re an employee no you know if you’re not thinking about it when you come home and having

that you know a lot of people say that pen and paper next to your bed um i don’t because if i if it’s really that idea you can’t go back to sleep no and my wife can tell you i’m up you know some sometimes i’ll wake up at two o’clock in the morning and i’ll be on my way to work at six wide awake you know a whole bunch of new napkin sketches ready to go um you know and just being active but then you know i think another big key thing is don’t get caught up in a bad idea because we can you got to be willing to change your mind right and it’s one of the biggest strengths that a lot of people lack is just being able to change your mind yeah um i will get outvoted on some stuff and i’ll be like man this is so cool will you swallow your pride then oh you have to yeah and that’s why you built that team right so if you didn’t you wouldn’t you’d lose your team there’s a few times that you know i’ve had to like override and

sometimes it’s like a product name or something something we’re not thinking something about macro so like more micro decisions yeah and it’s like we don’t have a good idea you know but we we’re waiting to do packaging products been made you know uh we gotta call it something you know and there’s been a couple of times it’s like well this is what it is and um but then a year later everybody just calls it that and you know like our suppressors i saw those on there yeah my wife and i we were driving back from i think oregon and you know i’m driving along and and my wife’s talking and i’m you know of course listening intently but uh i thought why don’t we call our suppressions jeep trails so we have the moab and we have baja um it’s another one brimstone and you know just and it was like you know it’s just nobody’s done it nobody’s got into those names so it’s just like let’s give it these you know something unique yeah wholesome unique you know it doesn’t have to be like you know death killer three kind of a

yeah yeah something a little more uh in the middle yeah you know and then uh i got turned 50 and i bought a motorcycle last year you know an enduro bike so our next suppressor suppressor is called an enduro because of the way it’s you know it’s real modular and and you can shoot it from you know a lot of different calibers and stuff like that and uh so i love it everybody just likes the names so i love how you’ve kind of talked about how you come up with an idea you can put it to the team it could just be a sketch and that’s how that’s how some of the biggest ideas start um the owner of united brett he is very similar a lot of us guys are or we’ll be like hey what about this like and we’ll collaborate and sometimes you know like you said like we’re like ah i don’t you know i don’t think that idea will work you know um but one thing i i’ve found interesting uh listening to a different podcast is a different entrepreneur it’s got a 48 hour which i was like

oh that might be not the worst idea in the world he’ll come up with like a sketch but he’ll sit on it for 48 hours you know just to make sure cause he was bombarding his team with like i did after i did after i did where they were like oh you know and i was like oh that’s kind of unique but i go back and forth on that if that’s true if it’s a killer idea like for me i want to be like here it is like before because a lot of times if i don’t get it out if i don’t make that phone call or like shoot that email off i won’t like forget it forget it but i’ll like lose a little bit of that fire that i had on it i got to keep that like momentum going on it you know and and i just love that mentality and you also hit on this and my wife’s awesome and she’s used to it by now i like i don’t turn it off like i don’t quit working you know i answer phone calls at eight nine at night or

i’ll keep working or i’ll shoot off emails or i’ll wake up early saturday and sunday to handle a few like things i can do from home you know i have a really nice home office that we put together my wife uses as well and having that support system behind you can help you like enable you to have those ideas share it with your team and just really like create that environment where it’s exciting where you’re growing because if you’re not growing you’re dying exactly like so like and we and you’ve got to be able to you got to get comfortable with failing too and that’s really that was really hard for me because i’m competitive yeah you know and that’s where a lot of the young people uh like a young engineer will come in and you know want to design something or just you know change a shape or whatever and then we all kind of like veto it and they it is really hard for some people to fail but you got to fill a thousand times before you come up with one good one i always you know i’ve always said

you know we come up with a thousand bad ideas but one of them is really really good yeah and the failures they’re they’re not always cheap sometimes they’re really expensive um but if you’re not comfortable failing you’re not gonna find that next idea you’re not gonna find that next little little niche even like us in the scrap industry like we are always trying to be innovative we’re always trying to like be smarter we’re not trying to create an environment where where it’s like no this is how we do it because i hate that i hate nope that’s not how we do it i’m like hey like i’ll tell any new employee like if you see a better way to do it tell me usually i’ll be like no that won’t work you know because we’ve tried it but they’re sometimes like it’s a good idea why did none of us think of that because we’re too we’re like in it too deep you know it’s like we’re too busy or too busy like you just don’t see it from a different angle so even i was touring fiber on i make like a trex

decking in meridian and one of their temps came up with an idea that has saved them hundreds hundreds of thousands of dollars of production time i don’t remember exactly what it was but they were willing to listen to a temp like hey why don’t we do it this way so they told us that stories like that is cool like i love businesses like like that you know well cool um i kind of like to close it this way like can you and you kind of hit on it already can you tell me like who’s been like your inspiration or mentor or anything like that or any like just word of advice for our audience man um i’ve had a lot of really good mentors in my life that’s one of my biggest blessings you know um i worked at hp when i was in my 20s and had um he was he wasn’t like my direct manager he was like two or three levels up but super nice guy and you’d see him there at eight o’clock at night and uh his name was ernie keith and he really taught me about manufacturing and

then another good mentor who’s had books on the new york times bestseller list dave garwood back in georgia okay uh really taught me a lot bill of materials was kind of like his thing and you know he was flying all over the country in the 80s you know working for cat and bell helicopters and somehow him and i just meshed so i’ve been at his farm he calls it a farm but it’s like this ultimate beautiful south georgia place and uh i still he still checks in on me and he’ll say what’s your numbers for the month you know and if i don’t respond to him within say 24 hours he calls me he goes i’m expecting your numbers you know um so um you know and without a doubt without my wife and the kids you know and that support that’s very important yeah i got my son working at the company now okay how old’s your son uh 17 about to graduate awesome uh about to graduate from that same high school i went to cool that kind of stuff so you guys are still in cuna then yeah nice um so

it’s it’s really cool you know and um daughter who loves business and is getting her business degree and so cool it’s been fun to be like that influence on people not that we’re perfect you know we’re not the most perfect influencer but um but you’re trying try yeah try every day i love it thank you so much oh you bet and we’re gonna tour your shop thursday a couple of days yeah i love it okay i can’t wait to share a lot of uh my wife called it shiny parts being made oh i can’t wait for that a lot of chips a lot of recycling oh yeah i guess we should touch on that real quick i always forget to talk about recycling and that’s what you guys produce like for us like we we walked and looked down at it before here like amount of chips part of those are yours you know you’re running 60 61 aluminum uh a lot of that a lot of 70 75 but yeah we we bring in uh i bet we have three to four deliveries a week of raw materials oh yeah that’s what scott

was telling me like the amount of materials coming in it’s been so much more because i’m used to going there and i was like gosh this payment’s a little bigger than normal like hey the price getting better which is also you’re seeing on the other end the price getting crazy you know yeah but you know raw materials and we haven’t raised our what we’re selling our products for you know uh for somebody who’s just starting out in the machining world raw materials are really you know a small part of okay anodizing and you know your post machining uh coatings that’s what it costs more than okay then the material does that’s interesting you know you guys give us great service and when the bins are full you guys are always there within 24 hours we try we try our best yeah some days the same exact day and and so we’ve you know helped get our machinists to let us know before the bins are completely full yeah that you guys need to come and then by the time you get there the bins are folded well it’s cool to see you guys we

started with you know cole and it’s cool to see um like i could run the reports and see the differences like it’s cool to see companies grow and be successful i just love it that’s my favorite part of my job is talking to guys like you and going to the shops and like learning about it like i love to like i love that show like how it’s made you know i love it like i love that show the dirty jobs you know i love like just being oh okay that’s how that works and you know in all the industries it’s just so cool and i’m i’m blessed that i get to do that and get paid for it yeah um i’ve told people that what we get from recycling now is more than i was making say like year three yeah you know and uh you know a lot of employees have made a lot more money than i have in that year kind of a thing so um yeah did you know mike rowe from dirty jobs is going to be there on thursday i’ve been trying to get a hold of him

he’s hard to get to um you know what would be a cool idea is um we’ll do a tour of this one and when you’re up and running your new one will come back in a year uh the new one’s going to be pretty high tech and all the way down to um you know the chips that are going out to recycling will be i love it like that would be cool like a like a follow-up like in a year so we’ll do it i’ll make it happen thanks again you bet