welcome to a scrap life a podcast solely focused on the hustlers Grinders operators and business owners who live and breathe the scrap metal industry every day here is your host Brett eart so I know you did a podcast with Nick the other day but I wanted you on here man um I’m H super excited to sit down because you you and I go back you know pretty far right I’ve known I’ve known about you I’ve known you for a long time and the reason for that is because you used to be with Schnitzer back in the day we were partners with Schnitzer at that point I know and now both of us have gone different direction seate ways yeah and I think looking at you talking to you it’s been good for you it’s I feel it’s been good for me and we wish those guys nothing but the most success absolutely but we also wish ourselves a lot of success sucess right so congratulations to you and what I what I want to talk about is just kind of what you got cooking and what’s all up to today man well thank you

Brad I appreciate it I’m also very excited to see the evolution of your own business yeah uh parting ways with a with a JB partner can uh can be pretty uh pretty can feel pretty daunting and I know you and I had a couple conversations about you know the future of the company back then and uh yeah things are evolved Aldo has set up his own company and we’re in a very Niche kind of uh Boutique item that we do we’re servicing end consumers uh mainly from Asia Europe and the us and we’re really in the service uh customer service business that just happens to be on scrap yeah and we are trying to allow a small mediumsized companies in the scrap business to leverage their scrap on a global scale without having to have the the means and the scale of those larger companies that can afford that so we are a boutique service and we can do selling we can do hedging we can do financing we can do transportation and companies don’t have to use it all but it’s A La Car menu and they can say you know what this

this component fits us and we need it and we can service that that’s awesome I remember you and I were talking the other day I mean earlier today before this and I know you probably had been hatching this business plan for a while but you were like you remember that conversation that we had Up on the Rooftop in Chicago there was a an event up there was a there was a bar and we were sitting there talking and you were kind of hatching your next move yes and I love people that bet on themselves right like I’m I’m kind of like I telling you I’m kind of like a cheerleader behind the scenes cuz I’m like I I just find so much value in that in that because you you found a niche you built over all these years you built the customers you built the relationship you you did what you said you’re going to do all for for years and that allowed a certain amount of trust to be carried over oh yeah and I I can’t remember what the year was unfortunately but I know it’s been five seven eight years

and when we had that conversation you you mentioned a couple things that really resonated with me one you said something along the lines about you got to believe in yourself right and there’s all sort of excuses that you know about entrepreneurs not taking this step and really comes down to fear and not believing on themselves okay and at some point you’re like man when am I going to do this because you can build those Souls excuses about it yeah and I got to tell you I mean if anything you guys have opened a forum for yes this is hard it’s not easy being an entrepreneur no especially in the scrap business yeah but here’s the rewarding part right yeah and and that resonates because I feel like it gives them a true vision of what this takes yeah the hard stuff the good stuff the the the crappy stuff yeah and all of it but yeah that conversation SE call it seven years ago and look at us here we follow you online we support you guys we want to see you guys succeed um and just opening the stable conversation to other people

like me other people in the industry you know it’s it’s great yeah I I think a lot of people I mean we we had a sign up sheet right like we’re like hey if you want to talk about your business talk about what you got cooking like like look us up because ultimately like we want to see people succeed and whether they I mean we we’ve talked to a few people now that work for other companies and they’re super happy in their career entrepreneurship isn’t for everybody like and maybe your situation would be different if if you if some other company had came along and said we want to pay you this much money and we don’t need you to do this or that maybe you’d be doing that but the opportunity you said I I I got an idea I want to try it there’s no time like the present and I’m going to I’m going to let it rip absolutely and listen we all in of our lives have reached out for somebody to give us a little bit of help and that won’t stop today yeah my meeting before this conversation

is with somebody who is in a transition of a job and we’re helping him literally update his resume my staff yeah I can’t hire this person but I want to support that process for him to find his next spot so we’re updating his resume my staff putting into a new template Distributing into our Network because I known this person yeah and he has known me and I would love to support that process right so it doesn’t necessarily have to be entrepreneur because it’s not for everyone but happy to have conversation how I can help you know and vice versa cuz when I always I always said this why I’ve always been so open is because I truly believe like the world is abundant right it’s not this isn’t like sports where there’s only one Trophy and only one person wins the like the cool thing about business the cool thing about our industry the cool thing about a a lot of what we do is a lot of people can win like there’s no a clear only one there’s only one winner so the more people that are winning especially if you have the

opportunity to do business with them today or in the future then that’s good for everybody that’s good for the industry a couple years ago you did one posting that I remember you were sending a loot of stainless steel to a consumer in Northern California you and I know who that person is and you named him yeah you’re like this is the guy who I sell my my stainless steel to because you do business with people yeah so here we are right you are you are doing that and you are sticking with that so who else do you see out there saying this is the guy so you’re giving this company a seal of approval that this is a relationship that I trust yep right is cuz I think you can you can spend a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of energy like talking and tearing somebody down or tearing a company down or saying those guys suck or this or that but I would rather spend my time effort and energy saying these are the people I’ve done business with and they always treated me good because eventually

cream floats to the top right like if you take care of your customers and you do what you said you’re going to do and you talk about that and you say hey these guys have been good to me like why wouldn’t I want that person to buy more scrap like if why wouldn’t I want them to be able to be successful because guess what that just gives them more opportunity to take care of me and they’re winning the industry has never has not always been that open and forthcoming right and I feel like this this new wave of communication tools podcasting interviews social media it gives you a platform to say hey guys this is who I do business with I trust them let’s let’s do good together the better they do the better you do okay absolutely but the industry is evolving uh you guys are part of that Evolution it’s something that you know we we were as a as a as a as an industry we were very skeptical to open or s to communication in the past absolutely yeah it’s changing I think that is a good thing for us

because it gives us a a conversation spot at the table how important this industry is as a whole yeah um you know so yeah I heard somebody say it the other day I loved it they said the first one through the brick wall is always gets a little bloody so like people are not really ready to make the change and they’re going to talk a little and they’re like why are you doing this why are you doing that but it’s that first person that busted to the wall that kind of starts to create the wave so like if you can create the wave and and and and it’s a positive one then that’s like that to me is it doesn’t get any better than that and at the same time I’m we get to create all these relationships and we get to have you know we get to listen we all we all we all look and cheer for the guy who took a chance on himself right and at the end of the day that’s really what it comes to and you have to have that belief that there’s going to be some

trials and tribulation going through there but at the end it’s like you can make it your own yeah that’s one of the part of the entrepreneur that I love about it you you you called your own shots yeah and you own it right and yes the first the first one that goes through going to get a little bruy yeah yeah you yeah yeah cuz you don’t know what’s on there but I got to tell you so many people look at it and say man I you know now I feel a little I I feel a little more confident I see the path so I get out there you know uh speaking in public is not what I would normally do but here I am sharing a conversation with you because it’s like hey man encourage you to like okay conversation if we had a whiskey or a CO light it’ be yeah it might flow a little easier we could do that wa W want wait want well it’s only it’s only uh 10:30 here it’s 5:00 p.m. in Europe though 9 it’s 5:00 somewhere we can find the spot

in Germany actually is that a is that a challenge for you I mean trying to manage the time zone on your end is that like probably your biggest challenge bus is a challenge from a staffing standpoint I have five people on my team and uh we spread wh Co hours and E Coast hours okay and most of my clients tend to be in Europe and Asia so it’s 9 hours and 12 and 1 half hours ahead but we also buy from the entire us right Hawaii which is two hours minus uh West Coast and East Coast plus three hours out of California every time zone gets get low just about every time zone but it’s very fascinating I love the people I love the relationships uh from a from a from a transactional standpoint it can be it can be challenging waking up at 2:00 in the morning to have a conversation and remember what what you did but you know it’s uh it’s just part of and also gives you an idea how Global this K is right yes where you need literally plus 12 and a half hours time zone ahead

of you to be able to encapsulate and and transact everything that happens on this environment as well well dud I that’s what I like I love about your business it’s it’s so far away from what my day-to-day looks like right in the fact that I mean you’re there’s a lot of similarities in the fact that you’re service you’re servicing your customers you’re you’re you’re buying and selling you know material every day probably not on the buy side but more maybe be on the sales side um but it’s it’s it’s just a very it’s a it’s it’s a niche deal that plays such a crucial role in our industry and what I wanted to do with the company is to give leverage to the to the yards that don’t have this Global a staff right and sometimes they they they’re trying to figure out how to grow their business and in but they don’t you can’t hire all these people that you need right so we come in there and say we can service you for that and we can do it exclusively for you we look after your business and we act

like a extension of your commercial business because we work exclusively for the client we are full disclosure we know exactly who pays us how we transact and we can service with those components to be able to say oh you don’t need to have the credit against this humongous company overseas we we can take care of that for you and it opens an opportunity that most most companies they just don’t get to have because they don’t have this scale right essentially it’s like I always say it’s like it’s like fractional like people I was talking to somebody the other day I had lunch with him and he was like man I need to get a CFO but I can’t afford a full-time CFO I don’t think I’m busy enough and I said well why don’t you look at getting a fractional CFO right like and he goes what’s that and I said well it’s somebody that can be your CFO for 10 hours a week absolutely and instead of somebody hiring this is my interpretation what you’re saying instead of somebody hiring a full-time guy that’s out there marketing their material they can

have a fractional yes marketing company that markets their scrap yes exclusively for you yep imagine the logistics are trying to find that person with the expertise hire that person manage that person deal with taxes benefits and all of that okay yeah and then having to give an infrastructure logistic financing banking hedging warehousing to that person yeah it’s not an easy thing that’s why most of the large scale companies can afford that because they have the volumes yeah a smaller companies that don’t that’s the challenge we sold that yeah because we can say we can be the fractional guy we look after your interest M we move this craft full disclosure this is what it goes we get paid we bet the consumers we know that they’re good people to do business with because my reputation is on the line I known these consumers in these yards for the last 12 years we don’t take on every single client we’re very selective on what we do because we want to stand by the deal that we make yeah yeah I I look at it people say do you export scrap and I say yeah but

I use Brokers and they’re like why do you use a broker why do you why don’t you just you know make the deal I said here’s the deal I said I want to know the guy I’m dealing with I don’t I don’t care he needs to make some money he do need to make a lot if I but he needs to make something and what he’s doing it’s a headache tax right is the way I see it absolutely is he’s taking away that headache of me trying to find the container deal with the drage get it take deal with the deal with the that customer make that deal and I feel like if I can deal with a brokerage house and and they say this is the price deliver it to this we’ll trans everything else is done that’s worth a couple cents to me right and it’s the same concept with what you’re doing you’re taking away that headache or you’re really kind of replacing that full-time yes we are cost of an employee and and allowing them to know what their margin is say build it in on the buy side

correct and we make it affordable because we can scale the services to what they need so it’s not like hey you got to take all of this right because hedging for some companies makes sense for other it it doesn’t yeah so it’s not an instrument that you have to get from us you can say manage my sales manage the containers I don’t want the headache of having to deal with containers we can take care of that I have a full you know two staff plus all these contract with freay forw and companies so it’s already there so the infrastructure is already there so to your point yes and we charge you a very clear fee for the service so every single month you know exactly where you’re going to pay I love it I love it well anybody wants to reach out how do they get a hold of you Aldo Aldo at the medals agency.com we have a website that tells people what to do happy to have a conversation and we don’t charge to have a conversation and if it’s not a good fit for us we’re happy to say it’s

not a good fit for us we’ll keep you in mind but we can recommend somebody else as well you’re on LinkedIn we’re in LinkedIn look him up man I’m I’m I’m I’m happy for you man you’re in a good spot like where you’re going and I really remember that we got to figure out what year it was because it’s going to drive me nuts okay we’ll figure it out yeah over a whiskey that’s we we need to ha the do yeah to get it figured out but I did check I’m pretty sure it’s 5:00 p.m. in in Germany okay 9 hours ahead so exactly all right man I appreciate you I’m super happy for you