it’s no secret i’ve bought a few pieces of sierra equipment over the years so when phil sacco came into town the other day we had an opportunity to sit down and talk scrap talk equipment and more importantly family business both of us are third generation family business guys who love the scrap industry and become friends over the years i really enjoyed this podcast and i hope you guys do as well all right we finally got uh i’m gonna say big phil because i only know you the most but uh you say your family calls you little phil yes sir but i’m sitting here with phil sacco jr um from sierra and we’ve known each other for a long time we’ve shot the together a long time and we’ve bought a lot of equipment from you guys over the years but it’s more than that to me and i love more than anything interviewing my friends in the industry right so we all we have a lot in common so welcome man thanks for taking the time thanks for having me man honor to be here and just be a part of your company and

uh you know like you said friendship man i mean we’ve both grown up in this industry and known each other for a long time it’s pretty cool so i mean as i’ve talked to you over the years i’ve realized um probably more than ever is probably there’s a we have a lot of common right in common so like you’re a third generation scrap guy equipment guy i’m third generation we both played college football yep so where’d you play your uh college football at i played at azusa pacific university okay and also uh one semester at bakersfield college junior college nice i think we actually our schools played each other yeah i was thinking about that and i was trying to remember we you and i didn’t play against each other because we’re you’re a little bit younger than i am um but i was i was trying to think because i played at you know eastern oregon university and then at southern oregon university now i want to say when i was at southern oregon is when we played azusa pacific in southern oregon we i played on southern oregon’s field i mean like

you said about a few years after you played but um i’m getting old on that field yeah i’m getting old i guess i still feel it in my joints nowadays i’ve come starting to uh my wife will her and i’ll be sitting there and all of a sudden i’ll like turn i’ll go crack and she’s like jeez what’s wrong my wife same thing sometimes like you know my i was lucky man i i’m sure you too i’ve had so many teammates that blew out knees career ending life-changing injuries i had a couple minor knee injuries that occasionally gave me some some trouble but you know for the most part i got out of there unscathed i had a couple concussions but i did break my back broke some ribs i mean it’s just yeah it’s part of the part of the game it’s part of the deal so you learned a lot of the business i would like to think probably from your grandpa right yeah i mean your dad and your uncle and you know other people have probably played a major influence but it’s probably a lot of and i don’t

want to i don’t want to answer the question and more i want to ask it is i mean how big of a role did your grandpa play in your want to be in the scrap industry oh man it was it was absolutely huge you know my grandfather was just an amazing human being and always loved being around them and you know as a little kid growing up in a family business especially the family scrap business yeah what better thing is it than coming to the yard you’re seeing stuff get crushed up or i mean it’s just a little cute little boy’s dream right to go sit in big equipment see all this stuff happening so at a very very young age um they used to pay me you know sierra going back we were originally a burlap sack business that’s how sierra bag started and you know uh some of your listeners may also follow sierra’s podcast heard some of the the stories there um but my grandpa used to pay me and at the time it was big time money ten dollars a warehouse to sweep and these are huge huge buildings probably

i don’t know 20 25 000 square foot warehouses i would imagine somewhere in that ballpark range and it would take me all day to do one or not all day take me to lunch to do one yeah ten bucks man at five six years old heck yeah i was a rich kid i just got ten what’d you spend the money on i had a piggy bank and i just remember i’d wait till the piggy bank was full um and it would go into a banking account for me like i literally started my my mom and dad started a bank account for me when i was so are you a saver or are you a spender i’d like to say i’m more of a saver but when the time’s right you know i’m not afraid like not afraid to have a good time but was your grandpa a saver or a spender he was definitely a saver i mean he was a uber conservative you know old world generation migrated over from italy had nothing in his pocket when he came over lived in new york joined the air corps in world war ii um

you know he that generation saw the toughest times and i think that’s what was instilled into my father my uncle my family which was passed down to me and i was just i always say man i was so lucky to learn and have a relationship with a grandfather like that that was one of my best friends and one of my biggest mentors i could ever ask for so i mean you and i we were talking we went out to dinner last night and um and we were shooting the and i from my standpoint and you said it you you said i came from a pretty well-off family right and but when i talk to you i don’t get that vibe because you know when you talk to people that come from you know a family that that financially was well off sometimes you run across those people where you’re like man you just don’t really know what it is to put a hard day’s work in or you don’t know you don’t understand the value of what we’re doing every day but when i talk to you and i i have a tremendous

amount of respect for people that you know because you’re just born into a situation some people are born into you know a rich family some people are born into a poor family we’re born in a middle-class family but it’s it’s all upon the individual you know how they perceive and what they do with what they’re given right so from my standpoint you you’re a bust your ass type of guy that you know i would have never you know if anybody ran into you in the streets i’d feel like they nobody would know that you came from a very well-off family right so how do you what what do you think from a parenting standpoint or from whatever like why do you think that that is what what was instilled in you early in life was it your grandpa your dad what was instilled early to kind of give you that work ethic because i’m big on that you know it’s uh definitely i think has to do with family upbringing you know like you know my grandfather came over from italy you know during and right out during the great depression times

and my grandmother on my mother’s side of the family also came over from italy at that same time my grandmother on the socco side came over from oklahoma during the great depression so you know i have grandparents that saw what it is to literally not be able to put food on the table at times and having that passed down and instilling work ethic in the family uh is a big big part of it the other part of it is i i kind of you know when i have these conversations and i think back to that i kind of equate back to sports you know we talked about football at the beginning like i played football i was in sports and i first played football i was a big soccer guy until i think i was 10 years old first time i played 10 or 11 is when i first played the pads sixth grade sixth grade yeah fifth sixth grade fifth grade i think is when i put put on the football play first year tackle football game changer i love this game i love the sport i’m this is what i want to

do i just it consumed my life um in the sports world is football well to be successful in football let alone any sport you’ve got to have work ethic you’ve got to put in your time you know nothing you can have the most raw talent out there but if you’re not dedicated and you don’t put in the hard work you’re not gonna get anywhere and unfortunately i’d see that sometimes in the business world too you know sometimes people are just handed a company or handed wealth and if they didn’t put in the work to get there not all the times but a good chunk of the time they don’t succeed yeah i think there’s a lot to that do you think that’s a parenting thing and do you think that your your parents helped instill that in you or is it just a sports thing i mean where did you your grandpa i think it’s a combination um you know sports is one aspect to look at um but but really i would say i had the best parents best family you could ask for my mom my dad you know my grandpa my

uncle john you know you asked earlier what did i learn from my grandpa yeah really all the way up until the time of his passing it wasn’t that i didn’t learn things from my father or my uncle in the family business but it was oh hey i’m going down to the yard this weekend i get to run the sheer i get to run the excavator you know i’ve torched learned you know i’m a horrible welder but i did learn how to weld um you know you go through those steps and it was always my grandpa teaching me his favorite thing was to drive around in the golf cart in the scrap yard and he’d sit there and he’d wait until he’d see something that wasn’t perfect i mean he was always about a stopwatch on oh you see he wasted two minutes and two minutes of wasted time when you’re getting 20 tons production over a course of a day that’s an extra you know x amount of tons which is profitable and he just instilled that into me so i think it was a definitely an upbringing type deal and you know my

grandfather passed away my freshman year of college um it wasn’t until then i realized how much i really learned from the guy yeah and then i started okay better listen to dad and uncle now let’s see what they have to say yeah and it’s i mean i mean it’s it’s crazy how much like you you know my some of my best memories are going back and thinking about you know my parents both you know worked at the scrap yard my mom worked at scale and then eventually became the accountant and my dad you know was driving truck and working out in the yard and um one this is in the early days when my grandma was working the scale and my grandpa was running the truck shop and dispatching trucks and you know just kind of managing the business and i remember going down there every saturday every saturday when i was really young and just sitting in my grandpa’s office and watching cartoons on a saturday morning because we got up that early and we went to the scrap yard and then eventually when i could actually work you know by the time

i was 10 9 10 i could actually i think my first job was to clean out the candy machine and take all the quarters and stack them and roll them and then then they’d put them in the cash box and put new candy in the candy machine and then from there i progressed to work in the recycling center so like some of my best memories are just hanging out in the scrap yard as a kid and throwing rocks through windows of cars and running anything any machine that they let me in whether it’s a forklift or you know i spent a lot of years you know stripping wire but i think that teaches a kid a strong work ethic is you know just teaching them you know what it takes to earn a dollar even if it’s ten dollars to sweep the warehouse whatever that is to me that’s big and so i don’t ever underestimate grandparents influence on the their grandkids and like their ability if you can get them in early and just kind of especially in a family business atmosphere yeah that’s a big that’s a big part of it so

kind of give me like what do you what what’s your role in sierra now like what what do you do on a daily basis daily basis i am uh equipment salesman i’m the west coast regional manager and i’m the canadian national manager so um you know my day-to-day is you know dealing with customers on new new equipment possibilities you know instead of just selling you know a piece of equipment to sell a piece of equipment me personally i like to go see the yard know the customer figure out what what are you trying to process what are your goals here because sometimes i’ll just get a call oh i i want to buy a 550 shear i want to buy a rev 1 2 ram baler yeah okay that’s great but hold on here what are we processing what’s your tonnage is what what’s your growth potential let’s make sure we’re getting the right piece of equipment for your needs yeah that’s one thing i really enjoy coming from a scrap yard background and now being an equipment salesman you know i learned about all this equipment growing up without ever realizing

it like oh yeah you’re going to process x amount of tons well you need this type of shear you need this type of baler and that’s one thing i feel is a strong point for sierra and myself personally that we can help provide customers the right piece of equipment for their needs so what do you like more the scrap side or the equipment side oh that’s a tough question i i love the equipment side because i get to travel i get to you know meet you and become friends with so many great people in this industry um but there’s definitely times i miss the scrap yard you know there’s there’s sometimes if i have to go up to our corporate in bakersfield and you know do what we need to do on the equipment side i’m like hey see you guys i’m going to go in the back for a couple hours and know hey no one’s running this excavator right now yeah you know safety am i good make sure i’ve got all my safety stuff hop in and just kind of decompress for a little bit yeah for me that’s a way

to just decompress i love it you know it’s we have a saying at sierra it sounds cliche but it’s the truth you know we do what you do every day because we’re born and raised in the scrapyard the scrap business is still a huge part of sierra’s business and um i think it’s helped us is just something to be said like if when you’re dealing with i don’t care whether you’re selling ford pickups or um sierra baylor’s or whatever you’re selling like if a guy’s sitting out there and he’s selling it he’s selling a ford pickup but you see him drive up and he in a nissan or a chevy or whatever right and he just they don’t really stand they’re just out there to sell yeah like to me that’s where i kind of that’s that’s the rub with a lot of salesmen is they don’t necessarily haven’t lived the life that you’re living right and i’m not saying you have to have seven eight scrap yards and be you know and do this and do that you know but the ability to understand like what the battle somebody’s fighting every day whether

it’s on the demolition side or the you know the yard side and the equipment that they need to get the max production and squeeze the max last drip drop dollar out of something when the market is just absolutely terrible because that’s what’s going to keep the lights on there’s always something to be said from an equipment guy that you can be like you they can feel your pain right they can understand what you’re trying to what you’re trying to achieve so my my other than take that out of the equation like what is because i know what it is in my mind but what is like the the thing that separates sierra from other equipment manufacturers um in your opinion you know in i’m no expert it’s just my personal opinion here i think that the experience that the entire sierra team has is second to none as far as equipment goes you know we didn’t we started as a scrapyard we’ve run every piece of equipment in our scrap yard before it gets to the marketplace so you know no machine’s perfect i don’t care brand abc every machine is going to have

issues but sierra you know we carry all of our parts in stock um we we the family has invested back into the business time and time and time and time again and growing up and now having a i guess you call it a important big role in the company is i really appreciate that as you look back and go oh well you know the family isn’t just taking the money and going out and you know living this lavish lifestyle they’re investing back into the company for people like you for our customers to know hey when there’s an issue we call sierra we’re going to answer the phone we’re going to have technicians and we’re not perfect you know we screw up too everybody screws up but our biggest thing is to make it right to the customer so i think that’s sierra’s strong point is aside from good equipment we’re able to get you up and running the fastest and we have the most knowledge and experience with this kind of equipment in the industry so i talked to your uncle the other day it’s probably like two weeks ago now and i was

like dude i’m like because your uncle’s pretty active on social media and here he’s actually the one that got me to first do my first podcast so like so him and i we don’t talk a crazy amount but on occasion he’ll call me ask me a question about something or i’ll call him and ask him a question but i had a thought every day i was like dude i know what the differentiator between you and the other guys are in my opinion and i said it’s your it’s the parts and the service like your ability to keep people up and running with their equipment because in our industry i don’t care whether it’s an excavator or a baler or a shear like breaks like we’re running big stuff we’re running as hard as we can and let’s be honest like sometimes the guys in in the yards aren’t the best at maintenance we like to feel we got a pretty good handle on it but i’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff and if you ever watch was it um your guys what’s the your guys guide that you guys just bought the service

department from uh oh and uh when wolf wayne is a great guy and he’ll always post some pictures about it this guy said he’s been greasing this you know and you’re looking at you’re like that thing ain’t everything grease but but like but my thing is hey forget about it yeah yeah you make your money when the market is good by your equipment running so downtime is the biggest killer so you people are you know when the market gets good all of a sudden everybody wants to sell car crushers everybody wants to sell bailers and you start seeing all these companies come out of the woodwork you know with these crazy shears and this and that and you’re like that’s great and i’m sure it’ll run just fine for the first 100 200 500 hours but what are you going to do if you break something important and how long are you going to have to wait for a cylinder or a limit switch or it is sometimes the little dumb things that really that really kill you you know on the production side absolutely but i think that’s the differentiator in my opinion

i mean you guys are great guys i enjoy bullshitting with you and in my opinion like for if i was you guys i mean what i would be like stomping my foot on is the parts i mean you talk about those big warehouses you’re sweeping and full full of parts i mean cylinders off every machine you’ve ever sold plus i mean just everything that goes along with it that is second to none because your ability to run equipment when the market is sh is good is absolutely because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to maximize it right so like like we were talking about earlier your guys are you know your lead times on machines they’re getting stretched out a little bit they are because also in the market it’s good well now so everybody wants to buy equipment well at some point i mean you might miss the boat you know i mean you should have bought the equipment you know six months ago a year ago and i’m i’m in the boat like i probably should have bought some of the i bought you know a while back but

obviously but budget whatever it allows you know you can only do what you can do but your money is made by running hard when the market is good because sometimes you’re only gonna get a month or two yep like right now right you got january you got february you got december you got january february they’re gonna try and drop drop the pricing on you if you had the equipment if you had the time and you had the parts like those two months you could have made your payment for the year right yep that’s a big hit on the nail head there that pays the year like the rest of the year is just you know trying to survive if the price goes significantly down or putting pro putting money in the bank if the market keeps going right exactly and you know but your parts department i will say you know and this isn’t me like blowing smoke up your ass is just like to me like this everybody has their differentiator that’s what it is for you guys you’re just your ability to understand the battle we’re fighting and be able to service

your equipment thank you yeah that’s that’s what we try to always get better you know we have an absolutely amazing team at sierra you know you hear us throw that out there a lot i mean sierra really is you know i feel like that about united metals too i mean knowing you guys for all these years and the team that you guys have built here building your your businesses it’s amazing and um sierra we we have so many amazing people that you know maybe you talk to them on the phone or maybe our customers never even know they’re there they don’t even know their name know their face but they’re they’re busting their butt every day and that’s what helps make sierra is our is our service department without a doubt and and we’re like i said we’re not perfect but we are always trying to better ourselves and reinvest into parts and service and being able to be there for our customers so do you see your company as as being american-made yeah i would say so you know they i get that question a lot look our two ram baylors all

of our reb siri balers 100 built here in the united states um our green machines our ferris shears baylor loggers those are still built in our original factory uh in italy uh but we bring them over pretty much in kits and we do the final assembly here in the us in our jessup georgia facility okay so you know the green machines i guess it’s a 50 50 you know not fully made here but we do assembly here and a lot of the designs on those equipment were built for the american market off of sierra’s opinions and recommendations um it’s a great relationship with uh uh edramack uh his original factory and um you know everything comes through uh the georgia factory before it goes to the customer yeah so so really i mean a portion of it is american-made and a portion of it still is made in italy but generally speaking i mean i mean a lot of what you’re doing is american-made made right here and you know yep that’s awesome so i mean and we have an open door policy i always invite everybody if they want to come

and see the factory we’d love to have people come to bakersfield or the factory anytime yeah anybody bakersfield didn’t come watch the equipment run because you guys are running your own and then obviously in georgia where it’s all being assembled and built how has the price of new steel affected have you have you guys been having a tough time sourcing steel or as it as has the the sourcing been available but as the with the price coming up obviously is that making it difficult for for you guys as a company i wouldn’t say difficult um i’m not directly involved in that but talking with engineering talking with upper management the price increase is there and it’s only going up component pricing is up across the board you know when we order our still we order it well in advance and in bulk shipments so we don’t we’re never like oh no we don’t have steel to build because we’re thinking you know six months a year in advance on on that kind of stuff so i mean it hasn’t really been a problem but the price right now is across the board on new

steel and components going through the roof and i was i was wondering because you know you hear these auto manufacturers and they’re having a tough time sourcing components right so it’s not i mean they can they can stamp sheet metal they can do they can do a lot of the but some of the final assemblies there’s some components that they’re just they can’t they’re having a hard time getting because things have been shut down factory’s been shut down some of the stuff they’ve been importing so i mean is are you guys having any trouble sourcing components or stuff that uh you guys need um to stay stay moving on a daily basis or is it me has it been i would say this the way sierra has always done things has helped eliminate that problem don’t get me wrong yeah there’s longer lead times price increases maybe some unexpected delays on receiving certain things you know if they tell you three months you may not get it for five months and then right before it’s supposed to ship oh sorry another month until you can get these motors yeah um but if we were

not if sierra wasn’t run in a way where hey we already have 15 power units on the shelf completely assembled ready to go then we’d be in in some trouble but because we are so proactive on not just having two or three of this one component in stock i mean we’re we we have such a huge inventory of parts that you know you hear people say but i think until you come to bakersfield or new jersey or jessup georgia at the factory and you actually see it it’s one thing to see a photo when you actually walk through and you see what’s there i mean it’s every time i go to go through it i’m impressed i’m just like and i see it all the time i’m just like whoa well it probably builds confidence like when you’re selling a piece of equipment you’re like yeah we’ll be able to service that yeah like you’re not you know selling and then just hoping that you’re going to be able to you know do something you know hopefully the right timing with the boats coming in you’ll be able to service the parts it’s probably

helps from a confidence level on the sales side so you’re in charge of what do you what do you see in the differences between let’s say the canadian market and the u.s market what do you see that in or if anything the difference in maybe equipment or the difference in kind of the needs are do you see much difference between the canadian market and the u.s market so the canadian market right now is very interesting you know they’re a lot of canada is still under pretty strict lockdowns so consumption manufacturing isn’t at the levels that it used to be but then you go to some provinces or some towns and it is so it’s kind of interesting but on all the customers i talked to in canada um there’s going to be a big need for equipment in canada the dollar right now is still really really strong um which is a good thing right for those guys yeah i mean well the dollar’s starting to weaken let me let me back up it was the canadian dollar uh the us dollar compared to the canadian yeah so the canadian dollar is

right now it’s about give or take a dollar 30 canadian for one u.s that seems like about 2002 when i went to canada to go snowboarding in college one time we did like a college trip and it was about a buck 30. it seems like that’s about what it was it’s good for us to go yeah but anyways go ahead but um you know that makes it difficult for the canadians think about you you go and you buy a million dollar piece of equipment they’re paying 1.3 million dollars now i mean that’s a big big jump um so me personally i’ve kind of found that around the dollar 20 really opens up for machinery sales into canada but uh there’s going to be you know once we get past this whole covid world when things do slowly open back up i see canada being on fire i mean there’s a lot of manufacturing up there a lot of quality yards a lot of quality manufactured things coming out of canada um on all spectrums from industrial to medical technology i mean canada is a booming country oh yeah and uh you know

it’s it’s been for me personally it’s been a privilege to be covering that territory i’ve just met some amazing people and seen some absolutely beautiful places of that country that i would have never gone to yeah there’s a lot of canada that i would love to to go to go see i’ve never i’ve only spent very limited time in canada i’ve been to mexico a lot more times than i’ve ever been to canada but there’s a lot of places and i’ve and i’ve heard there’s just some some super cool operations some super cool setups up there that i mean i’m a scrap yard junkie so like i someday if i ever end doing something different the only thing i ask of you is i just want to come be like a sales guy and just so i can go love to travel and like look at scrap yards and like check it out and just you know say hey you know just because i’m a junkie anytime i go somewhere with my wife i’m like can we stop and look at that scrap yard it just it’s in my so i think you get

being just kind of a scrap guy i heard you get the best of both worlds really yeah and that’s what i truly love about my job and you know being third generation in sierra is you know i still got the scrap side which is just something i absolutely love but get to travel and get to help people better their operations aside from just selling and it’s taken me all over the all over the globe really and uh what do you see um what do you see like the where sierra’s going today i mean you and i were discussing last night that you’ve seen a lot of um you know good traction in your guys two ram baylor so you know like on the wayside and stuff like that but where do you see the big opportunities going going forward i definitely think uh sierra is growing very fast in the waste and paper sector you know it’s our two rams are going into murfs they’re going into paper plants paper packaging plants plastic recycling facilities and that was a market that sierra didn’t really have before you know we were scrapyard focused and the

waste sector is just ginormous i mean it’s yeah ten times yeah we’re just the scrap guys we have peons compared to the waste deck that’s a whole another ball of wax and so we’re definitely growing at a very um good rate in the waste sector and the technology in our two ramps is what excites me you know we have developed these two rams i mean we have the reb one we have the reb2 150n 250 horsepower we have the rev 4 and now we’re coming out with the reb 8. and that is a big big waste bailing machine and uh you know really revolutionized the two ram alien industry with the reb4 uh i mean it’s just until you see one run and you can go see videos and all that but until you go and you see it run me growing up in the business seeing all different kinds of things processed as a kid having a competitor’s balers of ours in our own scrap facility it just blows me away i’m going how in the world anyone that’s about production and numbers and throughput wanting to be you know maximize their their

dollar amount that reb4 is just the most amazing two-round baler out there hands down now you sound like a sales guy yeah now i’m sorry no i’m just fine there’s my shelves so give me some uh so i know i’ve had this conversation with uh with john before but you know tell me about your dad’s influence on you and kind of because that’s another thing i think that you and i have a lot in common is well my dad is is pretty retired um you know every once in a while i’ll call them up or i’ll go stop by and drink a cup of coffee with them in the morning probably once a week if i can it just depends like i’ll call them up like on my way to work and if i got a little like i’m not super crunched in the morning like hey what are you doing and and like you guys want to have a cup of coffee they’re like oh sure because they’re pretty much just sitting there hanging out getting ready for the day and uh and i’ll go just bounce ideas off of them you

know i’m like hey we were talking about when we were talking about buying a sheer i was like this is what i’m thinking so i want to do it you know what do you think and you kind of asked me a bunch of questions and then basically just made me spit out the answer right like kind of here’s all the stuff you need to ask yourself so your dad’s still and still involved in the business i mean what give me give me some some background on you know on him and and kind of that that relationship with you so dad has always been on the scrap yard side more than the equipment um the sierra recycling and demolition he really grew our demolition business in the oil fields which is a huge part of our business now is um you know a lot of hazardous demo for the oil companies chevron era exxon so dad even though the last few years he says he’s semi-retired yeah and he’s you know living on his ranch in wyoming he is still very involved you know he may be a little bit more behind the scenes

but i mean he he still is very involved with uh scrap operations demo operations it’s kind of freed him up a little bit too to also check more on the equipment side of things as well kind of gives them a bit more of a bird’s eye view to see hey where what needs work but he wouldn’t have been able to do that if it wasn’t for the great team that we have in place at sierra recycling and demolition yeah so you know there’s a whole nother hear me talk about team and family man i mean this is just got some amazing people at this company well i think that’s where team sports teaches you a lot is i mean like the coolest thing about like say a football team or a basketball team or base anything that takes five or more people right to do something because and i tell and i was i was having this conversation the other day with somebody and i was like here’s the deal like not everybody can even be a starter right not everybody can be the top 11 on offense or the top 11 on defense

you got a you got a 52-man roster of people on the average nfl team and you go to college it’s a hunter man roster and all those people serve a purpose and they’re all part of the team and that’s why when you win the national championship or the nfl super bowl everybody including the trainer to the guy changing out socks gets a ring because as little as you think you’re you know that that little as you think your role is to the right person at the right time is a big it’s a big deal let alone if you’re actually in the management team or the upper management team or you’re the actual head coach the gm like running the show trying to figure it out you i think you even more rely on the trainers and the you know the guy doing the socks or the you know the the guy the punter like you know the guys that you wouldn’t think fill a a big role actually sometimes feel the biggest absolutely and building a team and playing team sports is crucial to me i mean it teaches you how to be

a cog in the whole machine and not be the whole machine yourself exactly and i think that’s probably that’s probably what you allude to all the time on the sierra side being a family-owned business and and i would assume that you guys have been a family-owned business there’s been the fair share of family head-butting at times point me one family business that hasn’t had that i haven’t i watched it my whole life and i were having this conversation the other day again i was like oh lee i’m blessed in a lot of ways that my uh you know i don’t have any you know real family to to per se worry about any as far as in the business it’s really only my family is all the friends and the team that we’ve kind of built up so like i have that extension of like a family but without having the the dynamics of you know of thanksgiving and christmas when everybody’s tired of seeing each other so what has your dad taught you he’s traveling with you today so i think it’s i think we gotta at least call him

out and say you know there’s there’s there’s some things that he’s taught you over the years i mean what are the kind of the top couple things that are important i think fairness um he is a very fair individual meaning you’re rewarded for putting in the hard work and he wants the team to come up together and i think in recent years i’ve really respected that of my father is you know hey you put in the work you do things right you’re going to get rewarded and men you might not get rewarded right away uh you know going back to sports you put in all that work in preseason you put in all that work in off season you’re coming up it’s like hey you’ve got your wins you’ve got your losses you’ve got your you know you might have an issue with the teammate but then you work it out you figure out how to move on and get better i feel that my dad is a very good coach in the business i think in recent years i’ve really noticed that he he’s a very good coach he was a coach right

he didn’t coach you for didn’t he coach he coached football for as a high school yeah so i went to bakersfield christian high school he didn’t coach when i was playing there but after i went to play college football it was kind of funny he’s he’s a guy knows football he’s a coach but it’s just he never wanted to be that father coach to like pressure me anything so like as far as football goes he didn’t really coach me at all in football he would always be there to support me and give you tips and stuff when you get home oh yeah you know maybe you should try this for that but then he would very lightly you know he didn’t want to butt heads or try to tell me something that my coaches were telling me differently or anything like that um you know what’s funny is my high school football coach who played in the nfl uh doug barnett he is actually our general manager of uh our service department now yeah so you know we kind of have that sports mentality a little bit on i posted an article on linkedin

that i found the wall street journal and it was about how you know these how managers or you know ceos or you know our be or have should have more of a coach mentality than a boss mentality and i really i read that and it was like my aha moment because i mean i feel like that’s what i’ve been doing but i never really had somebody explain it that well but it really is like there is a component of it that’s you know your job isn’t to know everything like there’s a reason why bill belichick you know probably one of the greater minds in the nfl had an offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator right it’s not that he didn’t know the offense or didn’t know the defense or whatever but he focused people in on okay you know i’m gonna give you the advice i’m going to tell you what i know and i’m going to knock as many roadblocks down for you to go do your job or you know the defensive backs coach or you know the line coach whatever that is those people just specialize in that little niche and they

they’re they’re a piece of that deal and as a coach like your job is to get everybody working toward a common goal it’s not to know every single thing about you know sierra as a company your job is just to kind of organize and group everybody up and say all right we’re going here we’re gonna this is the game plan this is what we’re doing right right wrong or indifferent like we’re going and so i i that was kind of my you know when so whenever i hear somebody has like a coaching background or whatever you could really see how that translates to be a good boss or a good manager a good owner or whatever just because they understand that you’re you got to get everybody working together absolutely and the other thing i i took from just the whole sports background that i apply to business is you know i always try to say a coach told me this in college five minutes early is 10 minutes late and that just like stuck with me yeah another one was you’re only as strong as your weakest link you know it’s there’s just

so many things that you can take from sports if you have that background and apply it to business as far as work ethic goes and for me aside from growing up in a hard-working dedicated family that was my i guess cherry on top to my drive my hey we’re gonna do this i’m not just here to collect a paycheck i want to you know let’s grow the company let’s we’re here for a purpose for a passion you know obviously you got to make money but for me it’s more than the money it’s a passion so where are you going to be like what are you doing 10 years from now like what’s your plan do you have any idea i’m going to be uh selling baylor’s shears and hopefully cutting some scrap yeah i love it all right man i won’t hold you up too much more i know you gotta get on your plane and get out of dodge before the weather hits but i just want to say thanks again it’s been a pleasure you know shooting the we’ve done a pleasure doing business i enjoy your family i enjoyed the

company and so thanks again for doing what you guys do man hey thanks for having me brett thank you been an honor appreciate it appreciate you man