hey brett how’s it going i’m good man i’m good how are you good doing well top of the morning to you yeah yeah yeah to be honest i get up pretty early so uh um it’s not it’s not too terrible for me i gotta uh myself a workout in and uh get my kids some breakfast so uh life is good and my wife gets them off to school and oh yeah keep the train keep the family train movement you know awesome hey you know i don’t meet a lot of people that like to work out in the morning i do and uh and so you know it’s kind of rare that you find people that like to get up and crack and go on i love to get in the gym at six in the morning and you know the funny thing is there’s hardly anybody in there you get to get the place to yourself at least over here yeah and and to me i mean you’re busy like i am man i mean i i’m i got i do run our scrap yards and i’ve got two young kids at home my

wife is a working mom she’s a school teacher so i mean it’s it’s uh like i said it’s i say it’s absolute elbows all day every day busy busy go go you yes know that’s a kind of a little bit of quiet time for you i guess i don’t see you tearing off uh leaving some at some late hour of the night when you’re done at work and trying to get into the gym right i mentioned that’s right no i’m coming home to hang out at least squeeze in whatever i can time wise you know the good old-fashioned uh work-life balance which sometimes more work than life and sometimes more life than work but it just depends on the week depends on the day depends on what’s going on so it’s just it’s it varies absolutely well we can get started hey everyone i want you guys to meet a friend of mine uh brent eckhart uh the ceo of united metals uh in uh idaho and uh united metals recycling specifically and i’m sorry are you in boise actually or yeah our uh we have our our main non-ferrous processing

facility is in boise idaho my office is resides in our very original location in caldwell idaho now but for years when we built that facility my office wasn’t boise awesome yeah and uh yeah so so yeah speaking of that just before we get into this uh to tell us a little bit about united metals in fact that was kind of one that maybe does lead to the first questions i’d love to hear a little bit about your histories i know you’ve got a very we’ve talked a little bit about it so maybe we just start right there uh tell us a little bit about your introduction to the scrap world and tell us what you love about your history okay i’m third i’m a third generation um in the scrap industry my grandfather started it in uh 1972 so i was kind of born into it um super humble beginnings you know just good old old school scrap yard in uh bfe idaho um just you know family business you know aunts uncles grandma and grandpa worked there when i was growing up i grew up in the office with uh watching saturday cartoons

with my grandparents with my grandpa because my everybody else was at work so eventually i was old enough to uh be able to work in the recycling center and kind of be able to handle the aluminum cans and whatever else pay some customers and i started cleaning brass at that time we didn’t have an export market for insulated copper wire so i as i got older i became kind of the wire stripper so we had that you know the wire stripper with the two rollers the one with the wider spaces for your big mcm and then the smaller ones for your uh thn smaller wire we stripped every everything um everything was done by hand you know now it’s very fairly automated we have some wire chopping lines but uh it was all manual manual labor at that point in the game um and then uh so just graduated my through my way through uh through the yard i’d done everything to run a cutting torch to uh to you name it so i i’d left to go to school went to school um got my undergraduate degree in business came back worked full

time with uh by that time my grandfather had retired we were partners with sensor steele we became partners in 97 so we were you know 50 owned by a publicly traded company um my mom my dad and myself you know just went to work at that time 20 something employees it just started grinding really grinding together built built the business we added facilities um we have today we have eight eight yards a couple auto salvages um and uh i retired my parents in 2016. we bought schnitzer back out of the business okay we became 100 family owned um again and uh here i am man just uh doing what we do you know and you gotta you gotta give a hauling company as well right yeah we have a trucking company yeah i dressed up for the event but uh our trucking company we have uh we run our own trucks we run um inner intercom basically what we call over the road trucks which is our long haul stuff that haul scrap outbound and then we have internal trucks that are moving scrap into our yard so we run 40-something trucks um

shuffling stuff in and out of the facilities now you guys are well i i never really knew much about the land of the land in idaho you know i know that everything i passed a continental divide typically if it’s going to go export it’s going out to the west coast obviously right so what does that look like nowadays like say the last few years i mean what kind of materials you got that are going export um and how and then also logistically how do you handle that how does that work how do you get it so for us the way the way it works for us is that we we have um because we are we are fairly pretty far inland i mean it’s tougher for us to get containers so the way it works for us is you know we’ve identified either trans loaders or brokers on the northwest coast um sometimes you know down in california the um southern west coast but uh mostly for us because it’s it’s beneficial for our trucks as we go to uh portland or seattle tacoma um is the primary ports we use so what we

do because our trucks and trailer combinations we can haul um 68 000 net so we can go up to 105 gross so what we do is we basically can ship three containers worth of material to the west coast on two trucks two truckloads so basically 344s right so we’ll load those truck we’ll load our trailers up you know we’ll put 66 68 000 net ship them to the uh ship them to the coast and then basically that load will get broke down into three containers and uh move from there so right and do you do you uh so you’re able to get that so you get three containers worth in one load are you running like tandem okay yeah we run we get in two so we get you know two trucks uh two sixty six to sixty eight thousand pound trucks you know we’re loading forty four thousand pound containers usually unless we’re shipping batteries and then those containers they can go to 55 so that’s one truck and what kind of materials make sense uh to go that direction to go off uh offshore basically export material for us right now is

uh irony stainless bales and boxes um batteries um we ship uh say old sheet is a good export item for us right now um lows easily translates easily we ship alternator starters mix electric motors small electric motors beam electromagnetic transformers all that stuff is material we’re boxing and moving to the coast um and moving through brokerage houses so i’m not dealing directly with the consumer um in these in the other countries i’m basically just dealing with brokers here in the united states that either have a translated relationship on the west coast or some of them actually have their own translating facilities it just depends on the broker depends on the situation all right and and yeah you were you told me that uh that indeed you work exclusively with traders or brokers uh and and you really love that uh relationship and i’d like to learn more like what what i mean obviously you know there’s a lot of there’s a lot of there’s a lot of yards that would love to go direct you know and um and you know there’s a lot i i used to be a trainer broker myself so

i know that guys in the middle earn their fair share the hard way well yeah what how does that look from your side how is it what how does that work for you and and you’ve seen i think you told me before you’re not super interested in going direct so tell me why you know i i don’t have a big desire to go direct a because we don’t do enough volume to move the needle for of any one commodity so i feel like there’s there’s brokers out there that have certain commodities that they’re very strong in because they have good consumers for those items whether you’re whether it’s alternators and starters and motors whether you know it’s an irony you know dirty you know contaminated brass or batteries i mean there’s certain items that people have very good homes for that are going to move enough volume there could command a better price and a better relationship than really i can ever command or get um from where i’m from where i’m at right um so that’s one component of it for me um the second component is the service so what my preference

is is i’ll take a cent or two less so i’m not having to deal with the bookings i’m not having to deal with the logistics side of getting the container moved in and out of the port and delivered to the consumer go through the ccic inspection or whatever inspection is depending on the country and basically there’s that service component of what the broker provides that i value um i i don’t ever have any desire to be a broker i don’t have any desire to be a uh um a buyer of material from other people’s yards so i’ve always just been very strong at staying in my lane i pick my lane i say this is what i’m going to be good at it’s going to be buying processing and getting it to the port of delivery and then letting other people kind of take the ball and run with it and do their job and what they’re good at right there’s people out there that are excellent with the banking they’re excellent with the logistics and the containers and the shipping and finding the right consumer and they have that you know they can

speak for languages and they just have that um they just have that grease that i don’t have it for that part of it right so i recognize that and if i’ll maybe adjust my buy price down a cent or two so that i can then pass that center to on to the to the trader and let them go do their job um it’s kind of my cons how i how i look at it on my awesome awesome brett um so so you’re working with these guys and uh and you’re still moving quite a bit of volume uh you know off the west coast it’s maybe not moving the needle i’m not sure in what reference to what what you mean there but uh but as far as like like i don’t move 100 loads of batteries yeah i got you but you know what i mean but there’s might be the guy that as a broker he accumulates all of these and he has a pricing power to go move 100 loads i might move one or two so he’s going to be able to or she’s going to be able to facilitate that

consumer relationship better than i ever will that is exactly and then and how so over over the years that you’ve been that you’ve been uh like closely involved in this part of the business um tell me a little bit about like how do you how do you i mean of course you know nobody’s perfect and uh you know uh you you run into some problems with you know i’m sure in the past with the trader brooker didn’t work out it’s here um yeah i don’t know you seem to have pretty good luck but are there some pretty are there also some pretty bad stories in the mix as well or are you able to always just have you just always had really great luck and you’ve always dealt with great trainers and brokers and never had any huge breakdowns you know yeah well you know you you know as well as i know that um some of the best lessons in life are some of the most expensive ones right and the ones that you’ve uh the ones that you’ve kind of ran into and you’re like okay i’ll i won’t do that one

again um i had a recent one on on ferris but uh which is more of a domestic company but it’s the lesson that i learned and it was expensive and i’ve kind of worked my way through it but as far as on the export side you know i’ve i have had pretty good luck but i vet our our traders pretty you know deeply right and by vetting them i spend a lot of time talking to other traders and and the the the best traders the best brokers in my opinion are the ones that don’t have a problem telling you who else is good right because they know that they have a certain you know not everybody can handle every product and has a great home for every single item right so if i’m dealing with somebody on a certain item and i say hey i’ve got xyz amount of this but i know you’re maybe not super strong in sealed units who is a good sealed unit trader that’s trustworthy who can i talk to and that’s kind of like the old school way of doing it right like we were kind of talking

about is it was all word of mouth it was like trying to find someone you could trust and then let them tell you who they could trust and it was it was very uh a lengthy process you know and you really had to kind of develop that you know versus you know today where it’s it’s so much more transparent or it can be so much more transparent and you can actually that that information is kind of at the tip of your finger now versus before old school like when i was starting to sell 15 years ago 16 years ago i had to go out and look for those traders go out and look and go to israel shake 100 people’s hands and then go with my gut and hope that i i swung and hit you know and i didn’t miss um and i think you know it’s it’s it’s been a process but it’s i think that’s one of those one of those things i’ve always valued about the right people is they’re never afraid to tell you who’s good in your industry regardless of whether it’s scrap or buying a used car

if you’re good people will tell you go see that person they’re good they’re good at what they do right and there’s a there’s a value to that to me so so yeah so what you’re describing there is basically if i’m what it sounds like to me here is that you don’t really like to work with people that kind of silo information do you prefer people that show that show their cards a little bit that are more open yeah because i feel transparency is when you’re transparent across the board people want to do they want to do business with you um because they know that you’re going to be they the right person knows that they’re not the answer they’re not the swiss army knife of everything a swiss army knife has a screw it has a knife it has a toothpick it has but it’s not the best screwdriver it’s not the best knife it’s not the i’m looking for the best knife the best screwdriver the best pair of pliers right like and and that’s not all in the same you know everybody’s got their kind of wheelhouse and if and if as

long as you recognize that um then other people and you’re you then you’re more willing to tell the next person hey there’s a better screwdriver over there like that’s that’s the guy that’s the gal that’s going to take care of you for that item go use them they’re trustworthy they’re good to go and but you have to figure out who you you know before you figure out who you could trust to kind of find that information out for you you know but transparency wins in my book yeah it saves us so much time you know and you know when i started uh brokering first and then trading scrap that was back in 2004 so it’s like 18 years ago right 17 years ago and um and man i tell you it cost me uh well i calculated at one point like about fifty thousand dollars of mistakes to get to where i had a decent network and essentially that was just trial and error it’s just like you said the gold conference you meet people you look online uh you give a few people a shot you know uh you know sometimes you sometimes

you miss sometimes it costs you you know a bunch of money and you move on but at the end of that process which is which was the only way really that i could you know when i got into this thing at the end of that process you paid a bunch of money and losses but you’ve eliminated some people and you’ve still got in your group there you know a few people that you know are solid because you’ve done business with them time and time again already right and that that’s a very expensive way to build up your network in this business i would say absolutely yes so which is why for so many years people guarded that those that information right i mean there’s no there’s no doubt in my mind i understand why or there that it because people took people years and it’s they spend a lot of money trial and error going through those tough lessons right so everybody was very guarded about who do you use i was just talking to my dad about this my dad hadn’t been to some of our yards for a while but he’s retired

and um and and i was just talking to him about this year they were driving down the road and he’s like um and he goes it’s kind of crazy back in the day like everything was so secretive of who you sold to who are you dealing with and you know who was buying your material who’s buying your competitors down the road material because everybody wanted to be their guy there you know and i looked at it more of you know as as i kind of came up i looked at it as i want to tell people who i’m dealing with because i want those people to be successful right because if you’re successful let’s say you’re my broker you’re my trader i want you to win business because i want you to i want you to make money right because if you make money now all of a sudden my bill isn’t as hard to pay right so that’s true you know i’m going to get paid i’m because you’re you’re making money you’re doing good you’re successful you’re finding better markets for the material all of a sudden you can command a little

better price because you’re actually you know you’ve got a little you know something that can move the needle a little farther right now all of a sudden you’re winning and if you’re winning you’re going to remember who took care of you and who helped who helped uh get you more business now all of a sudden you’re winning so i’m gonna win more and it’s kind of that that that circle that that everybody’s looking for right but the only way that that happens is if you actually promote the people that are doing good and you know that’s the that’s the that’s where i that’s what i’m trying to do and that’s kind of like just kind of reverse engineered the way i think people should look at it yes it’s funny because well i mean your the way that you’re running your business is is is the way that uh i think our industry would uh would with well i think that if everybody ran into business like you did we would thrive as an industry i feel like that you know that we need to uh we need to think more about how can

we add value outside of just the context we have you know like it’s it’s not just if all you got at the end of the day is just these secret contacts that’s all you got for business and what are you doing in business you know like that’s not it there’s a lot more service and value behind it you know like like don’t don’t like try to hard like keep that information in the silo be more open uh definitely applaud and and and let everybody know that you got a great supplier you got a great buyer help them out and also by the way i feel like that what happens as well is not only can they pay your bill as you said because they’re doing better but it kind of in a way it kind of creates a sense of obligation that man you know brett took care of me he helped me get this deal and that’s that one up you know next time that you’re like neck and neck with some some other supplier you’re gonna probably get the deal when the other guy won’t right so it’s just just making it

it’s relationships right like one thing’s the things the the scrap industry has evolved over a lot of years things have changed but one thing that still hasn’t changed is it’s super it’s a very relationship driven industry relationships are like the backbone of what we do and i’ve always felt in a relationship it’s a 50 50 deal right i mean my wife and i split a lot of the tasks you know sometimes she does the heavy lifting sometimes i do but ultimately the goal is to find that sweet spot of where you’re both doing you know an equal amount of work and contributing equal equal amount and business is no different like you know i i want to i want our brokers our traders to earn their money i want them to go to market and go to market with our material and try and find the best home and get the best price like there’s no doubt about that like i’m not gonna let you off easy but i’m also if you do the job i’m also gonna make sure that i do my part and i tell people about you right yeah and

i think i was having dinner last night with a with a traitor and uh and i said you know if you do somebody a good job they’ll tell like three people right but if you treat somebody shitty they’re gonna tell like a hundred yeah what’s the difference like if we could flip that deal and say hey you know tell this equal amount of people the same if you do a shitty job tell 50 people if you do a good job tell 50 people you know like if you could just do that i mean that’s going to help a ton you know yeah and also i think that you know because you know everybody at the statistic you know says that people are 10 times more likely to complain than they are to actually praise right and we’re all guilty of this i mean in our personal lives you know like i give you surveys from hotels airbnb i’m you know my wife is actually this is quite ironic but she was fussing at me in a car ride when we were in italy uh because i wasn’t taking the time out to give to

leave reviews on these places that we stayed in you know it’s like well if you’re going to complain one time then you need to also leave good reviews as well well good forever yeah that’s my i know the beautiful part of that is like you know you call me out that’s my whole business over here and i’m being lazy in my personal lives i think it’s important man i think it’s i think it’s important we live in a different world nowadays right i mean like without question that information uh is is much easier to obtain there’s more of it um the times have changed you know like the days that you’re describing when you’re what you’re what your dad was talking about you know um you know that reminds me of like the scrap yards that i still see this day with the huge walls outside because nobody wants to know what they got inside behind the walls right yeah keeping secrets but man nowadays you got drones you’ve got satellites you’ve got i mean you can’t really hide but it’s just but like as time goes by there’s going to be more and

more transparency and and we have to figure out like what if that’s the new game then what are the rules that in the game i think you’ve already stated part of it right here you know it’s a matter it’s now like we understand that people can see people do business with why don’t you start praising the people publicly that do a great job they’ll be looking at like where’s that seal of approval from brett i didn’t hear that brett was saying you’re so good why didn’t brett say you’re awesome yeah no 100 percent yeah and and and you and you have to actually go and encourage your um encourage your your suppliers i mean if i was a trader i would spend an exponential amount of effort encouraging the people that i knew that i’ve done a good job for and i’ve kept my word i’ve done everything you’ve ever asked me to do to just give me a review whether it’s a review on google whether it’s a review on tradefox whether it’s a review there’s an email that i can that i can kind of reproduce and put out there and say

you know from a legit you know somebody that doesn’t mind having their name on the bottom say hey i deal with xyz trading company and they’ve always been good to me like and that carries weight you know i think that carries weight with other with other people out there looking to sell items you know and that’s that’s not going to that’s not going to deter some of the shady scrap people out there you know that are you know telling you they’re going to ship you 80 brass and they load it with 50. you know like as a trader you have to kind of go through and vet some of those individuals as well right and that’s a whole different process but i think that i feel like the trading community and i don’t know i’m kind of maybe speaking out of turn a little bit but i feel like there’s a lot more communication on that as well like hey watch out for so-and-so over in you know new jersey because they’re they’re they’re going to sell you a bill of goods right they’re going to take some pictures of material and

it’s not going to be exactly what they said it was what it was you know you know see i wish there were many many times that i wish i would have had that advice when i was buying material you know and and before it was uh you know really everybody’s keeping their cars close to their chest they’re not they’re not giving unless unless you’re a good friend of theirs they’re not gonna tell you yeah suppliers and they’re not gonna tell you who they were suppliers and you know that was kind of a wake-up call for me back in like 2009 or so when i was a victim of fraud and you know i i lost a ton of money and i was reflecting on how the industry is and you know i was talking to people about it and one one uh guy that i know is that you know the problem is it’s like to be honest with you you know if i’m your competitor and you go and deal with a bad supplier hey that’s better for me because you know they’re going to stitch you up like they didn’t mean

at least we’re going to be even and maybe you go maybe go out of business and i was like ah man that’s bad and i i just i know that they said that’s just business you know you got to be you know more shrewd and you know but now that’s not okay man i think we got to watch out for each other a bit you know keep we all need to help each other to stay out of these problems basically yeah well and i think that’s where you develop your network of you know traders that like you said like if i if i was to be a trader i would look for other quality traders that made the that had great consumers for items i did it right right and then i really just say okay like i know you’re legit you probably know which companies that you’re dealing with they’re legit but i have a good home for these three four five six things and so i’m going to focus on that home and focus on that material can you help me find people that might be suppliers of that material maybe not

suppliers of um of what you’re looking for but then help kind of identify who those good uh processor producers are right yeah well tell us a little bit about about um i mean what i found interested in our conversation that we’ve had so far um is that you know you come from you you come from the old school but you’re very new school in fact they even estimated your age about 10 years younger than what you actually are when i found out because that you’re very you’re pretty millennial guy it seems you have a good a good grasp of technology and and social media um how are you leveraging everything social media like what kind of you know as yeah in your normal business i mean you’ve got tick tock channel uh you’re you’re all over linkedin that’s how i got to know you actually from your linkedin following i said all the posts and stuff maybe if you have some tips to share what or maybe can tell some stories about what’s working for you that other people could you know that aren’t familiar with like how to use social media could actually

embrace that for their own businesses i think the way i started on linkedin was just kind of telling our story of our company right and because it’s something i knew it was something that was genuine it was something that you know i didn’t have to pull any punches on i was proud of our history our heritage where we came from and you know kind of and then i just i was i just said i’m pretty unafraid to post you know what’s going on as far as you know if we wrecked the truck i posted here’s you know we wrecked the truck this week and it was a shitty it was a shitty week right um if we had a great week if something good happened i wasn’t afraid to post that um but really it was just my that was my way of communicating with people as i was trying to develop more opportunity for our business i just said i’m gonna have to go out and and maybe do and post stuff that maybe other my others might think is a little more uh you know they’re not willing to risk it or

they’re not willing to uh take the you know the they don’t they’re afraid to post stuff that maybe makes them look like in a bad light for one or two people but i think if you’re just genuine and uh and it’s work like i think people get get fooled by how much work it actually is to post and to communicate and on a daily basis right i mean people ask me so who posts all the stuff out from your account right and i said oh i do like anything that comes from my name my account like that comes from me from sitting in my chair with a cup of coffee or whatever if it comes from me like it says brett eckhart that’s coming right out of my cell phone or my laptop right um now if it comes from united metals or united hauling from our company accounts we have people that are out there kind of helping us generate content to produce it and kind of to basically round out the narrative you know of what we’re doing and communicate with the outside world of hey if you give us a chance

to supply you with scrap or to supply you with transportation via our trucking company or pipe then you know here’s what you can expect you know here’s what you can expect from us and i i think it’s almost holds makes you hold yourself accountable as well so if i tell you i’m going to show up with x y z type of this truck or whatever or if i tell you that i’m going to send you this grade of material and i’m telling people who i’m sending it to then that’s my way of keeping our guys our team accountable because i’m i’m pretty much putting my name on it right saying this is how it is and i don’t want to be made to look you know like i’m full of or you know not going to stand up to our end of the agreement um so it’s kind of an accountability measure internally um but also a way of getting you know just a small company out in idaho a little exposure to you know a huge industry nationwide and even bigger industry you know worldwide um and kind of a way to kind

of solidify your place on the map or in the industry um by being willing to communicate you know your your own story so we’ve got some construction outside so i’ll give you my perception on that you know you know i kept you know i’m i’m not a person i’m on linkedin a lot uh we do a lot of posting um and um but anytime i’m flipping through linkedin i would see a post inevitably you know about united metal i mean literally man they are all time like so what that does from an outsider’s perspective and i think everybody can understand this you start seeing that story that person they’re posting continuously and you know once you read an interesting piece of content you see a picture you know you see another picture and you start scanning it you it becomes that name united metals recycling it becomes a thing in your mind that you didn’t know before like i mean i i’d only heard of you and learned about you through social media i’m not i’ve only been to idaho once as a nine-year-old kid so uh but i think it’s really

amazing you know just it takes a it does take time and effort but i think what you said is really important that you know you just need to you don’t really need to hire a marketing company you just need to be genuine right just put your stuff out there and don’t be and don’t make it all about just like hey look at all these great moments that we’ve had in our company it’s also people on social media like to hear a story they won’t know about the people right yeah that’s that’s what i’ve seen work for you and you’ve been like an example of what i’ve also learned you know from my marketing people about like how you get this thing going on social media and i see your post a lot so you really got that one though get that one right on there and we have a yeah we have a great team of people that are behind the scenes you know like one of the best things we ever did was every year we do a photo contest intercompany photo contest right so we basically um at our company we do

a once a year company dinner usually around the holidays if you anybody can submit a photo or a video right if you’re outside working and you’re running the cinebogen or your driving truck or whatever you’re doing you pull your truck over and take a cool picture of the landscape with your truck in the background or you know the sun’s rising and you’re you know you’re crushing cars you know take a picture you know anything that is scrap really truck related pipe related we allow everybody to submit photos right and we do a big annual photo contest cool so we pay our guys you know like um like the for the top five ten pictures you know we give them real money at the company dinner but what that does is it encourages them a to take pride in what they’re doing but b it creates it helps us generate content so we can show people what we’re doing every day like from the angle of the people that are actually doing the work you know i mean i can’t drive around and take pictures of every single thing ever what’s going on right and

neither can our our guys in the background that are you know helping us create content for our social media but the more pictures the more content that’s getting submitted you know about what’s going on out there it just helps everybody’s cause um and i think it kind of creates that camaraderie you know internally that it can benefit you from a culture standpoint but also just from your social media standpoint and getting people kind of dialed in and thinking about you know how how to how to promote the positive things that you guys are doing every day and that’s really cool what what about yeah that’s a great tip because um you know photos are the thing that really spreads well on social media right people can look at them like um you know this is what this is what this is what facebook wants what linkedin likes to have and also original content you know like you said like yeah that they these these you know uh i think facebook i’m not sure but i’m guessing facebook linkedin they’re also looking to see out on the web like you know google image search did

they get this from stock photo or is this something you know new and i’m sure it does better so yeah that’s a real cool program that you’ve got or a little contest you’ve got internally it’s really awesome but what about are you active on twitter amy you know i i just never really figured that one out i’ve kind of looked at it and uh i’m just it’s it’s i’m not um i’m not a like a tech guru by any stretch you know um i’ve got guys in our company and that are really smart they’re they’re good at some of that stuff that have kind of showed me the way in some of the stuff but really what i’m always doing is you know i feel like like probably marketing is is one of my stronger points i’m not super mechanical like you know there’s guys out there that could tear a diesel motor down today and rebuild that thing back in a few days and they’re just very mechanical they understand the engineering side of stuff and that’s not my strong point you know my strong point is just looking at the market or

the industry and just kind of saying okay and then trying to apply what maybe others are doing outside of you know our industries and trying to figure out how can i work those um things that are working for other industries into what we’re doing to kind of help us build build our business um whether it’s on the marketing side or whether it’s on the uh you know actual day-to-day business side um so i think that’s probably more my strong point is not necessarily being tech tech savvy as much as it’s just being aware of my surroundings right what’s going on that’s working out there um and i think that’s that’s what i’m always on the hunt for i listen to a lot of podcasts you know i pay attention to what’s you know what people are doing um you know in other industries just because i wanted i’m like looking for i don’t want to call but arbitrage type opportunities right where it’s like hey we can do this here and it can be effective um and just like deal with it i heard it said one time instead of defending your

fortress right defending your fort all day go out and try and put yourself out of business like what’s the next what’s the next thing that’s coming you know figure out how to get ahead of it you know and try it i mean it may not work but it might and if it does you’re ahead right you kind of beat somebody else to the punch and uh and i think that’s we’re not afraid to try we’re not afraid to fail and go for it right yeah that’s super important right that’s kind of the mantra of the startup you know world is basically you know uh you know fail fail fast fail hard and uh you know so you want you want to get out there you want to basically try everything you can and you you want to have those failures you know and so basically if you’re not if you’re sitting back and you’re comfortable and you’re not trying new things um well you’re never going to really like you’re never gonna innovate after saying basically right yeah so i started an auto auction i was buying a lot of cars and i was

like dude i’m gonna start my own auto auction right so i started buying cars piling them in into inventory and we had this great plan of you know we’re gonna we we got we had the property we ran the auto auction we ran it like three times it was just like an utter failure like talk about like losing money real quick you know on cars but i think if you didn’t buy those cars for scrap value because some of them got it oh i was buying them at other options i was gonna re-auction them and i had this great idea and it was gonna work and it was a terrible it was a failure right but once it failed we you know we ran it for a while it sucked it was a money loser we moved on and we owned it we said yep you know it seemed like a good idea at the time but you know it didn’t work out right and i think that’s us in a nutshell like for every win we’ve had you know we i think we’ve had it you know a couple failures along the

way so yeah um but we’re just we’re still steadfast in our willingness to just try yeah awesome and social media and marketing is the same thing right i think where people get hung up is if you make a video today right and and let’s say it sucks like tomorrow nobody’s going to care about that they remember that video they already forgot about you like make another one you know yeah you know unless it’s something you know something just crude or racist or something that you know gets you a bunch of unwanted attention you weren’t looking for you know but i mean if you make a good video today like great but you better make a better one tomorrow or another one because they already forgot about the one you made yesterday or the post you made yesterday yeah you gotta you gotta i mean it’s you gotta keep going and you gotta you know keep uh yeah it’s it’s new it’s more it’s just marketing right it’s it’s branding and if your brand is your reputation you know people think of united metals i wanted to think like hey we’re not the biggest recycling

company nor do i have any desire to be some huge recycling company i just want to be the best at what i do where i’m at in the industries i’m in and i just and i’m not and i’m willing to go hard at my little niche you know and and i think that’s that’s all i ever want to communicate is i’m never going to be a sims or you know a schnitzer or one of these huge you know companies that’s worldwide or you know coast to coast i mean i’m i’m pretty comfortable in our certain industries you know and i’m but but we one thing that we are going to be is the best in our area doing what we do and i think that’s that’s the way we look at it that’s awesome that’s awesome brett well man uh listen i appreciate your time this has been uh really interesting to have a talk with you have a chat with you i appreciate you being the first person on our podcast series yeah i appreciate the opportunity that that’s everybody should know that this is i’ll take my inspiration from brett’s podcast if

you haven’t checked it out scrap life it’s quite interesting cool but you want to maybe summarize what you’re after with the scrap life for everyone you know i started a scrap life i mean i to be i the first podcast i started was uh i had bought a pipe realign company in indiana and so we were trying to bring awareness to that business and so we started interviewing individuals that were in the reline industry and which was great i mean i i we have a pipe company i’m interested in that world but my real passion was scrap right so it was kind of my way of learning how to do a podcast and how to interview people it’s kind of my way of trying error good and so i always knew i was going to do a uh um scrap podcast but i wanted to be um about people in the industry that were like passionate about the industry right i wanted to be the people that you know came from nothing and they just scratched their way and built a business or they built a career you know we’ve interviewed people in our

in our in just in our company that started at the bottom right guys that started running cans for they were i got a you know a guy that handles all the marketing all the purchasing for our company he ran cans for two years aluminum cans nasty beer dead animals in those cans for two years and just worked his way up right and dude that guy i’ve talked about somebody that has like this just a scrappy individual like you know that’s the evolution of the podcast for me down the road is just individuals who are just scrappy like they’re just pretty tough they’re they they take chances sometimes they fail sometimes they win but right now it’s just basically it’s i like having people on there that they got the good old rust in their veins and they’re just they’re just hard you know like they’re just females males like they just go hard and they uh and and they they love the industry as much as i do