welcome to recycled Idaho for to recycling industry veterans bread Eckart Nick Snyder’s for Idaho businesses and organizations that are putting in the work to keep Idaho environmentally and economically viable at the same time take a listen to how these entrepreneurs business owners and operators from making things happen in the great state of Idaho in this podcast Nick and I sit down with Ken Cortez the owner of metal crab he’s a second generation job shop owner based out of Boise Idaho and don’t forget to check out the YouTube boots-on-the-ground piece for our man nicked tours the metal craft facility width can alright we’re sitting here with Ken Cortes the owner of metal craft I’m Nick Schneider and this is Bret Hart welcome so Ken just to start out you’re the owner of metal craft what year were you guys founded in 1986 so we’re going three years now okay did you start it no my father started it after retiring from HP so that’s what brought us up there from here to here from California was HP 1hp moved up he came and around there fab shop oh really okay is

this the original this is the second we started in Garden City like a lot of businesses around here yeah so we had we had a building down there and I think the time we left I think we were in four or five days okay but my father started with some other folks can can’t be and people that would left HP and then wound up buying those guys out and took it up then we came up here which was quite the adventure moving to Boise City and I’m not doing it in the way we’re supposed to but we got it all worked out yeah now we’ve been here quite a while so like it’s like the small business way where you’re just trying to figure stuff out as you go and you plug and you put in you’re just trying to try and get through it yeah to keep keep the wheels on the bus and keep the doors open and just keep building well that’s just the life of an entrepreneur you’re learning as you go right oh yeah in a lot of cases so was your dad and was he I mean obviously

he’s pretty entrepreneurial to start it I mean did he leave a good job at HP to go out on his own or is it I mean how did that transition yeah I think the thing with with HP like a lot of big companies you know they they all do that’s the stuff in-house and then they send it offshore right so when they laugh when he left he left HP saw the writing on the wall and I think he said well I’m gonna retire thanks we retired I think it retired for like six months is I can’t retire you know so he was probably one of the guys that didn’t leave with any work out of HP you know if it’s good to say or not but he just decided after six months he’s bought an old machine and got that space in Garden City and just started out and after customers you know so it was it was kind of a rough start for him who was his first customer kitty I can’t remember his big neck job or first big customer that kind of help I think the first big customers were

around that time was like there was a company called ESI and then there was pre Co but even before then there were folks that were making actually making phone booths our actual phones you know the older talking to pay phones okay I remember seeing that because I wasn’t involved in the business at the beginning you know so I had some brothers and stuff that were involved in that but I remember some pay phone stuff and and then I got into this to see the electronic side there was company ESI and there’s pre Co and stuff like that so I think pre co was probably one of their his biggest starters okay I know that got rolling so you said you weren’t involved in the very very beginning so how long have you been in the manufacturing game so now I’ve been in over 25 years now okay yeah when did you kind of take part in 1990 91 93 after my first well Sergio was born and then I was it was I had a I had a great job at a great gig and I was travel in the northwest and was enjoying

life and but I didn’t like being away from the family when you have a family I was going up a couple weeks and what so it’s Sergio’s your first born second born X I can born okay yeah so I have three kids and they’re great kids and now they’re spread out over the two of them are here now and my daughter moved to Atlanta did your dad welcomed you with open arms or did he push you to get in the business or was he just needed to help I think I think it was kind of both it was it was good it was time for me to get off the road and it was being thrown to the wolves come on out learn a little bit about the business and then before you know it is like now you’re gonna be the general manager which it happens you know yeah and it’s like anything in life if you’re gonna take the opportunity go for it right yeah and so that’s what I did and family businesses are not easy I love them but do you know we just everything worked out we’re all okay

now but yeah it’s not the easiest so I don’t care what size of business it is and what their families are you love them yeah well I’m third generation family business so like I relate to so those stories and when you say it’s not easy there’s a lot of times where you’re like you have sisters or brothers or yeah you know anybody else involved I can thank you I bet there are some good stories by oh yeah you know it’s all working out in the end it’s yeah like I said you know he said you know come and learn the business and and then I started to take it over yeah and like I said I hadn’t really had that I still don’t have probably don’t have the right experience but I’m still gonna be learning yeah we all are in every day so yeah well you have a pretty entrepreneurial spirit obviously if you’re wondering if you’re willing to take over that and then obviously you’ve added we were just walking through shop and you’re telling me I’ve had this piece of equipment for four years or this piece of equipment for five

six years and that means that you’re still willing to put money back into the business to grow and and do more so yeah you have to the only problem isn’t the price tag of those things are they’re going up faster and you can think about it but yeah the way it goes so can you just give us just a boost of background of you know what what does metal crack do what do you guys well we’re a precision job shop and we are a job shop fairly large mod sites a medium to large but we we do we do not have a product or a line of our own so we rely on everybody else’s parts we build pieces for OMS people that are building their own products and so they need a couple brackets mates and panels or whatever so we’ll make those components for them give them to them they’ll assemble their products a couple of products here we not very many but we assemble some of them and they’re complete and there’s some cycles that that work their way through we are the beginning of a process I was telling you’re

the beginning of a process and the product life and a lot of times the end of the life you know when the quantities get really huge and everybody wants to set it off to China and do what they you know do and then if it starts to die out they come back because the quantities aren’t big enough and that type of thing what we try to do is keep it all here yeah so what everybody should try to do is keep all that work here somehow for sure are the majority of your customers are they domestic yes up until the last couple years with one of our bigger customers moving around now we send stuff offshore so we’re actually sending things to you know not China but Malaysia and other places so it’s it’s good they handle the shipping on that do you handle the shipping is that like a logistics yeah they you know they they take some of them take care of someone watch you take care of it you know it just it just depends so you go for like a machine you know job shop to deny your logistics company

has a building crates and we’re doing all that kind of stuff yeah and that’s it it’s a battle you know you really wish those customers were right around the corner so you can drive and drop it off now you got to get in the box and and I don’t know what they do when they fly across the world but man some of that stuff gets turned upside down and yeah what is going on yeah we’ve had some equipment come our way from other countries where this wife up all beat oh yeah okay we’ll make it again never happens but that was that was quite a little change for us but you have to change with this industry you know maybe some of that stuff will come back you just never know and already I think the best businesses regardless of industry you have to be willing to let change and be willing to retool and and and move a different direction and whoever can a lot of times whoever can do it the fastest and whoever’s willing to do it it’s usually who’s able to kind of navigate you know good times bad times

and everything in between well that’s I think that’s the biggest part about job shopping you have to be flexible you know because if we’re customer driven you know we’re customer driven by the top ten you know but we all don’t only have ten they think we only have five customers you know those five yeah yeah but we don’t you’ve got hundreds of them and it just depends we try to work it in the best we can oh yeah so you have to be flexible it’s it’s not the easiest thing everybody would love to go kay just send me one widget and let me make two million oh yeah you know but we’d be bored so what the changes that we were just talking about have you seen any significant changes the manufacturing well I think I think the the machinery you know that that that’s like it’s almost like computers now you know so laser technology co2 to fiber to different stuff that they’re doing now it’s it is changing all the time I think one of the things that’s really going to change it in the future is kind of the automation there’s

going to be some of that everybody’s gonna have to look at ya know you don’t want to take jobs from people but to compete and if you want to do those you want to be giggles you’ve got to be competitive got to figure out how to do it with less people you know because you can you know do you think some of that’s driven by B and and we talk to a lot of people in a lot of different industries and I’ve traveled a lot talked to a lot of from businesses and I’ve I’m always curious the question always comes up especially I can the last two years and are you guys having a hard time finding people oh yeah and it’s been more than two years it’s been it’s like the last two years it seemed that that drumbeat just keeping it louder and louder well and when that unemployment rate gets to that certain point it’s there’s just there’s nobody around and we live in an incredible state right yeah but think about it we’re not big there’s not a lot of people here for sure right so we’re just picking from

each other and you try not to do that to each other hopefully you don’t but it happens sure but there’s just there’s just not enough people here and I think that’s something that it’s twofold you love to have a small community and you’re like living where you live but if you’re a company like ours or someone else it’s like I need some more people yeah you know it’s when people talk about automation they get scared right they’re like oh well that’s gonna eliminate thousands millions of jobs or whatever that is but I mean when you I talked to guys like yourself and we had we fight the same issues like I think automation would make you as a country or a more efficient so I don’t necessarily think those jobs that everybody’s worried about getting taken some of that stuff’s not even available like there’s no there’s nobody to work those jobs in the first place there isn’t but there’s a lot of different versions of that and I think one of the things people have to realize and within any job that you’re at if you’re willing to grow with the company and

the company decides to go that way well then you want to be the guy that’s I want to run the machine that’s running the Machine yes you know so you have to be willing to jump in and say okay how do i how do I learn that because the industry is getting better and the interfaces between the automation and interfaces between machines are becoming much more friendly alright so you don’t have to have that mechanical engineer that can has to run the machine I mean it’s pretty the language is pretty easy you know that’s super easy but it’s better than it was right yeah and a lot of things and if you’re willing to learn that the guy who’s running the machine right now really should be the guy that runs does the automation surge because he knows the Machine part of it yeah you know but there isn’t there’s a separate industry there right now too but I think you those will kind of mold together into one I think so I think if people aren’t looking if some of the youngsters out there they need to be looking at maybe I need

to you know I’m an engineer and doing some things like that but maybe I have a look at automation because everybody’s going to be looking at that point there’s certain things Automation is really expensive yeah if you look at it from the price point right got how much labor is gonna save you and you can just close your plant and go home and it runs all night yeah you know you can run 24 hours a day and if you have that if you hopefully you have that kind of work and it allows you to do to get that kind of work right I think that that’s where I mean and I’ve said this before I mean I went to college but I don’t think college is for everybody I’m a I’m a super big advocate of if you’re not a school kid then don’t go to college don’t waste your time don’t waste your money and everybody learn a craft a trade go start out a machine shop go start at it you know whatever shop and learn how they’re doing what they’re doing and make yourself available to the company learn be willing

to grow with that business and be put yourself into that culture if you don’t like it go find something else right if you don’t like that one yeah go find something you’re learning from every step yeah hopefully you don’t become that guy that just keeps jumping around yeah if you’re learning and you’re young and you’re and you’re done there’s nothing they can teach you there’s no opportunity well then maybe when you’re 18 you just kind of if you might go into the into your world and say I don’t really like that I’m gonna go try it at my aunt at something else I’m not saying just get from seed job the same industry job to job to job unless you’re just not getting treated correctly right but if you’re like trying industry and you’re like I’ll go be a plumber it’ll be electrician yeah oh I’m really passionate about it no electricity you don’t need to go to college to do that well we’ve had people that have come here they’ve been to the technical schools and not with a lot of experience and then again the work world they’re like oh I really

don’t like doing this yeah that’s after two years or three years of school they come to the industry and they’re like there’s no fun what was I thinking well yeah you know it happens but I think that if you you know there’s there’s so much opportunity out there if you think if these youngsters would just say I’m I’m gonna learn and I’m gonna get ready for the opportunity and I’m gonna be a little bit patient that’s the biggest thing right now especially in this industry we’re even more at when the the minimum wage or with the hiring wage it’s not ten bucks and anymore you know yes how you try to keep up with everybody if you don’t you have to get somebody that’s paid quite a bit of money to get them in but they at that point that they don’t know anything so you’re you’re paying 15 16 bucks an hour or whatever it is or even if it’s 10 bucks an hour and you’re that person doesn’t know anything yet yeah you know but you have to the wage keeps going up and if you can find it a guy that

has some patience and he’s a good employee and he shows you that loyalty when that and you said it when that opportunity comes he’s next up yeah and I think a lot of the younger guys can enter the workforce don’t they want it now now now so it’s ooh it’s a breath of fresh air when you do see a guy coming into the workforce that has the the loyalty and patience and now opportunity will come it’s it’s not easy and you gotta understand everybody wants it well my buddy got this and my buddy got that as iclone good for them but you got to look at the long-term thing and it’s not for everybody no and if you like if you like working with your hands and you should be in a place where you get to build stuff you know then you shouldn’t be in there yeah and I was having a conversation with with RHI our HR guy earlier just today and we were talking about you know when the economy is really good then everybody’s got ten job offers right there when the rubber meets the road when the economy

dips and it’s gonna happen it could be this year it could be four years from now one year it’s gonna happen right and all the people that job job skipped and took the extra dollar the extra fifty cents and they never were patient and really learned to how that company did things or how they’re going to take care of them yeah those are those are to be the real losers in the whole thing because and it’s the people that stuck it out and said you know yeah I can go get paid a dollar more but Ken takes good care of me I’ve got a job I’m learning the next level of what’s gonna happen on the automation side or whatever it is those are the real winners by the time it is I think what people really when they say I can I can do two jobs you bring value to the company you’ve been valued yourself you know you hate to say it but it’s like the last one last one in first one out sometimes because their levels not wearing these we have to learn to jail they can move around that’s

what I think we’re very good at that here at medal car there’s a lot of folks that you know run around you saw me out there on the floor and when guys working in hardware and I said well nobody now me to go start to punching he runs the punch Hardware runs the laser so those are the kind of guys you want to have he makes himself more value yeah you know to you and to themself is everything’s gonna go up and down I would love to keep it steady you know there are times where the markets gonna crash in everybody says well what just happened yeah and you know and you gotta get ready for that right a hundred percent and those are the ones that are gonna really struggle and I think yeah yeah we work we’re talking about this earlier I said the day will come when you’re gonna have ten people for every job in each field versus ten jobs and only having one guy that day will swap I mean you’ve been doing this long enough you’ve seen it you know and I think our generation I even say

people who graduated 10 years ago all they’ve seen for the last 10 years is up at elite progression rights and say oh yeah we don’t yeah so for 10 years it’s just been getting better it’s that steadily better well guess what it’s not always like that yeah they were lucky where we lived right we got a great yeah this is a beautiful beautiful things happen here we’ve missed the first kind of a couple of downturns but they they got that’s the last couple times and it’s gonna happen you know for sure I’m seeing more and more 3d printer companies do you think that will affect the manufacturing industry or I’ll change anything I think it can really help with product to market quicker so when you can actually feel that and see that thing working on how it’s gonna work I think sometimes it can help on the manufacturer ability of it so if you have a you know when you go from the print you have it on the screen everything works on the screen yeah when you have that physical product in your hand then you can kind of go okay this

is what this is what it will look like right it’s more of like a mock-up yeah and this is great how I drew it and now that I get it out of it and it doesn’t function right right it doesn’t close or with it I think there’s a lot of anytime you can get that off the paper into a physical product too and play with in touch the custom sometimes people sell those things they’re developing a product it’s not even a product yet but the concepts there and they can see it there goes its ink it’s a big chunk like the R&D process getting that so they can think just think you said that physical product without running it through a series of five hundred thousand million dollar right you know we do prototyping in here too and there’s a lot of folks that do that and there’s a lot of companies though that they specialize in that but it’s pretty expensive but they’ll turn you a part in 24 hours you know but yeah pay for it source done some outsourcing of that too kinase not really product not really you

know we we work so close with our customers a lot of times it’s just okay if there if we work close and tight we can get a lot of it done you know what our job is is to not take on stuff that we’re gonna waste each other’s time with right yeah it’s not really in our wheelhouse would probably shouldn’t bring it in and sometimes we get pressure from our customers huh you know we don’t do a lot of these but could you look at like yeah I just don’t do that and sometimes in the backyard you like mom I don’t want to go into another shop yeah we gotta try that but you know it just depends on the customer my pencil approach a and part of that being in business as long as you guys have you guys have probably worked out some of those kinks where you’re like we’ve kind of been down that road and that’s not really we haven’t had some amazing products that people and that’s some of the fun part of this thing but I think some of the things they bring in well I got this

pretty good idea that’s really crazy and we had one customer that their product was was driven because their I think it was their grandmother or something that didn’t see really well and I’d love to read you know and then they were concerned about her saying they they developed a system that enlarged the book camera the whole thing and we built that for years but it was two brothers taking care of their grandmother that’s and it turned into a business that’s awesome so you know that you just never know what’s going to come in here the product lines that we see sometimes are just kind of crazy so what’s the I mean us being metal guys me being a metal guy like what’s kind of the I mean you see a lot of you know your basic you know material here you know your you know your steel and stainless and stuff like that is there any have you have you had to bring in any exotic alloys or anything and cut or if you guys always just kind of stuck to the it’s kind of the basic alloys yeah it’s kind of the basic

I think we might have cut some titanium or something a couple times um there’s some stuff I cut a little laser that people don’t want me to know that they’re cutting so I can’t tell them it yeah it’s just but it’s just basic basic material okay you know there’s a lot of times I was that gonna work yeah it’s a little cut it ya know expensive and you’re like just so you know you’re bringing the material I could lose it or something could happen but yeah like that like I said earlier if it’s not in our wheelhouse we probably should back off a little bit right and there are some crazy expensive materials out there oh yeah I mean we don’t see it as much on this end because I’m all people always ask me a question woody what about this and what about that material like you’re in canals and your Ma’s in this and I’m like you know organize oh we are pretty basic yeah we don’t have a big aerospace you know industry over here you know it’s a lot of you know your basic food grade stuff they might have

some of that eastern Idaho there’s some crazy yeah over there but yeah yeah we rarely see any of that yeah yeah but no I I don’t know it’s basic stuff that we deal with you know we’re searching out different materials and things there’s a like instead of having something electro polish now they have mirrored material that you can buy comes to your already surface finished and ready yeah which is great but if you’re scratching the most she can lose a little sheet yeah yeah it so it’s always changing there’s always new technology out there with the metal that you got to work with oh yeah where where does recycling fit in with manufacturing well I think you know just the whole recycling thing is the right thing to do right you know we have a big beautiful planet it doesn’t have its there’s that unlimited resources so if you’ve got to recycle that stuff if Jamie can you know you gotta get it out we try to charge for as much as we can on that material with you we make this is skeletons that we have to punch and cut out of the

little that sheet yeah you know you try to utilize the most you can but some of it just has to go do it’s got to hold it together someone yeah and that’s where the computer programming as came in and helped eliminate a lot of the scrap material that you used to say exists you know you know 10 15 years ago is they’re they’re figuring out a way to spin and cut and do put more parts per per sheet and ever before ya know there’s great software’s out there that are doing amazing things and and it does it saves your yield is much much better yeah and then you know when you’re looking at an industry like ours every time you touch it you’re it’s costing you money so you don’t want to touch it you know what such as I can write yeah so and sometimes let’s put that show these back on the shelf and then you touch it 27 times and that was all of us cost you 75 oh yeah could you keep moving it around you know so it is this things you got to look at yeah so where

do you see metal craft in the in the future what is your what is your you know future plans for well the goal is to be around 50 plus years okay so we’re blessed we’re really blessed I have to be here 33 years okay so a lot of job shops don’t make it we’re true job shop at this point you know we have 40 some employees it’s a monster to feed but you know my dad had a legacy that we want to keep rolling you know and maybe my kids will get involved in or whatever the people here will keep it rolling that’s that’s what I want to happen and we got to take it to the next level which we’re talking about things are really changing out there in the world now right with a lot of stuff coming back um I think there’s opportunity that some shops weren’t gonna have and you know it depends how deep your pockets are how what what your commitment is and how much risk you want to take exactly you know because all those machines out there they’re very very expensive and what you buy when

they got to run all the time yeah you know so I wonder I want this business to be around a long time doesn’t care about these people here and they’ve been here with me for quite a while I mean told you out there I have one gentleman here was 96 years old yeah can you tell that story yeah yeah well that’s a great well Ernie Resendez worked with my father and he moved up with HP also so he was uh he worked in their model shop down in Palo Alto so he moved up here worked with them at HP and we think it retired from HP one so he’s retired twice yeah and so he runs my model shop now you know he’s 96 but he still comes in three days a week you know he doesn’t go that shocked yeah he just has that has that skill that skill set that you know unfortunately a lot of our youngsters that come up there they’re never gonna have that because people like Ernie or they’re disappearing yeah right and he draws everything up on paper you know and then he’ll he’ll make it has

a little shop back there it’s all single hit punch and break and everything and he just has so he just probably why I mean if I could you know it’s amazing to watch somebody like that that has that incredible work ethic because he just works you know there’s some little parts that he does for one of our customers and we’re like how does he do that that fast and you know he even does my fingers are like numb I gotta get this done ya know and so he’ll he’ll do a thousand one day and he takes that on himself so I want to do a thousand and one the next day he’s always all still be push push that’s what’s something that some people don’t realize when we did the boots-on-the-ground portion we walked around and you got him a new machine but can you tell us about that machine well we had it’s just a roller so he was rolling we have these parts that we have to flatten out and Ernie has a role in his areas I’ll do them you know so it’s he’s cranking away on these

parts and then finally I go to get him a new got him with a power roller because I don’t know about that power role it’s not gonna be as good as when I’m rolling it I’m like yeah you have to stop rolling the Machine knew he didn’t want his old machine I just don’t know yeah it’s gonna work and the funny stories and this is bad on our part and it’s kind of silly to even put on this thing but it was the rolling wasn’t working correctly one of the rollers had moved over and the gears were weren’t connected and when I walk over there he’s pushing this part there you should that’s we push it because I know I’m getting tired of that this thing was gonna make it easy will you open up the sides like that bolts loose and that’s not good I mean any goes oh that’s gonna make it a lot easier yeah so I got likes the machine now so what in your opinion now and this what’s gonna get like the youth or get the next generation to have that same work ethic as earning I had

how do you how do we like how how do we as our company develop it and how do you develop it and then as a country what is what’s gonna have to happen to get people to realize that you don’t have to have your life figured out by 25 and have your career and you know I think Bob biggest thing is people and I think we’d do it to ourselves you know we all we all want our kids to have better than we did right yes we want to have the opportunity so we provide a lot of things for them so I think there’s a there’s a definite break there but if it a lot of stuff it’s all given to them they haven’t had of work now many kids nowadays that came out of high school never had a job during high school there’s so many yeah mm-hmm I always had a similar job out of high school all my friends all had summer jobs I they worked their butt off that’s number long yeah yeah you know and then with the only time they stopped working is if the guys were

played football winner okay I’m done I gotta go play ball and do all that but everybody worked so you learned how to work younger right and there wasn’t a lot of messing around with it you went out and you worked I’m not you know I’m not too proud to say I you know I’ve worked and feel there were ditches I don’t care what it was yeah you just worked for the Sun yeah but I had to make money if you wanted to buy something nobody just walked in the first to say I was spoiled my dad spoiled me I think more than he should have you know but I think I got the work out but he also taught you how to work I mean I think that’s one of the cool things about small businesses and I’ve never worked I can’t sit there and say like my wife’s worked for like 30 different companies you know she’s a schoolteacher today but you know growing up she her parents are school teachers so it wasn’t like she’d go in the family business and work on Saturdays right so she was worked at shop Kohl’s

and Walmart she’s worked at mall you know and and I never had that experience a lot of my work was just going to work every Saturday going to work every summer and run the recycling center so the small business businesses provide that advantage I think for the for the youth because they say hey like get your butt in here put a good day’s in a work feel how it is to be sore at the end of the day you know and I think you just I don’t know how you how you really established that work ethic I think you have to help them you know there’s a you have to mentor kids you gotta mentor people all the time you’ve got to really look back and go okay who gave me a chance and I mean I got to do that now yes right am I gonna get mad at this kid just yell at him or we’re gonna teach up something I think you hit it right on the head though I think you hear all these people complaining about Millennials you know who raised the Millennials yeah you know that look look

in the mirror like and I think as like a parent mm-hmm I look at myself and how my dad raised me like he made me work eight hours a weekend since I was like 10 you know just to get my allowance and if I didn’t like he would add it on to the next week and I at the time I couldn’t stand it yeah but I appreciated the heck out of it now and I do the same with my kids well it’s all generational like yeah sure I’m sure ARF dads fathers they talked about the same what’s wrong with these kids yeah that’s always gonna change right but I think that well there is a definite issue with people wanting to have everything instantly right now and that conversation can go on forever but it’s something that has to be yeah just I like you’re mean you have to be willing like you just say at the end you got it if you get a young young guy young gal and you’re been in here and you’re like you could just sit there and be like ah that dumb kid don’t know anything

or you can take the time say at one point I was the dumb kid this is what how somebody did help me and then you have to be willing to extend yourself and your time and say alright I’m gonna try to help you learn something even whether you work here one more year or 20 yeah at least you’re gonna learn something while you’re here the other two we’ve had some people come through here that just didn’t understand I have to be to work every day on time yeah that’s the one that that’s the first thing please just be on time and yeah how many times I did like I have to let you go play you can time that’s really what I want it was back to the little thing yeah it just a little things you can you be here every day at eight or six or whatever you know and that’s thing but it’s just stuff you have to work on you know and it when you’re a little company you know you want to try to give people an opportunity sometimes you can sometimes you can’t yeah and I think that’s

it hardens your heart just a little bit but you want to you got to stay flexible yeah yeah people it’s a people business I mean no matter what I don’t care how many robots are invented don’t care how many how much automation exists if you did the people if you have good people generally speaking you got a good bit that’s paying the bills and you’re doing it you know that’s you know some of us are gonna make money some so there’s times where you don’t make anything yeah someone who’s working on yeah you’re working at work you make a my yeah I’ll get back with you on that one yeah so one thing I know that’s uh close to your heart is the jalapeno open if you want to just tell us about that real quick well we started my father started the jalapeno open after him and some friends started the Hispanic business association so the HBA used to help Hispanic businesses in town but there then they kind of changed these went to helping the youth so this tournament is put on and we’re the main supporters of it now but we

we help Hispanic youth in the Treasure Valley and it’s for college scholarships so they’re not big scholarships but we’re getting close to a half a million dollars raised in 29 years you know we’re always looking to do more but you’ll find that a lot of these kids I’m impressed by what they do you know they some who don’t have English as their second language before you know by the time they’re coming out of high school they’re already taking college courses yeah you know in there and they’re excelling and doing very well it’s a great scholarship for those folks so we give you know out of high school and in continuing ed and we control the scholarships so if if something comes up and we decided that you know he maybe he isn’t college bound academic and he wants to go to vocational school we can completely give money for that so we’re not locked into that so we’ve just it’s a passion that my my dad had and I’m glad to be able to take it over as part of his legacy we want that to keep continuing on it’s just fun it’s it’s

fun and it’s the right thing to do how can you open it go get a chance to deal with it or play in it we have a blast and it’s just you got to give back to your community you know that’s wherever you’re going you know we do all this stuff and we spend all the money and we do everything we can to work and but you got to give back well it’s very I mean we’ve been doing about four years in a row no no don’t both a few times and it’s just a great turnout it’s a great it’s for a great cause and we enjoy support goes back to what we were just talking about about you know building work I think and you know it’s you know if the kid knows that they go to school and they do the right thing in school and they and they learn and that there’s a carrot potential care at the end with a scholarship and because they’ve they’ve done the right thing then that’s it that’s it just as important as you know in here and teach oh yeah I know that it’s

really amazing how many of those kids that once they get in and they have that that drive and there’s money there then they find it and they just think they finish yeah you know we’re in the process now and hopefully after 29 years a lot of these graduates and we have some I don’t know where they’re all at but we have some amazing graduates that have done some incredible things right do some of them stay in touch yeah some of them do actually one of them is David Estrada at Boise State and he’s a he’s a professor there now yeah and you know we’re and we’re trying to reach out to them to help us you know everybody you know it’s time to get back yeah yeah which I can I’m gonna be old and we’ll see what happens with who runs it well who does what but we’re real fortunate with a lot of the graduate we have a good including I guess graduation percentage you know and they do really well they just like I said it’s not a big scholarship we’re here no good as a finisher for years ya know

it’s like here this is some help and if you and whip and if they can apply for it every year kids so they that’s the ball rolling right a little bit some crazy thing it’s all expensive yeah sure so I love to end on this question but can you just give me like a mentor to you’ve had in your in your career and kind of what what they’ve done for you with that with that well I mean I’m gonna say the good Lord for one but then my father you know a little bit a little bit about him as he he raised three boys by himself basically and then I’d say my hand really helped him a lot but that’s was my first mentor he’s oh and he’s always been able to provide for me unfortunately lost the minnow for but that was one of the men that I always look up to he’s nobody’s perfect but yeah I was always looking out for us and and taking care of us and wanted to teach us and do the things that on that site I want to say it from a mentor side you

know I’ve I’ve been blessed with so many people it would be really kind of hard to pick one or two yeah you know I just I’ve met so many good people and if you if you’re open to that you’re gonna there were some teachers that you know what wasn’t the best student you know but they got taken away you should probably do this okay yes you know and I got some great pens that that you know that are around and I think from a from a mentor not even a mentor Vil and I watched someone like Ernie who’s still around and that’s what he does yeah loves who loves his country loves his work was everybody around him you know he gets to be grumpy at 96 he deserves that you know to love God in love country and everything as much as he does you know that’s just something really to look at and it’s it’s an ordeal I mean that’s just one more thing how do people get ahold of you they want to contact you I’m really hard to get ahold of actually you can get ahold of me at ken

Cortese ken Cortese at metal craft Idaho calm okay and then work your way through into our just call office 208 through six eight zero seven zero zero Mike Simpsons 111 I’ve been probably I’m not the best guy that light is blinking all the time you’re busy man yeah I gotta learn to do that better it’s one of the things that I gotta learn but yeah and yeah I always reach out to metal craft and they’ll find me Oh fantastic thank you thank you thank you thank you for listening to another episode of recycled Idaho and as we continue the journey across this great state we look forward to bringing you more stories of people and organizations putting in the work to do the right thing