Kevin (00:00.046)
is it actually records on your end. So it records onto your phone automatically. When we're all done, all you have to do is like, hang on, like stay on here. Somewhere on your phone, it might say like percentage uploaded. That's, know, once that hits 100%, then you're good to go and close out of, you know, the app and stuff like that. So is there anything you specifically wanna like talk about or?

Mike (00:00.446)
Huh.

Mike (00:21.991)
Okay. Okay. Cool.

Kevin (00:28.81)
you don't want to talk about or

Mike (00:31.195)
No, I really don't care. just, you know, when you're talking about looking for guys, I think that the way that, rocking to got started a little unique, a little bit different than what a lot of the people, you know, I listened to, I listened to your podcast all the time and you know, I haven't heard anybody say like, I didn't know what I was doing. got on YouTube and 13 years later, here I am, you know,

Kevin (00:57.87)
Hmm.

Mike (00:58.876)
So it's just kind of a weird way that it all kind of fell into place. I thought there might be somebody in their garage right now thinking they're not knowing that it could be a might wanna hear it.

Kevin (01:13.026)
Yeah. Heck yeah, man. Before we actually really fully get started, can you turn your phone the other way?

Kevin (01:24.75)
Hopefully it'll auto, I think so.

Mike (01:28.815)
To me, it shows that it's landscape now.

Kevin (01:32.736)
It shows its landscape, okay. Because you will crooked to me. Join in portrait orientation. Okay. It doesn't matter that much. You can just turn it back the other way. No big deal.

Mike (01:36.932)
You are sideways still.

Kevin (01:50.402)
The AI will. Yeah, all good. No, don't hold it. Cool. All right. Well, let's get rocking, man. Mike, I appreciate you taking the time with me. I know we've been chatting back and forth for a long time about a bunch of different things from the Facebook group and things like that. And I've gotten some stuff off for you, like some extra wheels from a couple of years ago that you and I barely use even now. But.

Mike (01:50.513)
Yeah, I can't. I just don't want to hold that thing the whole time.

Kevin (02:19.309)
Mike Gunter, welcome to the podcast, bud.

Mike (02:23.644)
How's it going, man? It's good to talk to you.

Kevin (02:25.651)
Awesome. Yeah, finally. It's funny because I talked to so many people online and like it's always been chat like we've been chatting for years, but we never actually like talk like on the phone or like I don't see anything other than your profile picture. So it's cool to actually see you in person now.

Mike (02:40.922)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how your wife is, but my wife thinks it's weird that I have internet friends. I mean, I know that dude. It's like how I'm like, well, we're in the same internet groups.

Kevin (02:48.107)
Right?

Kevin (02:56.205)
Back in the day, we weren't supposed to have internet friends or talk to anybody on the internet. Now I fly across country to Fabtech to hang out with all of them.

Mike (03:05.436)
It is crazy how small of a world it can be. And it's really crazy, like the connections you can make and like, mean, business deals and Skype. Networking with people online, like I've made a lot of good contacts, know, just reaching out and be like, hey dude, you build cool stuff. And what else do you do, you know, that I may need help with? And it's worked out really. There's a guy here in town actually.

Kevin (03:29.665)
Yeah.

Mike (03:35.12)
I just talked to him today. We're helping him get his, he finally convinced them that he needs a table. cause he was coming across town and getting us to cut like, you know, little brackets and stuff that would take three minutes to do if you had your own table. we're helping him set it up, but that guy, man, it was like July, I think, he posted on Facebook, trying to sell some, you know, custom ornamental on Facebook, on the local groups. It was really good work. And,

Kevin (03:49.666)
Yeah.

Mike (04:04.621)
I messaged him, said, you in, we're in San Angelo, Texas, West Texas. I said, are you in San Angelo or where he deals with the guys are like 300 miles away. He's like, no, I'm here. I've got a shop, this and that. And I said, well, can you come by? And he came by the shop and we talked for a couple hours probably. I mean, he was here just the other day helping us with some aluminum stuff. He has things that he's really good at and we're not, it's not our specialty.

Kevin (04:33.806)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (04:33.931)
and he'll come over and help us. I mean, we collaborate on a lot of stuff. It's been really, those connections have been priceless for us in the recent years.

Kevin (04:45.069)
Yeah.

Kevin (04:48.866)
Yeah, it's funny because as much crap as people talk on on on those Facebook groups, like they've been really, really good. Like that's how you and I I've connected with so many guys on there like the the four people or the four guys who subcontract for me now. Like I met them all on that group. Like I put I put a call out like a few months ago and I was like, hey, welcome to subcontract out more work, blah, blah. Bunch of people hit me up.

Mike (04:54.2)
Thank

Mike (05:07.875)
Yeah.

Okay.

Kevin (05:16.32)
Some people came by, some people, you know, it didn't really, it didn't align for us. But the guys I have now straight up came from that group. It was awesome. Actually, two of them I met at an auction, a local auction actually, now that I really think about it. But like, I have a whole roster of guys in like, that I just wrote down. They came in, I know what they're good at, I know who to send work to, I know what their rate is, I know where they're located. Like, it's been awesome. It's been like, you know.

Mike (05:25.284)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (05:31.778)
Yeah.

Kevin (05:46.318)
The internet for the welding business has been really, really helpful for a lot of us.

Mike (05:52.612)
Yeah, if you're not thinking, if you're like the old school mindset of, you know, competition and all that stuff, if you think, if your brain works like that, you better rewire it or you're just going to fizzle out. Like, you know, there's, mean, we have, well, I can tell you right now. So, so I own our shop. Rockin' Two, we own the shop, but there's three different welding companies on this property.

Kevin (06:06.318)
Yep.

Mike (06:22.074)
I've got it's us and you know, well you've seen kind of the stuff we do we do a little bit everything and then I've got a good friend of mine who has a company and he rents shop space from us and he does more of like like round tubing like I don't do I don't do round tubing I'm not a round tubing guy my I wouldn't say my brain doesn't work that way but I haven't tried to make it work that way

Kevin (06:48.139)
Yeah

Mike (06:48.569)
And he's really good with the bender. know, he just sits there and stares at it and he gets it, gets it right. So he does round tubing stuff and like out here hunting, like varmint hunting and high racks that go on the beds of pickups and stuff. And on top of UTV is as big. He does all that stuff. Um, well, and then the other guy is, uh, does like barns and carports and, uh, like our panel fencing and boat docks and stuff like that.

We're all really, I mean, we're all best friends. And I mean, rarely does a week go by when we're not leaning on each other to do a project, whether I'm building a bunch of custom ornamental panels and hiring Lee to go install them. if Aaron has a ton of contacts for work that I do, he'll come with a job like, hey, these guys need this, this, and this.

Kevin (07:35.928)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (07:47.618)
team up on it and we just do profit share on it and it works like it works to me that works so much better than just going like I need to go hire three more guys to get this done because odds are the three guys that you hire or not you know the deal you got to go through a lot of them where you find some good ones and we just got kind of fed up with trying to find the right guy so we just decided to kind of dumb it down and stick with each other like with the

Kevin (08:06.231)
Sure.

Mike (08:17.452)
you know, the core group of business owners, if you will, because I know that they're going to treat my job like theirs because it is theirs, you know.

Kevin (08:24.621)
Interesting. so do you have any actual employees or do you? Okay.

Mike (08:28.951)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, we had, who do have now? There's five of us now. Rocking test five, we had eight before just a couple weeks ago. And.

Kevin (08:37.975)
Okay.

Mike (08:48.778)
All good dudes, you know, just it wasn't it wasn't fitting. Let's just say that it wasn't really fitting. We weren't getting enough stuff done. You know, some guys were bickering back and forth by just stupid high school stuff, you know, and I'm big on, you know, we have to spend a third of our life up here, you know, and we all understand that welding in 106 degree shop.

Kevin (08:52.141)
Sure, yeah.

Kevin (09:04.151)
Sure.

Mike (09:17.433)
is not going to be fun. But with that said, like, I don't want people to dread coming up here because of the shitty attitudes or a boss that's overbearing or whatever. So that I when I hire guys, I tell them, I'm like, dude, I will protect the culture of this shop at all costs. Like it comes before anything. And if you screw it up, you'll be gone like very, very quickly. And I think we kind of got to where there was a fog over the shop. And, you know, it's not like there's a

Kevin (09:39.275)
Yeah.

Mike (09:46.872)
everything's done and everything's picked up and the shops organized. Everything was just kind of bad, kind of in a funk. And so we made some changes and went back to a smaller crew. And honestly, just in this couple weeks, can tell it's better, guys in better mood, stuff is getting done. We've got a good group of dudes, we're do.

Kevin (10:04.781)
Mm.

Kevin (10:10.709)
So I want to pick your brain a little bit about that profit sharing thing that you have going on with other guys. So you've got you and five guys in the shop. Do you like how does that work with like do the guys that you're like the other companies that you're bringing in on these jobs? Do they have guys? Do you split it up by hours? Like tell me what a normal job a profit sharing job.

Mike (10:18.615)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (10:39.543)
that you're doing looks like. How's that structured?

Mike (10:41.536)
Okay, so, okay, I'll give you an example. We just did the three of us actually had a hand in it. We did a there's a ranch, you know, there's all ranches. And, you know, I don't you're in Pennsylvania. Right? Yeah. Little spots in Pennsylvania that are pretty country, Yeah. Really?

Kevin (11:01.581)
yeah. Most of it is all country. You have Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that ruin it for the rest of us. You've got like Harrisburg and Lancaster right in the middle that kind of are like a blend of both of them. But like everywhere else is very, very rural. So,

Mike (11:14.529)
Yeah.

Mike (11:17.944)
See, I had a teammate and he was a roommate in college that was from Philly and I love that dude. But you could tell he was from Philly. It was awesome. See, a Philly transplant in West Texas, talk about some stories, man. That was great to watch. But yeah, so like we're out, it's very rural. We have 100,000 people in this town, but we are surrounded by.

Kevin (11:28.801)
Yeah.

Mike (11:45.943)
10,000 acre ranches, 5,000 acre ranches. It's huge, ranches. So, Arieman came with, he had a family members who bought a place and they needed a big long range rifle range, a thousand yard rifle range. And they wanted a shooting house and all the stuff for it. And so he brought that work here. He said, hey, this is what they want. We went and looked at it. So basically,

Kevin (12:02.508)
Nice.

Mike (12:15.329)
He and my guys built the shooting house. and then we also built like all the target hangers and stuff. And then he and our other guy that's here, they went out together and set posts and set the target hangers and concrete and shot everything with the rangefinder and all that to get it laid out. then, the three of us went out.

To set the shooting house and trim it out and do all that so like we all had you know At some point it was only my guys at some point. It was my guys and him at some point it was him and in Lee and basically We all just kept track of our stuff So if I'm in the shop, and I know we've got two guys on it. You know I've got a I've got a spreadsheet I've got a spreadsheet that has you know their hourly rate

Has our overhead and and I don't know if it's right or not because again, I'm doing all this by the seat of my pants You know, I've got our overhead number and I'm basically I'll kind of break it up You know, let's say if half of my guys are working on this and half the guys are working on something else Well, then I'm gonna take half of that overhead number that I've broken down by hour and I put that on that job so, know if it costs us without I think it costs

Kevin (13:35.297)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (13:40.598)
about like $1,300 a day is what it costs for us to be here. You know, and everybody working will, I'll just take half of that. Like we, you know, these three guys out of the six spent today over here. Okay. So we know that 600 bucks right there. Plus your anything extra materials or whatever. We just keep track of it. Like if I bought the materials, I keep track of it. He bought some of the materials for the composite decking for it. He kept track of it. And so

We do that and then at the end we put all of our stuff together. We make our, because that was an open ended deal. wasn't a, we didn't do a bid for it. We put it all together and get the final price so we know exactly what it costs. you know, whatever the price was, we pull out that cost. We split the cost up. You know, well, he had, know, Lee has a skid steer out there for a day. Okay. That's, you know, 600 bucks. So he gets that. That's all he is.

Kevin (14:19.828)
Okay.

Mike (14:37.226)
this, you he bought these materials, I bought these materials, we split it all up and then whatever's left, we just give it out. So.

Kevin (14:43.725)
Okay. Do you ever do jobs where you bid on them with other guys for, with a profit? how does, is it kind of the same deal where it's just like, you know, like this is how much we made. We split it like, you know, between now. So let's say, let's say, let's just use round numbers. Let's say 30,000, let's say it's it's it's a $10,000 job. Okay.

Mike (14:50.504)
Yes.

Okay

Mike (15:06.634)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (15:11.437)
cost $8,000 to do it. Three of you guys went in on it. You and Rock2 Industries did most of the work. The other guys came out and they did, know, day here, day there. Do you guys then split up the profit percentage-wise as to how many hours and how much stuff you put in? Or is it split down in thirds or?

Mike (15:33.813)
No, it's, I wouldn't say it's split in thirds. Um, honestly, we haven't really run into that because we are, uh, we're very close, you know? So like, yeah, if, we're bidding it and I know I need, you know, I'm like, I, Lee, need you to go install it. And that's going to take a day and a half plus his machine. Well, it's going to take us 12 days to build the panels or whatever we're doing. Yeah. We're not going to get done and split it 50 50. Usually I'll be like, Hey,

Kevin (15:40.182)
Okay.

Kevin (15:53.751)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (16:03.793)
Give me a price to do this and then, you know, he'll give me a price and then I'll just go ahead and throw my markup, our profit markup onto it and be like, okay, well I'll give you this much. Once you do it, does that make sense? Instead of, instead of at the end, you know, it'd be like, okay, well we should, we should profit, you know, 40 % off or whatever, you know, he said his job would be a thousand dollars. Okay. A $10,000 job. his part would be a thousand dollars is what it would cost him.

Kevin (16:16.141)
Sure, absolutely.

Mike (16:33.833)
say, okay, I'll give you 1400 to do it. You know, we just do it like that. We've been it's and maybe it doesn't work if we're not all, you know, good friends or in the same place or we just help each other so much. But we haven't had any scuffles or any no but heard or nothing like that. I mean, we're we're just, you know, we're just fair with each other. And usually ends up with us trying to give each other more money than we should.

Kevin (16:36.481)
Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin (17:02.773)
Yeah. Very cool.

Mike (17:03.669)
You know, because I'm I'm I'm of the kind I don't ever want anybody to think that I'm pulling one over on them or something like that. That's that's the last thing I want. So it just worked for us. And but it's it's not just those guys. We've done it with, you know, guys at other shops, Honestly, I just kind of thought everybody did that until you're asking all these questions. I feel like you've never heard of it before. I'm like, oh, I thought everybody did.

Kevin (17:10.125)
Yeah.

Kevin (17:21.643)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (17:27.149)
Yeah

Kevin (17:30.957)
No, no, no, no, no, I've totally heard it before, but a lot of guys have questions about how it actually works. Yeah, so to...

Mike (17:34.26)
Thank

How to do it, yeah. And there could be better ways. don't know. Like I said, this is all by the seat of my pants. So it works for us. It definitely works for us.

Kevin (17:46.722)
Yeah.

How long you been doing Rock2 Industries?

Mike (17:52.372)
So we've been around since 2012. the way it started, like in 2012, I had never even touched a welder ever. So I got done with school, got married, moved back to the Metroplex, and there was a company that we used to do hunts for, like guide

Kevin (17:55.053)
Okay, nice.

Mike (18:22.376)
corporate hunts for and they were still a manufacturer of tubing. And they called and said, hey, he said, hey, we lost our scrapper. Y'all bring, get a trailer, come down here, bring some cash. You'll make some money. And I mean, when I say I knew nothing about metalwork, I'm talking not a single thing. So I went down there, I borrowed a

Borrowed a Gooseneck trailer and I went down there and took some cash and bought some of their tubing and pick it up to Dallas put it on Craigslist and like four days later I quadrupled my money. We're sitting there holding, you know, four times what I put in. I was like, okay, let's do that. So I quit the job. was I had I had got a job like like loading trucks for an electrical wire company.

back in my hometown. And it was not, it was 6pm to 6am. We were newlyweds. And it was, I think we did like 21 days in a row is one those where I don't know what they call it. But like when you go to clock in at the flags up, that means come tomorrow. And we did like three weeks in a row where I was just passing my wife, like in the hallway, you know, for three weeks. I was like, this is not, this isn't gonna work. So I started doing this other thing and

Kevin (19:41.933)
the

Mike (19:50.151)
We worked it out and I got it. I got it basically built like a little network throughout DFW of all these people that regularly needed tubing and not, not, know, not long after we started, I got, I got to where, I'd be down there and, I'd be on the phone telling people, Hey, I got this, that this. And by the time I got it and drove back up and through the Metroplex, I'd get home with an empty trailer. I do that a couple of days a week, but like,

There's only so much you can buy and sell. So I was just kind of hanging out, not doing anything. I was like, know, there was material for cheap. should, uh, I should learn how to weld. And so I went, I went and got a Craig, Erland Craig, there's a buddy of mine, um, a buddy of mine got a, uh, had a, had a Hobart 135, uh, that he sold me for a hundred bucks. And I got that and, uh, started messing around in the garage, like with flux core wire and a

like a DeWalt Chop saw, the abrasive saw. And I did that for like a couple of weeks. And I was like, I feel like there's a better way to do this. And I start, then I get back on, I get back on YouTube, you know, like the welding tips and tricks guy. don't know what his name is. He's got some, he got some bad ass videos, man. And look at his and I'm like, oh, I need mid gas. What is that? Let's go.

Kevin (20:52.127)
Mm-hmm. yeah.

Kevin (20:59.287)
Yeah.

Kevin (21:05.611)
Yeah, Jodie Collier, yeah.

Mike (21:17.105)
go get a bottle, go get a bottle, do that, you know, so it's like, I was just like discovering new things. And every, every time I discovered something, it was like life changing, you know, like go from the, the D wall chops off to a Craigslist a half inch bandsaw, you know, like a Harbor freight bandsaw. I'm like, Oh my gosh, dude, how did I ever live without this? And that's how it was in my garage of our rent house. I,

Kevin (21:36.951)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (21:40.62)
Yeah.

Mike (21:46.034)
I remember I conned a guy into letting me build him a rack for one of those little Suzuki mini trucks. You know what I'm talking about? The little, was like, yeah, yeah. He was like, I was on a hunting forum. It's called Texas hunting forum. It's like, I was a regular on there anyways. And I was posting up some stuff that I was, you this is what I'm working on with every, and this guy is like, Hey, can you build this rack? And I was like, yeah, dude, I can build that. He's like, you got any?

Kevin (21:51.885)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so cab over ones.

Mike (22:14.322)
any pictures of the ones you've done? was like, man, I don't, but tell you what, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it. He's like, all right. And so he brought it over and I had that thing. I had a thing for like a month. It took like a month to build this thing. I can build it right now. I'm like an hour and a half, you know, but it took me a month. There's a pile of metal on the ground and stuff, but I figured it out. I got it done. I think I charged him like 300 bucks for this rack. And I saw pictures. I saw pictures of it on, on a, on my face.

And from then it was like, posted up the progress while I did it on this website. I get another message from a guy like, hey, I've got these plans for a rep for a Jeep. You thinking you can do that? And I'm like, yeah, man, we've done a few of those. Just kind of BS my way through it and figured it out. And the whole time it was funny. My wife was like, the first time you can't pay yourself or something, you got to go get a real job. I'm like, yeah, I've got it. And we, 13 years and ever.

Kevin (22:57.037)
you

Mike (23:13.583)
Never had to go yet, you know, so, but, yeah, it just kind of grew from there. was like, it was basically me and the Hobart, in the garage. And then, I needed to expand. were getting more stuff. you know, renting a shop outright was a lot of money. So we were trying to buy our first house. so we found a house on a couple of acres with a 40 by 50 shop. And, we, so we bought that.

And then I had my little brother, actually. He was in high school. was, I think it was right after, yeah, he was in high school. He just got done playing football. Didn't have anything to do. So he came and worked with me and he was the same way. He knew nothing about it. And I taught him what I had learned up to that point. And then we kind of learned the rest together. And he was, I mean, he worked with me for probably four or five years before going on and doing some other stuff. But.

So that's how it happened. We just kind of worked our way up and somebody would show up with something and say, can you do this? And I'd just be like, absolutely. And they leave and I'd try to figure out how we were going to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My main guy, my main guy, Matt, just a few weeks ago, we did something. We were trying to figure something out. And he said, he's a real quiet dude. But he was like, you know.

Kevin (24:24.141)
You still probably do that, right?

Mike (24:40.492)
I have no idea how we bullshit our way through some of these jobs. But it's funny when I was like that first year, maybe the second year. So like I had no formal training. like, don't know. I don't know if you know a lot of guys like well, you know, Tulsa Welding School in Oklahoma or I went you know, they went somewhere or I grew up doing this with my grandpa. You know, I don't know anything. And so

Kevin (24:44.247)
Yeah

Mike (25:07.793)
I went, had a guy, somehow got hooked up with a guy and he had some handrail to do. And he takes me out to the place and he's showing me these handrails, just like ADA handrail. And he's like, can you do those? I'm yeah, sure, no problem. He's like, He's like, well, we don't want to pinch these. We want to these joints. Can you cope the joint? I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem at all. And we got done. I got to my truck and then I had to get on Google because I didn't know what coping meant.

Kevin (25:35.02)
Yeah.

Mike (25:36.744)
I didn't know what it meant, but I was like, yeah, we can do it. No problem, We got you. And we did it. And it worked. So it's funny how we got into it. But after that, I moved out here, back out here. went to college out here. And that's where I met my wife and stuff. We moved back to the metro place. So we moved out here because her uncle passed away. And he was the one taking care of their family ranch.

And there wasn't anybody that seemed to be wanting to step up to take over that. So we moved out there and I partnered up with a friend who had a deal for a couple years and that turned out horribly. after two years, I left that, went back on my own and got this shop over here. And now we had 13 guys over the summer for a while doing some contract labor on some stuff.

We usually run about four or five or five or six guys. Usually is what we what we've run for the past few years. But yeah, it's it's it's weird sometimes to like look up and look around and be like, how did I even get to this spot? You know from where we started, but you know, it's just. There's a little there's a way man, you know if you got the you got the guts to try and stick it out, it can easily happen.

Kevin (26:42.647)
Mmm.

Kevin (26:51.745)
Yeah.

Kevin (27:04.619)
Now, do you have like an aspiration goal for Rock2 Industries or are you just taking it as it comes? Like, what does that look like?

Mike (27:11.513)
Thank

Mike (27:18.288)
Well, it's hard to say, you know, because like day to day you're just trying to survive, right? But no, I do want to. think the next thing that's on our kind of on my on my list is we need to get our office situation handled and we need to get it bigger. We need a bigger office to where we can get an office manager. My my wife does it, you know, she so my wife works from home, but she's a director at her company like it's not a, know.

Kevin (27:34.539)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (27:48.495)
She doesn't sell 3D mascara from home. Yeah. So, so she, uh, it's a, it's a real job. She has to, she has to leave and I'm stuck with our four girls for three days and it's miserable. Uh, she has to leave and go on business trips and stuff. She's, she's really busy. She does all the books and stuff right now. Um, but, uh, she's, she's getting low on time. So we've, talking about trying to get somebody in. Well, there's some logistics to get around that right now. Cause

Kevin (27:51.175)
Yeah, it's not a throwaway job. Yeah.

Mike (28:16.623)
You know, my office is a like a sea container closet, you know, it's not really not really good for To find someone who can come in and do it. So that that's probably one of our bigger things right now and then I The other thing that's kind of our bottleneck and stuff is the coatings So For a couple years now, I've talked about doing getting into coding

And we're getting closer and closer and we probably would have already been there if we had a spot to do it like shop wise, but we're kind of a weird spot. We're like, we're out of the city limits, but we are surrounded by houses. So it's a little tricky on figuring out, you know, sandblasting and stuff. So we'd have to build like a whole facility if we did it here to.

Kevin (28:51.98)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (29:12.972)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (29:15.118)
be able to do it without pissing anybody off. But that's the other thing that's the... Sorry, there's crackheads walking down the street staring at me. I thought they were gonna walk in here. I thought they were gonna walk in here. They didn't. But that's the main thing. We basically need to put up another 4,000 square foot building if we wanna do it. that's it, man. Even just materials and concrete.

Kevin (29:38.892)
Yeah.

Mike (29:45.323)
right there, that's, you know, 150 K probably. That's not even with our labor to put it up. So, you know, that's, think, I think coatings and getting that Cody, would say coatings, an office, and then probably like some administrative stuff like we need to get more organized on, you know, like, I've been working on an employee handbook, like some, some SOPs on some of the stuff we do, you know, because it's we've

Kevin (29:48.414)
and

Kevin (30:07.671)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (30:15.118)
We, it's weird because we started as like this deal. It's like me and my brother. Well, yeah, me and my brother, I can be like, Hey, Chris, uh, do this and this. kind of want to do it like this and this and this. And then I, you know, leave or go do what I'm doing. When I was like six guys and some of them are strangers, you know, so now I need to, I need to be able to draw plans. Um, I need to go draw plans. I need to learn 3d CAD. Um, you know, we have a table, we have a 200 ton break.

Kevin (30:34.838)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (30:44.141)
I need to, I got it. We just have to get more organized really is really, I think that's the thing that's kind of hamstringing us right now is organization and having some expectations put just not verbal expectations have some that are on paper that they can go reference it.

Kevin (30:53.837)
Sure.

Kevin (31:05.677)
Dude, SOPs are where it's at, That was a huge change, a huge game changer for our business, 100 % has to happen.

Mike (31:09.559)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, cause it's like, yeah, cause you think like you'll have a guy do something. You're like, dude, what were you thinking? You know, like, why would you think that's okay? But it's not that guy's fault. It's your fault. You know, that is my fault. It's not, it's not that guy's fault. Anything that happens here is my fault. You know, that, and that's the way I feel if it, if you fail, it's because

Kevin (31:30.093)
Yep. Yep.

Kevin (31:36.203)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (31:41.005)
I didn't tell you clearly enough or I didn't watch you or whoever's supposed to watch you didn't watch you through I'm supposed to be watching them, you know? that, yeah, it's common sense. They should rename it because it's not that common anymore, you know? But I don't know what they'll call it, but like common sense is kind of a, it's a little bit of a lost art. And like even I don't have common sense. Like there's shit that all do.

And like the next day or so I'll be talking to what you know, one of these guys that we work with about. Yeah, I think and do it. Why don't you do it like this?

idiot, you know, like, it, it, it, we all have it, you know, it's all in there. So eliminating that as much as possible is what we need to focus on. But yeah, I mean, just that we're adding onto the shop right now. We're adding another 2400 square foot. That'll have three different work bays and we'll have a two post lift in one of them so we can work on beds because we build beds. But we also put on a lot of them for

Kevin (32:20.395)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Kevin (32:28.449)
Yeah.

Kevin (32:37.196)
Hmm.

Kevin (32:47.532)
Okay.

Mike (32:48.702)
other dealers that sell them. A lot of them have got away from messing with putting them on because it's like a I don't know if you've ever messed with putting any kind of bed or body on the back of a truck but it's like you got to be part welder part fabricator part carpenter you know like it's it's wild yeah electrician it's yeah I will tell you one thing that I just recently I was just telling somebody about this yesterday that's like

Kevin (32:50.594)
Mm.

Kevin (33:05.837)
Yep. Electrician, hydraulic mechanic.

Mike (33:18.379)
I don't think I can ever go without it again. As I hired it, there's the newest guy. Um, he's a mechanic and like, he's a, he's a legit mechanic. He worked in mechanic shops for years and years and And we hired him and I was like, look, man, this is what I need. I was like, you don't have to be here right at set. We started seven over. You don't have to be right at seven. Like if you want to come in at nine or 10, that's fine. I'll have some stuff for you to do. And then other than that, you can peddle. Like I've got, I've got three trucks you can work on.

And then even the other guys we partner up with like he can work on their trucks and they can pay his wage You know, I'm like, you know, so this dude like he just he just rolls up. It's like hey, what do you know, man? He'll like He'll handle all the all the brakes on my truck Like this is the first time I've ever got the brakes done on my truck before I had to get rotors, too You know because usually I do it Yeah, usually I do it and I wait till they're like so

Kevin (34:08.424)
Yeah

Kevin (34:14.413)
Ha ha.

Mike (34:15.84)
He was, I said something about breaks and he's like, okay, cool. And the next day he's like, Hey, you're not going anywhere for a little bit. I said, no, goes, okay. And I look out there and he's doing the break. I'm like, this is great. It's awesome. Like he takes care of so much stuff that, usually just gets put off until it's so bad. It costs more to fix, you know, or where somebody sitting on the side of the road. that, that was really, that was really cool. And.

Kevin (34:35.595)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike (34:43.967)
Like he can weld, like we haven't got him in there yet, but like he stuck some stuff. He built himself some tools to like help with the job he was doing on. bought my old high school truck back and he's been like fiddling with it. And he like bought some bought some tools or not. He built some tools to like change the tires for me without going to an actual tire shop. I think that was possible. Yeah. He's like, I just built this for that. You know, so I'm like, well, we'll get you in there and get you welding stuff too. just so you can do it all. But.

Kevin (35:04.685)
Wow.

Kevin (35:11.511)
Yeah.

Mike (35:14.047)
That's really helped and he's taught us a lot of stuff too and we're going to teach him stuff. So I don't, I just, I want to have as much talent as we can and as much diversity in our talents as we can. And we've got that and we're, think we're lucky to have it. There's not much we can't figure out with the group of people that are here and around us and that we work with and stuff. I think that's pretty, I think that's pretty invaluable.

Kevin (35:18.669)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (35:41.678)
Cool. give me an example. So you said you do everything there. Give me like an example of what everything entails because I you know, I know West Texas there's a lot of oil stuff there. Do you get into a lot of that stuff or is it like auxiliary from that? Do you have like a specialty cut? You mentioned beds and stuff like that for trucks. So give us a you know, a three-minute idea of what you guys do in your shop.

Mike (35:50.366)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (36:00.774)
Yeah

Mike (36:06.034)
Okay. So I can tell you like just for today, it's like we've got, we've got, we've got some ornamental panels that we just finished up that need to go to powder coat in the shop. We've got a bed, a bed that a manufactured bed that we are installing on a truck today. We've got a 24 foot, like a big truck bed that we extended and built a new headache crack on.

that we are getting ready to mount on the truck. Supposed to be today. It doesn't look like that's gonna happen. But, and then I've got a, we did, we just processed some parts, cut some quarter inch plate and broke them into pans for another buddy of mine who's a welder for him to finish out. And that's oil field stuff. And then I have a pellet grill that I just finished for myself that's getting burned off outside the shop. So like, it's like,

There's no telling what we're doing any any at any point in time and like as far as oilfield we do We don't go out in the field and like weld pipe, you know, that's that it is This area is overrun with those guys. I'm not You know, I'm not that guy. I'm happy for them that they go do that I don't quite understand the attitude that comes with it of like I'm God's gift to the world because I can stick these two pipes together like

Kevin (37:08.045)
Sure.

Mike (37:34.385)
What we do is it that cool, know, a lot of people can do it, but sure, man, do you. But we don't do that. like we'll build some platforms and stuff. We'll do platforms. then I've got a guy who's a customer. turned into a good buddy. He's got some stuff going on where we're we're converting tanks. We're converting frac tanks into water filtration systems.

like cutting the tops off and we're dropping a track system in there where with stainless fins where we're building some compartments in there and stuff. We did a ton of those this summer. Right the day after everything flooded. This whole side side of town flooded our shop had a foot of water in it and my house flooded too. So we're dealing with all that and the day after he called he was like look I just I just got a phone call.

Kevin (38:27.361)
day.

Mike (38:29.994)
And it was, don't remember how many of these tanks it was. It usually takes us about two weeks to do one of those tanks. I think it was like 14 or something. He's like, do I say yes or do I say no? And I was like sitting there looking at all this stuff we were going to have to replace, know, every machine he had was underwater. And I said, yeah, they do it. Like, we'll figure it out. And so we did that many of them between July and I think October, we kind of got done with them.

Kevin (38:57.634)
Yeah.

Mike (38:58.675)
did a ton of them, man. We 13 guys. That's just unreal. this is a thing. This is 1.2 acres. You know, it's not like we have a huge, huge yard or anything. And there were just trucks and trailers and shit everywhere. I mean, it was, it was, it people were like stopping, you know, that were driving by there, like slowing down and looking in there and like neighbors like asking if we're okay. I'm like, we're great. Hope you like noise.

Kevin (39:13.206)
Yeah

Kevin (39:20.951)
Yeah

Kevin (39:27.373)
Yeah

Mike (39:28.041)
But yeah, I mean, it really is a little bit of a little bit of that. We're building them whenever I first started. It was like my firewood racks and fire pits, you know, and then kind of got it got into smokers and then with the hunting industry got into like a quad pod stand and just like the platform with the seat with the four legs and a rail.

Got into those, got into building stands for box blinds, got into building beer feeders, stuff like that. That's what we were really heavy on for the first five or six years. And then when we came out here, we got into more doing stuff for contractors. Like right now, I went and took elevation yesterday for a gate.

It's like a sliding gate for a new build on a house and a little bit of ornamental to go with it. And then a little bit of wood fence, because again, we just do whatever. So my buddy does wood fence. My buddy Lee can do wood fence. I'm like, hey, I'm bidding this. me what to bid. And he did. I'm like, OK, that part's yours. I'll let you know if we get it. We got it. But yeah, mean, truly just anything. When COVID hit, a lot of that

Kevin (40:36.087)
Yeah

Mike (40:54.068)
kind of like end user stuff, you know, like barbecue pit, backyard stuff, hunting stuff, a lot of that stuff. it slowed down a lot, cause I think, you know, the average average Joe was holding onto his money. but luckily we had started doing stuff for contractors. And as far as I could tell was like, like the, you know, the people who don't spend.

Kevin (41:08.855)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (41:21.448)
The people were more conservative with their money. They kind of slowed down on the spending when COVID hit. And the people that had more money, they were just bored at home. So they just came up with projects. So we started doing all kinds of stuff for them, fencing, gates, whatever, just stuff on big ranches. That kind of took off. really, that's better money.

you know, to do that stuff than it is to, you know, build 15 fire pits. But with that said, sometimes I really miss the old 15 fire pit days, you know, like, there's not a lot that we do anymore where I can move it around and flip it over myself, you know, to work on. So, you know, that's kind of a pain. but yeah, it's just, just a little bit. I don't like doing the same thing over and over again.

Kevin (41:58.806)
Yep. Yep.

Mike (42:16.603)
That's not me. I don't want to have a jig and just drop stuff in a jig for, you know, three months straight. So we keep it. We keep them guessing over here. And I think the guys that work here like that, too, you know, they have some variety and stuff. And sometimes they do it like I'd never want to do that again. It's like, well, you might not have to or you might. We'll see. But but yeah. Right, right. But now we try to take care of them as good as we can because they.

Kevin (42:26.657)
Yeah.

Kevin (42:36.597)
Yeah. Can't promise you anything,

Mike (42:46.033)
long as they're taking care of us, we take care of them.

Kevin (42:49.229)
Good man. What do you think is, so since you've been doing this since 2012, what do you think's been the hardest thing for you to learn in business?

Mike (42:59.953)
saying no. Like, and I'm sure you probably would like, like, how did how did JMW start? Like, did you? Did you start it from scratch? Like, I've never heard your little story. You start from scratch.

Kevin (43:01.162)
Okay.

Kevin (43:13.029)
yeah.

I started from scratch. started from, like, I was working at, so I went to school to be a mechanic and to work on heavy equipment stuff. And I was working for, like, I was never unemployed. Like, would, like, you know, if one person got slow, because, like, I was the mechanic and welder and fabricator for all of them. And that's like, you know, in a smaller, small to medium sized business, like, you know, I'm not super necessary. So.

Mike (43:25.478)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (43:31.078)
Thank

Kevin (43:44.846)
You know, this is about the time that the housing crisis was out after I was done college and everything. And I was always doing stuff on the side. you know, it was just long, long story short, I just got to the point where I was like doing a lot more stuff on the side and my boss came to me and he was like, Hey, you like you're the highest paid person here and you're probably the least important as far as.

Mike (43:49.638)
Yeah

Kevin (44:13.823)
like the operation goes to like make money. Yeah. Well, I mean, he didn't say it in like that, but like, like, like, dude, I knew I knew my place. Like I knew that was true. So and I was OK with it. He's like, how can I help you go on your own? And that was right at the time I took out a loan to build my shop on my property. I was like, don't fire me. Don't lay me off. Like, give me like a month to fully get this money in my bank account.

Mike (44:16.602)
Thanks.

Yeah.

Mike (44:25.456)
Yeah.

Kevin (44:42.815)
And then I'll transition out and I'm like, if you can rent me a bay, because he had a couple of properties, I if you can rent me one of your bays in one of your shops, like for six months until I get my shop built, I can do my own thing. So that's how I started. then after that was, I mean, even before that, when I was still doing stuff, I worked out of a Pet Boys carport that I bought on Black Friday for 150 bucks.

Like I have a picture, I was showing some guys like two days ago. I have a picture of when I had a come along in a tree to pull the old Bobcat welder up in high enough that I can pull, can back my truck under it. So yeah, that's how I started. So yeah, I built the thing from an old Bobcat welder, a job box in the back of my truck.

Mike (45:24.901)
Mm-hmm. Back under it. Yeah.

Mike (45:31.557)
Yeah, that's cool.

Kevin (45:40.173)
to what it is today and it's been a hell of a ride.

Mike (45:43.813)
the

Kevin (45:51.276)
Yeah, right. You look around at everything you got and you're like, okay, I can see where I like, I understand why I don't have money because it's all right here.

Mike (45:59.973)
Yeah, I don't have money. got a bunch of crap. That's why I like I don't I just like I kind of engaged it with my wife. You know, we talk about money and talk about all this stuff and you know, cash flow sucks at times and we're talking about it. I'm like, look, I know that we're I know that we're growing. She's like, am I? Because, you know, used to a thousand dollars could solve a lot of problems for us. And now there's not a single fucking problem it'll solve.

Kevin (46:27.936)
You

Mike (46:29.606)
Like we need more than that. I just felt like the net the net value is going up. It's got to be that's what that means Yeah

Kevin (46:36.589)
Yeah

Kevin (46:41.463)
So saying no has been the hardest thing for you to do in business,

Mike (46:45.605)
Yeah, man. like, I'm like, I'm a yes, man. And like, and I'm the guy that like, if you come up with something, you come up with a project, you're like, you know, next week, I'm like, yeah, we can, you'll walk away. I'll be like, there's no way that we're gonna do that. You know, so saying no to stuff like, you know, there's a point, I think, when you're starting out, when you just have to have money coming in, even if it's going to go right back out, most of it's going to go right back out.

Like you have to do something to justify, you know, having your business, but, you got it. There's, there's like a sweet spot where you got to start looking at like, man, it is not worth it at all to tell this dude. Yes. To fix it. He's jacked up fenders on a 16 foot angle iron top trailer for, you know, a hundred bucks plus materials. Like it's not, you know, if you need a hundred bucks, then yeah, I do it. But.

Kevin (47:43.884)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (47:44.709)
It comes to a point where it's not worth that like you can't justify it Once you really think about it, you know and I used to think shop across town that I'm buddies with and their sign Their sign, you know, it has their business name all this and that bottom. It says no repairs, please So like why would you put that on there? You know, and that was five six years ago that I saw it now I'm like, yeah, I'm doing that on my side

Kevin (48:13.479)
Yeah

Mike (48:15.96)
We're kind of on the hoopgy side of town. So I'll have a guy come in and say, if they come in with a ragged out trailer, like when they're walking up, just know I'll ask the guys, any of y'all want to do this after hours? Because we're going to do it. And we just tell them no, man. people don't understand it. And that's OK.

If you want to help somebody out, that's great. But if you want to grow and want to make profit and stuff, it's sad to say that probably not the guy you want to work for. You know, the guy that low balls you and you know, can you do it for 65? Get out of here. But. Yeah, yeah, for real, that's that's the biggest thing. But you know, I yeah, say no to stuff and.

Kevin (48:50.86)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (48:57.997)
This conversation has already cost me $60.

Mike (49:10.583)
We haven't really had a problem with firing customers. We've done it to one. But really, our customers are awesome. They're good people that understand. They get it. And at times, I don't communicate how I should. That's one of the things I'm trying to work on is trying to make the bad news phone call versus receiving the phone call and giving bad news. Your phone goes off. You see it. Your heart drops.

You know, I'm trying to get away from those. So I'm trying to I'm trying to just update like, Hey, you've got bad news, you know, but honestly, they'd rather hear that, you know, but our customers are great. Like we don't, if somebody comes in and they want us to do something, we'll do it. If they're difficult or if they're, you know, feel a little slimy or if they're trying to do something shady or, know, like we'll, we'll do it. And then we just.

Kevin (49:41.389)
you

Kevin (49:48.043)
Yeah.

Mike (50:08.193)
Next time you call, we're probably gonna be too busy to take it in. I just want to be surrounded by quality human beings, whether it's working with me or working for them. that's just kind of what we go on. And if you're that stuff, we've only had that once, cutting us out of a deal we took to the end.

Kevin (50:34.978)
Hmm.

Mike (50:35.427)
But it's like, it's still like nothing personal. It's just, I'm not going to be part of it, you know? So.

Kevin (50:39.501)
Yeah. So where do find most of your customers? What kind of advertising do you do?

Mike (50:48.003)
So in the beginning, in the beginning, a lot of our stuff came from that hunting forum that I was telling you about. We would post, you know, we'd do a job post it. Somebody would have an idea. And then I was like, okay, well, let's build a fire pit, post it, sell it to And I would run ads on there. I would run ads on Craigslist. This is like 2012 to 2015, 16 or so.

Kevin (50:54.093)
Hmm.

Mike (51:18.433)
I've run ads on Craigslist and got a lot of stuff from there, but you got to, you got to feed through the Craigslist BS, which is now the Facebook Marketplace BS. but, and then, you know, recently we don't really advertise. We've got to, we've got a group of, you know, like contractors and stuff that keep us busy with things. I try to post on

Kevin (51:25.665)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike (51:46.698)
You know, our social media, which I'm horrible at doing. do it like once every three months. And then I'll get on a spurt where I'll do it. Like, you know, you know, you could plan your posts to hit at different times. I'll, I'll sit down and do like four of them and plan them for the next, you know, eight days. And then I'll never touch them again for three months. But we're lucky. Yeah, dude. It's just, well, and that's another thing too. It's like.

Kevin (52:04.397)
This adds adds everybody. It's everybody

Mike (52:13.996)
That's another thing we've probably one of the other things that we need to talk about is like, is getting somebody to, well, I think if we got an office manager, like, dude, we're not a booming metropolis over here. Like she's not going to have 40 hours worth of paperwork to do. So hopefully we can find somebody who's got pretty decent at, at social media and like. Tick tock or reels or what, or just get her like, just take the footage and we can do it later. But you know, we've done some reels.

And they're not that hard to do, but like I don't. I just don't make the time to do it. You it's like you worked until you know, if I'm lucky, I'm out of here by six. Well, hit it at 730. I gotta pick up one kid from gymnastics and then we gotta eat and get bats and you know you blink and it's 10 o'clock at night and. You know, I'm going to bed because you know 5 o'clock comes early, you know, so it's tough to balance that out. But so really like right?

Kevin (53:03.851)
Yeah. Yep.

Mike (53:12.61)
right this second, mean, I guess it's just word of mouth and you know, if we build something cool, I'll share it on, you know, like the groups, like, oh, this kills me, dude. And I'm a big, I'm a big shit talker on Facebook, you know, like I've been punched in the mouth before. I'm not afraid to get punched in the mouth again, you know, but like the guys that try to advertise their stuff on welding business pages, like, do they not understand who's on there?

Kevin (53:42.445)
Talk about tone deaf to your audience. my gosh.

Mike (53:42.785)
They'll be like, they'll be like, yeah, Smith fencing and rubbing. do whatever you call us. then it's like, dude, everybody in here can do that. Why are you? But, you know, I'll post something cool on there, you know, just so like people can get ideas. Cause like, dude, I mean, as fabricators, we're all just copying each other and tweaking stuff, you know? But sometimes that'll, that'll end up doing stuff, you know, like we do.

Kevin (53:52.449)
Yeah, exactly.

Mike (54:13.045)
We built some beds, like some aluminum beds for, for can ams and polaris is and stuff. we did deck one of those out all, you know, I'll post it on the, on a group for that, and, get some interest, but I don't know. It's really just more to kind of show people what we're up to. we, we, when I had all the other guys, I was, I was talking about when we added onto the shop to try to get back into.

Kevin (54:30.263)
Yeah.

Mike (54:42.721)
pushing some of that end user stuff like the smokers and smokers, barbecue pits and grills and stuff like that to try to help cash flow, you know, cause it's, you know, I could, we can do a job for, and we do a $8,000 fence job right now for a contractor. We'll send them the invoice today. And you know, we're lucky. We'll see the check in a week. You know, sometimes it's a month versus your end user stuff. You know, if I sell you, if we build two,

$3,000 barbecue pit this week, you come pick them up on Friday, you're leaving, you're not leaving till they're paid for. So we've talked about doing some of that to try to help the cashflow situations that we all get into. And we might do that, but now with a smaller crew, it's like, the past couple of days, I've been like, how are we gonna get all this done? I gotta send this guy here, this guy here, this guy here.

We've got too much going on, you know, my wife, which like my wife was like brilliant. Like she is the biggest go getter, most ride or die person you'll ever meet. Like you'll ever meet. And, uh, like she would, she would sell our house and move us into a single line. If I was like, Hey, we have to get this powder coat deal going on. She'd be like, okay, let's sell the house. Like she, she will do whatever. But, but she, um,

yeah, I forgot what I was talking about.

Kevin (56:13.677)
Ride or die.

Mike (56:17.35)
Yeah, but there was something she was telling me about or asking about. kind of don't remember. It's been a long week. I really don't remember. I completely lost track. I was so blinded by her intelligence. But.

Kevin (56:28.781)
All good,

I'll leave that part in for her. about that?

Mike (56:38.417)
Yeah, no, she I always thought that if if she quit working or something happened with her job if she came over here and like Did this thing full-time like we would we would blow up like we'd be huge because she everything she touches everything she touches turns to gold so but but yeah, no, she's been and I think honestly so you're talking about businesses and stuff like You don't see very many successful ones that doesn't have like a supporting wife at home, you know, like like if

Kevin (56:50.508)
Yeah.

Kevin (57:06.573)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (57:08.562)
If they're not on board, I'm not going to say it won't work, but it's going to be two or three times harder, you know, because it's not just like, yeah, I'm going to be laid every down there. Sometimes it's like, we'll be on the way somewhere and I got to turn around and go get my truck and leave. And you got to, you got to do this without me. You know, it's, it's tough. It's really tough. And at times you wonder if it's worth it, but you know,

Kevin (57:15.149)
Hard. Yeah.

Mike (57:37.694)
I've never had to in 13 years, my oldest kid's nine. I've never had to ask permission to go to her school to visit and have a pizza party with them. And to me, that's plenty. That's worth it all. But yeah, that's important. But no, I completely forgot what I was talking about. It's amazing.

Kevin (57:48.823)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (57:52.439)
Heck yeah. Yup.

Kevin (58:02.093)
All good, with being in this for so long, tell me about a financial lesson you've had to learn the hard way.

Mike (58:05.077)
Yeah.

Mike (58:14.975)
Oh, dude. Well, I could I could yeah, I could teach you I could teach you about the I had to become an expert on CDL CDL requirements for trucks and trailers. And that was like a $2,500 lesson when I did not have $2,500. When I was

Kevin (58:18.957)
Dig up dirt.

Kevin (58:32.843)
yeah.

Kevin (58:38.721)
Yeah.

Mike (58:43.112)
When I was just hauling tubing, I got, got pulled over by a, it wasn't even a state trooper. was a city guy, but he was like the commercial vehicle enforcement. And I had a three quarter ton Dodge pickup and I had a 32 foot Goose neck, but it was a dual tandem, you know, rated for 20,000 with farm tags on it. And I knew zero, did I need zero about rules, regulations, what to say, what not to say.

Kevin (59:03.031)
Yeah.

Mike (59:12.478)
And, uh, he comes up and he's like, well, what are what are you doing with all this? I'm headed down here to sell it to a guy. He's like, well, you should have told me that. Like, what do you mean? And do like an hour later, we're doing, we're doing the safety check. You know, he's like, he's like, Oh, I got his list. And he's like, where's your fire extinguisher? I'm like, dude, you know, I don't have a fire extinguisher. You know, he's going through all of it. And I think he popped me with like four of the 27.

Kevin (59:12.546)
Yeah

Mike (59:42.417)
Infractions I had and he was like well good news only get me for this He's like but bad news you're out of service So you got to get a record to haul you back? But I hire a big rig record because that truck dude it was he didn't run it across the scales, but it probably had about Six thousand feet of two by two by one eight square tubing on it. So that's what 18,000 pounds right there roughly like yeah, we were overloaded and He made me

Kevin (01:00:06.081)
Yeah.

Mike (01:00:12.284)
get hauled back up. So it was expensive. And after that, I became an expert. I learned everything there was to learn about it. I went and got a trailer and I figured out which trailer to get. That was the lightest one so I could carry the most. Yeah, that that was a pretty good one that just pops out. Just right off the bat. And then, man, I would say like,

I just in the past couple years, I've kind of learned to like, just jump. when you, when you need something like just get it, find a way to get it. so for us, you know, with, with beds and really a lot of different stuff we do, we were, were, didn't have a press break and I had, there's two different other shops in town.

who had them as cool dudes, dude, they would help me out. But they're also shops, so they have their own stuff going on. You know, so like, I remember it's a it's a friend of ours, we built a bed for them. And they needed that bed. And, you know, we had it was like a one month process before we had the boxes and stuff. For the time we took it in and measured to the time we had the boxes built and on that bed to finish the rest of it.

It was like a month and it was cause you know, across town here is not two minutes. It's 30 minutes, you know, so I'm, I'm, I'm designing and drawing the parts. I'm cutting them out, cleaning them off, marking them. And then I'm taking them across town to these guys. And I'm just, you know, either soap stoning where I need the breaks for giving them a little half ass drawing. Cause I don't know 3d CAD and.

Kevin (01:01:46.604)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:02:08.189)
It's sitting in their shop for a week or so before they can get to it, then they get to it. So either, they break it wrong or I designed it wrong, you know, or the table cuts it a little wrong. But you know, it's two or three weeks before you get it back over here and realize that. And then you start the process over. And so I, it was costing us so much money. was, it was a.

Kevin (01:02:21.911)
Yeah.

Mike (01:02:36.421)
It was just extra cost. was costing us so much extra revenue and time. And finally, my wife was like, just, just go find, find a way to get a break. Just go get a break. And so we did, we went and got a break and, and it's sped up like everything. And I would, I would venture to say that just from, just from the, most months, just from the extra stuff we get for either other shops or other fab guys.

Kevin (01:02:40.577)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:03:05.775)
of breaking, it pretty much pays for itself just in math, not even counting the savings we have from not going across town, not paying $6 per break and you know, all that. So, but man, I was so scared of getting into that debt for that for that break, you know, and it's, it's, it's great, like, we should have done it two years before that. So like, if you can justify that, you know, I'm not saying like,

Kevin (01:03:12.385)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:03:29.994)
the

Mike (01:03:35.26)
Don't go buy a 2026 F450 because you want a cool truck. Don't go get into debt for that. Like, you know, I will go get, go get something that runs and is reliable. But if it's something that's going to directly make you money, we can go get it. Find a way to get it. You know, if you've got that far, you've got to have the will. You've got the will to make it work, you know, effort wise. So just, just do it. Like just jump in, do it.

Kevin (01:03:50.476)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:04:02.091)
Yeah. I like to say if it pays for itself within a year or two, depending on what size chunk it is, absolutely go buy it. Go buy it.

Mike (01:04:13.306)
Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's the deal. That's the deal for us, man. It's like, you know, I will say it kind of sucks buying your second plasma table. It's not near as cool as buying the first one. You know, you buy the first one. It's like, dude, everything's going to change. And then when it dies, it's time for the second. It's like, shit. It's like, I just got to do this. So I go back to where I was before. But we are.

Kevin (01:04:25.472)
Yeah

Kevin (01:04:35.488)
Yeah

Kevin (01:04:39.947)
Yeah. Was that from the flood that you had in your shop or is that just

Mike (01:04:44.284)
No, dude. I will say right now, you know, everybody says hypertherm is, the, is the one to go like the go-to brand for plasma. You'd our hypertherm was sitting, it was turned on sitting in 10 inches of water. And at some point it turned itself off, right? Cause we still had power in the shop when I came in here, it was like five in the morning when I came in.

It was sitting in 10 inches of water. It was turned on, but it wasn't powered up. I picked it up in my panic and just pure freak out. was having, I pick it up and I like set it on the cross member of our, we have a star lab table. I set it on the cross member, but it won't go cause everything's hooked up. So I laid it on its side and water starts coming out of the top of it. I was like, it's like, just, it's completely toast now. Then we open that thing up, sprayed it out.

put contact cleaner on it for three days, plug it all back in and it's dude, runs just like it did ever before. Like, yeah, dude, that's, that's like, that is a Testament and our millers, we have one that's kind of acting up, but I'm not, I'm not convinced that that doesn't have something to do with the, the, like rag, like the, I won't say rag tag, but like the group of guys we had, we just hired, hired, hired all summer and gave them machines.

Kevin (01:05:45.995)
What?

Mike (01:06:10.137)
That thing probably wasn't treated all that great, you know? But the Millers, they were all good. Like we had, what did we have that went down? Our press brake was acting up because the pedal was underwater. So some of the electronics in that had to be redone. The table did act up for a little bit, but we got those kinks figured out. A couple machines went down. But yeah, I mean.

We bought some other MIG machines, know, welders have got so expensive. I rolled the dice on some of those prime welds. Do you have any of those? So, you you can get a 285 amp MIG for $999 ship with a three year warranty. And I bought one of those things. Dude, we bought it.

Kevin (01:06:53.63)
Okay. No.

Mike (01:07:09.508)
We bought it and put, we went through, we bought it and immediately stuck it in one of these tanks in the summer. So it's like 125 degrees in those tanks and all, all they do is weld three eights plates all day long. And that thing ran for like, I think we ran like a, we ran like five spools of wire through it in like a month and it did break, but we shipped it off and they just sent it right back and they fixed it, turned it right up and then we use it every day now.

Kevin (01:07:38.476)
Just buy a second one, just swap them out.

Mike (01:07:39.864)
In for nine.

Dude, have, that's exactly what we're doing. We have two of those now, but we've got like three or four 252 millers. Then we have two of those prime welds. And I said, I was going to get a third one and just put it up in the law. now we keep the boxes. Like when they come in, I'm like, Hey, keep the boxes. Cause yeah, as soon as one breaks, we just send it off and then grab another one. like, you know,

Kevin (01:07:46.764)
the

Mike (01:08:13.418)
I can buy four of those for the price of one Miller right now. like, you know, I know Millers are good and I like them and I know Lincoln's are fine too, but man, that's just the price has got so high. I'm I'm failing to see the quality difference in the fence panel that we're well, you know, like it, it, was just fine. So yeah, we even bought one of their chinchilla little plasmas. It's like 280 bucks. cause we have a,

Kevin (01:08:25.622)
Hard to beat.

Kevin (01:08:30.956)
Sure. Yeah.

Mike (01:08:43.353)
We have another hypertherm hand plasma, 85 amp, but we needed another one out there. And I got a little chinchy one from prime weld and it, it still works, but it definitely a little more, a little more Amazon, Amazon quality than the, than the welder. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But like the, the make has like the full trigger function. Uh, you know, the, the four touch trigger, it's got.

Kevin (01:08:59.82)
Smells like China a little bit more.

Kevin (01:09:12.15)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:09:16.342)
That's awesome. speaking of tools, it sounds like your press break was a pretty big step to help your business out. What would you say is a tool that you should probably get rid of?

Mike (01:09:23.982)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:09:30.751)
Mike (01:09:34.714)
I've got, we're kind of good at good written stuff we don't use though. Like I've got some, some well, I've got, I've got a, uh, like a stick, I got some stick welders we don't use. Like what is it? The Miller, the CST 280, you know, it's like a little, little bitty stick welder about that. And we don't use that. It just sits around. We should probably get rid of that, but I wouldn't say there's any like big ones.

Kevin (01:10:00.225)
Yeah.

Mike (01:10:04.441)
You know, we've got a band we got a we've got a Grizzly bandsaw. That's like it's like middle sized I thought we killed it the other day and I was a little bit excited because I was gonna get an Ellis but My god brought it back to life. So was like, cool. We saved money, but So yeah, I can't yeah, yeah

Kevin (01:10:25.484)
Thanks, ButtDamn.

Mike (01:10:31.961)
So we got that and then we do the dry cut, you know, the evolution dry cut saws. They are, and I really like, I'm of the weird opinion that I like the 10 inch miter saw better than the 14. Like, I don't know, do you have one of the new, they came out a couple of years ago, the 14 inch miter saws, but, so I got one of those. Yeah, I got one of those right when it came out. And of course a high school kid that worked for me broke it, but,

Kevin (01:10:36.138)
Yeah, those things are amazing.

Kevin (01:10:45.194)
Okay.

Kevin (01:10:51.157)
yeah, yeah, love that thing.

Mike (01:11:01.561)
So, you know how you like it's got three different settings where you can slide it out Yeah, you slide it out and it pins in three different positions See so like when we're doing art because a lot of the tubing stuff we do suppose two inches smaller I like the tenet saw because it's like a smooth sliding saw So you can start that cut right on the corner of the tubing

Kevin (01:11:07.852)
slide in or out. Yeah.

Mike (01:11:27.263)
every time and then like take it down like caddy corner around so it's like a perfect cut as far as trying to save the

Kevin (01:11:34.604)
So like it doesn't like are you saying that 10 inch one doesn't pin? But it slides, but it does slide. Oh wow.

Mike (01:11:39.818)
No, it doesn't pin. just slides. Yeah, dude, it's it travels like eight inches or so. So like you can slide it all the way back and get it started. You can make that blade hit right, you know, right on that corner and then go from this corner up here to this corner down here. And so it it's not, you know, because they say putting those blades on the flat is what burns them up. So I like the tenant. So like our setup now is actually

Kevin (01:11:50.89)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (01:12:00.459)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike (01:12:07.351)
There's two saws that we got, you know, conveyors on either side. But then there's two saws. There's a evolution foot, peanuts, just the regular top saw, you know, that we just use to cut nineties. And then right next to it, if you pass through it, you get to our 10 inch miter saw. So we just put them both on the same thing. And that way, if we're doing, if we're doing miter cuts, we can use that if we need to do straight cuts or pipe or something, just use the 14. But, but man, I

Kevin (01:12:23.241)
Mmm, gotcha.

Kevin (01:12:33.164)
Gotcha, gotcha, I fall now. That's cool.

Mike (01:12:36.535)
Yeah, I don't think I can't think of any tool that we like to get rid of. Really? I don't. We need to add shop space is what we really need, which I think that's everybody's problem. Probably. Yeah, we need shops. My wife was like, well, we get rid of those guys and still need the shop space. was like, absolutely. We need the shop space. Yeah, we always needed it for a while.

Kevin (01:12:42.614)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (01:12:47.892)
Yes.

Kevin (01:13:00.512)
Yes, yes.

Mike (01:13:06.392)
Our main shop is it's only 30 by 60. It's 30 by 60. And then like down the 60 foot side, it's built out with wood, like seven and a half foot wide. So if you call that eight, it's really like 22 by 60 is what we're working out of. Well, there's a five by 10 plasma in a 12 foot, 200 ton press break in there and all our welding machines. So like our workable space is

Kevin (01:13:22.848)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:13:30.39)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:13:35.222)
real small.

Mike (01:13:35.703)
I don't know, 7, 800 square foot. It's like 12 foot wide by maybe 40 foot long. So that's not even that. We're out of space. We don't have any space. So I'm excited to do this other thing. We've been gathering materials for like six months to do it. I ran into a dude on a

Kevin (01:13:42.86)
Hmm.

Kevin (01:13:49.568)
Yeah.

Mike (01:14:03.297)
Facebook that was selling three Bay doors, like 12 by 14 Bay doors that he pulled out. He pulled them out and the guy replaced them with insulated ones. And I think we got them all for like, we got all three of them for 1200 bucks. And it's got everything, you know, so, but yeah, that's, that's really what we need to get going on next is the expanding a little bit. We could use another forklift. We kind of fight over that.

Kevin (01:14:16.64)
Heck yeah.

Kevin (01:14:28.587)
Nice.

Mike (01:14:33.515)
But as far as getting rid of stuff, man, I don't know. I can't think of anything. What do you need to get rid of?

Kevin (01:14:39.436)
Most guys hate getting rid of the thing. I don't think I need to get rid of anything because I had this heart to heart with myself about two years ago and I got rid of everything that I needed to get rid of. I'd say probably the thing that we don't use the most is our cold saw. I've got it, I just can't bear.

Mike (01:14:53.527)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:15:05.652)
Like a legit cold saw. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (01:15:07.188)
Legit like Scotchman cold. So yeah, three phase. No, I'm sorry. It's not even three phase. It's a three phase. I don't know. We haven't used it so long. I forget Yeah, I don't think this one is I think this is a single phase one. I'm pretty sure it's a no Bay. Whoa, which Scotchman like bought out and I've got it just wrapped up in shrink wrap because I just I just can't bear to get to get rid of it right now

Mike (01:15:15.995)
I think they usually are. They're usually pretty rowdy.

Kevin (01:15:36.768)
I, you know, cause like when you need a cold saw, you need a cold saw, you know, I'm going to have a tubing job, a stainless tubing job that comes around and I know I'm just going to need it. So I just, you know what, put it, put it on, on a pallet, put it on, on the, on the pallet rack and just one day.

Mike (01:15:36.938)
Yeah.

Mike (01:15:41.396)
Yeah.

Mike (01:15:53.696)
Wrap it in plastic for six years and then we'll need it.

Kevin (01:15:57.549)
Yep, exactly. Exactly. I think I think I'm into it like 300 bucks. Like you don't owe me anything. Like, yeah, no, like, what am I gonna do sell for 1500 and then need to buy it again for 2500 when I need it like

Mike (01:16:02.492)
yeah, you can't get rid of that. You can't get rid of that.

Yeah. We'll see. Yeah, that's a deal. It goes back to this 1500 solve any problem you have right now. No, it doesn't. It doesn't see my, my mechanic just drove by with a four wheeler that I told him hadn't ran in three years driving it. So yes, that yes, that works now. Yeah.

Kevin (01:16:16.096)
Yeah, exactly.

Well, speak...

Kevin (01:16:29.27)
That's awesome.

Mike (01:16:38.282)
I see, you know, going back to like me not knowing anything about the industry or anything. I didn't even know. I didn't know why you would need cold salts. Like I didn't even know what, what they like, what purpose they really did. I just thought I was like, why would anybody want that stupid slow saw? And then I talked to people who do like stainless and stuff. I'm like, that makes sense. I know nothing about stainless. So, you know, yeah, that's, that's pretty wild.

Kevin (01:16:48.108)
Mmm.

Kevin (01:17:01.963)
Yeah.

Yeah. So what do you think that most welding business owners are doing wrong these days?

Mike (01:17:14.965)
I just think, and it's not even like, don't, I don't think it's, I don't think it's just welding owner, you know, welding business owners. think a lot of guys like they're trying to do it all too fast. Like, you know, we all want to get big and we all want to do, you know, we all want to do all these crazy cool things. But like, I think a lot of people put the cart before the horse.

And, you know, honestly, this summer running a bunch of guys kind of taught me that to, you know, you get you get a job and you go out and you hire all these people and stuff and you just think it's all going to fall together. It's not. You have to have you have to have that base in place. You have to have these like the standard operating procedures. You have to have like a hierarchy in place of who's

Who's in charge, who's going to explain this and that, you know, we, we, kind of did it in the summer when we, we hired all these guys and there's so much stuff going on all this and that. like, when you really back up and look at it, like the output, you know, if we doubled our workforce, we didn't double our output. You know, we, we're just all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. You know, everybody's busy. Everybody's doing stuff, but like, if we were to step back.

and attacked it a little more tactic, you know, a little more, a little smarter, I would say. We could have done the same amount of work with with fewer, fewer guys and fewer overhead. So like, you know, you see guys that like they'll get a couple of jobs and and then they just pop off and go buy a welding rig, you know, and it's not a

Kevin (01:18:55.339)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:19:05.556)
2005 gas Chevy pickup with what you know, they go buy they go get this big note, you know, like there's a time and place when you need a write off and you need a note or whatever. It's not your first year in business. I can almost guarantee you that, you know, it's like people are so enamored by the, the, the fame, you know, of like running your own business and this and that, and you know,

Kevin (01:19:19.914)
Yeah.

Mike (01:19:32.693)
It's all about the image, know, it's like keeping up with the Joneses, but welding business style. And dude, it's like, just get what you got to get to make some money. like, it's better to stay, it's better to stay small and kind of perfect what you're doing and like slowly bring in the resources you need to do it the right way. And like I said, we do, mean, I'm not practicing what I preach. Three months ago, I've

Realized that I was doing that same crap, you So people just get ahead of themselves. And then I would say, you know, guys just trying to be like cutthroat, you know, go back to the whole like competition, you know, that's my competition. That's what I like. No, dude, that dude does the same thing. If you should talk to him because odds are he might have had a job last week, you know, come across his desk that he couldn't do because he only has two guys.

Kevin (01:20:03.105)
Yeah.

Mike (01:20:30.652)
And if he knew you and you had two guys, you all could have done it together. I think that that's a big deal. It blows my mind when people have that narrow mindset on keep everything a secret. Don't tell anybody who we're working with, blah, blah, blah. I think that's small minded to think that way. But yeah.

Kevin (01:20:53.386)
Yeah. Yeah, man. No, I agree with you on that. I totally do. So if you were to do it all over again, what would you change?

Mike (01:21:06.684)
Man Nothing right? I mean it perfect the first time Hey, man, I don't know I think I wish I could have learned some of the lessons quicker than I did, you know, Will say that I will say that I in my opinion I think it's best to if you can do it on your own do it on your own

as far as like, you know, partners and stuff like that. It's very, and not just in like stuff that happened to me, but like talking to other people, like there's not that, you know, there's a lot of people that try to partner up early and like on paper, you know, I'm not talking about what I was just talking about with like some guy who does the same thing as you. I'm not talking about partnering up on jobs. I'm talking about partnering up on the actual business.

Kevin (01:21:33.772)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:22:01.07)
I would say do everything you can on your own before you do that. then, and when you do really look into it and don't just, don't just look at it at face value, you know, look, look into that a little more. and then I would say really, if you don't know like how much it costs for like your business to be open per hour,

Kevin (01:22:27.788)
Mmm.

Mike (01:22:28.134)
you know, per hour per day, per month, whatever you do, then you're really just like, you're just shooting blind, you know? And like it wasn't, it was like maybe two and a half, three years ago that I finally sat down and saw, did the math and figured out what it costs for us to be open, you know? It wasn't that long, like some of these things I've doing it for a while before I really caught on to

Kevin (01:22:34.593)
Yeah.

Mike (01:22:57.831)
You know, you know, I ran this deal like it was a lawn mowing business I had in seventh grade, you know, for for long, a lot longer than I should have. And yeah, so yeah, it's kind of it's kind of weird. now, I mean. That's that's I think that's what I would probably do different. And I probably would have reached out. I would have reached out to contractors and landscape companies and stuff like that.

Kevin (01:23:04.81)
Yeah, so do we all.

Kevin (01:23:16.961)
Yeah.

Mike (01:23:28.478)
sooner, if I could do it again, because those, those guys will, if you find just a couple of those guys, they won't keep you employed, you know, 365 days a year, but they will help you. They will, you know, they'll add to your, to your job list. they'll, they'll add to your job list for sure and help you out. And it's just another good resource, man. Cause like, you know, like the guys that do landscape stuff that we work with if.

Kevin (01:23:45.996)
Heck yeah.

Mike (01:23:57.998)
If we get a job, you we may get a job where somebody wants us to do a complete project. Well, we could do it now because we could sub them, you know, and just those connections are just if you don't have those connections, you really you really had a disadvantage, you know, versus versus somebody who's got a guy for everything. I feel like we have a guy for most.

Kevin (01:24:05.58)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:24:23.376)
most anything, you know, if you call me for something welding related and I can't do it or we don't know, you know, I could send you to somebody, you know, who could do it and you can do it good, you know, cause you don't, we just, we just try to keep a tight circle and, and, know, every we're all in the same mindset. So I think creating that network is a pretty big deal, which if you're, know, if you're a, if you're a hardworking,

decent human being like it'll happen. You just need to get out there and knock on some doors and maybe take some donuts to some places or do whatever you gotta do to try to get some business. But yeah.

Kevin (01:25:05.248)
Yeah, man. Absolutely. What kind of... So you mentioned spreadsheets earlier. What kind of... What do you use for invoicing and quoting and time tracking and stuff like that right now?

Mike (01:25:21.639)
I just do it all on napkins

We use QuickBooks online for so for invoicing and payroll and all that stuff. It's QuickBooks online. I to me some people complain about it. I haven't had I had one problem with QuickBooks online holding a pretty big wire transfer once but turns out my customer put in the wrong number. So it wasn't it wasn't even them.

Kevin (01:25:32.886)
Okay.

Kevin (01:25:55.638)
Yeah.

Mike (01:25:56.751)
but that's who, this is just who I started with. And it kind of grew from there to where like we take our credit card payments through there, all the payroll's done. And I know, don't use this stuff, but I know that you can get set up to where your guys clock in and out and QuickBooks automatically picks it up and figures and runs payroll and stuff. I don't do that because a lot of times,

Kevin (01:26:02.346)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:26:22.969)
A lot of times, you know, these guys will like forget to clock out or something like that. So I always want to check it before we submit it. So I just use like a little pinchy app on a, on an iPad, you know, a burner iPad I got for them to clock in and out on. But that's who we use for that. And then.

Kevin (01:26:26.773)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:26:38.207)
Okay.

Kevin (01:26:45.12)
Do you use any sort of project management software or anything like that?

Mike (01:26:50.02)
So I just started actually want to ask you about this I just started I Guess probably a couple months ago. We started using that company cam app And It's really cool. It really works good. We don't use a third of the features that it has but what I really liked about it was that you could Like I can go to a job site and I can walk it

And it has the uses AI where I can walk through. can just take a video and start talking. So you take a, you just start the video and you start walking through and I'll come over here be like, we need a four foot walk gate right here. And I walked to the next thing. Like, Hey, this is going to be three foot panels. We're going to step them up to four foot right here. you know, this and that, Hey, we need to pull this old existing fence out. this and that, whatever. And then after AI, after I do that,

AI turns it all into notes. So it's like a whole summary and it has pictures. It has like still shots of when you set it while your phone was on that, whatever you're on. And it summarizes what you say. So sorry, I can do that. And then two of my guys have access to it to where they can go back and look and like, just that right there eliminates a lot of the questions. We just had a big fence we did. Then we probably

just two and a half hours from here. I went through and did a walkthrough of it by myself. I did one of those videos and then I sent two of the guys up there and one of them I, I, I talked, I spoke to him, I showed him pictures and I gave him that. And just off of that, they did that whole thing. was like 400 and 70 foot. They did it. And I still haven't been back up there. Like I saw the pictures, the guy called me and said, it looks great. Like,

But I don't feel like that would have happened previously. So that's pretty cool. But with that said, that's really for bigger projects for us. We have a lot of like, I won't say piddly, but just like little stuff like modifying this truck bed or stuff like that. I don't have a great way to keep track of that.

Kevin (01:28:47.977)
Okay.

Kevin (01:29:12.096)
Okay.

Mike (01:29:12.511)
you know, I've kind of done it all like the whiteboard. I've done a Excel spreadsheet. at this point, what I'm really wishing somebody had would be like, and I may sound dumb cause it's made, it may in fact exist, but, like, you know, like, almost like a virtual, a virtual, dry erase board where you could, you could do it you could open it up and have some details on each, on each deal, you know, on each project. you got

10 projects up there where the guys could look at it and open it up and look into the details and stuff like that. And we've done like, like a Google drive. We try to do that. But I don't know if you're like us, it's like, we'll do something real gung ho for like a month and then it'll kind of peter off. You know, if I can get too busy, I don't, I don't make the time to put those jobs in there because they're in my head, you know, and, that's, you know, I feel like that is.

A lot of our small business guys struggles is keeping that stuff organized. maybe that's where we're getting to a point to where we need a project manager to come just fill the role of project managers and just keep all that stuff organized.

Kevin (01:30:37.035)
Yeah.

Mike (01:30:40.438)
Maybe that's where we're at, I don't know. But I don't know where the money would come from to pay for them, you know. Yeah, but what do you like? What do you use?

Kevin (01:30:46.316)
You

Kevin (01:30:50.22)
Awesome, Awesome.

So currently we use job trade. Job trade is, it's good, it's it's good, it's not bad. But it's far from what could be ideal. We use QuickBooks for paying, doing taxes and stuff like that. Job trade is nice, but it's so...

Mike (01:31:06.275)
Thank

Yeah.

Kevin (01:31:23.252)
It's not set up for welding business owners. It's not set. It's set up for more general contractors. And I found that there's a lot of things that we need to like work around to make it work for us. And I'm torn around the idea of making something specifically for welding business owners, because I live this. I've lived this for 11 years now. You know what I mean? I know what we need. And I'm just kind of picking everybody's brain about what

Mike (01:31:26.115)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:31:35.662)
Yeah.

Mike (01:31:45.365)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (01:31:53.005)
what they want to see in it, if they want to see anything, or if they're happy with what they've got, or what works for them, what doesn't work for them about the system that they're using. I am one small set of, I know what I need, but I want to know what everybody else needs too. You know what I mean?

Mike (01:32:10.765)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to dump that money on all that work just for you to be the only person who needs it. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (01:32:20.032)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'm kind of just asking everybody because like that does kind of, like your virtual dry erase board is kind of like the dashboard of each job in job trade. And like it works. The biggest problem is having people put in that stuff.

Mike (01:32:37.259)
Yeah.

Mike (01:32:44.481)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (01:32:44.888)
But it's also starts at 200 bucks a month and it's 20 bucks per user. If you've got five guys, plus you, plus your wife, that's another seven people times 20 bucks. You're 300 something bucks right there. 340 bucks, 350 bucks a month. Is there something that we could... And then it also takes so long to...

Mike (01:32:51.585)
Yeah.

Mike (01:33:05.409)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:33:14.7)
get used to it. It's a very, very powerful app. the problem is, you know, you almost get lost in it because we only need about 25 % of what it actually does. So how do, how, like, how, like, what is like, is there something out there that is streamlined, not as cumbersome, doesn't have all the features, but w but we don't need all those features. You know what I mean? So.

Mike (01:33:27.841)
Yes, yeah.

Mike (01:33:42.253)
Yes. Yeah. Well, cause you get, you don't even want to try. Like you watch those advertisements for these different programs and you know, it's like, track this track that you can do this to have your guys do this and that blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, dude, I don't, that just makes me not even want to try, know, cause that's too much, you know, too much stuff for me to try to figure out.

Kevin (01:34:03.882)
Yeah. And like I've gone through the, the micro managing of everything. Like, we need an SOP for this and SOP for that. You need to do this. You need to do that. It's like, all right, that got a little bit too deep and nobody liked to do it. And it really wasn't even helpful. so what, like how, like, where is that balance of like sharing enough information, but not making it over, like overbearing to the point where it doesn't work.

Mike (01:34:28.333)
Yeah, yes. Yeah, we're a simple people. They get too complicated with us. Hold on for just a second. What's up? Okay, I'm gonna get a there's some money on the desk. Just get 200. It's an envelope. Get in touch with me.

Kevin (01:34:33.12)
Yep. Yep.

Mike (01:34:59.559)
Sorry, man. Yeah, that was my cash guy. Poor dude, man. He's 60-something years old and he's welded his whole life. Just found out he had cancer. Yeah, so he's just kind of coming in and helping every now and then. Bad deal, man. But yeah, on the programs, exactly like it. They have so many features, it's too much.

Kevin (01:35:00.3)
All good. All good, man.

Kevin (01:35:11.83)
Dang.

Mike (01:35:27.744)
to handle like the company cam is like, it's like you can assign tasks to different guys. And it's like, okay, well, that's great. If we're doing a $50,000 project, you know, that's great. And there's six different guys going, well, then you got to assign all of them. then, and then you have to teach these dudes like, Hey, you have to sign in and do that. Well, like, well, just for instance, my guy who just came, you know, he's

60 years old, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, he's not very computer savvy, you know? So, so that guy, you you assign him stuff. It's that's not going to get, then it's just something I have to go in and repair, you know, or say, yeah, he did complete this task. The company Cam one has a deal where like, like you can't click that you completed a task until you've taken pictures of the task completed, which I'm sure that's cool. If you're doing like, you know, you're plumbing a new house.

You know, I'm sure that's great, but you know, if we're, we're fixing, you know, you know, some random dudes fenders on his trailer for a hundred bucks, I'm not going to put that in that freaking thing. So, you know, it, that's, that's the tricky part for me. And I don't know. mean, do you like, are your invoice amounts, are they all, is there a range of them? Are they all high? Like you do thousand dollar jobs still.

Kevin (01:36:52.14)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we do a few hundred dollar jobs for our good customers. Yeah, only for the good customers though. Yeah.

Mike (01:37:00.223)
Yeah, just people. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah. Which and I would say we're the same, know, yeah, we're the same. But it's just I don't know, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to take the time to do that for a $300 job, you know, because like

Kevin (01:37:20.406)
So the thing is, that, you know, I feel like there's, there is a cost to wrapping your brain. Like, I don't want to say it's, it's not mobilizing, but it's like changing gears. There's a cost to changing your, gears, like going from this job and then wrapping your head around this clock in, getting geared up, get your tools out. There's like,

Mike (01:37:20.491)
It's just like.

Kevin (01:37:48.865)
there's a cost to that and there it's definitely, you know, I just bill for it. I just built like, you know, if I think it's going, going to take an hour. Like that, like that, that's okay. But when it, like, if I think it's only going to take an hour. Yeah.

Mike (01:37:50.933)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:38:10.475)
I'm here.

Mike (01:38:13.073)
phone in because it doesn't get low on battery in it you like did Apple play and it puts it puts you on the speakers are we good now okay okay so if you think the jobs gonna take an hour

Kevin (01:38:17.609)
all good,

Yeah, we're good. We're good. Yeah. so if I think the job's going to take an hour, then like, I need to bill at least two or three because there's like, you know, there's setting up, there's me going and actually putting in the invoice and sending it out. And there's, you know, receiving the invoice and documenting on the other end. And like, there's a, yeah, phone calls, there's inefficiencies. like,

Mike (01:38:43.161)
yeah.

Couple phone calls. Yeah.

Kevin (01:38:50.846)
I'll do smaller jobs, I don't skimp on the fact that I, you know, trying to meet their budget. like every hour needs to be accounted for. And the smaller the job, the more I am, I want to say less generous with my time towards them. Like if it's going to take an hour and like, does it really take an hour to like, you know, document the like

Mike (01:39:03.27)
Sure, yeah.

Mike (01:39:10.65)
Yeah. yeah.

Kevin (01:39:19.916)
make an invoice and send it and then do the paperwork on the back end? No. But you know what? I'm definitely going to charge you an hour for it. I don't short myself on those small jobs anymore. I definitely don't.

Mike (01:39:36.881)
Yeah. Yeah, that's, I definitely do that. I definitely do that as well. Like we, don't pay as much attention to, um, you know, Oh, traveling and grabbing materials for this and that, whatever, if we're doing a big old fence or something like that. But yeah, if, you want me to cut out half a sheet of a 12 gauge on the table, yeah, you're going to pay for that. know, and it's just, well, I think that's just.

Kevin (01:39:53.654)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:40:02.155)
Yeah.

Mike (01:40:05.093)
That's just part of growing, right? Like, you know, in your first in your first year, if you would jump to do that, you wouldn't even charge them for going across town to go pick the stuff up because you need the job. But, you know, if you once you get to a certain point, like you have to charge for that or else I think doing stuff like that is some of the stuff where, you know, when you're trying to understand, where like, why didn't we do as well as I thought we would do in this time frame, whether it's this quarter, this year, whatever.

Kevin (01:40:14.476)
Sure.

Kevin (01:40:33.952)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:40:34.341)
I think things like that that kind of snowball on you is where a lot of that comes from. Like if you don't account for that, you know, like, you know, if you don't put in for that day that it's going to spend for you to drag material out, drag machinery out to somewhere before you even actually start the job, then it'll catch up to you. And someday you'll look up and like, oh, that's where that went, you know? And that's kind of one of the things that we

Kevin (01:40:57.92)
Yep. Yep.

Mike (01:41:03.397)
I have just in the past couple years really started to think about, you But, yeah.

Kevin (01:41:10.314)
Awesome, man. Well, Mike, I really appreciate the time you've taken. You've taken the time here. is there anything else you want to add on to this,

Mike (01:41:16.482)
Yeah, man, it was fun.

No dude, I just want to thank you. You know, I'm probably speak for everybody else that might be listening like you know, I've listened to this and I've taken advice from you know, like I've talked to some of those guys that have come on here and talked to me and like taking advice like I know our weld test that we do. I can't remember who it was, but you know, I heard that on here. The guy he just does a 18 inch square out of square tubing, you know, and has them grind half the

Kevin (01:41:48.118)
Yep, that was Adam.

Mike (01:41:50.092)
Okay, Adam, yeah. then like, you know, Bruce, Bruce is in Fort Worth, not that far from me. I've messaged him back and forth, kind like you and I have, some questions about stuff and took some stuff from him and Austin, Austin in Louisiana, you know, I've talked to him and man, this is a great resource for people to get ideas and like figure out, like you're helping people figure out some stuff on maybe how, why things aren't going the way they need them.

And that's cool because like, you know, it's a this is a niche. This is kind of a niche market. It's hard to find, you know, good, good fab shops and stuff. And a lot of them don't want to share their secrets. So having this is really it's been cool. It's helped me a lot. I'm sure it's helped a lot of people. So it's cool. You're doing it, man. And someday I'll get over there to the Yankee land and I'll come through and I'll come here and get the cheesesteak or whatever y'all eat out there.

Kevin (01:42:35.936)
Awesome.

Kevin (01:42:41.482)
Yeah, man.

Kevin (01:42:46.494)
Yo, come on up for the Fabricated Olympics, man, September 12th!

Mike (01:42:49.656)
Dude, you know, it goes back to like how I'm all homeschooled, you know, I don't know half of that shit.

Kevin (01:42:56.044)
Fake it till you make it, man. You'll be just fine.

Mike (01:42:58.517)
I just go up there and be like a little school kid, know, just amazed by the skills and stuff. yeah, man, I would love to. And if I ever make it to like Fabtech or something, I'll get you up. All right, man, well, it was good talking to you,

Kevin (01:43:07.616)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:43:13.59)
Heck yeah, man, I love it, let's do it.

Kevin (01:43:18.337)
YouTube buddy, I'll talk to you All right, see you

Mike (01:43:20.394)
All right,