Born Scrappy
The go-to podcast for scrap metal exporters and traders
Born Scrappy
Generational Leadership with ReMA Young Exec of the Year Ed Harding
In this week’s episode I chat to Eds Harding, 3rd generation and Vice President of Operations at Harding Metals. Eds went straight from college into the family business and has never looked back. Not only is he the ReMA New England Chapter President, but he was recently named ReMA’s Young Executive of the Year - congrats Eds!
In this episode, we talk about:
👉 When no deal is your best deal
👉 Sweating your software
👉 Customer diversity
👉 Unsung hero’s
👉 And more!
Listen to the full episode. Wherever you stream your podcasts.
Born Scrappy. Brought to you by Buddy.
The only marketplace and trade OS built for scrappies, by scrappies.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/tradewithbuddy/
WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?
26 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...
I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.
I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don’t produce much metal waste).
I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That’s right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.
Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.
COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN
Hi, I'm Stu Kagan and welcome to Born Scrappy, the podcast for scrap middle exporters and traders. Join me in conversation with some of the most experienced traders and operators that have helped shape this incredible industry. In today's episode, I'm chatting with Ed's Harding. Ed is the VP of operations at his family metal recycling business, Harding's Metals. Edge was recently awarded the Reamer's Young Executive of the Euro Award, so I thought it would be great to get his perspective on our great industry. In this week's episode, we chat about when no deal is your best deal sweating your software customer diversity, unsung heroes, and so much more. So let's get into it with ads. But first intro. Hey, ed, how are you? I'm good, Stu. Thanks for having me, uh, fan of the podcast and happy to be on it. Yeah. Look, um, I mean, you just won the. PRESTIGIOUS award. Um, I think in, in global, the global industry at the moment, young Executive of the year, um, from. Firstly, congratulations. I think it was only last week that that was announced, so that's really cool. And then you'll be getting the award in in San Diego, which is exciting. Um, I guess let's jump straight into that. It's, uh, how did that come about? What do you do at Rema, you know, what do you tell other people that are in the young executives or considering joining the young executives? Well, I'll start with, uh, finding out about the award. I was shocked and I was, uh. Surprised, uh, felt really good to be recognized. I got in the email, um, maybe two or three weeks ago saying, you've won the award, but keep it secret. I did tell my dad before it was announced, and I think it was a lot harder for him to keep it secret than myself. He was pretty proud. I think he almost cried, maybe did shed a tear. I got started with, uh, volunteering on the New England chapter level locally for Rema probably about eight years ago. Uh, and worked my way up to chapter President how most volunteers with the succession plan get to a executive role on the chapter side, and kind of just did what I felt like I needed to do to make the chapter better. Uh. As far as planning events, looking after the finances, um, and it's been a very good way to meet people and get your name out there. So. It's been a great experience for me volunteering for Rema. Yeah. So that's what I wanted to ask you. I mean, what is the, what are the benefits of being involved, um, from a young age in Rema? You know, you said networking, meeting people. I mean, is it actually having an effect on your business?'cause I think a lot of, if it's the previous generation or the owners of the business are like, well, don't do it. It's a waste of your time. You, you're putting energy and time into this. Where's the return on investment check? Well, you definitely get the networking'cause your name's out there and you're meeting people that you might not in your regular day of business. But all the stuff I've learned, uh. Chapter issues I've been able to bring back to our company and kind of be one step ahead of issues that are coming up. Maybe things that affect our business, like regulations or things that are happening with, I don't know, transportation. Um, how's, how's, uh, things that are happening with rail side gonna affect my business. I don't have a rail side, but I ship to people that have rail side. So indirectly it's gonna affect me. And being able to bring back the information I learned on the chapter meetings I can bring to my business and feel like I'm a step ahead. Yeah. Look, I, I'm a, I'm a big fan of getting as, uh, as involved as you can. Like, like lots of things. You get out what you put in. So if you just pay your membership dues and you don't attend events and you just kind of like hang out, you'll probably ask yourself question of. Is there much value in being a part of the association, but the second you start getting involved and attending, even if it's the online events, you know, whatever it might be, um, straight away, you definitely start to reap the rewards and. Not everybody gets awards. We get rewards, but we don't all get awards, um, like you did, but it's, let's take a step back here quickly. Um, you obviously started off in the industry. It's a family business. We know that from your surname anyway. Some people might not know the business. So give us a bit of background of how you got involved in the industry. What kind of your. Father or uncle or family made you go through getting started and, and what you do today? Uh, so I'll do it as quickly as possible. My grandfather started the business in 1950 in Boston, found an opportunity to move to, um, Northwood, New Hampshire. 1963, that's a little bit north of Boston. He passed away, uh, in the mid seventies, so I never met him, but my father and uncle were in their late twenties when he passed away and then taken over the business from, from then on. Um, it's the only job I've ever had. Well, I guess I worked at one scrap yard in college part-time, but working in a metal recycling facility is the only job I've ever had, so it's in my blood. Um, and Harding Metals is a, I guess you would say a collection facility. Uh, the only processing we do is, um, is shearing iron to prep it. And then we have two, two Ruan Bayers. Uh, our bread and butter is industrial scrap. So. What we focus on is servicing manufacturers. How can we make sure that their process doesn't skip a beat? We gotta get the scrap outta their facility and give'em a fair price. But the service is what they're looking for and that's what we focus on. Uh, and because we've built a good industrial base, we've been able to kind of branch out and be a wholesale. Buyer of smaller, uh, yards in New England, and then we also have a retail business. But I'd say if I broke it down, it'd be 60% industrial, 30% wholesale, and 10% retail. So we feel like we have a, a good hold on the industrial space in Northern New England. Okay, so how do you do it? You, you know, you spoke about your focus is getting from industrials, you know, adding value there. What do you do, um, that you think sets you apart from others? Uh, I mean, the customer comes first. Our suppliers, uh, I. We bend over backwards for them. We give them the best equipment we think we can provide. Uh, we give them detailed reports, which I know that they use on their manufacturing data analysis. How much, uh, scrap are we producing? Sometimes we want the scrap. We want more scrap, but they want to produce less scrap. Uh, so they're using the new materials efficiently as possible. Um. Just communicating with your customers about what's going on with the prices and the markets? Uh, my uncle at the business, he's kind of in charge of, um, purchasing and my cousin, uh, is on that side of the business. They're out on the road visiting our industrial accounts all the time, making sure they're happy. If you're not visiting your customers, there could be a problem that's really easy to fix. And. You don't know there's a problem to fix. So you gotta make sure you're out there making sure they're happy and if there is something that you need to adjust, we adapt as quickly as possible. And I mean quickly, like it's like a phone call from the sales guy on the road, like, we need to do this right now, and then the next day it's in place. Yeah, that's great. Talk to me a bit about the data.'cause it's something everybody could do probably a little bit better. So you're sending reports, are these reports you're creating yourself or is it coming off a system that you use? It's all generated from our, from our software. Uh, we use, uh, shared Logics, the programs Remus, and it's very easy to give reports to your customers with their product. Um, internally every day. It's like, how can we use this software more? Because I still think we're just. Scratching the surface on the data that we can get out of our software, um, that's definitely like a goal every day or every couple weeks, is what's the next thing we can make our software do for us? And over the past five years, 10 years, we've really evolved the way we're using the software. I can remember when we first started using it, it was like just the bare minimum, but there's still so much stuff you can get generated from your software. And I'm looking forward to doing more with what data we can get outta it. Yeah, it's, it's quite an interesting one. You know, if you look at the previous generations that take your, your late grandfather, everything would've looked completely different. Um, and your father would've made huge amount of changes and moved the company so much more forward. Right? Internet came along, like a lot of things changed. And you will be doing the exact same thing as the next generation, and you'll be looking to make better decisions. But in order to make better decisions, we need more data. So for you, it's like how do you scrape your software system, you know, your inventory and. Purchasing, being able to issue that also, that data to your suppliers is hugely powerful. Um, but there's even more that you could be doing all the time when it comes to providing data and using data. So it's this generation that you're in now will be, um. You're, you're kind of like native to using data. You're native to all these sort of software products, et cetera. So you guys are looking for all the time, um, how you can get more data from any system, which I love to hear because obviously it's something I'm, I'm very much involved in at the moment. Absolutely. So, ed, talk me through, how long have you been in the industry for now? Except for not when you were a child coming to visit the scrap. Let's not talk about that. Actually fully employed. I guess I graduated college in 2013, so I've been evolving my role at the company since then. I, I started, uh, being a guy, doing sales, trying to get industrial customers, uh, calling on smaller dealers or wholesale customers. But my role kind of evolved as we needed more help at the facility with the operations and. I guess I really thought I knew a lot about the business before I got more involved in the operations. When I was in high school and college part-time job, I'd come work in the yard and help with the bailers and sort metal, but wasn't really until I kind of saw the bigger picture after I had a college education and was seeing more of the logistics, the buying, the selling, um. You know, you gotta move the scrap so your books look good. Nobody wants to have all this unsold product on their yard, so it wasn't just sorting the metal or processing the metal. It's like, what's valuable? What do we need to get out the door? What's coming in? How do we get it in and out as quick as possible? I love watching scrap metal come in the yard. I love it. But you know what I love more watching it go out. Watching it go out. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So tell me, is your strategy then to, you know, ship to the ground? Do you guys try and get rid of everything or are you sometimes playing the markets a little bit? Um, when you expect the markets to be moving? Uh, we don't, we don't play the markets. Uh, very occasionally. Might be an item like tung and carbide we wanna sit on, or maybe we will hold off shipping steel for a couple weeks at most, because we think there might be a, a serious pump in the next month. But I don't know, we feel much better about having, uh, the scrap on the accounts receivable side than in the yard. Yeah. Yeah. For good reason. Can you think of a, um. Some sort of trade on the buying side or selling side that, you know, was pivotal in your experience and, and growing you as an operator and growing you in this industry? Um, when I first started, I was out on the road trying to buy and a lesson. I was taught by a guy who's now retired but had been in the business his whole life. He told me. When you, when someone that is seasoned in the business, they might see a younger person as an opportunity to take advantage of, or you're out there hungry to make a deal. Your job is to make deals so you might make the wrong deal. So what he taught me was sometimes the best deal is no deal. And I guess I have kind of had that lesson instilled in me my whole career, like. Don't do it if it doesn't make sense. And you gotta have a batna your best alternative negotiation. And sometimes just not buying the stuff is better for you. And just recognizing that taught me a lot. It wasn't necessarily a lesson I, I learned from a bad deal or a good deal, but it just kind of stuck with me. It kept you away from making a bad deal. So you didn't have to learn it through that way. Yeah, yeah. It's um, it's a real thing, man, like. The newer team members, I'm, I was one of them for a very long time, like are so hungry in their mid twenties that they just want to do any deal. When the bigger the deal, the more attractive it is, you know, the more you see yourself, your, your name up in lights, like winning, you know, the Rema Young Executive Award. If you put up this a great deal and it's just like. You know, to lose out on that, it, it, it really makes things difficult. So one of the things I've always thought about is kind of like, don't get emotional. Right. So as soon as you get emotional about the metal, it makes it very hard to say no. So when it's, when there's an emotion involved and all of a sudden if I buy that parcel, it's going to make me feel X. Or if I buy that parcel, I will then be seen in a certain way, right? Or my father will be proud, or whatever it is. Like as soon as you start to feel those feelings, like step back. Give it to somebody else because you're in the wrong position to be buying. And actually, if you go to auctions, live auctions, they use that to exploit the buyers, to make them pay higher prices. They get emotions involved. You know, you've got the fear of missing out, not losing to the other person, jealousy, all these sort of things that come in play when there's another person bidding against you. It's very different to you just offering a price. So with that in mind, like the ability to say no. Um, yeah, it's a, it's a major tool we should all have in our, in our toolkit. So good lessons learned really early, hopefully helped you avoid some big mistakes. And you kind of feel good when you're like, no, that deal's not gonna work. Uh, you walk away and a lot of times they're gonna come back too. Exactly. And say, you know what? That actually might work for me. Let's talk again. Hopefully they come back to you and renegotiate and just like, okay, you're right. Maybe I was pushing a bit hard. What deal can we do? And that's the kind of place you want to be in, but you can only get there if you said no, if you're just too aggressive, just too keen. Um, unfortunately you can add up in big trouble if we stick to the buying side and we look at strategies. So we look at buying strategies and. Lots of companies have different ways of getting the metal in the door. You know, early operators who set up a new company in an area where, let's say there's been other players that have been there for a very long time, I. They have to come in and they have to offer something different. So they might come in and go, our prices blow away everybody else. We are the top prices and as a new player, people now sit up and they listen. Right? Otherwise, you know, it might be about customer experience and it's all about our service. And you know, when you sell to us, you get paid right away. And we are lovely people and we'll take you for a beer, but we don't necessarily pay the highest price. How have you guys gone about. Positioning yourself. And then the other thing I wanted to ask along those lines is how do you make sure people know about that kind of way of doing things? I guess it has to do with the service. I mean, that's what we sell ourselves on, but we don't lack on price either. We, on the selling side, we try our best to make sure we're always getting the best price so we can. I feel like that's our duty to ourselves. So we're getting the most of our, our medals, but we owe that to our customers so we can then pass that good pricing on to them. But it's definitely just like service for us, for our industrial base. We're gonna do what we're we we say we're gonna do, and you don't have to worry about your scrap metal if you. Manufacturing, you're dealing with Harding Metals. We don't want your scrap to be a liability. You need to focus on the manufacturing side. What are you producing? You don't wanna worry about a pile of chips or skeletons that aren't getting picked up or not handled properly. So we pride ourselves on being reliable. And on the retail side, which is a smaller percentage of our business, but. It's part of our business. We have a great team in the office of our front office staff who are greeting the customers. So they're always smiling. I don't know how they always have a good attitude. They only have one emotion and that's happy. So my hat's off to them. Um, and I also wanna touch about the retail side, just. That is a totally different thing that people don't understand about our industry. On one side, I'm, I'm talking to these manufacturers that, you know, you gotta dress up and be professional, put your best face on. And then I come back to the office and there's some guy turning in his beer cans and, uh, it's just a huge spectrum of customers. Um. But you know, that's an interesting part about our business, the diversity of customers you have. Um, it's a guy who is getting rid of his lawnmower. It's a guy who's getting rid of his junk car, and then everything in between to the biggest Mac manufacturers in the, in New England we're dealing with. But Eds, I mean, you're being quite PC there. I mean, I feel that that's the hardest job we have in the company. I did it for a long time and very early on, and the reason why it's the hardest is not just that you have different people, it's that you have all different walks of life and that it's like some guy arrives on a Friday afternoon and he is hammer drunk. He's been drinking since 10 o'clock in the morning and now he's bringing you beer cans and gonna fight with you. How much they weigh, or he's put some stones in them, or he's arriving, you know, with something that you're not sure where it's from, and you have a whole bunch of questions for him, and you can be dealing with aggressive people who you're having to deal with. And then the next time you're dealing with a mom. You know, who's just dropping off a washing machine that isn't working or, or like, you know, something around the house, whatever it could be. Or a dad. Um, I guess the point is that that role is so hard because of the diversity and it can get really intense and it's really hard for a person to kind of keep their cool and also be happy at all times when they're dealing with that. No, that's correct. And that's why I'm so impressed with the team we have,'cause. Nerves get pushed to the edge. People are being rude. I don't know. We're trying to run a pretty solid sized business and I don't wanna have to go argue with somebody about, uh, why, why their stuff's getting bought as irony aluminum instead of old aluminum. It's like, but it happens every day. Like that's, that's what we do. And no, then they have to call us and yeah, I get it. But that's, it's such an important role, so it's great that you have a great happy team'cause that's key there. Um, you said something earlier, you said it was your duty to get the best sales price. In order to pass it on to your customers, how do you ensure you're getting the best sales price? How do you know, and I asked this question quite a lot lately, how do you know that you're getting the best price? How can you sleep at night knowing I achieved the best price for my material? I guess you just are in touch with the portfolio of consumers. You're paying attention to the markets, you're going to rema shows to try to extend that portfolio prices. A huge part of it, but it's not the only part of it. Appointments, you know, we've, I talked earlier about moving our material as fast as possible. I'm probably gonna move my material for a couple cents less if I can get it out this month and have to wait for an appointment for 45 days. And then how am I gonna get paid too? I don't want to have our terms out for, you know, if it's 45 days and another guy's 15 days. That changes your position of the price. Um, but that's stuff we decide internally. Is it worth the extra pennies or two to ship at a different date? And then you always have to take into effect your quality and is your quality right for that consumer? There's certain products we do. We don't wanna ship to certain consumers because we're, we don't like their downgrades. Uh, and we're okay with that. We might say we're gonna ship 10 loads to this consumer for a penny less, and it's gonna be no downgrades and. This other consumer, we're gonna get whacked with a pencil. Luckily, we have great consumers. I, I think we have great consumers and I feel like we're getting the best service. Uh, our quality's good enough for them and the prices right there with, uh, anybody else that's offering to, to sell. I want to go a little bit further into the claims part, you said, right? So getting whacked with the pencil as your wedding. How do you have that data though? Where do you utilize data other than earlier where you pull some reports off your inventory system, your software system? Where else do you use data to help you make decisions? And what brought me onto that was, um, you know, I don't want to sell to certain people because I get whacked with their pencil and therefore I don't get paid full value. They gimme a great price, but I don't get paid full value. Now, how do you know if somebody for the last six months has averaged 2%? Claims, whatever. How do you track that to make a decision? Or is most of it gut, head, heart, you know, where, where do you track that? Um, we do track it, but I would say the decision is probably more gut. We do sales settlements for every load we ship and it's reviewed if it's over a certain percent, but it, I don't. I am not doing all the selling, but we don't have someone on our sales team that says this guy, it's not a hard number that says this consumer is 20% of the time downgrading us 3%. It's just kind of more of a gut and saying, I remember last time. Yeah, and, and this is where I said earlier, the next generation will be doing things differently. So you're not yet using Buddy, so you don't know about what we are able to do, which is give you that sort of data, um, and to see ratings, to see how other people are, how they performed with others as well. But where are you using data? So other than that report you're pulling, like where are you using data to start helping you make better decisions now? Uh, it's kind of like. At the end of the month, kind of pulling our reports, um, what percentage of fares to non fares did we do? What was our AR turnover, our AP turnover? How many times did we turn over our inventory? Then we used data to kind of track, uh, our trucking fleet too. Um mm-hmm. To see how productive we are, especially on our, uh, we have kind of two truck fleets. We have our. Inbound truck fleet, which is servicing our customers in New England. And then we have our outbound fleet and how much did it cost us to outbound? So when we use our own trucks, were we able to do it cheaper than using a third party? Um, most of the time we can, but when we can't do it cheaper than third party, we say to ourselves, we were able to get it on a truck and get it outta here when we wanted. Both vital, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, both. We need to move the material as fast as we can and do it at the best price. Um, one of those have to work, you know, sometimes if the one doesn't work, we have to do the other one. But, um, how do you track that information? Because that is key information that we can all learn from. So it's how are you tracking your transport prices? Uh, well, we break it down for what mode it's in, whether it's flatbed, van or dump. We track how much material is per load and then, you know, we're usually getting third party freight back to New England. So what was our. Backhaul cost or revenue versus how much it costs us to do, uh, and how does that compare to what we think a third party would be? And we have a good idea of how much a third party would be. But sure. In New Hampshire dump trailers going to Ohio or Pennsylvania, the supply is more than our demand. So if we don't have our own trucks, we might have to pay somebody. A lot than we're willing to just,'cause we can't get the trucks. So with having our own trucks, we're able to move it and that's what I guess our, our end game is moving it. At the end of the day, we are a glorified logistics company. Rarely we move material from one place to another with a bit of processing in between. I exaggerate. There's a massive amount of processing between, but the both customers see us as a logistics company. The one sees us as collecting the material. The other one sees us as delivered. They don't see or care much about what we do in between. And if you want to keep your customers happy, you have to be a really good logistics company. So are you using spreadsheets or is there a specific system that you use to track that information? We're tracking most of it in our software system, and then we will pull it out into Excel sheets. And I just wanna touch about what you said about being a logistics company. You're so right. The trucking is such a big part of, at least our business, and I think most businesses are recycling metal, and that is such a thankless job being the dispatcher or the truck driver, because nobody ever. It gives you a high five when you did the job. You know when things go as planned, you're, you're not getting a pat on the back. It's only when things go wrong, like a truck breaks down or you miss your appointment, and that stuff happens a lot. And that can really screw up your game plan for a week. You know, if I want this truck to be here, here, and here, well, it broke down on Tuesday. Now I gotta scramble, I gotta get creative. So definitely wanna acknowledge the dispatchers and the truck drivers'cause our business wouldn't be here without them and they don't get enough credit. I used to call my drivers goalkeepers. Now I dunno how well you know, soccer. If you watch much soccer, it might be the same in ice hockey. But then do you call it soccer or is it football? Well, I don't wanna confuse all the listeners now. So soccer's easy'cause no one can confuse that with another sport. So, um, when you look at soccer, the goalkeeper's job is to save the ball. And whenever they get these thousands of balls kicked to them all the time, they, their job is to save it and stop it from going in the goals. No one gives them a high five when they stop, every single ball that comes in, unless they're pull off like something miraculous. And then maybe people are like, oh, well done, goalkeeper. The second they make one mistake and one ball goes in, all of a sudden they are like seen as the word, they literally get dropped from a team for making one. And that's how people see drivers. Yeah. The driver makes one error. The problem is you can use a customer for a driver error. Right? Like that's how important. The same as a goalkeeper one era, you lose a game. Mm-hmm. They're the most important role in the company. And it's the same as the guys in the frontline, right? Those guys dealing with the people we spoke about earlier on those front scales, retail, like that's the hardest job. But they're the juniors. They, and also if you think about this, it's their job is to grade what we're buying. Literally. That's where we make our money. How important is that role of the front scale? But for most companies, they are the ones that are like neglected and you know, he's not a hard worker. Maybe I'll stick him on the front scale. He's not so sharp. I'll stick him on the front scale. And actually it's like those are like your best people you need. It's so important. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. What do you do about employees? So literally just talking about the team and it being so important, how have you, um, at Harding's Medal, how do you guys keep your team motivated? How do you keep them employed? I'm sure you've got people that have been there for a long time. Um, how do you make sure you don't just lose people every day? Um. Well, I think we pay them fairly and try to have a good attitude. You know, this Harding Metal should be a place that you are happy to come to work every day. I don't have a formula or some way to tell everybody this is what you do. It's just kind of, do you treat people? And I know everyone on the. Management side is, are all positive people that kind of send that positivity everywhere. So that starts with the talk. I think, you know, you wanna be happy to come to work. You know, we're, we're hard on our, our guys as far as expectations like you gotta be here every day. Uh, we work six to three 30 Monday through Friday. You have to be here. But if someone's not here you, you gotta figure out what's going on in their life too. So you can't just always be mad when people show up, but you gotta hold'em accountable too. Like I said, I don't have a formula. It's just kind of treating people right and making sure that it's a healthy work environment to come to every day. How do you treat people right? I guess. Um. It's really easy to get like wound up with the business and say like, we gotta get this load out. Or why are you guys processing that so slow? You guys can't have dirt in that. Or why do you have old sheet in the new aluminum? But at the end of the day, it's not really that big a deal. You just gotta deal with it the right way. And you can't be mad when stuff goes wrong. You gotta be stern, but so you don't get walked over, but. I think that the guys that work for us are the biggest part of our business, and you gotta respect them and to get the work out of them. So always just looking at the bigger picture, I guess, something that really pisses you off for 10 minutes isn't a big deal and the next day, but it can ruin the culture. Yeah. You know what I mean? When you blow up in the yard. I met a few people because of sticking the wrong aluminum in. Uh, that could ruin the culture very, very quickly, especially if it's, you know, it's often not necessarily from that incident. It's often the pressure of something else that, and I look, I work for some of the toughest people, um, in South Africa. You know, I work for some of the hardest people you could ever imagine. And there was shouting and screaming that went on on a daily basis in the yard. Um. As soon as you realize, actually this guy's just dealing with something else and he's just had a massive amount of pressure elsewhere, and this is just like his release. It's like I felt, I felt more comfortable knowing that he wasn't actually shouting at me. He was just shouting and it just made him, made him feel better. So yeah, I think, uh, you gotta kind of be careful how you manage that, that situation as well. On the, on the growth side of things for you guys, I think it's your cousin. Who was in the 30, under 30, is that right? Was it James Jameson? Yeah. Yeah. Jameson. So he obviously achieved much more than you, um, in his early years. And I did send you a text to wind you up about that when he was 30, under 30, you're not under 30, so you weren't eligible. But now at least you get the bigger trophy, which is the young executive of the year. But, um, you know, you've got young generation coming through. It's not just you. Are you guys looking at growth? Are you thinking like, well, what's the next step? Or is it very much like status quo? We are really comfortable. We make a good amount of money. Let's not fuck this up. Um, I guess both. We're in a good place right now. Um, status quo is we feel healthy, we're in a good spot with our business, but Jameson and I are always talking about what's next. But you can't just jump at every idea, and money isn't unlimited, so you have to plan for it. We recently just built a new maintenance facility, which we took on some debt for which we're paying off. So we kind of gotta work through that project before we get to the next, which I am not sure what it is. We always are kicking around ideas. It almost seems like every three months we're. Scheming up something that can be the next big thing, but it kind of seems like organically every five years a new opportunity comes. So we built this maintenance facility. We're just past the year since we moved in about five years before that, we started, um, started taking on autos and doing auto dismantling. We, we never really wanted to get into recycling cars, but. There was an opportunity for us to add that as a new revenue stream, and it's, it's been great, but we got a couple more years to work down the debt of this maintenance facility. Um, but the maintenance facility is an ongoing project where we're looking at data and trying to figure out. What are we putting into each piece of equipment? Uh, are we getting enough out of each service? Are we servicing our forklifts, our trucks, our skid steers? Are we cleaning our baler pits, uh, as often as we need to? And this new maintenance facility is an opportunity for us to. Regenerate the way we look at our, our maintenance program. We used to have a one bay garage that serviced, um, like 30 trucks and now we have a three bay garage and a wash bay and it, this beautiful facility. Um, so that's kind of a project we're working on now, but I'm sure there'll be something in the future. Were you involved in the project Right from the beginning and the ideation coming up with the idea? And I'm just interested because I often like to, um. Talk about the difference between equity, debt, um, and how you raise capital. So how you decided to use capital. So were you a part of that strategy which decided to, to go to the bank and borrow money? Yeah, definitely. Um, we have a line of credit, which is for the operations. Our goal is to not use it, and we haven't used it in a couple years, but, uh. It's there in case I, you know, you need to buy scrap and you don't have the money to do it. And then we have an equipment line, which we borrow money for equipment when we need. And we worked with our bank for this project, um, specifically for the garage. Um, it's not like putting in a piece of processing equipment that's gonna. Give you dollars right away. But it was a necessity because we had outgrown our current facility and we're, we're building our, our fleet of trucks and equipment in the yard. But back to your question, yeah, we worked with the bank to lend us the finances for the project. Have you made a mistake yet? I'm sure you've made many, but have you made a mistake when raising capital or when kind of investing a piece of equipment? Did you get something wrong, whether it was a truck or. Something along those lines. I never made a mistake. No. Um, yeah, we've made mistakes. Rima young example of the year, never made a mistake. Uh, I would say we're tight with making purchases. We really don't do anything unless we feel comfortable because, and that comes probably from before when I was in the role I am now. Before, or maybe we weren't watching our money as um, tight as we are now, but we're not, um, kind of just jumping by a piece of equipment without making sure we need it or we think we can make some money with it. Okay. So no, nothing you can think of. We like, shit, wish we hadn't done that. If we could go back, we would kind of either not buy that truck or, you know, even if it's changing brands or whatever it is, or a forklift or whatever. Um. I guess I can't think of anything that jumps out and that's why you one young executive. Obvious. Alright, so we're running out of time man. It's, uh, this is lots of fun, but we're going get into the getting to know you stage the quick fire. Last few questions. You've listened. You will have heard these all before, so let's get to know you a little bit more, uh, a little bit better. Favorite TV series or movie. Uh, the TV show I watch the most is probably SportsCenter Nice. But as far as the series I, I was definitely watching all the Yellowstone shows and the spinoffs. Kind of sad. It's over for now, but I, I do enjoy that show. What's your favorite sport? Uh, probably ice hockey to watch as a spectator. Yeah, I, I've seen it twice live. I absolutely love it as a spectator sport. It's incredible. I don't enjoy it as much on the tv, but live is incredible. Yeah. I'm a big fan. Um, favorite place to visit, um, close to where you're from. Well, relatively to where we are now. Gold Coast Australia. I did a semester abroad there. You lived there. That's right. I remember. I remember you told me about living there. Yeah, with your long blonde hair surfer style fitting in in Australia? Yeah, so I've been back twice since I studied abroad and uh, I'm always looking ahead to when I can go back. Yeah. Awesome. Do you read much? Do you have a favorite book? Um, I'm not a big reader, but, um, Rhonda Byrne has a series of books. The first one was The Secret, and I listened to this. I listen to it on tape a lot when I'm in a bad mood in the car. It's called power, uh, and it kind of just puts me in a good, uh, mindset for what's important. Very good. So check it out if you're looking for a book like that. Yeah. That's cool. And lastly, have you got a favorite quote? I don't know where this quote generated from, but it's something we say a lot at Harding Metals. It's not hard to do the right thing, it's knowing what the right thing is, but once you know what the right thing is. It's hard not to do it. That's awesome, man. That, that's brilliant. Ed. Thanks so much buddy. It's uh, this has been awesome. Really though congratulations on the award. I know in San Diego you'll be getting up and saying a few words. Um, so well done for Rema for choosing. You think. It's a great, great recipient. Thanks being on Born Scrappy. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Cheers bud. Bye bye.
