Blending Heritage and Innovation with Ryan Weinstein

In today’s episode I chat to Ryan Weinstein, Vice President of M&M Recycling.

He’s a second-generation scrappy who literally grew up in the yard, and now oversees four locations including a shredding facility.

Ryan blends old-school hustle with modern tools, from running dispatch to rolling out new software. He’s got deep knowledge from the yard floor to the global market, and has a clear vision for the future of the industry.

In this episode, we talk about:

👉 New tools in an old-school game
👉 Building a business that cares
👉 Doing what you say you’ll do
👉 Why service beats pricing
👉 And much 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.tradebuddy.io/

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

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stukagan/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/born-scrappy/

Transcript

0:12

Hey, Ryan, how are you? Hey, how's it going? Yeah, really good man. Ryan Weinstein from Emine MI was in your yard just the other day, man. It's uh, it's great to have you on the show. Yeah. Sorry I missed you, but glad to be here. Yeah, well, you know, you had to choose your priorities and I guess having two kids at the same time was probably a priority O overseeing me messing around in your yard. Yeah. You know, we'll get them in the scrap yard sooner than later, so you gotta get them a walk in first, then they'll be on the crane in no time. Absolutely, man. Yeah. Um, had a great tour of your yard, spent some time with the family and when I was there was really like, hold on. We need to tell a bit of the story. Um, your family's been through so much, Eminem just seems like. Um, has been on a great journey and, you know, I posted about this. Even what you guys are gonna be doing in the future is, is just as exciting, if not more exciting with the next generation, you and your sister getting into the business. So, um, I thought we had to kind of jump in, so I said to the family, who's gonna be on it? Who's gonna represent Eminem? And they said it's nominated. Huh? And, uh, yeah. You were voluntold. Exactly. So here we are today, man. Ryan, tell us a little bit, I mean, obviously it's a family business, but tell us a bit about how you started, right? You started walking and then you won the cranes, I'm guessing, but just walk us through how you got involved in metal recycling. Yeah, of course. Obviously my parents started the business, so growing up around it all the time, you know, every summer vacation, every weekend you're in the snake pit, shoveling cans very quickly. Find out what you do and don't want to do. Go off to college, go get a job. And then I started getting phone calls every, every day. Hey, when are you coming back? When are you coming back? And eventually they pulled me into the business full time. And, um, now it's been a decade. Then time flies when you're having fun. So, um, you know, like I said, when it's a family business, you wear a lot of hats. You do everything. You see everything. So, you know what I love about the scrap industry and our situation is, you know, you can be a buyer, you can sit in the office and the minute you're done with that, you can get up, go in the yard, you can be a torch cutter, you can be on a crane, you can start being in operations. You have the best of both worlds. So it's never a dull moment in the scrap yard. Yeah, that's for sure. I mean, listeners can relate to this. Before we jumped onto this, you told me, just hold on, I'm handling dispatch at the moment. So you know, my phone could be going a bit wild and there could be drivers, et cetera, and I think anybody who's been in this industry knows how hard that is to manage dispatch for your drivers and take 45 minutes to just do like a podcast recording. Yeah, of course. You know, one of my favorites, just this little side story is, uh, helping this customer unload and, uh, you know. Customers may be come with a chip on the shoulder every once in a while and it's a big load. And he drove through 10 other scrap yards to come to us and doesn't like how I'm unloading the truck with him. So he goes, oh, I want to talk to the manager. Said, yeah, no problem. So I go inside, I change my shirt, put on a hat, come back out. Hey, how can I help you? And his attitude changed really quickly and now we're best of friends. Oh man, I love that. Look, I've heard many times people being like, can I speak to the manager? And they're like, yeah, hold on one second. Hi, how can I help you? But I haven't heard them go in and, and actually get changed. I love it. You've gotta be there though, man. You've gotta be on the tools. You've gotta be on the scale. Like in order to be able to, to run the show, you have to be able to do exactly what goes on and every other person in your yard is doing so, so you've been 10 years. Doing all the work, I guess still gonna carry that on for another, how many, you know, many decades. Your dad is still on the tools. I mean, I walk around with your dad in the yard. He knows exactly what's going on with every pound that's on the floor and every machine that's operating there. And he's been in it for how long now? Oh yeah. His whole life. I mean, just this entity alone's been the last four decades and, you know, he came to America in the eighties, started it with, uh, my mom, so just them two. And, uh, we've hit the ground running ever since. And, and he was in, um, recycled middle recycling in South Africa as well, right before he came over. Yep. And then, uh, came here. He started, uh, smoking aluminum, doing in guts. You know, you know the old story. The market drops overnight and all of a sudden we're buying everything. So no more just aluminum. Now we're taking, you know. Oh, aluminum, brass, copper, steel, and grew into the company we are today. And every, uh, every company and every person's had their own setbacks and obstacles to get through. And I'm sure we've had our own fair share, but it's kind of that, uh, last man standing mentality. Ambitious. Make sure you know the nuclear war goes off, you're the cockroach that's the left here, and you just keep coming back. It's not. It's not how many times you get knocked down. It's how many times you get up. Right. And that's right. And I've heard that saying so many times, but just the other day I was explaining it to my son and I was kind of like, it just makes sense because if you get up every single time, you can't fail. Like literally you're just onto the next project. You learned from the previous time you got knocked down and you just keep getting up. And be the cockroach at the end. Right. Um, you know, last, Ben, I love it. It's awesome. What, um, your day to day, I guess, um, is made up of a mixture of dispatch and everything else, right. What's it looking like now? Yeah. Um, I try and like focus on sales as much as I can.'cause you know, you are reaching out to new customers, new leads, um, but it's all the customer experience as a whole. Um, you know, waking up in the morning, 5:00 AM making sure all the drivers are out, coming into the yard, making sure everyone knows what they're doing, that we're all on the same game plan. Um, talking to everyone about what loads are coming in, what loads are coming out, um. Speaking, uh, you know, customers in the yard making sure they're having experience, they're getting helped, getting in, getting out, and um, really that's just the name of the game is it takes a village. So helping everyone be successful, that's how you have a successful company. You know, I don't really care who did what or what happened. You know, I'm more of a solutions based type of guy, so you ought to be that positive driving force that's really pushing everyone all the time. And it takes a lot of energy and effort to do it. But between me and my parents and my sister and my family and my wife does HR and my brother helps out the business, uh, you know, we're all pushing. So. So it takes everyone. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. I love that. I love that village vibe though. It's awesome because everybody's, you know, motivated to achieve the same goal, and that's so vital. If you go to the bigger corporates and you go the other companies where it's just a mishmash of, of different companies that have come together, it's so easy to just. Misalignment and it's like, well what's your intention here? Right. Whereas, at least with you guys, it's like we all have the same intention. Everybody's goal is to make Eminem, you know, take it to the next level. You don't have to ever worry about other people's intentions. Makes life much easier. Yeah, of course. And uh, you know, we have 56 other families to feed that rely on us, so, you know, they gotta. Know that we're pushing the right direction, and in turn they take ownership and they look out for the company. And you find a core group of people that's got everyone's best interest. And you know, it takes a village. So everyone's gotta pitch in and be on board and, you know, we, we enjoy it. So that's the number one thing. When, um, in your, in your decade of, of operating in this business and I guess almost a life of, of kind of watching it all happen, can you think of like a trade where either on the buy side or the sell side, which is kind of been integral in your, in molding the way you operate, and even if it's, you know, something your dad went through and he instills in you guys? Yeah. Um, yeah, I'll speak more to, um. To us trying to close, um, maybe a customer or choosing equipment just'cause I feel like as far as material, what goes, you have a buyer for everything, right? You always have a home for stuff. But, uh, something that stood out to me fairly recently. Is, um, we've put in a full blown shredder operation and now we're starting to bolster the downstream and we like to walk forward and run and one thing at a time. So we're doing our research and we're visiting hundreds of different equipment manufacturers, and we're talking to everyone and we're getting quotes and we're doing trial runs of our material on their machines. And this one equipment manufacturer. I just, one day I get this nasty email, I've wasted all this time with you and spent all this energy with you, and you're not buying my product and I'm never gonna work with you and help you and sell you. And I'm just thinking to myself as someone in sales, I'm like, look, the scrap industry, I can't say it enough. You gotta have some tough skin. You gotta be able to take rejection. And we haven't even chosen the equipment yet. So he. Jumped ahead before we even said no. And I'm thinking to myself like a, this guy, whether his father worked with my father and his equipment's good, at least for right now, I'll never buy equipment from him, first of all. And second of all, from my own sales perspective, it's like. You know how many customers have told me no, and I still put them on the calendar in a month to call them and shoot the shit and say hi, and make sure everything's going well. And if anything changes, just keep me in mind. Like you, you gotta take your emotion out of it. So that's, um, a recent example where now everything I'm going into, I'm saying like, even if they say no, even if they reject me, like. Forget about it. I might be mad. Let it roll off my back and I'm gonna call you the next day. Don't worry, I'll call you in two weeks. I'll call you in a year. And like I said, we're not going anywhere, so eventually someone's gonna piss you off. You're gonna have a bad experience, gimme a chance. We'll make sure you're happy. Probably not the best sales strategy that I've ever heard. Um, probably not something gets taught in college, um, to fight with the person you're trying to buy from. Um, and hopefully that, uh, they'll just give in and say, oh, I didn't know you felt like that. Um, now that you're angry, let me please let me buy from you. Uh, so yeah, not something I would expect everybody to follow, but a great, great story of what, of what not to do. But I mean, there is a lot of nos. I mean, when we're out there buying, you're out there trying to find different industry accounts and, and they've already got somebody servicing them. You get nos all the time. You've gotta be thick skinned. You've gotta be able to just roll with the punches. Otherwise, um, yeah, you, you, you're not cut out for this game if you can't. Yeah. I mean, um, you know, the, Scott, there's only a hundred pennies in my dollar, so if it's price or if it's this or it's that. I can only offer you what I can offer you. You know, if you decide to pull the trigger, we're gonna make sure that we keep you and you can have a good experience and we're gonna do what we say we're gonna do. That's the only thing we can do. So everyone else, good luck to you. There's enough good business out there. You know, you, you said something, you said there's always bias for my metal, right? There's always bias for metal. There's an insatiable demand globally for recycled metal. There's no, that's not in question. Right? But how do you choose who to sell it to? Right. How do you make that choice? Because everybody wants it, right? No doubt. You're like every other metal recycler who's getting thousands of phone calls every single week of different buyers from different parts of the world, uh, obviously. Price can start a conversation, but at the end of the day, I'll take a penny or two less to have a proper relationship. If, uh, you know, you've come to visit my yard or I've met you at a trade show, or you pick up the phone when we call you or, um, you know, we give you a few loads and if there's any downgrades, we have a conversation before you just hit us. Like, that's what we're really looking for because. We know on both ends. Not every load can be perfect. It's not, you know, there's always things that come up. It's how you handle it and work through it. So it goes without saying. We obviously have to pay for the material and, uh, we learn the hard way quickly, you know, get stuff up front if it's going FAS or whatever it is. Um, so of course money and price comes into everything, but, but it's about the real trick is the relationship. You know, are you picking up the phone? How have we met you? You know, that type of thing. You can expect a lot of phone calls after this if you sell to people who phone you because, uh, every buyer is now like, okay, we got Ryan. We'll get his number. Um, and if anybody's wondering, Ryan's number is 5 8 2 7. I'm just kidding. Go ahead and call me. I don't think I shoot me a text. It's funny because, um, you threw in, oh, and they need to obviously pay us near the end. You know, most, a lot of people are like, payment terms are really important and anybody can offer you any price in the world. I can offer you a million dollars a pound and just not pay. So like, um, a lot of the times, like, well, payment is, is obviously up there, number one. Let's flip it now. What about on the buying side? You spend a lot of the time on the road trying to buy material. What are you telling people to sell to you? Why should people, um, be selling to you? And, and actually that's door trade as well, right? So, um, the retail trade as well as industry. Yeah. So kind of the same things I was alluding to is, are you picking up the phone, are you standing behind what you spoke about? So if we talk about material, you have a job in a month and we quote you 10 cents or whatever it is, and the market's changed, you know. Are you gonna hold the price? Are you gonna pay me on time? So our biggest thing is service and the customer experience. Whereas, you know, I tell people, Hey, here's my cell phone, don't bother with the office. Don't bother about calling 50 people. We'll take care of you. You need a truck, we'll send a truck. You, you want a price for something? Here's a price you got. Material needs to be picked up. We'll be there tomorrow and then we'll make sure we're there tomorrow. So that's what I love, being in a small, smaller company. I like to say that we're. Small enough where we can make pivots and be flexible and take care of things, but big enough where we can also handle everything that we say we can. It's really just doing what you say you're gonna do. If we double click on that a little bit. You guys have just lately started doing a lot of social media work. We've seen you on LinkedIn, et cetera. You know, how much marketing do you do? Do you have people on the road that are going out and visiting? I, I'm sure you're obviously one of those people, but do you have others? Are you paying higher prices for the door trade to come in? What are you tactically doing? Yeah, so it's funny, you know, the crossroads of, um, old school and new school and working with my parents and changing new things. So when you first come into a industry or a business, maybe before you even learn things, people, they always seem to wanna change everything before they learn. Or, Hey, we should be doing this before they see how it's done. So, um, the last, I wanna say four decades, we've just been. Heads down under the radar, word of mouth will grow organically and we have a sign on the side of the road. You see us drive in, then you have a good experience. You tell your buddy not in social media, you know, we're not putting ourselves out there. Um, now, recently since um, my sister's come in and we weren't doing marketing, and in this day and age you. Have to, or you can, it's a big avenue to go down if you do wanna bolster sail that way. So we're just starting to get our feet wet there, and, and it's great. You know, there's, there's the meeting of two minds of, you know, we're still gonna put our head down and be under the radar and keep quiet, but we're also gonna be posting over here on, Hey, we had a good month. We had a bad month. Come to Georgia, come to Atlanta, see what we're doing. So, you know, Eminem recycling here in Atlanta is a place to be. Yeah, look, I've seen it and it's really good. I think Sarah's an absolute legend. I think, um, what she started doing for the company has been brilliant. I think your future is extremely bright with the combination of, of you and her as well as your other brother playing a small role. But, um, I. Just starting to get into the, the social media side of things I can see is gonna have a big effect on your business. You're gonna find more buyers reaching out, you're gonna find more people looking to sell to reputable companies, and you start to get seen as a reputable company. So, um, yeah, I think we've seen that as well. A good bit. Attraction. Oh, really? Awesome. So tell me more. Well, Sharon was featured in recycling with Rema, and that's just because she started posting and then they just have a conversation and you know, the more you put yourself out there, whether it's marketing or sales, or even just walking around your own yard, the more things come back. Kind of, you know, karma in a way. Yeah, absolutely. Talk me through how you're making some data-driven decisions. So the next generation surely has to be looking at more data. What are you guys using at the moment and how do you see that changing in the future? Yeah, of course. Um, for me everything's just volume of scrap, right? I mean, volume solves a lot of problems. Obviously it's gotta be the right pricing. It's gotta make sense for your company and what you're trying to do at the time, but you have to know what are your selling points at? What are your price points at? What are your margins that you can work on? When you have a thousand customers at X and you have a big load come in, can you give'em a few extra cents to keep the customer happy and get the material in? But you can only know that if you know where you're at. Um, and then as far as like processing. Uh, cost per ton. You know, what are you shipping material out at? What is your freight costing? So you really have to have the big picture of everything to be able to make these decisions. The old adage I use with any dispatch rehab is, you know, you have to be tracking your drivers all the time if you're gonna change your out and make decisions. Because when things change, which they do constantly, you're at a loss if you don't know what's going on. So, um. And the way we track that is, uh, we've put in a green spark the past year or two. So we've gone in all of our software up to date as far as, um, point of purchase. So we're tracking what all of our yards are buying, how much of what, where's the inventory? Where's the material? How close are we to loads? Um, our dispatching and everything is digital. Our pre-trip, our driver's routes. Everyone's given a phone where they just download an app. I can be anywhere do it from my hip. So, uh, we really are in the new age and I think you have to embrace technology and really adapt if you're gonna grow. Yeah, we busy working with Sarah at the moment and you guys just to helping you with a couple of AI tools to help you with training and things like that, which we'll be bringing out at a later stage. But, uh, yeah, just something. Something quite fun that I think, um, you guys are using as well and you definitely are starting to embrace it, which is awesome. Now, I guess I, I like to ask how people manage key person risk because if you lose your key people, it's quite a difficult, um, operation to run'cause you've gotta train new people, et cetera. And I know you guys are training a whole bunch of new people. Your key management, I guess your executive, maybe your exec are made up a family. What about everybody else? Like how do you make sure number one, you're keeping them. Number two, if they do leave or get hit by a bus tomorrow, that there is a process to allow another person to come in and take that role or take the the tasks and, and handle the role. Yeah. So we've had people, um, who've worked with us for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, or kids have come into the business and that only happens when they realize, like you said, their core family driving the company actually cares about their employees. You know, we're a family owned and operated business. I have kids myself. It would be crazy to think, oh, your daughter has a recital one Friday of one month of the year that you want to go to. We're not gonna say no, you know? Gotta make it a place where, yeah, you're, you're busting your, your butt here, you're out work, you're here all the time. You're doing what you need to do. Taking off the last two hours on a Friday to go do something that's not the end of the world. Just make sure everyone's cross-trained under you, people have your back. So it really does take everyone, like you said, a common goal, common team to really drive the whole company because when the company does well, then everything can be dished out to everyone from top to bottom. And uh, we really strive to have an open door policy. I tell everyone. You have an issue with anyone on the yard at home? We said it didn't say you don't like it with work. Not with work. You have my cell phone. You know where I sit in the office, come talk to me anytime about anything. It can be personal finance. Your girl broke over you, your dog died. Someone at works hap I don't care. You know? We'll work it out. You're at work. More than you are at home. You're at work 90% of your life. Your work family's gotta be people you enjoy being with, you know you want to go to war with. And if it's not, honestly, find a new company'cause we don't want you here if you're not on board, if you don't have the work ethic, if you're not ready to go to battle and at the same time, enjoy and celebrate it together afterwards as well. It's hard as a South African family because the work ethic in South Africa is intense. Like it's, you're expected to be there every minute of the day, and that's not just the working hours. Like I remember, oh, I worked crazy, crazy hours and everybody in the middle recycling industry has. But in South Africa it's kind of a, a little bit of a different operation and at another level. So, uh, sometimes you have to push back against your dad at all. Well, no, I'm on, I'm on his side all the time. Actually. We, uh, we, he's instilled that work ethic in, in all his kids and me especially having the opportunity and being lucky enough to work with him every day. You know, you're fighting, uh. The new school of, well, you know, I need a get a drink of water. I need to sit down and I need to take a break. And we're all for that. Of course. If it's hot, take care of yourself, you know, juice gotta do. But at the same time, it's a scrap industry. We're here to work. So like people say like, oh, I'm on my lunch break and I. Lunch. What's that? Let's, let's go get another customer. Let's go torch some more scrap. Let's push out another load because we're the ones doing it as well. Then everyone does it together. So, and how do you see technology changing the way you guys operate in the future? Like, what is there coming down the line, whether that's downstream stuff you've looked at, or the future of robotics or whatever it might be for you? Yeah, I think all technology in every aspect of the yard's important. Whether it's making maintenance on a new crane easier, or whether it's a more robust processing, like you alluded to downstream. Just, you know, when you go down that rabbit hole, it's an endless game you can play. So you really gotta pick and choose what are we doing this year? What's gonna get us to our goals fast enough? Um, so. Implementing technological changes that make sense in the industry before the shiny ball syndrome. So you work with all these conveyors similar to a waste industry where they have robotic arms that can pick out the trash from your picking line. But maybe that's not the first thing we're gonna spend on when we can spend on another ED current, something like that. So sure, you have to look at everything. You have to be open to everything'cause it's changing all the time. But you gotta make the right decisions for yourself. Um, I'm, I'm a big fan of walking before you can run, don't overextend yourself. So maybe have the volume before you invest in a new machine, because we'll get the machine to work, we'll make the end result. But, but if you buy a machine bigger than you can buy it and then you're trying to feed in material you don't have, that's when you get into trouble. So. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you about that, you know, the process of buying new equipment. You know, are you, do you guys sit down as a family, have a, a structured meeting and decide, okay, we're gonna do this? Or is it, oh shit, we've got so much volume of this coming in, it's about time we looked at some more equipment downstream or another baler or whatever. What's kind of your process did you guys go through before you buy? Like how did you go through decide to buy the shredder or the downstream? Yeah, it's a bit of both. Um, so we're talking all the time, literally all the time. My wife sometimes says, Hey, can we go to dinner and not talk about work tonight? And it's like, I can't, it's just in my blood. Um, it's the way we grew up, but so we are, we're talking all the time about what our hopes, wishes, and dreams are. What's happening, what do we need? Um, so it gets to a point where you have a gut feel of kind of where the company's going and what we need. So like, for example. Me and my dad Clinton are having a conversation over and over again about, oh, we have more loads than we can handle for our trucks. Then obviously the next conversation is maybe we need to buy another truck. So would you guys run a return on investment? Uh, any sort of Excel sheet? I mean, I worked at, you know, the biggest metal recycling company in Sub-Saharan Africa and we didn't even always run that. We used a lot of gut feeling and you know, things have changed. A lot of the big corporates is a whole CapEx process. Are you guys kind of in between or you just gut feel, Hey, let's go ahead and do that. Go find me the best option. Or is there like a lot of structure that goes into it? No, it's um, it starts with a gut feel and then you gotta dot your i's cross your T's and make sure it makes sense and works and that comes afterwards. But we have to be here every day running it, having our thumb on the pulse to know. What's coming next and what we think we need. And I'm lucky, uh, where my dad's been, boots on the ground in the business in the last 40 years. So a lot of his experience, expertise, I mean, he is got a knack with machinery. He is a numbers guy. He is, you know, that's just in his wheelhouse. So I sit next to him every day and learn something. Yeah. Machinery and numbers. It sounds like the perfect scrap guy. Right. Yeah, exactly. You don't need to go to college. You just get into the yard and you'll learn very quickly, uh, numbers and machinery. Oh yeah. If you were to look back, I mean, what's the worst piece of equipment and the best piece of equipment you've ever bought? And you don't need to mention the brand names. Sure. Uh, let's see. Uh, I mean, the, the best piece of equipment I would have to say, just because it, it's helped. Taking our company to the next level. Well, maybe kind of in tears actually, is we bought a few stationary, um, shears where we're creating, uh, mix one and two bales, mix one and two packages, heavy metal plate. Um, and that was the first five or 10 years before we got into our current operation and that allowed us to. Reopen the conversation with the mills. Um, call all those old relationships we had before when we originally had a shredder and, um, start sending them material. They get to know our company again, get to know we're consistent. Um. So the, uh, like I said, the walk before you can run is you buy that middle tier machine that isn't maybe what you want or what you want to get, but it opens the door for the jumping point to, to do bigger and better things. And then obviously that led us into saying, okay, hey, all this mix one and two, this could all be shred and made a number one shred. And now let's look at the numbers and see if we can make that happen. And five years later, here we are. So you're saying a mid-size static share. Was the best thing. You got the best piece of equipment. Your board. Yeah. Tell us the brand and recent to date besides the current share. Uh, the brand we bought was a little fort. Um, great company, great service. It took care of us and, um, you know, it's a very easy machine to operate. It did what it, what it needed to do. You got a push your ram and a blade and that's all you gotta take care of. Uh, make sure you're greasing it. It's got hydraulic and fuel and like I said, just start overloading it with material. Did they use that same sales strategy that worked so well, um, which was to fight with you at the time of sales in case you, uh, left. Yeah, exactly. When we were looking at all the machines that we wanted to buy, they got a little antsy. No, no, they're good. Yeah. No, that's, no, that's awesome. You know, you told that story earlier and I was just thinking about some bad sales. Um. Stories or, or what happened with me. I was in New Zealand and we couldn't get environmental approval to put in a static shredder, right? So a fixed shredder. So we had to go with a mobile shredder. Um, it wasn't my first choice, um, but unfortunately we did have to, um, I'd run many, um, much larger shredders in South Africa, and I knew what I wanted and unfortunately I had to go with the mobile. So I reached out to a couple of them, and I think there were only maybe two, maximum three of them. It seemed any good. Um, one I visited, which, um, is a beautiful part of the world. I went to go visit them and it seemed pretty good. So I reached out to one of the mobile shredders, um, which I wanted to speak to. And, um, instead of replying to my email, they forwarded my email to one of the opposition in New Zealand. Who had just ordered one of their machines and they actually told them that I was in the market to buy a mobile shredder. Now, at the time, I didn't have a mobile shredder. I didn't want it to get into the market that I was bringing another shredder into Auckland, New Zealand. And immediately they forwarded the mail onto like a whole bunch of other people to tell them all that I was in the market for, for a shredder. I found that absolutely insane. Like these guys could have sold two mobile shredders into Auckland within the space of like a month, and, and Auckland's not a big market. And instead they went and told. The other client that I was looking for, and I, I didn't know how that was a sales strategy. I'm not sure how that strategy works. Um, obviously needed to say I didn't buy that shredder. That shredder out of interest is the same brand that you have, um, which is why I never got the one that you had. Not that I know which one would've been better, but, um, yeah. Very, very crazy sales tactics. You know, we learn a lot school about, you gotta know when to say no, you know. You can't, so you think they were just saying no to me. You think they were just saying no to me. They were just like, maybe actually no, I was just saying maybe they, you're gonna ask them reports and they can't get anything to New Zealand and then you think, oh, this is a terrible machine. They didn't service me. I don't know. They just sold a machine into New Zealand. So if anything, having two would make things easier for them, I would think. But what do I know? I don't, uh, you know, those aren't the sales tactics I've used in my businesses before. No. Anyway, so they lost out on a sale and, uh, ruined my opportunity to go in. Um, more stealth. You still bought in a mobile shredder and, and took a lot of the market. So, um, I wanted to ask you on Born Scrappy, I think you've probably watched maybe one or two of the episodes. Who would you like to see next on the show, whether it's an individual person or more roles that you'd like to see? Yeah, I'm gonna be honest. You know, we keep our head down and we stick to ourselves. So I can't tell you anyone per se, who would like to hear from. But, um, but I think you've done a great job of, of collecting, um, a wide range of people from top to bottom. I've listened to a bunch of episodes. I've liked them all. Um. I know anyone who really has something to offer a little bit of experience or brand new, but can just tell their story and bring another perspective where, uh, you know, oh, I didn't think about this, or, Hey, that's a good point. Or, you know, so if you've done a really good job of curating, um, some good podcast episodes, so keep'em coming. Do you prefer the consumer side, the broker side, or the scrap side where the operators. Uh, for your podcast or for me personally, like in the day to day for you to listen to, which one do you prefer? Um, probably the scrap side. I just love, uh, boots on the ground, listening to people have yards. How are they setting it up? What are their pitfalls? What are they overcoming? How are they doing it? Because obviously there's a lot of offshoots to our industries and everything in the scrap industry, but at the core, you know, it's that person who has the yard or, or multiple yards and anything in between that are fighting that battle every day, you know? Yeah, I hear you. Absolutely. Something you can relate to. Yeah. So before we head out, let's, um, get to know Ryan A. Little bit better. So, uh, you should know what's coming now. Sure. But, uh, have you got a favorite TV series or movie? Uh, yeah. So I watch a lot of shows that I do. So I'm gonna give a few top movies here for you. Um, we can go with Wayne's World, Rocky, really all the Rockies. Um, Scarface Gangs in New York. The Sandlot is a childhood classic. Wow. So there's a few good ones. If you haven't seen'em, check'em out. I mean, I think I've seen every single one of those. I think, uh, the one that sticks out for me would be the number one Waynes world. So, uh, it kind of molded my childhood. And just yesterday I was talking to somebody about Zoolander and I said, um, you know, there's so many quotes I used from the movie Zoolander, as well as, and I said to, as well as the movie Wayne's World. That is just like general. Language for me, it's just my, in my vocab on a daily basis. So yeah, that's tell, you know, you like the movie when you're quoting it all the time. Absolutely. What's your favorite place to visit? Um, instead of, uh, individual place? I just love really any adventure. I'm a big, uh. Backpack, throw all your stuff in a case and go slumming it and meet people and try new foods and get up to no good and see what's out there in the world. So I've, uh, lived in Japan. I've been to Asia, China, Southeast Asia, all over Europe. My family's South African. Uh, we have family in Australia. So I've been, I've been lucky enough to go all over and, uh, there's really nothing better than just the, um. The adventure, just the freedom of not knowing what's coming next. I think you need to get to the south island of New Zealand. I think that'll be life changing for you. Yeah. That's on the to-do list, for sure. Yeah. You've got, you've got three kids to look after at the moment, so good luck. Good luck with that. I'm gonna stop them to my back. And they're coming with, they're coming with, I love it, man. Amazing. New Zealand's the place for that. Absolutely. New Zealand's amazing. What, um, what's your favorite book? Um, the Gray Man series if you're into like CIA thrillers. Yeah, that's a good one. Also the Gray Man series. I don't, there also, um, also the best CIA kind of thriller kind of thing was I am Pilgrim. Have you read? I Am Pilgrim? No, no. I'll have to look that one up. Eh, if you like that genre, it's probably one of the best books ever written. Like, it's, it's absolutely phenomenal. It's written by a Hollywood screenwriter, so it's written like a movie, and when you read it, it's literally like you're watching a Hollywood blockbuster. It's, it's unreal. Oh, that's great. Uh, last thing is, what's your favorite quote? Uh, favorite quote? Let's see. I like, um. You know, you can't take life too seriously'cause you're never gonna make it out alive. So the end of the day, it's just a piece of scrap, you know, it's just a dumpster. Yes, it's important and we take it serious and we all rely on this business. What's the movie? This and that. But I don't know if that's from a movie, just, uh, it's from a movie. It's a hundred percent from a movie. It's, I watched too many to remember from a movie. Oh man, I'm gonna have to like message you after this. It's, um, it's either the woman or the man tells their partner whatever, and the couple, um, you can't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive. Um. Anyway, I'm gonna find it out and I'm gonna message you that later. And if anybody else is listening, send me a random message and be like, this is the movie that it's from. Or Stuart, you're an idiot. It's an old quote from blah, blah, blah. And it was not from a movie either way. Ryan, it's been awesome having you on the show. Um, glad we could put this together. Looking forward to seeing you in person again, you man. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you.