Shaping Tomorrow’s Industry with Nathan Workman

In this week’s episode, I sit down with Nathan Workman from Pure Aluminum. We explore the future of aluminum and the lessons he’s learned from over a decade in the industry.

Nathan started his career at Kaiser Aluminum, where he worked in casting, logistics, and metals trading before making the leap to Franklin Metals and Pure Aluminum. Today, he’s helping launch Pure Aluminum’s new secondary facility, rolling out an ERP system, and using data and AI to make smarter, faster trading and operational decisions.

We dive into his journey from atmospheric science graduate, aka weather buff, to aluminum trading pro.

In this episode, we talk about:

👉 Lessons learned from trading and negotiations

👉 Using AI and data to drive smarter operations

👉 Culture, empowerment, and leadership

👉 Building partnerships that last

👉 And more!

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 10 football 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

0:00

Hi, I'm Stu Kagan and welcome to Born Scrappy, the podcast for scrap metal 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 sit down with Nathan Workman from Pure Aluminum to explore the future of aluminum and the lessons he's learned from over a decade in the industry. Nathan started his career at Kaiser Aluminum where he worked in casting logistics and metal trading before making the leap to Franklin Metals and pure aluminum. Today's helping launch Pure's new secondary facility and using data and AI to make smarter, faster trading and operational decisions. We dive into his journey from atmospheric science graduate AKA weather nerd to aluminum trading Pro. In this episode, we talk about lessons learned from trading and negotiations using AI and data to drive smart operations, culture, empowerment, and leadership building partnerships that last and so much more. So let's get into it with Nathan, but first intro. Hey Nathan, how are you? Good, Stu. How are you doing today? Yeah, awesome. Thanks man. Uh, welcome to Born Scrappy. We spoke about this just the other day and having you on, so I'm glad we can make it happen. Yeah. First off, I'd like to, to thank you for having me on here. I've been following you on LinkedIn and, uh, seeing what you're doing yourself with your, with buddy, what you're doing with the, uh, podcast itself. And it's really exciting and I love your attitude and your upbeat feel about everything in the scrap industry. And it's good to see somebody like you out here. So well greatly appreciate you having me on here. Thanks, Nathan. I appreciate that man. Um. You know, for us, we've had conversations around pure, around Franklin. I thought it'd be really cool to get you in and have the conversation kind of give us a feel for, you've got both operations, you've got a lot of experience on both sides, consumer and supplier. Thought it'll be great to have you be able to tell us the journey of both sides and, and all your answers I think are gonna be symptoms on the scrap side, sometimes on the consumer side. Quite excited to hear more about that journey, but I think, like I always like to do, let's kick us off with what got you into this industry. How did you get into metal recycling and talk us through, you know, where you landed now. So yeah, it's actually, I wasn't born into the industry, right? So it was kind of, uh, I found my way into the industry, which I think it's, uh. A couple different ways that occurs, right? Either you're a family operation or you know, what, one day you just start working somewhere and it just kind of feeds it way through. And, uh, I kind of went that route. So I am a meteorologist, interesting fact by me. I have my degree in atmospheric science from the Ohio State University. So that's what I wanted to do since I was a kid. Um, but things with family and all that made it work out Where I started working for Kaiser Aluminum in 2015. I, I needed a job. My, my ex-wife had a bleeding disorder. We needed insurance. So I had a couple friends that worked at Kaiser and they got me into, uh, our advanced engineering department there. And what I did there is, uh, I was down in the plant. We cast metal five days a week down there. We were refining, uh, casting there, our processes, uh, if we wanted to change a temperature on something, if we wanna change a water flow on something, or if a, a consumer came to us with a new alloy, they wanted us to cast to see if we can do it. We did it for them, so we just had. Three small furnaces down there. And um, so I did that for about five years and just, it wasn't for me, right? I didn't want to work in the factory all day for the rest of my life. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There's some really hardworking guys out there, but I also, if I didn't focus on meteorology, I would've went the business route. So, um. After five years down there, I went up into the metals trading department at Kaiser. I worked three years with the logistics part of it, so I scheduled all of the inbound scrap into all of our plants, with the exception of our plant out in Washington. So I did that and just kind of kept working at it. Got to see scrap, I mean, because we were using our own internal scrap when I was down in advanced engineering. So I got to see external scrap, which is really fun, right? I got to see shreds, I got to see plate, I got to see everything. And it was really, really interesting. And I'm like, you know what? I want to, I wanna make a career out of this. So I did the logistics thing for three years, and then an opening came up that I was able to join our buy team. So I, I started purchasing and haven't looked back since. And, and I, I love it. And I really think this is gonna be my career for the rest of my life. It's such a fun industry to be in. Talk me through a little bit more about pure aluminum, you know, what differentiates you guys? Where did you come from? Uh, what's sort of the journey look like and what's the future look like for you guys? So I, I work for Franklin Metals slash Pure Aluminum. Now, I've been there since the beginning of the year, so I'm relatively fresh with the company, but I did do business with them at my previous job, and so. We have Franklin Metals, which is located in Lake Odessa, Michigan. It's about half an hour east of Grand Rapids, and at that location we focus. Mainly on three 19 and three 80. The cast alloys, that's been our niche for, Mark's, owned the company for 20 years. He's been there at for about 40, and that's what they've been doing the, the entire time. They, they will make, uh, a million to a million half pounds of 3 19, 3 80 a month. Um, they have some, we have some Pedler yards. Um, we handle our own internal scrap. Um, and so we'll go out, we do some industrials as well. So we've been really refining that over the last 20 years, and it's running great. To Mark, who's the owner of our company, um, he decided, you know what? I wanna do something different. He's had his material processed at secondaries through throughout the years and, um, in 2021 when, when COVID was going crazy still, and there was a very big constraint on secondary processing capacity. I, I remember that when I was at Kaiser. It was very hard for you to get units processed, right? If you had draws, you wanted melted down, processed, if you had. Uh, cans you wanted made into RSI, any of that stuff. There was a long delay in getting that, and also the prices were really starting to elevate. So Mark's been very successful at Franklin. He had some, some capital to invest and he's like, you know what? I want to disrupt the industry. So, um, he decided to buy some land in Saranac, which is about 10 miles north of Lake Odessa, where our current location is. So he decided to build a secondary for Pure. So at Pure we have a, uh, 88,000 pound rotary furnace. We have 140,000 pound reverb furnace, and our goal is to put another reverb furnace in within the next two to three years. And we actually have some really, really big plans that, uh, we're still working on. We gotta get the plant up and running and making some money. First, but we have some long-term, big plans that we wanna to have at Pure. We have a huge plot of land. I think it's around 55 acres, so we got plenty of room to expand. So Nathan, you know, I'm, I'm excited to watch this journey. I think Mark seems, um, pretty impressive and uh, no doubt there's gonna be some great outcomes. Let's just go back in history a little bit, you know, in order for you to be where you are now, focus on procurement, et cetera, you've done a lot of buying. Um, has there been any trade that stood out for you where, you know, something either went wrong or right and it just kind of taught you something that will always stick with you? So, uh, that's a, that's a great question and one thing I think about there is lessons to be learned on every trade, right? One of the things that's frustrating for us, I think in the industry and nobody wants to hear a phone call about is when you get a rejection, right? The load arrives at the plant, it's shifted. There's some quality issues. All that stuff, but I actually think that's a, a fun opportunity, right? Because that's when our negotiation skills really kick in, right? If you can convince the guys at the plant, like, Hey guys, let's, let's take care of this. This is a one-off, this is a great supplier because I hate wasting freight, right? If you're moving a load to the plant. And then you reject it while you're losing that freight there, you're losing the weight freight back. You gotta send the load back in, and then you have to drive out with the load when it's offloaded. Right? So those are the difficult but fun experiences because it, it really kicks our negotiation skills into play. But, uh, for a specific case, um, last year, um. I don't know if you remember the UBC market went just crazy. We had a very good favorable contract. If the suppliers were to deliver on those contracts, they would've probably went out of business. Um, and so what we ended up doing is we had to do, and I think it kind of happened in, throughout the industry where we, we worked with the supplier to kind of find the middle ground to where we could still get our supply in, and the supplier's not getting, uh. Killed because, I mean, some of our deals were in the low sixties, and if you remember, uh, at a point, uh, I think probably September, October last year, spot UBC was going at at 80 plus percent. And, and, and our vendors just couldn't cover that. So that was a very good experience because it made to realize that this is a partnership, right? Anything that you do in our industry is a partnership. So when you're buying scrap. Um, the salespeople can't win every time, right? And if you're selling scrap, you can't win every time. It's gotta be a, a common ground where everybody's succeeding, right? Because if one guy's winning everything, another guy's losing everything. So that experience really stood out last year, was figuring out where we could work on with our suppliers to, to make sure that we got the units, but also make sure that they weren't getting just killed by it. You know, we talk about a win-win on every deal. Both parties need to always leave thinking that they won. Yes. Um, both parties have to have a good leave with a good taste in their mouth, with a good feeling, and that's how you build a relationship and that's how you build a long-term relationship in a way that you'll help you get through any ups and downs that come in the future. But it's quite interesting because I do know, and I've experienced myself. The other side of that where you are caught in a horrible situation and you have to be honorable and supply the material, but you're losing money on everything. Not everybody's the same as you guys, Nathan. A lot of people say, you know, if it went the other way, you would've made me supply. Or you would've, yeah, you would've, um, tried to walk away from it. Right? So it's kind of like, um. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's kind of gotta, gotta work both ways and not everybody is willing to do that. Um, so it's good if you go first because then next time when it goes the other way, you expect them to still supply. Um, e Exactly. So it's, yeah, it's uh, that's kind of what our thought process, right. And with all the vendors that we were able to work that with, we had a great longstanding relationship with those vendors. Right. So, and they supplied into. To all of our plants and that have had great service with us. And, and so it wasn't like we were giving it to everybody, but, uh, we, we, we, we helped out where we could. Yeah. And when it comes to, um, buying or selling, trading in general, how do you decide, you know, who you should be buying from or who you are willing to sell to? You know, what sort of decisions go through your mind when making those those decisions? So obviously we wanna maintain our longstanding relationships, right? We want to go out and talk to the people we do business with. We have established, uh, rapport with them. We know we're gonna get from them, but there's gonna be times out there where you have to go out and dig in the weeds. So, uh, I've been on the road a lot since I've joined the team. I've been visiting a lot of yards. I've been getting some FaceTiming with people. So having that. Face-to-face relationship is very important in our buying strategy. Doesn't have to be that case, but we want to be, we wanna have a face and a name to everything, right? Um, so that's important. Obviously price is gonna be important. Quality is gonna be important when we're looking for material, what volumes we can get. Kind of just the basic, um, the basic answers to things. But, um, the relationship is key, right? Our business is a pure relationship. Driven business. It's, it's everything. Right? And, and with, with technology and ai, it's not gonna replace our face-to-face interaction that we have with people every day. Yeah, absolutely. You threw in. It's a pure relationship industry. Right. So Pure was that, was that on purpose? Right? Pure relationship could be right. Is what you call it now? Yes. A pure relationship with everyone in the factory. Yes. This is a pure relationship. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, uh, I, I am a Buckeye, right? Uh, Michigan is, is pure Michigan. That's a slogan. And that was kind of the genesis for Pure Aluminum, right? Is they're a Michigan based company. They love the pure Michigan side of things, so they kind of did the play on words with pure aluminum, pure Michigan. But as a Buckeye, sometimes that's no, no fun to deal with.'cause I'm not a, I'm not a big fan of the college, the University of Michigan being completely honest. Well, you're, you're stuck in a hard place then. Yeah. Yeah. And my kids, uh, they, they're all Buckeyes too, right? They're young, but they're starting to get into the rivalry and they joke with me every time like, oh, you're going back up to Michigan again. I'm like. Yeah, guys, Michigan pays my bills, so I can't be too hard on'em. Yeah, exactly right. When it comes to buying, you spoke about you're on the road a lot, you are face-to-face. What other strategy do you guys use? I mean. You all want to make bigger margins. Everybody wants to make decent margins. Is there brand awareness? You know, um, is it your location that's important? Are you doing collections more than expecting deliveries? You know, how do you guys operate strategically? So we, at, at Franklin, we have a pretty big industrial slash collection, uh, run that we're trying to grow. We're trying to expand. We're in a great location, right? Northern Michigan, central Michigan. Huge in the auto side of things, right? I mean, you got Detroit. An hour and a half to our east, you have some solid industry, uh, towards, um, Muskegon, Western Michigan. Chicago's not that far away. The Midwest, Ohio, Indianapolis, all of those areas we're in a perfect location to source our scrap, right? So we are really heavily auto dependent. That's gonna be the goal at AT Pure is we're gonna be pretty heavy on the auto scrap, obviously our die casting capabilities. We're gonna really up what we're doing on the die cast side of things. So we will focus on the industrials, but I am going to be doing a lot of dealer scrap. Um. From the vendor, scrap, all that stuff. So, uh, prices. Obviously gonna be the most important driver, but what we can get in, uh, how, how much a, a supplier can supply us, what quality of material that they're supplying us. Those are all huge factors. We spoke just before we started recording, we spoke about you starting to use a bit of ai, um, to help you with some, you know, some tasks that might take you days or weeks to do. How are you using data at the moment to make better decisions in your day-to-day operation? So that's a, that's a really good question because that's something I, I think that even Mark himself would say is that we struggled with, at Franklin, we were, we're kind of a, a traditional old school, um, yard and a ER at Franklin. So we weren't, uh, utilizing data to our best capabilities. But at Pure, we are bringing in, so right now we're in the process of finalizing a couple of different ERP systems. Everything we do is gonna be data driven, right? Um, one of the softwares that we're using is called Aleia. It's a blending software. Uh, so I mean, it will tell you to the pound what you're gonna yield, right? And we're gonna be able to really use that data to optimize what we're charging, to optimize the amount of money that we're making. Because at the end of the day, we wanna make money. That's why we're all in business, right? Um, so AI data is gonna be humongous for Pure. We're really excited about this aleia software. They, uh, they've been really helpful with us. They, um, we're able to take all alloys, right, throw into their system, throw what weights we have, and the system spits out the, uh, optimized blend. And so it, it's, it's huge. I mean, back in the day, right, you would've had a person sitting down, writing everything out, wasting, spending all sorts of time, just calculating things. And we're people, we can make errors. So this software is gonna be very critical for our operations. I hadn't heard wonderful foundries yet, so, and I know quite a few people that have reached out to me looking for one. So that's, uh, that's really interesting. I'm interested to, yeah, to follow that a little bit and hear how it goes. They've been, they've been solid, right? We, we have calls with them multiple times a week. Uh, they're actually at Pure right now getting the system up and running. So, um, we're very excited to use that software. But Nathan, it's just, I just wanna hop a little bit more on the scrap side. I mean, you sound like the majority of the operators that I speak to, there isn't that much data. We could do things better. Like, is there something you guys are looking to change there or are you just living with the fact that Franklin's not gonna have much data? Um, for Franklin, we're kind of living with the fact that we're not gonna have much data. I, I think if we go through and Alea works out well for us, we may might take it down the road and use it at Franklin. As of right now, we're, we're really focusing on optimizing pure more than we are optimizing Franklin because we know what we're doing at Franklin. Um, so, uh, yeah, I would say that we're kind of keeping things standard down at Franklin for now. How do you foresee, um, technology having an effect on this industry in the future? Yes. This, this is one of my favorite questions. Um, so technology is, is huge at pure, or going to have a fully automated cell line, right? So from start to finish, there's going to be an operator at the end of the line and you're gonna have your charging person, right? Besides that. It's, everything's doing it by itself. Um, and that helps out multiple ways. There's a very, there's been a very tough labor crunch, especially post COVID in any industries and definitely in our industry. Right. Uh, it's tough to get guys to wanna work around the furnace all day. And it gets pretty hot up in Michigan, even though it seems like it'd be snowing there a lot. It gets into the nineties and people don't want to be around that heat anymore. Right? So technology in general is helping us. The labor side of things. And not only is it gonna help us with money, it also helps with safety, right? Because being around the metal, if we're being honest, is very unsafe thing to be around molten metal. I mean, we're 1500 degrees, right? Molten aluminum. So something happens, somebody can get hurt very badly. So, um, at Pure, instead of using your traditional graphite, uh, pump. Most people would use, we're gonna use a magnetic based one. And that helps out immensely because we replace that graphite multiple times a year. And it's a hundred thousand dollars, uh, plus a year just in graphite, right? And it, um, affects the environment. You're wasting that graphite, you're mining the graphite and whatnot. So this pump has a 20 year lifetime to it. And so not only is it helping. From a financial aspect, it's helping from an environmental aspect. It's really, uh, technology is, is been huge. I think we've seen a really big change in technology within the last 10 years, and I mean, it seems like every two years the technology gets even better. Two years from now we'll be working with technology. We're like, wow. Uh, I think everybody has put in a shredder in the last five years, five to 10 years. Right? They see how that shredding technology can really. Impact their business and will help with the recycled content of what we're using. Yeah, I think, um, he's talking about the shredders and how fast things have moved. I think with ai, everything's gonna just be moving so much faster. I think we're gonna find that what used to get old after two years is now, you know. Redundant after one year. Yes. With the new technology that's just going to come on through downstream, through sorting, separation, wherever you're looking in our industry, I think you're gonna find a huge effect. We won't see it as AI having the effect necessarily, but ai. Gives people the ability to move faster. So all of a sudden we can come up with ideas faster, execute faster, um, program or engineer things much quicker. And all of a sudden, if it was taking two to three years, you're gonna find that's gonna be shortened in my opinion. And, um, I think that's the scary thing about buying something right now. Yes, yes. Like if I was in the market for downstream, I'd just be like. Do I wait another six months, but when I'm, six months later, do I then wait another six months? Like how, and it's gonna take forever to install. And you know, if I'm putting in a whole new operation, I could be waiting a year to get the whole thing installed. And by the time you're installing it, I'll be kicking myself going, oh, you know, there's the whole new design, there's new technology, and you know, the 1% I was leaving behind now I would be able to remove it if I just had waited six months, waited a little bit longer, months. So it did. It is difficult, right? Yes. Like I wouldn't know when the right time is to buy. I think the right time. I used to always say the right time to buy something was yesterday. Yeah. I now feel like the right time to buy something is tomorrow. Yeah. Um, because you know, yesterday was like, if I had it. Yesterday I would already be making money, so it would be kind of, you know, operating for me. But right now, I look at it and I'm like, well, tomorrow's the best time because there'll be new technology tomorrow. But the problem is how long do you sit in stagnate for? So, uh, it's, uh, anyway, that's how I feel about equipment. It's, it's pretty tough at the moment. I agree with you, and it's just like anything else we use, right? It's like our cell phones, right? The every new iPhone is just like, well, this can't, it can do this with the camera. And it's, well, if you need a new phone, you're like, do I do it now or do I wait till tomorrow? So it's just, it's really cool. We live in a great time, a great time right now with all the, uh, advancements in technologies across the board. There has never been a better time to live. That's for sure. No matter how much the world is messed up. Yes. Um, no. Previous generation has had a better lifestyle than we have and the ability to communicate and do everything with technology has just changed everything. And I think it will continue to change specifically in our industry. Um, there's absolutely no doubt about it. Absolutely. Can you talk to me, Nathan, a little bit about. How the companies use capital for growth. Do you guys, um, wait to be profitable, take the profit vested in new equipment? Are you taking capital? You know, are you taking debt from banks? Do you guys sell equity? What sort of situations have you seen in the company? So, so for Franklin itself, we're, we're a completely debt-free company, right? Mark's, like I said earlier, he's owned the company for 20 years. Uh, he's been very successful, so he doesn't have any debt on that company. Everything that we utilize, uh, is. Spot for, paid for. And so, uh, what with being as successful as he has been, he was able to take a good bit of his capital and reinvest it into making pure, right? Pure is all been set up by Mark. We haven't had anybody else put any money towards building the plant. Amazing. Um, yes. Yes. So, I mean, we, we did have to take some debt for a little, some of the equipment, right? So it's not like he's just went and threw it all up. That way. But, uh, that has been the really cool thing with Mark is because Mark could have been just, you know, what, I, I've made the money I needed to make, I'm gonna sit on it, retire to Hawaii, Florida, and have a happy, easy life. And instead he said, no, I want to, I have a plan, I have a goal. I really wanna to do something cool in the industry. So he, uh, he decided to take his money and put it towards that. Nathan, do you know anybody in our industry that has ever made a decent amount of money and then said, no, I'm just gonna retire and go to Nope. Hawaii or Florida like, and I love that everyone in our industry, I love that we just like, we're, we're different animals, right? We're a different beast. Yes. We just have to, we hungry. We just have to keep going and get better at anything we do and go, whether it's going downstream or pivoting in some way, whatever it might be. Like we are, I think we're all cut from the same cloth. I think guys are just hungry. They all want to just, you know, be more successful and have more of an impact. I think Mark's no different. I think that's exactly it. It's super impressive to be debt free. Like I, I can't think of many companies like that. It's really hard because when you have a company that starts to make money, everybody throws money at you. So now you're profitable. You've got decent revenue. The banks want to give you as much as they possibly can,'cause that's how they make money. So they want to give you everything. And when you're in a position of, well, I'm profitable now, the bank wants to give me$5 million to go buy a piece of equipment, well that, that piece of equipment's gonna make me some money. So it sounds like a good idea. Yes. But often the better way to do it is. Just keep putting that money back and invest that money and do it yourself, because what I've found firsthand is when something happens, whether it's COVID, whatever it could be, for me, the experience was COVID. The bank is very quick to just try and get that back if there's any form of risk, and they go and get it back, and then, um, you're left with having to find five and a half,$6 million to pay them back where your equipment's sitting there. What do you do, right? Yes. It becomes a really hard situation. So going that route, if you can go that route and you can be patient, it's always gonna have the better outcome. Nathan, then let's talk, let's talk about, um, people and culture. How Mark and the team, you know, how you guys view people, like what is it that Franklin and Pure does to keep their people, to make them feel a part of something? Like what do you guys do that might be different or that you're really impressed with and what even brought you over, I guess. Yeah, so I've been dealing with Franklin for the last five years before I joined the team, and I always dealt with the same people, right? That's how I knew it was a good company to work for, is that, um, every time I would go to schedule appointment, or if I was purchasing a material from them, I always dealt with the same person over five years. And I took that into account when I decided to make the change, right? Because I had been at Kaiser for 10 years. It was my job my entire career, so. I wanted to do something that was the right choice and the right fit for me. And Mark does such a great job of empowering us, empowering his employees, supporting his employees, having their back, just like everything else. I mean, with kids, right? Anything in life, you're gonna make mistakes. You're not gonna win every single deal. You're not gonna make, you're not gonna be perfect every single time. But we always know that Mark has our backs. If something goes wrong, we're gonna take it as a team. That's one thing I love about our company, is that we're a team and that we all succeed or we all fail. Um, so that's one of the really big things with Franklin and Pure. And, and another thing is that, that Mark will let you be what you want to be, right? If you just want to, if you just want to operate the furnace your entire career. Great. But if you say to Mark, you know what, 10 years from now, I want to be your right hand man. I wanna run the company, help you run the company. If you show to him that you can work hard and that you are determined, he's gonna let you do that. And I think that, that anybody at the, at our company would say that they feel empowered in the decisions that they make. Um, they know that, uh, that we all support the decisions that are made. Um, so I think that. Having that team environment with empowering people is a very important way to keep them. They feel like they're contributing. They feel like they're making a difference in what they're doing, and nobody wants to go to work where they're just like, where they feel like they're doing nothing, right? It's like, oh, well that's not exciting. That's not a reason to get up every day, where if you feel like you're making a difference, then you're gonna want to go to work and you can see those results pay off. You're going to want to stay with that company. So I just think empowering your people is a huge way to keep them. Keep them on your team, obviously you gotta worry, keep wages into account. I mean, everybody also wants to make money, so, um, money's not everything. Right. Um, but it is a very important factor in what you're doing every day. Nathan, you probably said empowering like six or seven times. Yes. Sorry, obviously comes across. No, it's, it's something that obviously comes across in your day to day. Um, you know, on a daily basis. You guys feel empowered. Yes. Being empowered, letting them feel empowered is probably the opposite of micromanaging, I would say. Um, something I'm not great at is, um, you know, I had 85 yards. Um-huh I got very involved in every, all 85. I would go to the yard and I would tell people to, you know, move that pile over there because the customer experience isn't as good as it should be or clean, whatever it could be. Um. But it's so important to let everybody feel like they're empowered to do their role. Can you give us some examples of how we do it though? Like people that listen to this often ask me. Okay, well great. You gave me the high level idea, but nobody ever says like, how, so what are like examples of, how does Mark make you feel empowered and the whole team empowered. Oh, I mean, and, and. Letting me make very key decisions, right. Uh, decisions that he should probably make. But he trusts me. He trusts that I can do things. I mean, we are trying to get some of our overseas partners for our ERP, uh, over to the US right? To kind of finally implement some things. And, uh, mark said, Nathan take care of it. Right? He doesn't have time with how busy he's going on with this thing to realize, Hey. They're gonna be sending this much money on a hotel, they're gonna be spending this much money on a car. The things we don't think about. Right. But that really affect our bottom line. And Mark empowered me to make sure, hey, what the vendor's saying they're gonna do, uh, I I am going through and, and verifying that and make sure that makes a business sense. Right. And it's not just with something like that, it's with scrap purchases. Right. He empowers me to go out and say, Hey Nathan, what's gonna make money? Um, what do we need to buy to make the money that we need to make, to keep the lights on for me to keep my job? Uh, and Mark doesn't sit there and analyze every single thing that I do, every single pound that I buy. I know what guidelines we have, and if I gotta push those guidelines, maybe I'll have that conversation with him. But he trusts me. He knows that I, I'm looking out for our company's best interest. And so he, he kind of lets me do my own thing, which I really appreciate. I think. You know, what you made me think about there is that, um,'cause you touched on that it allows him to do other things. Um, empowering others actually becomes a force multiplier. So all of a sudden, as a leader of the company, if I'm not having to do all the day to day or certain things and being able to trust others to do it, I can focus on other things, which means now we have two or three people all doing individual tasks, which are really all important if. I'm also overseeing what you're doing, Nathan. Well then we have like one and a half people. Yes.'cause half my time is overseeing everything you do. Yes. So I've only got half a day, you know, in my day to be able to do things that are really gonna turn the dial for me. Um, something that I used to always go back to, we had written up on the wall at one stage. My company was intent. It's all about intention. So if you're leading a team. And somebody messes up, the first question I always ask is, what was their intention? So if somebody messes up and say, for example, you know, somebody I've had lately, you know, maybe they weren't, um, uh, really getting outta bed or really doing what they needed to do, making the phone call, sending emails or whatever they might be, their intention there is. They're not trying their hardest, their intention isn't to do their best. Their intention there is to get away with what they're doing, right? Yeah. Whereas if there's somebody who's like getting in on time or early every day, leaving late every day, working their absolute butt off, but they make a mistake, like they buy a parcel and they overpay for a parcel, or they sell it into the wrong market, whatever happens, right? Immediately I say to myself as the leader, this person didn't mean to stuff up. This person is trying their hardest. They might need a bit of coaching. Let's rather focus on how we learn from the lessons. Yes. Instead of getting really upset with this person now that took me a long time to learn. So, you know, all the time when I was in South Africa and had all those yards, that wasn't how I operated. Only leaving there and setting up my own company in New Zealand rarely helped me start to find that. Um, and that I think is really important if you can empower others, which then frees you up. To become a force multiplier, but when doing that, you have to be aware that you're empowering others to make decisions, and you have to be aware what their intention is. When they made that decision, were they trying to go home early because they were lazy? Were they trying to get away with something they knew wasn't right, were they, you know, up to no good. Or where they're actually just trying their damn hardest, and maybe they're not, haven't learned enough or experienced enough, but you gave them the opportunity to make that decision. So here it is. It's like now we need to do some coaching, or now they learn from that. But the way you manage that as a leader is absolutely vital. And I think if you get that right as a leader, your team must just feel amazing. Right. Absolutely. And, and I've, I've not in a position of authority yet, right, where I oversee employees, but one thing that I definitely, uh, will think of is like if I, if I bring somebody on board, I have to trust that I made the de right decision myself, right? Is that if I go out, interviewed this person, obviously you're gonna have issues with people, what happens. But if I trust this person, I, I need to make sure that I'm trusting myself and that I have the right people in the right position. So, yeah, I think that is really key. Very important is that you trust yourself as well. Yeah. Nathan, just to jump back into equipment side of things, can you give me an experience where you either bought the best piece of equipment ever or the worst piece of equipment ever? If you're gonna tell me. Worst prefer to you, not usually name a brand. Um, but if you can think of a piece of equipment that you've been a part of where, um, it went really bad or really well. So I won't go bad. I will say that there is a piece of equipment that we're having issues, but I'm not gonna go too far into that spiel. I wanna keep it pretty positive, upbeat guy. So I like to talk about the, the good things. Um, but the, the folks at GHI with their rotary furnace that, that we've bought from them have been great. Um, we had them there in, uh, they've actually been here for. About three or four months making sure everything's up and running, ready to go for when we, uh, light the furnace up. But they've been great. Their resources are very intelligent. They know what they're working on. Their equipment itself is amazing. The rotary that we're putting in, like I said earlier, is 88,000 pounds. Uh, so it's a massive rotary. So yeah, I would like to give the shout out to GHI'cause they've done a, a great job with their rotary, the sow line that they've put in. It's, it's been phenomenal. I, I see them at all the conferences. They're a great bunch of guys as well. Yes. Like they're good people. Not only just with good equipment, but they're actually good guys as well. Yeah, yeah. We've dealt with a couple of their technicians and they've been very helpful, very hard workers. Uh, so we're really glad that we partnered with them. Another group that I wanna give a shout out to is Traxxis. Uh, they are our joint venture partner with Pure, as I said earlier, mark kind of, um, he, he's doing all the equipment. At the, uh, facility, he bought the land. But Trais is, uh, helping us from a purchase side and a sales side. So Trais will finance all of our purchases that we're making into Pure, they're gonna handle all the invoicing and all that. So with the folks that we're working with, um, they're gonna just be seeing their pos from Trais if we buy scrap from people. So, uh, I just wanted to give that shout out to the Trais for, for everything they've done with us. Awesome. All right. We need to go into the final few rounds quickly. Um, sure. Who would you like to hear next on Born Scrappy? So, I have a few people I think that'd be great for it. Um, I, I think that, uh, Neil Rifkin at Metal X, uh, he's one of my favorite people in the industry. Uh, he's just a good guy, right? We have a lot of great people in the industry, but he's just a good guy to talk to, talk life with, talk, uh, scrap with. Um, and then another one is my, my really good friend Nick Gorman. Uh, he works at Kaiser. He's seen it all. He's been on all sides of the equation. He's been a cast house manager. He is been a scrap buyer. He has so much insight into the scrap industry. I don't know if you'll get him on there'cause he is not a technology guy to be, to, to be honest. But, uh, he would be a great person to, uh, to talk to. Yeah. Awesome. Alright, before we go, Nathan, quick fire round to get to know you a little bit better. Sure. What's your favorite TV show or movie? Favorite movie? I am definitely, uh oh, like two thousands. Will Ferrell comedy type of guy, right? So I loved old school. I loved, uh, Talladega Knight, so I'm more of a comedy guy. I don't get too much into to thrillers or, um, into horror shows. But then the Netflix show, the Hunting Wives, my, uh, my girlfriend's got me into that show. That's a pretty interesting show. It's a, it's a little crazy, but, uh, it's a really, it's a really fun show to watch. There's a lot going on. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll keep it that way. I haven't. It's, it's, it's fun. I haven't seen the show, but I've seen every one of Will Ferrell's movies. You're in good company here, man. I'm, I'm the same as you. I much prefer a two thousands comedy, um, than I do a horror or thriller. And then we stop making them because I watched Happy Gilmore two the other day and I'm like, no, please, just stop, stop. I'm with you there. I'm with you there. Favorite, favorite place to visit? I'm a, I'm a beach guy, so I love going to Florida, uh, Tampa, Florida, Clearwater Beach. That's, those are my absolute favorite places to go. I, I love, I love being at the beach. Awesome. Uh, same here. Favorite book? Do you read a lot? Uh, yes. I haven't been able to read as much as I like to here lately with everything going on with work, but, uh. I, I'm a, a nonfiction type of guy, right? I like documentary type style books, but, uh, I really like the World For Sale, which is, uh, a huge book with our industry, right? I mean, it's a great book to show you how the world works from a business aspect. So that's one of my favorite books. The, the Trading World is just absolutely wild. It's, it's probably calmed down from those days with Mark Rich, but, uh, yes, it's still. Opaque and absolutely wild out the inside. Yeah, the the oil side of thing was so much fun to read about how the, they were trying to get those, that the oil story is great. Yeah. No, it's, it's phenomenal. Um, have you got a favorite quote. Yes. I don't want to butcher it, but, um, it's, uh, it's by Joe Missoula, who's the coach of the Boston Celtics. And it applies to sports, it applies to business, it applies to, to everything that we do in life, right? It's, uh, it's that everybody wants to win until it's really time to win, and then you have to nut up and do a lot of shit that you don't want to do. And I think that is such a good quote, right? Uh, I, I, uh, absolutely. Have it on, not the adult version, but I have the edited version of that quote on, on the kids' walls. Right. Because, uh, I, I have an 8-year-old and he wants to play sports and sometimes he just doesn't wanna put it into work. Right. And it's just like. If you want to be good, you gotta practice. And it's just with, and it's not just with sports, it's with everything that we do in life. So I think that quote really, really hits right, is that we all want this. We all think, oh, we're gonna do this, but if you don't put on the work, you're not gonna get it. Nathan, you, you're speaking my language, man. I'm like, I've got a 10-year-old and. For so long he wanted to be an All Blacks rugby player. And I was like, he would literally be watching rugby with me and he'd say, Hey, I'm gonna play for the All Blacks, which is the New Zealand team. I'd say, Uhhuh, uh, no, you're not like, and he'd be like, why am I not, am I not able to? I was like, oh, you're able to, but you're sitting down on a couch next to me where there's thousands of other kids right now in the garden practicing. And working super hard at 10 years old. That's what they're doing. And you're super comfortable at home sitting on the couch or playing TV games and that's why you won't be all black and all these other guys will. That's awesome, man. It's been great. Thank you so much for being on Born Scrappy Nathan. This was awesome. Yes. Thanks so much, Joe. I really appreciate the time and again, I think what you're doing in the industry is great. Thanks Nathan. Cheers. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye.