Born Scrappy
This is the podcast for scrap metal traders and operators who want to get sharper without losing their scrappy edge.
Born Scrappy
Moving From “Good Yard” to “Great Business” with Neil Byce
In this week’s masterclass episode, I sit down with Neil Byce, Owner of CW Companies, Vice Chair of ReMA, and future Chair of the association.
Neil built one of the fastest-growing scrap companies in the U.S., with 15 yards and counting. But he’s done it the hard way, by learning what breaks when you scale fast.
This episode is a deep dive into the shift from being a hands-on owner running a good yard, to building a high-performance business that can scale, sustain, and succeed without you in the room.
In this episode, we talk about:
👉 Recognizing the signs you’ve outgrown your systems
👉 Scaling people before you scale problems
👉 Leadership lessons during rapid growth
👉 Why letting go is key to leveling up
👉 Moving from hustle to process
👉 And more!
If you’re a scrappy leader trying to grow your yard the right way, Neil’s insights are absolute gold.
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?
27 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 11 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/
The scrap metal recycling industry has always run on hustle, trust, and sharp instincts. This is the podcast for traders and operators who want to get sharper without losing their scrappy edge. I'm Stu Kagan. Bringing you insights and stories from the people shaping the future of our industry. This is born scrappy. Hey Neil, how are you? I'm good. How about you still? Yeah, I'm awesome man. Thank you. I'm uh. I am excited. This is a topic that I absolutely love. You know, we're doing master classes this season and a lot of them kind of resonate with me, but I think none as much as this one because I've been in the situation of having 85 yards and 4,200 people, but I also have been in the position when I left that and went to New Zealand. Of having me start just by myself and growing that to four yards. And I love this conversation. So if anybody who doesn't know what we're talking about, the masterclass today is gonna be moving from a good yard to a great business and with us Neil Bi from CW Companies current Vice Chair of Rema. Future Chair of Rema. Put the crown on soon. The crown. Welcome man. Yeah, exactly. We have to rip it from Andy. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Um, Neil, go ahead. Yeah, give us a little bit of background. I think all I would say, everybody in the United States, well, north America knows you and your company, but let's say, you know, the international viewers. Tell us a little bit about how you got started and, and what CW is all about right now. Sure. I started in the business in, uh, just after the crash of oh 8, 0 9 and when scrap prices were in a very depressing place and it was very difficult to sell the materials out of college. I went to work for an equipment, um, company that sold. Construction equipment, uh, equipment for the recycling industry, also the timber industry. Uh, I left that place and then took a CFO job at a timber company, but never sort of forgot my friends in the recycling space. And, uh, as the years went by, a friend of mine that I had, uh, grown close to in the recycling space offered me a position and I couldn't say no. And, and that, uh. That was the beginning of it. I remember the days of the runup and, and even in the recycling business in oh eight when, uh, you folks were out directing traffic.'cause we couldn't keep these customers, uh, out of our facilities. And, and the material was coming in way faster than it could be processed. I entered in the business at the bottom of that. Watch it grow back up through 2012 and, and get to a better place, and then 1516 happened and so on and so forth. The yard that I worked for when I got into the business was, it's a family scrap yard. They maybe did a couple thousand tons a month of, of different grades, maybe a truckload a month of non farris materials. And life was good. It was simple and. The business thrived and did well for itself, but I sort of always wanted more. And, uh, the gentleman that I had worked with or for at that time wasn't really excited about scaling his business and was happy with where things were at. Uh, we were doing projects with, uh, partnering company here in Minnesota. Crowing recycling, and that is where I met my partner, grant Van Ren. And that's kind of how we all got our start together. If you'll remember, I think it's starting near 25 years ago now, or 20 years ago, the bridge in, uh, in Minneapolis that spanned the city of Minneapolis to the north part across the Mississippi River failed and collapsed into the river. Many people have lost their lives. It was a, it was a terrible accident here in the Twin Cities. My partner and I now, and the guy I worked for at the time. We're tasked, uh, we, we bid it on an auction. Everybody said we couldn't do it. Uh, we had to clean 8,000 tons of bridge up in less than 30 days. That was our timeline. And we did it working 24 hours a day with portable scales and lots of shearing and torching equipment. And we got it done in 17 days. And that was the beginning of a relationship that has now developed, uh, since 2009 is when that started. And we've grown since then. Talk, talk about where you are now. How many yards have you guys had? There's been a lot of acquisitions, I believe. Uh, where do you guys stand right now? So, I think at last count, and I don't wanna sound like I'm being flippant at all, right. We just added a new entity and we can talk about that too. But we have 14 and just added a 15th, uh, which will be coming to fruition this year in Tennessee. Awesome. Look, I just wanna say one thing, starting after 2008 is absolutely the best time you could have started starting before 2008 was terrible because people got super lazy in their trading. You could literally buy whatever you wanted to for your sales price today, sell it tomorrow and make. 10% on it. It was a very lazy period to learn trading. Nothing could ever go wrong, and that was a good three to four years. And then in 2008 crash, everything changed. The world changed. So to come in then I would prefer that than anything before. Stories, generational stories about 30, 40, 50 years ago when, when those folks couldn't do anything wrong. A$5 swing in our marketplace in the Ferris world was like a catastrophic cataclysmic, you know? Uh, but, but those folks, uh, profit was still in it. Everybody operated, disciplined. Uh, it was a different time too, but. Neil, let's jump into the masterclass because I think we could speak for days on markets and stuff, so I just wanna kind of, you know, explain to everybody what we're really gonna focus on here. A lot of yards, they make money, you know, they're respected locally. The guys, they work hard, they do well, but only a few of those yards or businesses make the jump from being. Good to being great. And we are gonna focus on what breaks on the way, what changes you have to make, uh, and also what it feels like because when you're going through it, which I think Neil, you're going through it, which is really exciting. Exactly. And I think, um, it's easy in hindsight to look back and go, oh, well, it was obvious we would make that decision and we would do that. But while you're going, there's a lot on. Let's jump into the first question. Um, I guess it talks to what I was saying now. There's usually a moment where you think, you know, things are working, but it just doesn't feel right. There's things that we can do better. Can you take me back to a time in your yard where things were good, but you realized that you could achieve much more and be greater? This is a really important philosophical question and I see good to great as some sort of a continuum where you are in some constant flux of that process all the time. You, there are moments when you are good. There are moments when you have greatness, and then you're back to good again. It depends on your business. It depends on what, where you're at in that continuum, whether you're scaling your business, whether it's mature or not. For me, I guess what I would say was. At one point in time, profit was the defining factor for good, right? If you were making money, uh, it created profit. Now, what's interesting about profit is that you weren't failing by any means, and you were winning, but barely. And that winning was fragile. It, it gives you opportunities. It gives you the opportunity to. To create expansion that isn't reckless and it's purposeful. It creates opportunities for creating resources. Uh, it allows you to train your people properly, invest in systems, fix the problems with purpose and confidence instead of, uh, fast in being reactive. The disadvantages to it was you didn't know what you didn't know. I think, I think that that's key and an important part of, of moving from Good to Great is recognizing what you don't know. I think one of my most important stories I would tell is the RIMA story. Environmental health and safety is a great example. It, it is a necessity, right? But as you scale your business, it's also very difficult to afford as ownership. You're part of that solution. You're the environmental person, you're the safety person. You're responsible for a lot of different hats and rules as you continue to grow, that expands and profit affords you that stuff. Uh, I think the, the rema point I was making is what's fantastic about our industry is that. Nothing's proprietary when it comes to our health and our safety in our organizations. Big companies help little companies, and that's just one aspect that we do as a community. So we were able to improve our businesses, um, utilizing other people's information. That's the, you don't know what you don't know part. It's about growing all of that. It kind of makes me think about how collaboration is so important in this industry. How we can come together and achieve so much more, and the industry can be great if we work together. Health and safety is a perfect example of where we do work together. So I like that example. But I wanted to touch on growth and going through that process, which you're going through, right? I find that growth exposes things that were fragile, that you didn't necessarily know when you were kind of happy with where you were. What's something that worked perfectly when you were smaller? Started to break as you started to increase the yards, maybe five yards, six yards, who knows when it happens? Yeah, that's a great question. I think one of the stark reminders was there became a time that you can't ever be great. If you can't not be in the business, if you're always tied to the business, if it's success is directly tied to ownership, being there to make decisions, to help decide on processes to help make sure that loads are getting out, that you can't scale. And if you can't get past that, then you'll always be stuck in some form of good and never getting to the great part. You know, I think one of the quotes I'd say today is informal systems don't fail loudly. They just leak money. Right. So I, I think to answer your question, when we were small, what worked was the hustle and the common sense part of it. We didn't have a ton of systems, but with speed, we were honest and we all worked really well together. So that cohesive group allowed us to mask some of those things that weren't allowing you to scale. As, as we grew the same things that made us fast, started making us fragile, and then you would start seeing chinks in the armor where systems didn't exist. We didn't have a lot of systems and processes because we had answers and we were participating. So at, at that point, you needed to scale management. You needed to scale systems and processes. You needed these folks to come in and create all these work rules and create accountability amongst your people. Without sacrificing culture. I think the biggest challenge that we all face, Stu, is that as we grow, we start to lose the purpose of the business. The purpose of the business was that founding, founding principle that we all have this vision about of what we want our business to look like to our customers and to the folks we buy metal from to that we sell it to. That's the key piece, and how do you not lose that along the way? Yeah, I think it's, I think that's brilliant, man. I mean, you summed that up so well. It is so difficult to scale. People underestimate. Yeah. You know, you get, you can't find yourself in the middle of it, and every day something's on fire. And not necessarily, literally the guys aren't handling the buying correctly. They're not treating the customers correctly. They're not answering the phones like they should be. Trucks aren't getting to the sites when they're meant to get there. All the things that were just so easy when you were there by yourself and your team, you know, they just came to you and, and asked you, or you jumped in. It just becomes so much harder. The, the challenge that we faced in the beginning was profit, as I said, created opportunity. It created opportunity for growth, right? So you could go and buy another business. You had the cash available to do that, and it was euphoric in a sense, right? Because it's easy and it's fun, fun to go buy a new business. And the challenge is integrating that business into your business. You know, the, the buying is easy. The blending is hard. That is, uh, one key piece of that question that I answered now is integrating that into your culture, integrating that into your systems is more than challenging. It, it takes years and, and, okay, Neil, but, but you're telling me, I guess, and I know some listeners who have messaged me, it's like, but tell me how to do things. Like, you're telling me what's wrong and you're telling me what to like, but how do you do it? Look, there's no right answer. I think that everyone's experience is going to be their own. Monday morning quarterback is easy, and as we look back, we can see all kinds of mistakes that we made along the way where you didn't scale at the right time. You scaled too easy, you scaled too soon. Uh, adding layers of management. While it's important, if you saddle the business with too much management at one point in time, and then you hit a down cycle in the business, of course now you've got too much overhead and that creates strains on the business. And conversely, if you don't scale up quick enough, it's the same fight. Now you don't have enough talent, and then everyone else struggles. And that hurts culture. It's terrible on your employees. They're overworked, they're overtired, they're overstressed. Everything sort of puts a strain on the business. I think you know that that great business doesn't create all of that odd chemistry in the business. But what do you do then? Neil, I'm not gonna let you get away with this one. What do you do to try and be great? Like, you know, you say the Monday morning meeting's great, but what else is there that you bring in? What are the systems that you brought in or processes that you're like, this will help us scale? The answer is. You have to bring people in and you have to empower them to do it, and then you just have to get out of the way. I think that's the hardest struggle for a business owner is letting go. Remember how we were talking about in the beginning, Stuart, where you are so integral in the business in one moment and the next business you just keep backing away. And as we go through these questions, I think what you'll find is that. This process includes my partner and I, just having to consistently back away, back away, back away. You start to question your value to the organization as you move forward because it changes and evolves so much over the course of time that who you were in the beginning has to be something totally different today. Otherwise you failed the business. Because when I was a manager, when this thing started, I'm no longer a manager Today. I manage very few people and in fact, my goal is to have. No oversight of anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the perfect, um, um, I agree with, I think people is so vital that that's how you scale. So you know those people that are gonna message me and say, well, how do we actually do it? The answer is depth of talent. You need to surround yourself by really good people. Neil, and I've met a lot of your team and I, I'm glad you mentioned that'cause I do think your team is exceptional. I think you've got a great team around you and that allows you to not only be great right now, but allows you to become even greater, which is just so, so vital. Obviously, I wanted to ask you early on, you run the business in your head. You know all the numbers. You know the prices, people are getting paid, the market moves. You know what to change about, you know, every customer by name. At what stage did you go, I can't run this business in my head anymore. And what forced that change? I, I think the first moment for me anyways, was when I realized that people were waiting on me to do their job. And, and how obstructive that had become in the business. Uh, as I'm over here doing something else to try to grow the business or do something else for the business. I'm no longer focused on the day-to-day, and I'm distracted from it. And so folks that are inside the business trying to do their jobs weren't able to, and it's not that they weren't capable of doing it, but too many decisions that required ownership, you know, potential decision making and, and for us to weigh in, like pricing exceptions, uh, customer issues, equipment decisions, the hiring decisions, operational changes, all those things that. Sort of the day-to-day operational challenges we all faced, those folks weren't empowered to make all the choices they needed to make. So that was, I think the first moment. Yeah, I think it's spot on. It happens to me so many times. I realized as you were talking about that, I was just thinking how many times that happened to me in New Zealand that I have a problem probably with micromanagement and because I've done so many roles in the company, I want to be the decision maker. But as you scale, being scrappy doesn't actually help you in the long run. You have to have those systems. Yeah. When you're small, you can win with hustle and uh, once you start to grow, the business starts demanding that clarity and some of the leadership depth. And otherwise you can't scale. You're just stretching. And that's another inherent danger. All of us is stretching versus scaling. So when you want to be great and you want your company to be great. There's the saying of you need to work smarter, not harder, but smarter. When you think about the context of working smarter, not harder, what does it actually look like in practice for you? It, it has to include decision making at all levels. It has to integrate everybody's thoughts. I'm not gonna say it's completely like a bottom up strategy, right? But it becomes so participative. That decisions become clear and become easy through that process, where if it's counting on ownership to make those choices, that couldn't be the furthest things from smarter anymore because I'm not in there as much as I used to be, or my partner we're just removed a lot from the day-to-day and those decisions. It can't be made by us again. It's just, it's empowering those people to make those choices and creating that environment where they feel rewarded to. I think Tyler Adams said one of these in, they're authorized to fail, right? People are empowered to make choices and take ownership of the wins, take ownership of the failures, uh, and we all learn stuff from that. So it's what you glean from that. I think that's what I would think about working smarter. I guess it's being able to trust your team and also trust the process. Trust that they understand the process, trust that they've been trained. What about on the data side of things? When you talk about having multiple yards now, I mean, is that something that you consider, um, helps you run the business from the top where you don't have people to manage but you kind of wanna look at data to help you make better decisions? I mean, data is critical. Remember in the beginning when you got in business, it was no different than when we got in business, and there were times when we make more decisions by our gut. Than we made using anything empirical. Right? Let's not sell this month because I think the market's gonna go up, right? I mean, my gut, my gut thinks, yeah. Yeah. I mean, those times are gone. Uh, we are consistent sellers in the marketplace. We're disciplined in that fashion. We don't play games in markets. It's about consistency. It's about what data you wanna collect, understand, and disseminate in order to make decisions. There's less emotion in all of those decisions every day. Uh, occasionally you do make a decision based on your gut, right? Whether that next, of course, that next acquisition makes sense. All the numbers maybe tell you something different, but you wanna be in that market, or you like the business and you think it has potential. Uh, there you still make flyers. Was there ever like a number that you tracked or that you started tracking that changed how you decided to run the yard? No, there was never a magic one number, like a metric or a KPI. No, the reality was more like drinking from a fire hose, right? And every once in a while you would get a short pause and you could breathe and zoom out and make a couple of good decisions, uh, based on some data points. And he tried to focus on those things. But you know, there was never one spot where. Something categorically changed with one yard or this thousandth ton, or the 10000th ton or the 20th thousandth ton. None of those decisions are changed. Anything, you know, we've tried to calm, chaos, and breed consistency. Love it. Um, Neil, you've mentioned earlier that you are looking to have no one. Reporting to you, you are looking to not manage any individuals. You have a few now, but no doubt. 10 years ago you had 50 to a hundred people at some point that relied on you. I get what's changed in the business, but what does your day now look like and what are you focusing on now compared to what you used to? Lemme give you some context. When my partner and I first got into business. Grant, my partner had a shredder in northern Minnesota, a small shredder, four or 5,000 tons a month, right at that point in time, he had, I think, maybe 35 to 40 employees. Fast forward to today, that grew from the one facility to 14 and almost over 400 employees, and so in, in a less than a 10 year span. This thing has grown from 50 to 400. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine it would get here. And when I say that I shouldn't be managing people, it's gotten so big. It's beyond me, right? So I, I, I think the secret to all of this is recognizing who you are, what you're capable of getting, people that may be smarter than you involved in your business, and then just getting the hell out of the way. And letting people run things. So I think what my partner and I have done is we're trying to evolve to that place where we get out of everyone's way. But not only that. We are a bit of the secret sauce that got us here too, right? So we recognize that and what we wanna keep doing is growing the business based on that secret sauce. We wanna keep the culture the way that we want it. We wanna keep adding businesses every year, and we want it to be metered and we want it to be scaled. And he and I are trying to balance all of that now. And so what does our day-to-day look like? You know, today's conversation this morning was about hiring a COO. We don't currently have one, and we're looking at adding new layers of management to make sure that we're providing all of the support, both at the bottom levels and all the way at the top levels so that these businesses can run efficiently. So what I'm thinking is if I had three yards at the moment. And I'm listening to this and I'm going, you know what? I want this to be a great business. It's a good business. I want this to be a great business. So what I need to do is I need to free myself up. I need to put in the right people, make sure I've got the right processes in place. Let them hire smart people and not tell them what to do. Let them make comfortable and trust that these people are. I guess their intention is right, and they're really focused on doing the best that they possibly can, and they're equipped to be able to do everything I need to, and then I have the ability to focus on growth, then I can focus on being greater. Yeah. All those things. Yep. The next thing, I mean, I, I think for us, we're still in growth mode. Until you get to some sort of an apex where your growth sort of trails off. I personally don't think growth or greatness is attainable in, in the way that we're sort of talking about it in today's context. Right? You're somewhere always in between good and great, but great takes a ton of effort and focus, and that's why I was mentioning some of those big companies in the beginning. They're great companies because. They spend a lot of time and resource being great and making sure that all of the value from the top down is not just intrinsic, but you can feel it in the marketplace. You can feel it within the community that it transcends all facets of their business. I think for us in this conversation. Greatness is more of a verb. It's a doing word. It's more like something that we're doing, not something that we're achieving. And you know, as the business owner who wants to be great, I guess the question is then it's easy to tell people, well focus on creating more time for yourself. And that's what we just said. Now hire the right people, get the right management in, do all those things I said. But in your day to day, if you're that person. I mean, I know from having been there, it becomes very strategic. You know the old thing, you know, you work on the business, not in the business. So if anybody's unsure about what that actually means, well that means sometimes being on a whiteboard and sometimes pulling the data and working out where we can cut some costs and do we need an extra truck because you know we're working over time, or do we need more people instead of having the overtime, the cost of that, do we need an extra yard? Do we need some more equipment? That's the strategic stuff that. If you're in the business, you don't have the capacity to think about and there's nothing better Neil than having a business partner that is similar in that way. And, and you can bounce off each other and especially, you know, it sounds like you guys have a great relationship and you can actually work together. It's hard and it's lonely when you're by yourself trying to do that. And we bring great balance to each other. I think I'm more of the boardroom person and he's more of the jump into the excavator or jump into a sheer and cut up material or jump into a material handler. I think that that's part of what we've given up largely. We've given all of that up, is the hands-on the day-to-day, being able to spend time. You know, I would jump on the brass sorting table from time to time back in the day because I wanted to know more about every facet of our business. Why is this so important? You know, how many variations of brass are there in there that are critical? When I started in the business, it wasn't critical, right? We made a brass package. Well, now that the company does 160,000 pounds a week of brass, you're sorting every grade of brass that you can, all the way down to specific alloys. And it's gotten even more complicated with that, with all the technology out there, with sortation capabilities and, and so those are the things that we're focusing on is. How do we maintain our relevance and our longevity and our business into the future, right? So how are we going to tackle those things? What are the resources it's going to take? Meaning people, assets, land, any of the things that are related to that. That's the focus that we're on. And then obviously also running efficiencies on the day-to-day in these facilities. But it's far more abstract today than what it was. 10 years ago when you were able to walk around the yard and spend the time. Yeah, it's, it becomes a lot harder as well when you're not in the yard as much to make certain decisions. So you rather want to let the people that are in the yard that are operating and make those decisions, because if they're coming to you to ask you, how can we make our, you know, the customer flow quicker? It's like, well, I'm gonna ask back at you. You're the one that's in the yard all day, you know? Right. It's hard for me. I've stepped out of that. What would you say was the hardest thing that you personally let go of? As the business gal. And, and that could be, you know, personally you loved having control. I was a micromanager. You, you lost out in some relationships that you had your identity of being that guy who was in the yard. I don't know. What did you personally? Well, I mean, I think, I think it's all those things. Uh, the hands-on part of the business of running a single entity scrapyard of knowing your customers, having a cup of coffee with the guy who brings you copper every day, or, you know, collects 600 pounds of steel from. Neighboring houses as he puts ads in the paper. You know, I what all those pedler relationships, all of those dealer relationships, I miss that. I think we both do. We miss being able to interact with people in the yard like we used to do. You know, it, it's just becomes different. Everything is different for me. So funny because you see the new guys who join or the young guys and, and I always say, you know, one out of five might stay because of how hard it is. And putting in those hard yards is tough, but you have to do it in order to really, um, grow in the business. But it's crazy how you miss it. It's like it's the hard yard, but you miss, you miss it when you're ahead of it. I think the biggest challenge with it is that when you are small. Your wins are immediate and they're instant. Mm-hmm. Right? And so you feel good about the business at faster intervals. And when your business grows and it starts to mature, those victories aren't the same anymore. They're more strategic, they're more abstract. So it's the long play. Your winds, uh, may take years, you know, or, or possibly generations. Depending on what it is that you're up to. It used to feel like you were moving piles. Now it feels like we're moving outcomes, and so it's just categorically different. Yeah, that's a great point. I never thought about that before. It makes a lot of sense. You know, when you're dealing with things on a day-to-day basis, it's just constant wins or losses. Not that you always win, but at least you kind of know the outcome right away. It's very tough when you're sitting there and you're working on a five year plan or three year plan and you dunno how it's gonna go. And that kind of leads me to my next question, I guess. Why do some yards not become great? If you looked back in five years time and you were like, CW never became great, what do you think the reason is? Well, I don't, I don't wanna tie size to great'cause there is no tie there. I mean, I, I think that a single entity owner business can be great. I think that's about choice, right? And so every yard has the capacity to be great. Most yards never become great because they stop at profit. And don't get me wrong, profit matters, but at some point, success isn't just about profit. It's more intrinsic than that, right? You have to be happy with your people. Um, it's a measure of whether your people stay with you, whether your customers trust you, whether you can grow that business without burning everyone out. We're trying to build the kind of company where an employee will spend their whole career with us and people will say that we have a unicorn company. That is inherently our goal for the next generation we plan to hand this to, is we create that atmosphere for these people. It's not easy. Neil, how do you do that? No, I, I mean, it's a lot of work on the business. It's constant. There's no comfortable place. And I think because we are growing, it always has those creative juices flowing, right? Everybody's constantly trying to figure out process improvement. Everyone is always working towards some type of future, some type of goal. There's no one who's complacent. There's no one who's comfortable, and that goes from. Myself and my partner all the way down to those that may clean the lunchroom or pick meatballs off of, uh, the shredder line. We wanna make sure that we are creating an environment where if someone wants to be in that career. Great. If they wanna grow out of that, we provide that environment. It is completely about this full circle, intrinsic value within our organization. And you strive for it. And how do you create it? I don't know. It looks a little different probably to everybody, Stuart and to us. I think it's, it's how I described it. Um, we're looking to be a unicorn company. We don't wanna be like everyone else. You know, if you can have the whole team, everybody wanting to be better or everybody wanting to be greater every day, although that's an individual thing, as a team, that is so powerful. If everybody is striving on being better in their role every day. Then you get to where you wanna get to Neil, because it's a sum of the parts. And, um, it's about creating that culture and making sure that everybody does feel like it. But if you can achieve that, I don't have any doubt you'll get to where you wanna get to. I think, uh, I think to sort of wrap it, uh, finish lines are infinite, meaning that it's okay to move the finish line out as you sort of get closer. Uh, you have to have small victories for your people. You have to have these places where people feel like they've accomplished. What they need to accomplish, but then it's okay to reevaluate those goals and set the bar out even further. I think that that's, that's the key piece. Um, that doesn't require growth either, right? That just requires being better, being more efficient, being more something, and that's the critical piece in keeping. Growth minded strategy in everyone's brain. It isn't about that next facility because that can sometimes create more chaos than anything else. It is trying to create being great within your organization with what you have, and then everybody's involved in that. Yeah, absolutely. That growth mindset is, is massive. I wanna just bring in one more question before we finish off. When you walk in your yard today. You will have different eyes to what you had early on. What do you notice now that you never would've seen years ago? I guess back then, we would walk around and argue about how many tons were in that pile, how many pounds of copper were in that box, how many pounds of aluminum were in that bale Right now it becomes, how long did it take you to run that bale? And what did that cost our company? And so, you know, those necessary but boring KPIs and ROIs. And so it's more of this data-driven functionality that helps you make choices about what's next and what the company needs, uh, how many more people it needs. What type of management or expansion in any type of management we may need to scale the business. That's the kind of things that we see. It's measured in things like flow and downtime, uh, safety habits. I think that's probably the key thing that when we walk into a facility today, we're looking to make sure that everyone who shows up leaves exactly the same way they showed up, and that's a key critical piece. Our commitment to safety and the wellbeing of our employees has certainly evolved over 10 years. And now it's a critical key component and it starts with us, right? We are the example. And so we've become a bit of the mascot in that form or fashion too, and we don't take it lightly and I hope we're moving the right way and we're doing so consistently, but still profitably. Yeah, I think, um, it's very funny how, um, your spectacles change as you go through the different levels of management. Um, but I, I think, you know, health and safety's a massive one. And then I think what you touched on was efficiency. I think that's something you start to look at, which you didn't consider when you were operating the baler. You didn't think about efficiency. When you're looking at the data, you're looking at how many more people we need. Do we need extra baler? What is the actual cost of gonna making these bales? Those are different lies. Yeah. In the beginning of the business, you're worried about moving the material. Today, you're more worried about are you doing it the right way? Is it profitable and are we It's profitable. Yeah, exactly. Neil, at the end of Born Scrappy, we always, uh, want to get to know you a little bit better. So we're gonna ask you four quick questions so that when you are chairman and on stage at Rema, everybody knows more about you. Sure. So have you got a favorite TV show or movie? Oh boy. Favorite TV show or movie? Uh, I think my current guilty pleasure TV show is The Diplomat. Have you seen The Diplomat with Carrie Ross? I haven't. It's, it's a political show, uh, a drama. Um, but it's smart tv. I like, uh, I like smart tv. My wife makes fun of me. Um, billion was another great show, I think was, was one of my favorites. I, I love those shows. I demonstrate people's ability to be successful, uh, by themselves or, or with others, and share that success to them. Have you got a favorite place to visit? Boy, do I have a favorite place to visit? In 2019, I was diagnosed with diabetes, and since then I have become a freeze baby. And uh, I am constantly in some state of being cold, uh, e even in my office now, I run a heater. It's probably 80 degrees in here, and I still feel cold. So my favorite place to be is in Arizona in the summer. Despite what everyone else would tell you that it's Hell's Kitchen. Uh, I find a hundred degree heat and being out by the pool. Fantastic. Hotter, the better. I'm looking forward to hosting you in Austin in summer. Uh, that's different. That's a humid heat. That's, that's not the same. It's not so human. You'll be fine in Austin, I promise. Um, have you got a favorite book? Uh, favorite book? No. I have a favorite author. I used to love reading books by an author by the name of Vince Flynn. Uh, he wrote a lot of, uh, books kind of similar to like the clear and present danger books that, uh, that we've all read. There's sort of this action adventure military style book. And then I'm gonna give props to George Adams. Uh, I've gotten a lot of inspiration from his book too. Have you, um, have you read? I Am Pilgrim. I have not. Okay. It, it's very much in that genre. You mentioned not in the George Adam genre. Yeah. It's not about script. Right. Uh, in the genre you spoke about, it's probably at the best spy kind of book I've ever read. It's actually written by a Hollywood screenwriter. Okay. Um, so he writes movies. So he's written this book and it feels like you're watching a movie. It's, it'll change your life. I wrote it down. Good man. Um, have you got a favorite quote to end on? I, I say this one a lot, so I'm gonna use it. Uh, it's Mayan Angelou who said it. If someone shows you who they are, believe them. I think too often in business, people expose themselves. For good or worse, right? Uh, if, if someone has good behavior, it's personified throughout their employment with you or their, their being with you. Same with negativity. Um, if someone gives you examples of good or bad behavior, take it. Literally take it for what it's worth and, and act upon it, right? So elevate those that, that are great and, and those that aren't move on from love it. On that note, Neil, thank you so much for being on porn. Scrappy Man. Love the episode. Thank you, Sue. Cheers. See you. Bye. That's it for this episode of Born Scrappy. If you have any questions, stories, or topics you want us to dig into, send them my way. Until then, keep it scrappy.
