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Built to Last: A Blueprint for Growth
10 Plays2 months ago
From BMX kid to steel entrepreneur, Aidan breaks down starting a business at 15, landing early jobs, overbuilding on purpose, and scaling from gates to structural steel and custom builds. We dig into harmony vs. balance, pricing, QA (core samples, torque specs), AI as a real shop tool, and why his advice is simple: “Just do it—take the jump.”
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Transcript
Mastering Mind and Market: A Five-Year Journey
00:00:04
Speaker
The voice of growth. Mastering the mind and market.
00:00:10
Speaker
Especially because I've been so driven the last five years. I feel like as soon as I catch up, my workload doubles.
00:00:19
Speaker
Metal. Period. Anything metal.
00:00:25
Speaker
Because I want to build things that last hundreds of years.
00:00:31
Speaker
love every second of it.
00:00:34
Speaker
I just want to keep going at the pace I'm going and I'll see where life takes me.
00:00:42
Speaker
Just do it. Take the jump.
From Teen Entrepreneur to Metalwork Enthusiast
00:00:47
Speaker
So you just turned 20 years old. You've had your business for five years. You started it when you were 15 and the world wants to know why Honestly, I don't even know why.
00:01:00
Speaker
I mean, I just started one day in freshman year high school. and's like I was racing BMX at the time, and I was kind of tired of this. I can do something productive with my life. and I mean ah built a couple gates here and there, and it was what I was good at. was really what I wanted to do. i eventually knew I would have wanted to do something with metal or something with like art or something.
00:01:31
Speaker
I wanted to do something with my life. So, I mean, what better, what better time to start than freshman year high school, you know? Yeah. I mean, I say this to a lot of people, including my children, like when the world zigs, you zag and the world, uh, 15 year olds are typically worried about social media madness or,
00:01:54
Speaker
what's happening with sports all the time, or they're not even worried about starting a business. and Yeah. You kicked it off. So who was your first customer?
Building a Customer Base: From Neighbors to Builders
00:02:05
Speaker
My neighbors. um I think so. Yeah. My neighbors crossed street from me, built a little gate for them, and then their neighbors. So I did a couple of my neighbors close to me, close to my house, and then started branching out from there. I started contacting some local landscape companies and just small home builders, stuff like that, just for like gates, trellises, small like ornamental iron work.
00:02:33
Speaker
And then eventually got to the point where I am now where we're doing, starting to branch off into structural steel, steel buildings and stuff like that. Well, I'm aware of this sort of level of revenues. i won't share them with the audience, but I'll say that you have more momentum and more capacity more clout than many 35 year olds that I know.
00:02:56
Speaker
And I think that your mindset really is one of ah of a young man who's driven and has a plan and you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, which is sometimes again, one of these things that a lot of folks don't want to do that.
00:03:12
Speaker
No, not a lot of people want to do that at all. Hard to find people that want to work just in general Yeah. What would you say is your biggest challenge to to growing? I mean, I'm assuming it was in a straight line from 15 to 20. I'm sure that you've had ups and downs. What's been the biggest challenge?
Balancing Business and Personal Life
00:03:28
Speaker
Probably just managing, managing my time, learning learning how to manage my time, you know, being, going from 15 years old 20 years old, trying to balance a business, trying to balance my personal life and trying to balance everything. Yeah.
00:03:45
Speaker
And, uh, But yeah, that's probably- Is balance easy? Yeah, it is getting easier. but I worked for the CEO, I tell the story often, this really super driven guy, but he was also seemingly well balanced. He had a ah good home life. He had hobbies even. like And he was managing a pretty good sized business. And I asked him one time, I said, to Mark, how do you balance it all?
00:04:11
Speaker
And he looked at me in the eye and he said, Manny, balance is bullshit. He said, it's all about harmony. yeah And once I started thinking about what that meant, it means that different aspects of your life are able to sort of coexist. And sometimes one's gonna be heavier.
00:04:28
Speaker
Sometimes you may have more work and your family is gonna be pushing back. And then sometimes you're gonna be like, you know what? I'm just going to take today off and you're going to into your family and your personal life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah. That's definitely one of the harder things to do, especially because I've been so driven the last five years and I've just been go, go, go nonstop pretty much. Finally. i mean, these last couple months are probably the busiest I've ever been in my life.
00:04:55
Speaker
with jobs and projects and stuff like that. And it's coming to be pretty easier on balancing stuff.
Diving Deep into Metalwork
00:05:02
Speaker
Do you feel as though the scale of business is growing? You're getting bigger and bigger clients?
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I feel like as soon as I catch up, my workload doubles and my scale, we just jumped to the next level. I feel like. Yeah, that's a good thing. yeah um We've talked about areas where, so you do awnings and gates and fences. and So what's the core business that you do right now?
00:05:31
Speaker
Metal, period. Anything metal. That's i've always so what I've always told people. I mean, it is what I've always done, not really what I've always told people.
00:05:42
Speaker
But um yeah, anything metal, I mean, stainless, sanitary metals, aluminum, steel awnings, canopies, doors, gates, fencing.
00:05:56
Speaker
I mean, literally anything metal. That's my sweet spot right there. Do you feel that your age has been a plus or minus in trying to get new business?
Youth in Business: Perceptions and Realities
00:06:10
Speaker
Um, I would say like 50, 50, I've had some people definitely take, try to take advantage of me, um, just for my age. And it happens a lot, like a lot more than you'd probably think.
00:06:23
Speaker
Um, but I would say but probably 50, 50. Um, a lot of people look at it as like, Oh my God, you're, you know, 19, 20 years old doing this. That's amazing. Like,
00:06:35
Speaker
let's keep the ball rolling and do some more work together. Or some people look like it as like, Hey, you're 19, 20 years old. I'm going to not pay you on this or whatever. so they're not going to, they're, they don't know the kind of worth that work ethic you have. Yeah, exactly. Or how you try to,
00:06:51
Speaker
You know, we've been working together for a while. you you know, you try to do the right thing. One of the mantras that we talked about is that you over-engineer, you over-build things. yeah That mighty might may not be the best way of saying it, but you basically make things bulletproof. Exactly.
00:07:07
Speaker
What was the the idea for that? Why not just do what what's necessary, like at that point, and then just stop? Because I want to build things that last hundreds of years.
00:07:20
Speaker
don't want it to ever, I hate having to go back to projects and fix things. So might as well over engineer it and overbuild it to where I don't ever have to go back. Was that from the very beginning or did you sort of build that into, as you were growing the business? No, that's since the very beginning. I've always tried to build things over, like obviously over engineered, overbuilt, bulletproof, as you said. And, uh, yeah, just.
00:07:46
Speaker
just so they last. One thing's to last longer than me for hundreds of years by the time I'm gone. That's really good. Yeah. My stepfather was boiler maker for the mines back in the day.
00:08:01
Speaker
And um every time I talk with him, he is referencing some job that he did. and I had the pleasure a few years ago to go driving around with some work he'd done, some metal work.
00:08:13
Speaker
And it was so standing. It was there. the wells were beautiful. yeah And there's a pride of ownership that comes with doing that kind of work. Oh yeah, for sure.
00:08:24
Speaker
Definitely. Is there one project that you're highly proud of? I wouldn't say the most proud of, because I know you do a lot of things. Is there one that really stands out as like, man, I'm really proud of this particular job?
00:08:36
Speaker
would say, yeah, but it's not done yet. So not done fully. Okay. Um, it's that big one that what we've been working on right now. So, um, I would say that's probably my proudest project just cause the sheer size of it and the amount of hours that we have into it and just the time and detail in it.
00:08:56
Speaker
Give us an idea of what, of what the size is and the detail. Just, you don't have to name names necessarily, but what's the, what's the flavor of the kind of job that this is? We were there for about six months, um, doing everything from an awning, like 2,100 square foot awning
Pride in Craftsmanship: A Custom Metalwork Project
00:09:13
Speaker
to some,
00:09:14
Speaker
custom loft in is in this dude's garage. I mean, you multimillionaire. He just, he's got the pockets to spend and we build him whatever he wants.
00:09:25
Speaker
We build him custom cantilever pergola that overhangs his pool 23 feet. You know, we to put 13,000 pounds of concrete under it just for it to, just for it to be able to stand there and um some big uprights on that thing. And A lot of cool custom stuff in his house, outside of his house.
00:09:47
Speaker
He's got a cool koi pond. He's just, it's cool property. Probably reveal it here coming soon, the whole the whole property. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, the, you know, I'm a mechanical engineer by education. i didn't really do much. I did about a year and a half worth of true engineering.
00:10:05
Speaker
And then I went into the business domain and realized that that I like that better. Yeah. Way better. But you know one thing I really appreciate about what you're what you've been doing is that you are not a Mickey Mouse outfit.
00:10:18
Speaker
You are legit. You have all your plans engineered, stamped. And you just mentioned 13,000 pounds of concrete. I mean, you came up with that number working with your engineering staff. Like that is not anything that should be scoffed at. I mean, that's legit process. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. We have to have, I mean, everything's legit that we do. We, I mean, every time we pour concrete, we have to pull core samples and make sure it's right. And, we pull torque specs on all of our bolts and just make sure everything's correct and to the point.
00:10:52
Speaker
Nice. Have you ever done a job and either realized because you thought about it or the customer told you something isn't right and you had to go back and fix it?
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah, couple of times, but it's been, you know, I don't think it's been anything major to where like it shifted the whole project, but small things here and there, you know, I get busy and as everyone gets busy and you know, some things skip past us, but you know we make it right for the customer and do what needs to be done.
00:11:26
Speaker
That's really good. Yeah. In the fiveyear five years you've been doing business, give or take, has there been any point in that time when you've wanted to quit?
00:11:38
Speaker
No. I mean, there's been some hard spots where, you know, I've been, haven't had any work or, you know, it's been too busy to where I'm just like, I don't know how I'm going to handle this. I just want to be done with it all.
00:11:55
Speaker
But no, not really. I love it. I love every second of it. I love the busy. I love the slow. i've learned I've learned to love every every aspect of it.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. I think it goes back to mindset. You can look at a big ah um challenge as ah challenge where it's going to hold you back or push you back or push you down.
00:12:19
Speaker
Or you can look at that same challenge and see as an opportunity to to rise you up, to push you forward. Yeah. And from what I know from you and speaking with you and working with you for a number of months here is that you've really...
00:12:33
Speaker
taking that mindset to the extreme and you've brought resources to the table to help you to get to that next level. What are the the next steps for the company?
00:12:47
Speaker
Structural. We want to be doing buildings and custom stuff. I like custom Custom steel, eventually I wanna work my way to build custom spec homes out of steel, fully out of steel from the ground up, obviously besides concrete and finishing touches and stuff like that. But yeah, that's the main goal is I wanna be able to do steel spec homes.
00:13:12
Speaker
Interesting. yeah Have you seen those shipping container houses? What do you think about those? I think they're cool. Yeah, I think a lot of, they're, mean, pretty much modular. You can do whatever you want with them.
00:13:24
Speaker
So obviously shipping containers aren't the best for a home structurally, but you can make them work as you need to. Yeah.
00:13:36
Speaker
When it comes to customer engagement, are you mainly relying on word of mouth or is there other ways you can reach your customers?
Marketing Through Word of Mouth and Instagram
00:13:46
Speaker
Past five years, it's all been word of mouth word ofoutuse and Instagram, man, maybe Facebook.
00:13:54
Speaker
That's how we've been all of our clientele. Really? Yeah. I mean, I've maybe posted a couple of videos here and there, you know, boosted it on Instagram a couple of times, but that's about it.
00:14:05
Speaker
I mean, I've never really like paid for marketing or like advertisement or like a commercial or, mean, the most I do is like yard signs and Instagram.
00:14:22
Speaker
And where did you get this business knowledge and acumen? Trial and error. I never went to school for welding. I didn't go to school for engineering, but I, you know, i work with engineers. I work with welders and I am a welder obviously. And you know, past been welding for probably 10 years now and just trial and error pretty much.
00:14:47
Speaker
And what about, um, I guess as you were building your business and are building your business, who do you rely on or who do you look to for business advice, business um mentorship?
00:15:02
Speaker
My parents and you. Yeah. Yeah. I think your parents are really good trailblazers. I've never met them personally, but from what I understand, your dad has a... Commercial tire business.
00:15:15
Speaker
So he's supplying tires for like what? Semis, big trucks? Semis, big trucks, anything. Anything from a wheelbarrow to a you know big truck out in the mines or something like that. okay I never really wanted to get into that business myself, but...
00:15:31
Speaker
He loves it. so Yeah, you can appreciate it though. Yeah, for sure. And your mom? Cosmetics. She's always done nails, eyelashes, body contouring, stuff like that.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, so very similar story to me. I mean, my parents didn't have necessarily those similar things, but my mom ran a restaurant. She ran a clothing store. um She was in real estate. My grandmother, who's still alive, ran many restaurants. Yeah.
00:15:58
Speaker
And we draw inspiration. We were just talking about in the pre-meeting that, you know, there's not always a singular mentor you can go to for advice, but you sort of piece together. ideas here, ideas there. yeah And that's kind of the beauty of this podcast is we're providing a lot of great content. you know The whole idea of, well, I'm too old, I'm too young, it's BS. I mean, clearly you're here celebrating your your recent 20 year of life and you've had a business for a quarter of your life.
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, i never thought of it like that, but yeah. Seriously. Yeah. and just think about by the time you're my age, so I'm 52, we'll just make the numbers easy, maybe say 50. The next 30 years, you're going to have been in business more than, way more than half your life, right? That's why I started it so early. I'm going to a little head start on everybody else.
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah. So with that, where do you see yourself at 30 years old? 10 years from now. 10 years from now.
00:17:07
Speaker
I want to travel. I want to be, you know, I want to be out of state doing some projects, you multiple states wide, doing some big buildings or some big custom homes.
00:17:20
Speaker
Or, you know, I don't, honestly, i don't really know. I don't, I just want to keep going at the pace I'm going and I'll see where life takes me. Mm-hmm. That's a good attitude. There's nothing wrong with that. I have a vision of where I want to be, but it's not like set in stone. I just want to...
00:17:42
Speaker
yeah yeah ah get i don't know how to explain it. but No, I get it 100%. When I was in junior high, I had this vision of, I wanted to to have a company, we called it The Firm, me and my buddies.
00:17:58
Speaker
And The Firm was a company that we would build machines to build machines, to build things. I don't know why, i was that was in my mind, whatever. And as time passed, we sort of forgot about it, I forgot about it.
00:18:12
Speaker
Then I got my engineering degree and I worked for industry for a year and a half and I worked in sales and marketing and other for other companies. And eventually in 2010, I came to start a company and it was an engineering company. We had mechanical, electrical, software engineers.
00:18:29
Speaker
And ah about two, three years into it, we were sitting there and my guys were working on this project and it was an automation project. We were making a machine and make machines. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. And it was like I was like, oh my God, that that was the vision. I didn't know it was there.
00:18:47
Speaker
and And even this podcast, so when I was 15, when you started this, I was ah into like ham radio, i was into like building antennas and I was very much into talking on a microphone. yeah I was talking to strangers across the the world.
00:19:04
Speaker
And here I am, 40 years later, 35 years later, maybe not a stranger, but I'm talking to people that- Yeah, doing a podcast. Doing a podcast. And i've got I think on the fly, I don't think of these questions necessarily. Sometimes I have a few. Yeah, just- But like I mentioned, it's a conversation.
00:19:20
Speaker
And I think it's the most natural way that way, rather than sit here and read you a series of questions, I just want to understand, and I want our audience to understand, like what are those inner workings that drive you yeah so they can get and it's inspiration from that? Yeah.
00:19:36
Speaker
Have you ever been in a position in in um your five years in business, and just in general, where somebody has asked you for business advice?
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah. Were they older than you?
00:19:55
Speaker
roughly like around the same age. Um, I got a couple buddies, uh, like out of state and even here in state, um, couple buddies that started businesses that asked me for just little things here and there, but nothing crazy.
00:20:11
Speaker
Um, but yeah, that's probably like two to three people within the whole five years. Oh, like I said, there's ups and downs to being young. I mean, some people look at it as you know I'm not going to take advice from this 19-year-old. What does he have?
00:20:28
Speaker
Or you know some people look at it as, hey, you know sees a different perspective on things. Exactly. Yeah, that's one of the big things I really tout and I try to it like spread the news as much as possible is getting rid of your own bias.
00:20:46
Speaker
And we tend to hang out with people that are very similar to us. They think like us, they look like us. They're in our same age range, give or take. And, and again, back to that, when I was 15, some of my friends were in their sixties.
00:21:01
Speaker
Friends, straight up friends, because these were old guys in my hometown. They were ham radio operators. They had antennas. They had like, I just would go to their house because I saw a big old antenna. like, hey, are you a ham radio operator?
00:21:12
Speaker
And they'd come in and they'd show me all their equipment and I became friends with them. and And now, you know, I would consider you you a friend. and And so it's like age is not a barrier when it comes to getting perspective and knowledge. Yeah, exactly. Same thing with different. I mean, I tend to to be little more libertarian and, you know, more conservative in my thinking.
00:21:32
Speaker
Um, and I've got friends on all sides of the aisle. Yep. And this Charlie Kirk thing is exposing a lot of, you know, of the bone with respect to values. Yep.
00:21:44
Speaker
And you're seeing people unfriend people for saying this, for saying that. And you know what? I think that there's just a lot of pain and confusion surrounding that and everything else going on in the world. Oh yeah, for sure.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah. I got friends that, you know, They let things, they let stuff like that ruin, ruin friendships. I have a buddy who lost like, he posted one thing about just like supporting Charlie Kirk. He lost like 3 million followers in a day.
00:22:13
Speaker
It just, it's crazy. That's crazy. Just this world, this world was crazy. Yeah. The thing is, it's not getting any easier. It's not getting any un-crazier. I mean, it's just getting more crazy.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah. um The topic of ai has been central to everybody.
AI in Metalwork: Tool for Growth or Job Killer?
00:22:32
Speaker
ah just had an a podcast earlier with a deep expert in AI security.
00:22:37
Speaker
oh really? Yeah. He comes in and he looks at vulnerability for a company, i typically larger companies. you know where If something goes wrong, how will it go wrong?
00:22:48
Speaker
Will AI open the door for bad actors to come in and mess with your data? He mentioned the idea of like this like shadow AI and these other things where you're talking with the company and you don't know, but behind the scene behind their curtain is bad actor AI people, whatever.
00:23:08
Speaker
do you use AI very much at all in your business? Yeah, I do. I use it for like just some small brief renderings. like I'll take a snap a picture of something real quick. um yeah I use it to draft up some proposals, use it to draft up RFQs, you know anything.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's quick, it's easy. And you just tell ChatGPT, hey, you do this, this and this, and it, you know, it does it instantly. So, I mean, I mean, it came out when I was a sophomore in high school.
00:23:35
Speaker
So I used that in high school for some essays and stuff like that. And that was right before they, uh, they started catching on to it. And, you know, my, my, uh, history teacher was probably wondering why I wrote a perfect five-star essay on, you know, whatever topic, but.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah. i I use it quite a bit. Yeah. I think it's a tool. If you use it correctly, it can be a tool that will augment what you're doing. um there I did another podcast.
00:24:04
Speaker
It was more of a monologue about thriving through hell. And there are two big voices that are in the industry. One guy, Mogadot, ran Google X. Google X is like their think tank where they do special projects to solve like big issues in the world. right The other guy is Jeffrey Hinton.
00:24:26
Speaker
Jeffrey, Dr. Hinton wrote the code that enables ChatGPT and others to do the what they do. That's great. His deep neural networks provides that that thinking mechanism.
00:24:39
Speaker
And there's a but bunch of others we spoke to or we referenced and we spoke to some as well, some experts. And they agreed that there's a ah very large chance that the next 12 to 15 years will be hell.
00:24:59
Speaker
Meaning ridiculous amounts of unemployment. Right now we we freak out if there's 10% unemployment. he they're They're thinking 90% unemployment.
00:25:11
Speaker
Oh, I don't doubt it. So all knowledge workers, graphic artists. I mean, i don't think your business necessarily would super hit, but it's probably going to help you grow faster, right? You can get this this agent, this AI agent to do all your renderings, to do all whatever. You just tell this agent to do that.
00:25:29
Speaker
And then you can bring your crew in to actually do the metal. Yeah. I think... Pretty much any office job or any like anything you do on a computer is going to be obsolete in the next 12 years, you know just because of AI.
00:25:44
Speaker
you know Even like engineering or like architecture, um drafting, rendering, whatever it is on the computer, it's all going to be obsolete. The only thing that's not going to be obsolete is working with your hands and actually building stuff.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah. So you've, you've in essence, uh, future-proofed your, your livelihood by, by having bloody knuckles and and doing the work you do. Yep.
00:26:11
Speaker
Um, are you still getting up on scaffolds and welding and all that? Are you basically more just directing the the flow? No, I am. I'm still welding, still doing when I can, when, ah when my phone's not ringing, um, feel like my phone rings probably once every five minutes, but Yeah, when I can, I try to weld as much as possible and I try to help my guys out as much as possible.
00:26:32
Speaker
Lately, I've been a delivery driver. yeah Delivery pickup materials. um But yeah, no, I try to weld and actually do get up there on the lifts or whatever. do you do you enjoy it? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
I enjoy that more than sitting at my desk doing some renderings or some some calculations or something like that. Has this been your only job or have you had other jobs too? No, this has been my only job.
00:26:56
Speaker
since the beginning. So I never even worked fine. I mean, I worked with my dad. I've gone on calls with him and stuff like that. But, um you know, this has been my only job.
00:27:07
Speaker
Never worked for someone else in my life. that's That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So my first job, i was 11 years old and I was working for my my mother and grandmother at a restaurant. I was a busboy.
00:27:18
Speaker
And then at 14, I worked at Safeway as a courtesy clerk, basically sweeping and doing really terrible things like cleaning up the bathrooms, which were terrible. And so I've worked with so many people. I became my own boss, so to speak, back in 2010. took me basically 25 years to become my own boss. Yeah. And you did it on day one.
00:27:43
Speaker
That's crazy. Day one. Yeah. What advice would you have? So now assuming that really nobody knows your age necessarily, what advice do you have for somebody who's looking to start a business?
Taking the Leap: Just Start Your Business
00:27:56
Speaker
Just do it. Take the jump. That's the only thing you, mean, you don't do it. You're just prolonging it. Just do it. Send it.
00:28:06
Speaker
what's going to go wrong? I mean, a lot of things can go wrong, but i mean, you won't know if you don't try, you know? There's a question I ask all my guests. Asking you is going to be a little bit difficult, but I'm still going to do it in a different way.
00:28:22
Speaker
So I usually ask folks, the folks on the other side of the table are usually in their mid-30s to early 50s. Yeah. And I ask all of those folks,
00:28:34
Speaker
If you could have a ah magic phone, you could tell your 18 year old self something. What would you say? You're a little bit different because you're 20 years old. You were 19 four days ago. Yeah, exactly.
00:28:48
Speaker
ah So what would you tell your 10 year old self? Start now. Instead of start five years later. You would have started at 10. I would have started at 10. Yeah.
00:28:58
Speaker
have started, you know, something obviously on a small scale, something I could do at 10 years old, um, or at least try to figure out something to do, you know, in the, in the lines of entrepreneurship, you know, try to go sell something.
00:29:13
Speaker
i don't know, even if it's like a lemonade stand or something, I did do that once. I sold some lemonade and some paper airplane stand when I was like eight or ten years old or nice somewhere around there. But yeah, probably start now. Nice. If I could. The other question I ask is definitely going to be better suited, I think, or whatever.
00:29:36
Speaker
um If you had that same magic phone and you could ask the question of a 50-year-old Aiden, what would you want to know?
00:29:47
Speaker
Hmm.
00:29:50
Speaker
Asking myself something when I was, if I was like, you know, me now calling on this phone, asking if 50 year old Aiden 30 years from now, something, what would you ask that Aiden?
00:30:04
Speaker
How'd I do?
00:30:07
Speaker
I mean, I don't, really know what I want to ask my future self. Um,
00:30:15
Speaker
Did I make it? do we Did we achieve some of our goals? um where Where am I now? What kind of projects are we doing?
00:30:26
Speaker
am I still in the steel game? are we still, you know are you building stuff? Or are you just you know hanging back on some beach in Mexico or something like that?
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah, that question, man, I ask that a lot, right, of my guests. But every time I ask it, I ask it in myself as well. You know every day we learn something new. Every experience we have builds to the your personality, your your identity, really.
00:30:54
Speaker
And it's crazy for me to think, you know, I'm 52 now. Where will I be or what questions will I ask when I'm 75? Like, what is that? And the crazy thing, the sort of mind explosion is that we have that the answer is is already here. Like we're working on the answer.
00:31:13
Speaker
yeah And it's in process. So you'll probably be in the game, right? We've talked about you wanna be nationwide and you wanna be well known to to be in that space.
00:31:28
Speaker
um Building a brand is important, building personnel, building I mean, there's a lot of nuts and bolts, unintended, involved with building a business of that scale. um I think you should be really proud of yourself.
00:31:42
Speaker
Yeah, I am. Especially for what I've built in five years and being able to do it and still graduate high school and still have a girlfriend and try to make time for everything.
00:31:56
Speaker
It's definitely hard, but I'm proud of it for sure. That's great. Yeah. Well, thanks for your time, Aiden. It's been a pleasure to to get your thoughts on some things. Yeah, thanks for having Looking forward to seeing what happens in the next five years. Yeah, for sure. Cheers.
00:32:10
Speaker
Thank you.