Grant FuellenbachDec 10, 2025
The Remote Ops Playbook | How to Run Heavy Construction from 2,000 Miles Away
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The Remote Ops Playbook | How to Run Heavy Construction from 2,000 Miles Away
Grant Fuellenbach
In this episode, Roggen Frick, Founder of Bear Iron Works, challenges the "Owner Operator" myth that you must be on-site to make money. He reveals the "Lean Management" systems he uses to run a heavy manufacturing plant in Colorado from his home in South Carolina. You’ll discover the math behind Rent vs. Buy for heavy iron, how to turn soil disposal costs into profit centers, and how to build a business that runs on data, not physical presence.
The Remote Ops Playbook | How to Run Heavy Construction from 2,000 Miles Away
Grant Fuellenbach
In this episode, Roggen Frick, Founder of Bear Iron Works, challenges the "Owner Operator" myth that you must be on-site to make money. He reveals the "Lean Management" systems he uses to run a heavy manufacturing plant in Colorado from his home in South Carolina. You’ll discover the math behind Rent vs. Buy for heavy iron, how to turn soil disposal costs into profit centers, and how to build a business that runs on data, not physical presence.
Chapters
00:00
The High-Paying Leash
Introduction to the problem of business dependence and the solution.
00:59
Podcast & Marketing Insights
12:15
Bear Iron Works Origin
18:29
Remote Operations & People
23:21
Delegation & Employee Training
30:41
Lean Management Principles
35:21
Employee Benefits & Retention
37:18
Innovation & Career Paths
46:06
Soil Classification Guide
48:27
Special Offer & Connect
50:48
Systems Scale Success
Transcript
00:00
Do you think your business falls apart the second you leave the job site?
00:03
You haven't built a business, you've built yourself a high paying leash.
00:07
Today I'm talking to Rogan Frick.
00:09
He started exactly where you are, wearing every hat from welding the steel to driving the delivery truck.
00:15
But today he runs the same operation, profitably from 2,000 plus miles away.
00:21
We break down exactly how he built the machine, how he extracted the knowledge from his head, documented his processes, and installed data triggers that catch errors without him needing to be in the room.
00:32
Plus the radical hiring move that solved his labor shortage overnight.
00:37
A mandatory four day work week that attracts top tier talent who actually show up and stay.
00:44
If you're ready to stop the firefighting and start owning a system that runs without you, this is the blueprint you've been looking for.
00:50
Let's dive in.
00:51
You're listening to beyond the Bid, the show by Go first, where we share the systems, strategies and practical AI for builders.
00:57
Keep listening to learn how to win more of the right projects, boost profitability and scale.
01:02
Beyond the Bid.
01:02
Cool.
01:02
All right.
01:03
Welcome back to beyond the Bid.
01:05
Thanks so much for being here.
01:06
today, as promised, we have a pretty special guest.
01:10
somebody who has definitely seen his fair share of, the lovely world of construction that we all belong to.
01:18
Rog and Frick.
01:19
Thanks so much for being here, man.
01:20
Really appreciate you jumping on.
01:21
Yeah, thanks Grant for having me on.
01:23
And I was happy to learn that you were a fellow CSU alumni.
01:27
Yeah, yeah.
01:28
Go Rams, baby.
01:30
Let's go.
01:33
Yeah, yeah, that's a throwback for sure.
01:35
but so tell me a little bit about bare, iron.
01:38
Like one, that's a pretty kick ass name.
01:41
or for what you guys do.
01:43
but what's the impetus behind it?
01:45
Like what, what got you?
01:46
and you know, you guys definitely operate in a, very needed but pretty niche, environment with, rock screens.
01:55
So, so can you tell me a little bit about that story?
01:58
Yeah.
01:59
So Bare Iron Works starts with my dad.
02:02
He came up with the idea for these rock screens because he's been working in the industry his whole life.
02:07
when I was growing up, he's had construction businesses.
02:09
I grew up in the industry, you know, on his lap, operating equipment.
02:13
When it came time to, for me to go to college, go csu.
02:18
I, was doing their construction management program.
02:20
I chose construction because I had that background in it and it felt like a good fit.
02:25
I raced motorcycles and I wanted to have a shop.
02:28
I could put my motorcycle in Fort Collins and I could work on it.
02:31
And so my dad suggested, why don't you make these rock Screens.
02:34
I had made a couple and we sent them to Richie Brother Auctions.
02:37
and then I even made one for like a friend, one of my friends dads.
02:41
When I was in high school I made it actually in my ag class.
02:44
And so when I go to college I rent a shop and get a welder and I start welding these things.
02:49
I make a website and start marketing them.
02:52
Well then pretty soon I start like getting all this demand for Grizzly Rock screens and this thing's growing.
02:57
I've got a part time employee.
02:59
Pretty soon I got a second part time employee.
03:01
I've moved into a bigger shop, I got a forklift, I'm doing all the accounting, I'm trying to go to school at the same time and it kind of became like a little bit of a nightmare to juggle and I started to fail some of my classes and just was falling behind.
03:14
And so I shut it down and continued with school and was just going to go into the construction industry and that was my plan.
03:21
I went and worked for FCI Constructors for a handful of years.
03:25
I was doing school remodels.
03:27
I worked on River Power Authority, their headquarters there and did construction management.
03:34
I helped him implement a new ERP at fci helped them develop their standard operating procedure for that.
03:40
And partway through my dad he was working for Kiewit at the time and he was down in Louisiana working on a big liquid natural gas plant.
03:49
And he was getting really tired of this job because it was seven days a week, 12 hours a day.
03:54
He was working night shift.
03:55
He was like the head of the whole site at night.
03:58
And he called me and he was like what if we.
04:02
He's like I want to move back to Colorado.
04:03
I'm really tired of living down here and doing this and I'm worn out.
04:07
My health's going bad.
04:08
What if we started the Grizzly business again because you proved that there's a market for it and I'll get the operations set up and you can work on the marketing stuff you know after work.
04:19
So I was still working at FCI Constructors the whole time and doing the marketing.
04:23
When I would get done after hours I was putting in late hours building the website, doing Google Ads, starting to do all that stuff and getting him the business that he could do the operational side of it.
04:34
I already did the operations once and I gave him all my drawings and gave him everything that he needed to continue where I left off from.
04:40
And so we worked as a team and we built from there and started to grow this thing.
04:44
And then I started to implement some different practices, Lean management practices.
04:49
I put in an erp.
04:50
I learned that that was important when I worked at FCI Constructors to have something that helps you manage your day to day operations.
04:56
Put that in place, got an auto scheduler, helps with our inventory control and everything like that and really built a process for that.
05:04
And then eventually I went full time, into the company, about the time that my wife was going to law school.
05:11
And I think that brings us into a point here that we're going to talk about later in this episode is I actually now live in South Carolina, but I'm still the head of the company.
05:19
I develop the procedures, I do all the software, I oversee the marketing and really drive the strategic growth of the company, all remotely.
05:28
Because we've built such a great team in Colorado that they don't give us any headaches.
05:32
They know exactly what they need to do and they get it done.
05:34
And that's amazing.
05:35
Yeah, it's a really impressive story even excluding the fact that you're running remote now, but just the fact that you know, you're able to build it, build it one time, and have so much success with it and then know that you know, you're it's a, a pretty successful model and so then you can go back to it and just, you know, not even hit the ground running.
06:00
You're already like, you're running at that point, you know.
06:03
Yeah, stopped.
06:05
Yeah, it's like I kind of had my homework done already by the time version two came around.
06:08
So we could just instantly get started.
06:10
Right.
06:10
We didn't have to take on any debt to get started the second time because it's like we already had all the development, we already had product drawings, there was everything, logos.
06:17
And I just pulled up the old website and launched it.
06:20
Like all the work was already like ready to go.
06:22
Just resubscribe and get everything hosted and.
06:26
yeah, kind of took off.
06:28
How was, so how was the transition to you know, this like remote ops, like running, running your own company off site, let alone in a different state.
06:39
Like how, how did you prep for that, plan for that and like even now, how are you managing it?
06:46
So it all comes down to people, right?
06:49
And people are the key to making that happen in this type of business.
06:52
Because this is a business that's physical goods that we're shipping across the country, and shipping to different places.
06:57
Right.
06:57
So you'd have to have the key People in place.
07:00
So luckily, you know, my dad and I have a good working relationship.
07:03
He trusts my vision of where to take the company and the procedures and doing those things.
07:07
Because that's the whole reason why he pushed me to go to college was to learn those principles of business and understand how to manage.
07:14
Right.
07:14
He's the school of hard knocks guy.
07:16
He understands operations, understands construction management, but the business side, you know, he still just learned it as he went.
07:25
And so he set up the operation team, kind of got that going and together we identified one of the biggest problems that we had in the business was shipping.
07:35
Because when I was doing it, I was actually doing the deliveries myself because I had no clue how logistics worked, had no idea how to get a hotshot guy.
07:42
It was one of the biggest reasons I wasn't going to class is because I was actually driving like across state lines, delivering these rock screens.
07:49
And so him and I sat down and we're like, well, we need, we want to put in an operations manager in place.
07:54
Because we knew that we wanted to build a company that ran itself.
07:56
That was the whole like when we sat down and decided we were going to do this, that was the whole goal was to build a company that is self operational.
08:06
And we identified that our operations manager that was going to oversee the production of everything needed to be somebody that understood logistics because it was the number one thing that was killing the company.
08:17
Even my dad, he had ideas like he knew a handful of hot shots like and a trucking company and he was kind of doing it himself.
08:23
But I mean we were talking like thousands of dollars just to get it the next state over, you know, which was just too much.
08:29
Not efficient, doesn't work.
08:31
It's killing the, killing the margin.
08:32
So we hired our operations manager for his expertise in logistics.
08:36
And then I taught him how to manage manufacturing.
08:39
I taught him how, how to schedule it, how these products are built, what welders care about.
08:44
My dad taught him safety, Put him through an OSHA 400 class to make him an OSHA trainer.
08:49
And because we really value safety, we get that from the construction industry.
08:53
You know, we're pulling that in.
08:54
Safety first is number one in our shop.
08:55
That's our number one core value at our company and put them in place.
09:00
And I being remote, right, that's hard to make sure that people perform to the level that you need.
09:06
So one of the hardest things in construction and manufacturing is finding people that want to work that will show up to their job.
09:13
I mean the bar is low right now.
09:15
I Mean when we're going through hiring, we're going through candidates that they come in, they interview they, they accept the job and then they don't show up.
09:21
It's like it's the craziest thing ever, right?
09:23
So people and putting them in place, once you get a good person in place, you make sure you keep them in place.
09:28
So we do things that are a little bit different.
09:30
We do a four day, ten hour day work week was like the very first incentive that we can offer because we couldn't do healthcare right away, couldn't do retirement accounts.
09:38
So we do that because time is equivalent to money.
09:41
Everybody wants time.
09:43
So we do that.
09:43
Everybody gets a three day weekend every single weekend.
09:45
We manage our production.
09:47
So that way they're only working 40 hours a week so that they don't have to burn out on overtime and get tired of the job.
09:52
And we listen to our employees to make sure that we're retaining them.
09:55
So we built this good team of people that like working with each other, really enjoy working for us and understand the process.
10:02
So that way I can trust and rely on them and I develop their skills and keep developing them.
10:07
That way whenever there's a problem, they know enough about what to do that maybe like they can do most of it, but then if it's something that they are unsure of, they can call me and I can guide them through it.
10:17
And I would say that that's the other part of being able to run it remotely is I have done every single thing in this company myself by hand.
10:26
Like at some point I have done the welds, I have delivered the product to the customer, I have done the online marketing, I have done the accounting, I, I have built the website.
10:36
Right.
10:37
I have had hands on with every process so I can just pick up a phone and walk somebody through it.
10:42
Yeah.
10:42
so if you don't have good people and you don't have experience running a remote operation like this isn't possible.
10:47
So that's just not.
10:49
I have so many questions that come up with that.
10:52
that brings up a really interesting one though around, you know, a lot of owner operators, who I talk to are kind of in that boat too where they've, they've been the framer and the electrician, they've you know, been the person in charge of their own ad campaigns and their website and all these things.
11:09
but unless they have a good system of like getting it outside of their head and into the heads of other people.
11:15
Right.
11:16
They're just being, you Know, almost like bombarded with text messages around, like, hey, I did X, Y and Z.
11:21
But you know what, how do you do 1, 2, 3 again?
11:24
how have you found to like kind of escape that bottleneck, if you want to call it a bottleneck?
11:29
Yeah.
11:29
So I mean I still run into those bottlenecks all the time.
11:31
Like it's, it's one of the number one growing pains of a company is trying to take the hats off your head and put it onto somebody else's.
11:37
But you know, when I was going, actually the time I moved to South Carolina was the time I decided to go full time with the company because I knew that I could just, you know, I, if I'm going to stop working in construction, I might as well just go all in on this and do whatever I can.
11:52
But because I did that right.
11:53
Well, I can't go in and just go into the shop and help Weld.
11:57
I can't wear that hat.
11:58
It's physically impossible for me to do that.
12:00
So I have to take that off my head.
12:02
I can't improve operations or anything like that.
12:05
I have to take it off my head.
12:06
It forces me to train them to know what they need to know and put that, put those procedures in place.
12:13
And then I make trips back all the time because, you know, I got customers all over the place.
12:18
I go visit customers in all different states.
12:20
And really being an east coast representative has been helpful being over here for that.
12:24
But I do travel back regularly, check in with everybody, see what they need.
12:29
I assess what they need to learn and make sure that they understand it and make sure that I teach it in a good way.
12:36
And I think that I've been told that I'm a good teacher, which I think is helpful for that too.
12:40
But I can tell you that I, like I said, I still have those problems with the bottlenecks.
12:44
Anything I still do my, like, I can still do myself.
12:47
I still am doing myself.
12:49
And now I've hit this wall of right.
12:51
Like because I used to have a hobby for making videos.
12:54
So now it's like I want to make the videos for the content, I want to make the website because I can do that.
12:59
I've, I've hired it out to marketing team, but I still am involved with that.
13:03
I'm still like hands on with the software and all the data and you know, trying to do those parts of it because I haven't been forced to hand that off for any reason yet.
13:12
But now I'm getting to a point where the Workload's enough that I need to, I need to hand that off to people.
13:18
And when you can do it yourself and it's.
13:20
And you know how to do it, it's the hardest hat to take off your head.
13:23
yeah, absolutely.
13:25
Yeah.
13:25
it's not even trust at that point.
13:27
It's like, know a quality control, but you're, it's a QC against your own standard.
13:34
Right, yeah.
13:34
Because unless I can get it out of my head effectively, it's never going to come up to the level that I need.
13:40
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
13:43
so you mentioned another thing that was really interesting.
13:46
When you do go back and you're talking to your team, how are you.
13:51
You said that you're listening to them and you're, you're identifying what they need to learn and hopefully and like, you know, you're building out a plan to, to teach them.
14:00
How do you do that?
14:02
Do you do like quarterly or even like annual reviews or how are you identifying those gaps?
14:09
Yeah, we do annual review reviews with every employee in the company and to make sure that they're performing well and that they understand what they need and identify areas where they can improve.
14:19
But, you know, when I go there, my time there is very valuable because that's the time that everybody can interact with me, that they can ask me questions and that any problem that they've been putting off for me to show up and deal with, then it's time to load my plate up and deal with it.
14:35
And so beforehand, you know, I start identifying problems.
14:38
Like one of the things with the ERP was having good Internet in the shop because we have production kiosks at every station.
14:47
Well, what happens is there's like communication errors when you have bad Internet and then it causes like duplicate pickings of your inventory or duplicate jobs get completed and it screws everything up.
14:58
Right.
14:58
So I'm identifying those problems beforehand because we have weekly operations meetings.
15:03
So I'm still in tune with everything that's happening there.
15:06
Identifying that, building a list of things of like, okay, this is what I'm going to execute the week that I'm there.
15:11
And I mean, that is like you think that I could go there and do some things and since I don't work there every day that I'd be not busy.
15:18
But it's like some of the busiest weeks that I have.
15:21
You know, I work the longest days when I'm there, catching up on the backlog.
15:25
Whether I'm like running new Internet through the whole shop and re networking it so that the iPads work.
15:29
And once I'm there, then I start talking to the employees, you know, time permitting.
15:34
Sometimes I don't, sometimes I have other reasons for that trip, like looking at real estate or whatever it might be.
15:40
But I do try to spend days in the shop, talk to every single person.
15:44
I talk to the lowest person on the totem pole because I also feel like sometimes they have the most valuable insights about what's going on with your operation.
15:53
you know, that's where I learned that these iPad kiosks weren't working.
15:57
They used to be Chromebooks.
15:59
That's where I knew I needed to spend some money to upgrade into iPads.
16:02
Even though they only, you know, tap a button on it, if that button doesn't function right, then it screws everything up.
16:07
So it's like you got to spend that extra money there, identifying what training they need to be able to effectively do it.
16:12
Identifying like, because when I'm looking through the data of the jobs and having all this data that I collect, I can identify like who's, who's putting errors into the system the most.
16:22
That tells me like, who, who needs the most training and helpful with the, with the workflow.
16:27
yeah.
16:28
And then the other thing that I do is whenever I'm teaching somebody something, I record a video of it, try to, And you know, every time I do something, I try to do it as if it's my last time, record that procedure, give it the video to them and they can take it from there.
16:44
And then usually they only have a handful of questions.
16:47
Even though I'm remote, I'm still very involved with everybody in the company.
16:51
That's huge.
16:52
Those videos that you've recorded, are those falling into a knowledge library or, SOP database or something?
16:58
I do have a goal for that.
16:59
Right now.
16:59
It's all a Google Drive folder split up into different topics.
17:03
But yeah, that's the ultimate goal is to hopefully build an AI database where it's like, here's these hour long videos I recorded about the whole topic.
17:13
And they can say, well, how do I do this?
17:14
And Shopify and you know, maybe one day it'll be able to just pop up a little five minute clip and say, this is the part that covers what you want.
17:22
That'd be the end goal.
17:23
yeah, that would be pretty slick.
17:25
Absolutely.
17:26
so you also mentioned that you, you kind of run your shop on a number of, you know, different philosophies and methodologies.
17:35
Was one of those can you kind of talk a Little bit about, you know, just how you run that on a day to day basis or even in your, you said your weekly UPS, meeting.
17:46
Yeah.
17:47
So part of Lean Management is identifying what you need and having just that.
17:54
Right.
17:54
And so that was like step one of this whole process of building out an ERP system and standardizing this because at first all the products were call somebody, get a quote, tell them what you want.
18:04
You know, custom made to order grizzlies.
18:07
So I start identifying what were the standard things that were requested and start standardizing these products and start building out SKU numbers that track those most popularly requested items and then building out all of that in the system so that it's all there.
18:24
We know exactly how much material is needed for any product to make, exactly how much time it takes to make any variation of product.
18:31
Right.
18:32
We know all of that information no matter what it is, right.
18:35
It's never.
18:36
And we're already prepared.
18:37
So what that does is there's another part of it is we do the E Commerce too and we tie all that into our E commerce site so we can just, people can just buy it.
18:47
But 80% of our stuff still goes to the phone.
18:49
But what it does is it lets us track all that information, right?
18:52
Identify what's the most popular models.
18:54
So then we're, anything that we build the stock we know is going to sell because people request it, we have the data that proves it.
19:01
So we build those items to stock.
19:03
That way anytime something custom comes along we can just pick up the phone and we can keep our lead time short because we already have the things in stock that people, people need plus you know how construction goes.
19:13
Well I didn't know that that was going to be in the ground.
19:16
I need a grizzly rock screen or I need a bedding box or whatever it is, I need it tomorrow to keep my critical path moving forward and so try to keep those items in stock for our customers.
19:25
And then analyzing all the raw material that we have and you know, finding.
19:30
Okay, well part of Lean Management, just in time delivery of getting something just when you need it, which we do for majority of our steel, because not all of it's, you know, universal.
19:41
With each product, we work with our suppliers to make sure that they have it in stock ready to ship.
19:46
So we can usually get any of our common sizes the next day just by calling our steel supplier.
19:51
But the items that we use the most.
19:53
Right.
19:54
We identify, okay, what items can I buy in a bundle?
19:57
And adding all that up In a year.
19:58
Okay.
19:58
Okay.
19:59
Now I go to the supplier and say, these items I want to purchase in bundle quantities, what prices can you give me?
20:03
What breaks can you give me on those, on those materials?
20:07
And then what other inventory or like what other deals can you do to help me make sure that, you know, we're going to keep this supplier relationship going and that you're my sole source?
20:15
You know, and then inventorying things and knowing that we're going to buy that is huge.
20:19
And so, we have those bundles of the commonly used materials.
20:24
Run it through our system.
20:25
Our scheduling software is all automatic.
20:27
It accounts for how much time is clocked to a job and it reschedules every day.
20:31
And so it tells everybody exactly what job they need to work on.
20:34
Stuff comes in through the door.
20:36
The process is just smooth, fluent, and just goes.
20:38
So then when it comes to an ops meeting, anything that comes up that's worthy of discussion is custom stuff or customer problems or just like weird things with the facility or a piece of equipment's broken or something like that.
20:52
Right.
20:52
It's never, it's never really anything about any standard product that we make.
20:57
There's never really an issue with that because everything's been thought of beforehand.
21:00
That's amazing.
21:01
Sounds like a very well oiled machine for sure.
21:04
It is.
21:05
It's running really lean.
21:06
And you know, something I'm doing now is at the end of every year I have all this data and what's the point of having all this data if you don't use it, right?
21:13
So I go, I sit down and I start going through all of it line by line and analyzing those different things and start finding where else I can cut waste because that's another principle of lean management is cutting your waste away.
21:27
Are there products that I can make out of my waste scrap metal and make another product out there?
21:33
Is there some inefficiencies that can be corrected with a change in procedure?
21:38
You know, identifying things like that?
21:40
you know, one of the things that we did last year is we really drove down our shipping costs by working with multiple shipping partners and getting the best rates.
21:47
And it's like even though revenues might not grow, I'm saving enough money that now I'm able to slash out them benefits to everybody.
21:56
So the company runs the same as it has.
21:58
we do plan on growing by implementing some more product lines this year, but we've been able to do those things that bigger companies offer to retain our employees.
22:08
Right.
22:08
So started with that four day work week now you got the four day work week.
22:12
Good, good pay and health care and you get a Christmas bonus and you get a retirement account.
22:18
Right.
22:18
We're, now we're competitive now.
22:20
We're, now we're a bigger player in the area, and can and maintain those workers.
22:25
And you know, that's been done with cost savings.
22:27
It's never, it hasn't been done with increased revenue.
22:30
Yeah, that's, that's really impressive.
22:33
Honestly, when, and you know when you feel like your boss is actually listening to you and giving you the resources that you need even without the increase in revenue, like you said, that's really cool.
22:45
Yeah.
22:45
And that's really like, that's probably like one of the biggest pain points.
22:49
And where I learned that was when I was in school after the first round of this and I shut it down and said, I'm going to focus on school.
22:56
I went, worked for a temp agency sweeping floors on construction sites.
23:01
And that's what I was doing.
23:02
I was digging trenches, setting up silt fence and sweeping the floors.
23:05
Right.
23:05
So I'm working with the people that are the lowest on the totem pole.
23:08
And we would sit there all the time and be like, these stupid idiots don't know how to do this if they're doing this like this.
23:15
And it's so dumb.
23:16
Right?
23:16
It's like, but the guy can't read a tape measure and actually make something, but he can see the problem.
23:21
He's not blind to the problem.
23:22
And so that's where I learned that even though they might not have the skills to accomplish something, they still might have perspective.
23:29
absolutely.
23:30
Yeah.
23:31
So I guess are you, is that process digitized at all in terms of how you're, you know, getting that, that feedback or that creating that feedback loop with your, you know, the, the guys who are on the bottom of the totem pole, and who are like, you know, do you run any type of like idea contests or anything like that around?
23:53
You mentioned earlier that, you might, we might be creating a new product line with the scrap.
24:00
Right?
24:01
Yeah, any.
24:03
Do you, do you take feedback in terms of like, ideas and problem identification and all that from all people or.
24:11
Yep, yep.
24:12
We actually, every week in the operations meeting, we give the opportunity to recognize innovation in the company.
24:18
Cool.
24:18
And so anytime.
24:20
Because I mean, there were ideas, like, even though I was talking to people, there was still ideas that these guys were withholding from me.
24:27
Right.
24:28
And they weren't telling everybody like what they saw.
24:31
And so we started offering the innovation Recognition that if anybody does something that contributes to improving the process or improving the company in some way, we're going to give them lunch and pay for the whole company get lunch.
24:43
So it's a whole team effort.
24:44
And the minute that we started doing that, well, here come all these ideas of how to make the products faster and we cut down our production time a couple hours.
24:51
And here's an idea of how we can reuse this drop here on another product and save all this money of buying raw material and making it more efficient.
25:00
It was like crazy how fast those ideas started coming through the door when we started doing that.
25:05
And then the other thing that we do for safety is we do a safety rewards program.
25:09
And you have to be careful when it comes to incentivizing safety.
25:12
Right.
25:12
Because it can easily lead to, well, don't tell anybody, don't tell anybody I got hurt or don't tell anybody I fell off the ladder.
25:21
You know, even though we need to know that information.
25:23
And so, incentivizing can suppress that info.
25:27
And so the way that we did it is we incentivize safety through just typical like violation checks.
25:34
Like are you wearing your seatbelt on the forklift?
25:37
Are you have a face mask on while you're grinding, you know, and looking for those types of basic things that easily get forgotten.
25:45
And then as long as you don't have any violations at the end of the month, you get put into a drawing.
25:50
And the number one prize every month is a day off work paid.
25:53
Wow.
25:54
Even more time off these guys get.
25:55
Right.
25:55
And I mean this, it's worked successfully.
25:57
I mean these guys, it doesn't sound like they're working at all because they get time off and they get three day weekends.
26:01
But they're producing efficiently and they like their jobs.
26:05
It works well.
26:06
yeah.
26:07
Are you, you.
26:08
So it sounds like, you know, you're creating definitely a, a strong workplace environment for these guys, you know, to actually strive in.
26:18
Are you using them as a source of referrals when you are hiring too?
26:22
well, I mean, it's a small enough shop that, you know, the interview process takes place like right next to the production floor and candidates can, you know, talk to other employees like while they're in there.
26:34
Sure.
26:35
and then usually, you know, our ops manager and, and our production manager are doing, the interview so they can talk about the workplace culture.
26:43
Yeah.
26:43
And then, Grand Junction is a smaller town, it's like 60,000.
26:48
I mean it's not a small town, but you know, it's not a giant city.
26:51
And so you kind of get this network of people of like, yeah, I know all these other welders.
26:56
Like yeah, you'll hire people and they've worked together before at some other place.
27:01
It's pretty common.
27:02
That makes sense.
27:03
No, I was just thinking, you know, with the, the, the culture in the workplace that you're creating, you know, it sounds like you can be relatively selective too because of the benefits that you're now offering and because of the, the type of.
27:17
Just the workplace that you've created, obviously.
27:20
right.
27:21
So I'm wondering if like the, you know, the, the, the guys who you have on staff right now because you've almost created like a next tier or top tier with your team.
27:32
If if you're using them to say like okay, who, who are the best in class guys that you've worked with in the past, let's get them on too.
27:39
Right.
27:40
And that, that did kind of happen, throughout the, throughout the journey of it.
27:43
Like we did get some other welders that came in that they'd worked with before, from our top tier guys and they've been the top tier guys.
27:51
Like those guys that they brought in were also the top tier guys.
27:53
Right.
27:53
And it's, we keep developing that worth workforce from within.
27:57
And you know, we're bringing in, you know, you start as a, like everybody starts out on the saw unless they're like a really experienced welder.
28:05
Because we'll, we'll take candidates from the local welding school or somebody that you know, can pass our welding test and we'll throw them on the saw and start teaching them how to fabricate and then put them on some simpler products that don't have like so crucial welds.
28:19
Like, like feed tubs.
28:21
We sell feed tubs for animals.
28:22
Right.
28:22
Those don't have to have as strong a welds as a grizzly rock screen does and so start them there.
28:28
Then once their welds are looking good, you know, we put them on the actual main products and getting them welding there and then work them up.
28:35
Right.
28:35
And then you have the opportunity to become a lead welder.
28:38
You know, that lead welder, then he's identified to become the production manager.
28:41
That production manager, we've identified him to become the next ops manager.
28:45
Right.
28:46
As long as he can develop those skills that we need him to be that person.
28:50
So we really do have a path up in the company.
28:54
Even though it's small, even though the company's small, there still is a Pathway up, as we grow.
28:59
Because I do plan on growing this further and moving people up the ladder and putting them in places.
29:03
And that's amazing.
29:04
Keeping those people, people assets that I have because they're very important.
29:07
Your, your people assets.
29:09
I believe still in the age of AI, that human assets, the ones that know your business well are still going to be very, very valuable.
29:15
I could not agree more with are you.
29:18
So you mentioned something really interesting too about this like, upwards momentum of, you know, identifying how it's almost like karate belts, you know, who, who currently have the blue belts, who have the brown belts.
29:33
Right.
29:33
And you know, how the, the people with the blue belts can get to the brown almost.
29:40
are you kind of overseeing all of that in terms of like, this person, you know, has done X number of hours on the, the, the feed beds, and so they've qualified to become the next, you know, I forget the role or the title that you said, but are, are you managing all of that yourself or is your operations manager kind of overseeing the operations team?
30:04
So what I try to do is I try to put people, like, I try to let them own their work, right?
30:10
So if you're the operations manager, the general manager, the people that are under you, I'm going to let you own that part.
30:16
You know, I'm going to have oversight on it and make sure that you're doing it right.
30:19
But like, I'm gonna let you determine what's best for those employees, especially not being there, right?
30:24
Like, who am I to dictate if this guy's a good welder or not when I don't see his welds every day, right.
30:30
So I let those guys kind of determine when people are ready to move up and I have the conversation with them, right?
30:36
Like, how's this guy performing?
30:38
How are his welds looking?
30:40
You know?
30:40
And then during that annual review, you know, we're looking we're grading on all these different criteria of how these people are performing and how they improved and what could be better as well as I also have that data that I'm tracking too.
30:51
I can see who's meeting the production goals and who's an efficient operator and who's an inefficient operator and keep track of those metrics there.
30:59
So what I do is I give recommendations to my middle management, but I let them own the decision.
31:06
If they feel like my recommendation's wrong, that's, that's their decision to make.
31:09
they see it every day yeah, absolutely.
31:12
Especially, you know, just going off of data.
31:14
If they have, like you said, that real time data and they can prove it to you, then that not only helps, you know, you trust their, opinion and their recommendation, but also gives you a lot more information in the future to go off of.
31:27
Yep, yep.
31:28
And it's helped us develop, a good workforce.
31:30
And, you know, I like the team that I have.
31:32
That's awesome.
31:33
Absolutely.
31:35
So, I know, like the audience who generally watches and listens to this, we're all in construction and one thing that we all have in common is just, you know, we build things on top of the ground.
31:47
and I know one of the assets you had on your website was how to identify or classify soils, when starting to do groundworks.
31:57
Right.
31:57
Whether or excavation or whatever.
32:00
can you talk a little bit more about, you know, that asset, where to find it, what it's useful for?
32:05
Yeah.
32:05
So on our website we got a blog post talking about just what you described there, soils and construction, how to classify them.
32:11
And what that guide there does is it talks about how, how soil, like you take a soil sample, how a sieve analysis is done, the classifications of the granule sizes, and how that plays into the structural engineering of soil.
32:25
Right.
32:26
Because everybody thinks that the foundation is like where the bottom of the strength is, but no, the earth is what's holding up that whole foundation.
32:35
That's holding up that whole building or structure or whatever you're building there.
32:39
And so your soil engineering is really, really important.
32:42
And anybody that lives in Colorado can attest to what bad soils are like because we have clay, which is the worst soil to build on, because it swells and it shrinks and it swells and it shrinks when it gets wet and dry.
32:56
And that's why you have roads that are bad in Colorado.
32:58
That's why your buildings crumble and all those different aspects there.
33:02
And so over excavating and putting in an engineered fill, you know, that's important.
33:07
That's why screens, like I make the grizzly rock screens exist.
33:12
So that way you can size down the soil to what you need and make a mix design that matches the spec.
33:18
Because that soil engineering, actually, it's true.
33:20
I took a whole class on just soil engineering when I was in school talking about that.
33:24
It's very important.
33:25
and so, yeah, that's available on our website, on our blog, on there.
33:29
And then any other cuts, any other listener on this podcast that needs our products, because I know that the, you know, you guys are the target Demographic of what we need.
33:38
So you guys listen to this podcast.
33:39
You guys are lucky.
33:40
You get 10 off anything on the website.
33:41
If you use the code, go first 10.
33:44
That will get you 10 off anything that we, that we make.
33:47
Amazing.
33:48
Yeah, that's, that is definitely, pretty generous of you guys.
33:52
and the soil compaction or the classification that asset will definitely be helpful for so many of the listeners too.
34:02
so we've talked a lot or we've talked about a handful of different topics and concepts today around just you know, best in class business management practices.
34:13
if any of our audiences, you know, excluding the the, the guys who just straight up need, you know, the, the products that you guys manufacture, and sell.
34:24
but if people are generally interested in learning more about, you know, how you operate, the, your story, maybe even lean manufacturing and lean management.
34:36
how can people get in contact with you?
34:38
Yeah, you guys can if you're interested in my products and different things like that.
34:41
I'm going to be trying to write a newsletter here.
34:42
Up in this upcoming year is a goal of mine that can help top touch on some of those topics as well as how to apply them to construction.
34:49
Because I want to make sure that this construction knowledge I have in my head doesn't go to waste even though I make a manufacturing, making a manufacturing business.
34:55
But you can Visit our website beariron.com and if you want to reach out to me personally, get in contact with me personally, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and I'm happy to chat construction business or whatever it might be.
35:09
Amazing.
35:10
Amazing.
35:11
Well Rogan, I loved our conversation today.
35:13
I personally learned quite a bit.
35:15
and dude, your story is impressive.
35:17
It's, it's definitely it's.
35:19
It's one to to keep listening to, that's for sure.
35:22
I'm glad that you liked it and thank you Grant for having me on the show.
35:26
this was a great opportunity and I appreciated the conversation.
35:29
Absolutely.
35:31
But yeah, I'm definitely interested to seeing you know how how your company grows and yeah, appreciate you being on.
35:37
So yeah, thanks again and I'm sure we'll be in touch.
35:40
Yeah, let's stay connected.
35:42
Absolutely.
35:42
Take care, man.
35:44
Thanks.
35:44
Look, my entire mission with this series is to see talented builders and business owners stop getting run over by operational chaos and to actually start building the business they deserve.
35:55
If this episode gave you even one tool or 1% of a tool to fight back, please share it with a fellow builder.
36:02
Help me spread the word.
36:03
That is all I ask, so make sure you subscribe so you're ready for the next one.
36:07
Until then, systems scale your success.
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