All right. Hello and welcome to another episode of the construction corner podcast. I'm Dylan, I'm your host and our blue collar. Bad-ass cohost, Matt Vetter. Matt, what is going on?
It's a beautiful Friday, Dylan. It's snowy as hell here in Southeast Michigan, but it's a nice end to a long week.
And. We've got another guest joining us, the welding Lord, Zach Arnold of Utah.
And it's going to get a little colorful today, guys. Zach is a colorful character. He owns Arnold quality. Metalworks out of Logan, Utah, and. Just a great, great guy and MF CEO of Arnold, Callie metalwork. So Zach, welcome to the
show. Thanks guys. I appreciate you inviting me out today. Excited to do this.
Glad
to have you man. Glad to have you. So
before we got started here, we were talking about snow and what a like snow storm. It, so, I mean, it's, it's the beginning of February here and like, I got a foot and a half last week, the mountains up above me got seven feet of snow. And, you know, it's, it varies.
But Matt, you were saying that you got a few inches, and everything got shut down, but Zach what's, what's like a typical storm for you there in
Logan. So up here in Northern Utah, we're sitting at about. Wow. 4,500 feet above sea level. And so we're kind of up there in elevation. So if it's a serious snow storm, we may see a foot or a foot and a half of snow.
I think I remember. Two, maybe three times in my whole childhood school being canceled because of snow. And it was like two feet in a couple of hours. Right. First thing in the morning. So the plows can get out. I mean, it's like, I remember walking into the school bus stop in a foot and a half of snow, like, well, there's, maybe we're going to be a little late today, you know, like, but schools still go, and they don't cancel for snow around here.
Like nothing shuts down for snow around here unless it's real serious for sure.
I'm with you, man. I grew up in around Chicago land area. And then, and then in Michigan, obviously, and I could probably count on my hands, how many times school was canceled, but now I've got three school-aged children. And like I was saying before, we got a whopping four inches last night, they shut schools down.
It blows my mind. I mean, they, they started a couple of years ago, shutting the school down the night before because of the prediction.
If we think it might snow tomorrow, so a school's canceled.
It, it literally represents everything I think is wrong with society. We had, I had subs call in sick today because of four inches of snow.
They couldn't put their trucks out. And
yeah, I had guys out on a job site in a blizzard the other day. And I mean, a couple of weeks ago I was outside in a blizzard, just, I mean, well-done rails out in a blizzard, snowing sideways, and I like it. You're welcome to Utah. That's a fact of
life. We can all go down to Florida.
Yeah, jobs still got to get done, you know? Yeah,
definitely. My superintendent was a rare form of pissed off this morning and I actually had to go out there to try and calm him down because he's on the same mindset I am, but you know, we've got deadlines to meet and it's one thing if you get an accident.
Okay. But because it's snowy out, we all drive trucks. But one day won't kill us, right.
Or
real button got to hit that four wheel button to make sure you can go put some new tires on.
Yep. I think it's fun to be out, frankly, but.
Yeah, I love sliding around corners and you know, practicing my drifting and donuts in the parking lot.
You know, it's one of my favorites. Absolutely.
I'm the first one to turn off the traction control and let's go on. I do. And I get in the truck, hit that button. Turn that shit off, man.
Awesome.
Zach, I guess one of the first, you know, big questions, changing topics here a little bit is, you know, what got you into welding?
Yeah. So I, when I was 16 years old, I was, you know, I was big into riding my bike BMX street, biking, that type of thing. And I didn't really have a path of what I wanted to do with my life. And one day I was sitting down in my mom's basement and I was watching TV and I saw this TV show. It was called Fuck.
What was it called? It was Jesse James. He built a custom shopper from just raw materials and then he wrote it to Sturgis a motorcycle mania. That's what it was on the discovery channel. And I watched that, and I was like, Holy shit. That's what I want to do is my life. I want to build cool things out of metal.
And so I signed up for welding classes down at the local technical school. And I was fortunate that my high school allowed me to go take welding classes in my junior and senior year. And so I took. Oh, I think I did five trimesters’ worth in those two years of welding. And then I got a full-time scholarship, or they did like a senior scholarship for a few of the seniors that were graduating to go full-time and finish out the program.
So I did that and finished, and then. And got into welding. Like the day I graduated, and my teacher says, Hey, do you have a job? Well, I'm delivering pizzas. He's like, cool, go visit this weld shop. They're going to hire you. And so I was like, okay, cool. Went out and interviewed the old man that interviewed me.
He's like as soon as you're going to have to cut your hair off. Cause I had hair down to here and piercings in my face, you know, as a punk ass kid and. He's like, well, we might have to make you cut your hair. And then the guy that actually owned it, he's like, we don't give a shit if he got long hair, man, like, can you, well, and so that was how I got into metal working and welding.
And then I, I worked for about 15 years in the industry. Before I decided to start my own business, which had kind of always been a thought of mine. Like when I decided I was going to do welding I knew I wasn't going to always do it for someone else. I was eventually going to get into just doing it for myself or for my company.
And then that's kind of grown into now. It's teaching other people how to weld. Like I. I rarely weld anymore. Now I'm just running my business.
That's awesome, man. So going back to the, to your high school start, did you actually get high school credits for the welding classes?
Yes. So, I mean, like my senior year, I think I took jewelry three times, so I was making rings and stuff, you know, working with metal and then I'd go over and I do welding for half the day.
And so, I mean, I was just like playing with metal for the last year that I was in school. And yeah, I mean, credit, I graduated early and then just started working. That's
awesome. I love that in the, in the short time that I've been co-hosting with Dylan, we probably talk about this sort of thing. I don't know, every episode.
And it just that sort of stuff wasn't around when I was coming up through high school and, you know, voc-tech was, was auto shop and that, that was it. And, you know, we don't need to re rehash all my bitching and moaning about the problems in the industry. But I think if, if more schools got on board with stuff like what you went through and we had Andy's Zeller a week or so ago, and he had, you know, a similar, similar kind of vocational program, but he was on the design side, the BIM side.
But if more places got on board with that sort of thing, We wouldn't have this problem in the trades that we have today.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it seems to me that over about the last 20 years or so the school system has really pushed the idea that technical or vocational schools are for. People who can't necessarily get into a four-year college.
And that the path to success is to go to a four year college, get yourself a degree. And then because of that little piece of paper, someone's going to give you a job. But I mean, all these people, I, how many times have you heard of people that have like a fucking master's degree and their manager at McDonald's?
You know, and like 200 grand in debt. I'm like, dude, I, I got a scholarship. I think I paid 300 bucks for my books, you know? And it's like, and that was all my investment in school. And then on the job training, you know, and you can make good money in skilled trades. There's lots of money to be made. And there's also a lot of satisfaction to be taken from creating things with your hands in mind.
I have, so a couple of questions in there. One, I want to go back to like the jewelry thing cause like jewelers make a ton of money.
Yeah. Easy Marcos on that.
Yeah. Yeah. And just, well, in like the skill, the craftsmanship, when you're dealing with stuff, that's that tiny, you know, like you're under a microscope and magnifying glass to.
To do all of it, but like how many people out of your, your school, you know, that, that were in those classes went and, and made that a
career? I, I honestly don't think it's many, you know, it's like, there's, I there's actually one guy that he's my vice president of business development and we met in welding school.
You know, he went to a different high school, but the high schools around here, they all allow the kids to go to this technical college during high school and start learning. And so I met him and then didn't see him for 10 years. He continued down the same path as I did. And so it's, I'd say it's a small percentage.
You know, like the average age of welders now is 58 and a half years old. Wow. And so, yeah, I mean, it's an old industry, as far as the people that are actually working in it. Cause there's just not a lot of kids or younger people that are getting into it. You know, why would you, if you're told, Hey, you got to go and get a degree and you should sit in front of a computer and do something working that way, you know, that you don't want to do hard, physical, dangerous, and dirty, you know, I guess it's not really glamorous to be a welder.
Like the work is brutal, right? But I it's super fucking fulfilling to do it. You know? So
this is the other side of things that I really want to talk about is so as a, as a welder, you went through school, got maybe some certificate, or graduated, right. Through that, what did you make when you started?
My first welding job, I was making nine bucks an hour and I did that job.
I was doing structural steel erection. I was doing structural steel fabrication and welding, and I was doing some ornamental railings welding and installation as well. So I was just kinda like the new guy. I spent a lot of time with a grinder in my hand. Spent a lot of time, like for the first month I just went with this old timer and he's like, okay.
Give me that give me that Jimmy, that I don't mean that was like a cent of his conversation was like, grab that for me, grab that for me. Like, don't even talk to me on the ride, up to the job site in the morning, just like, give me that, give me that. And it took him probably a month, month, and a half to warm up to had actually talked to me, you know?
And so it's like, that was kind of my initial exposure. And then I decided I didn't much care for working out in the field because it was nice for a month in the spring and a month in the fall. And other than that, it was like hotter than hell or it's, you know, a snow storm and your gloves are soaked and frozen within the first five minutes you get on the job site.
So I was like, yeah, I want to get into a climate control shop. And so I moved out of that into a different shop and I think I got hired on at $11 an hour at that next place. After probably six months, I got a raise to $12 an hour. And then I started really developing my TIG welding skills, which is more of the specialty welding.
Started welding a lot of aluminum. And at that point I went to my supervisor and I was like, look. I, I don't like this shop that much, and I'd be totally willing to go to another shops. That'll pay me, you know, 15 bucks an hour to do this exact same work. So, you know, what are you going to do? And so they gave me a raise to 16 bucks an hour.
And I did that for a while. I ended up moving to a different shop. I worked my way up to like 18 bucks an hour. My final welding job that I had before I started my company. I was making 27 bucks an hour, which in Logan, Utah was a good paying job. You know, we got a lower cost of living here. And so it was like, it was a comfortable living.
My wife didn't have to work. We've got four kids. So it wasn't like we're a small family, you know, but I made enough money for us to live off of doing that, you know, and then it was just the like, Hey, I'm. Tired of working for other people. I'm tired of building someone else's dream. So I gotta start building mine, you know?
Yeah. So there's a couple of things I really want to hit on in here and then go into some other financials and kind of your, your journey too, as a business owner. But the big thing that you know, for, for some of you out there, these numbers might not seem like crazy. You also have to remember, there's no debt, right?
You started working at 18 or 17 whenever you graduate with no debt, you know, 300 bucks for books, which is cash, right? So no debt. Even okay. Take the four years of somebody going to college at even 30 grand a year, you know, so there's $120,000, you know, that you're to the good plus whatever you made over those four years, let's say you made 120 grand over the same four years.
Right? So now you're 250 a year, a quarter million dollars to the good. Of somebody that went to college and then, and then plus whatever you're doing now, and your earnings are higher through that. And so everything, you know, it's quarter million plus in the same four years, or right after graduation, you're probably a half a million to the good.
Right. So this is the thing to understand, even though those numbers don't sound like crazy, right? You were you're 18, right. Is good enough to have a good time. By the time you turn 21, you can afford some beer on the weekend, probably before that. But we won't, you know, like that's the, that's the type of thing, right?
You had enough money to drive around. You were, you know, you could support yourself. Right. And that's, that's the biggest thing that I want to push here is like, Even though, like for some of those numbers and I'm sure like today, like starting salaries are much, much higher for welders, but like having that skill, you know, one is going to be with you for a lifetime, right?
If the average age is 57 and a half 58 years old. So now you're in it for 40 years, right? From 18 to 58, 40 years of working, making good money. And no debt, right? And you have a skill, you can build shit at your house, do all that type of stuff, right. Help your buddies out on the weekend, you know, put their trailer back together that they broke or whatever.
Like, absolutely. This is what I want to really push here is. You know, tr like I went, I did the school thing, right. I'm an engineer. I got the good degrees, all that shit. But like, you know, through that, like I picked up debt like any, you know, other good college kid, but it's knowing that there are other opportunities, right?
Like, I've said this before. Like I'm not the most mechanically inclined guy. I know that. Right. But like math and science and computers and all that stuff is my skillset. You're, you know, super good with your hands and you know, what you want to do at an early age. And I think that it's so important that all of us like.
Understand what you're good at, right. If you can do math and science and all that stuff. Great. Go, go that side of it. If you know that you're, you love fixing shit and, you know, welding and putting stuff together, tearing it down and putting it back, do that, right? Like don't there. And there's plenty of great examples of people that have fantastic jobs, fantastic careers in, in doing all this.
And I just want to, you know, I know we emphasize this point every single time, but it's, it's worth repeating because I think not enough people understand that there's. There's people like yourself and we'll have more and more of them on that are skilled craftsman. Right. And you can appreciate skilled and quality craftsmanship when you see it.
And this goes for anything from woodworking to metal, to art through the, you can appreciate it. That that in and of itself is the blue collar Bad ass right. You, you found something, you were passionate about, you exploited it. You blazed your own career path. And I would correct me if I'm wrong, but I would almost guarantee if you didn't start your own shop, had you kept working for someone else?
I would bet you could walk out to any shop ever and have a job in minutes. Right? You created these skills that most people don't have, you know, and that's the beauty of it.
A hundred percent correct. I mean, I, and that really alleviates a lot of like potential stress as far as the unknown, because what I know is if things were to go terrible in my business and we had to shut down this afternoon, I could have a new job that paid me 25 bucks an hour to start in on.
So it's like, what do I really have to worry about? My life would change a little bit, you know, and I'd have to go on and follow someone else's rules, but yeah. Ultimately, like I wouldn't have any issue finding gainful employment, like zero at all. It might not be ideal, but I'd have a new job, you know, this day, the same day.
And that's a huge level of comfort, right? I mean, not, not all industries can say that there's a lot of, there's a lot of career choices that, you know, if you get bagged one day at work, you might be pretty far down in your luck for a long time, you know, but, but construction all across construction. Like you said you could walk out and go drink a beer and then, you know, drop a tear tonight and start on the new cruise tomorrow.
Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've heard people that are like, Oh yeah, I just left this job after four years to go work for this company. Cause they offered me $1 more per hour. What the fuck are you talking about man? But yeah, that's like, that's totally it. People are like, Hey, I've got to.
Skilled trade. You know if you don't treat me right. I'll just go somewhere else. Yup.
And there's opportunity out there for that, which is, which is absolutely right. So when, when did you actually start Arnold quality? Metalworks
I started it four years ago. So it's actually almost to the day, four years ago.
It was February of 2017 and my wife was pregnant with our third kid, our third daughter, and I had a good job, you know, as a fabrication supervisor. Running my own department. There was potential for me to grow within that company as well, but I just got to the point where, like I had always worked early.
I'd always missed seeing my kids. I was gone to work before they woke up. I'd get home just before dinner. He was hanging out for an hour maybe, and then put them to bed. And like, that was all the interaction I got with my kids. And so why am I found out my wife was pregnant with our third daughter? I was like, look, something's got to change.
Like I can't just keep doing what I have been doing. I, even though I had a good. Good job. I wasn't being challenged. I wasn't growing, I wasn't learning, you know, I was feeling very stagnant and it drove me nuts. Like I was losing my shit. I was like getting to the point where I was like, maybe I'm just going to quit welding and go and try something else.
Because like, I don't know what else to do. You know, like I'm not being challenged here. I'm not, I'm not growing as a person, you know? And so I. It, when I found out she was pregnant, I was like, okay. I'm going to quit my job and start my own weld shop. And that was like, she was like, well, okay. Cause I mean, I'd tried that a few times before, like tossing out the idea, Hey, maybe I'll just quit and start my own shop, you know, there's money to be made.
And I finally, like, I guess, broke her down enough that she was like, fine. Like, you're just gonna do whatever you're going to do anyways. So just fucking do it. And so I really didn't have a business plan. I didn't have a clientele list. All I had was a dream and luckily, I owned my house. So I refinanced it did a cash out mortgage took about $80,000 out and I used $40,000 to start up the business and the other 40,000 to live off for the first year, year and a half.
And just bootstrapped the business. I started in my two car garage at my house with one TIG welder. And a little table, a little saw. And after about six months, I had filled up my garage with equipment to the point where I had about open space for maybe like a VW bug. And that was my open working space.
I was like, shit, winter's coming. And it's going to be 10 degrees outside. If I have to put something on my saw the garage door has to be open. And so at that point I started looking for a new shop. I was talking with my grandpa and told him, Hey, I'm looking for a bigger shop. And he says, Oh, Hey, well, the family owns this building and it's not being used right now.
I'll call your cousin. He's managing it. And I was like, Holy shit. And so I call him up and he's like, yeah, it's just it's just being used as like storage right now. And a couple people have a little eBay business where they're selling stuff. Excuse me. And so I moved into about a thousand square feet of this building that I'm in now.
And after a year I had grown into the full 7,000 square feet of the shop. I got into doing commercial work. Like at first, I was just building rails for little old ladies. And it was like, what, what little old lady am I going to meet this month? Who's going to pay me. To build a rail for a front porch so that she doesn't slip and fall down the stairs.
And like, that's how I'm going to continue growing for this month, you know, like, and so I do one or two rail jobs a month and it was like, it was slow and it was stressful. And one morning I'm talking with my wife and I was like, you know, I am I'm getting really frustrated. I've like, I'm really good now at landing three to $5,000 jobs, but I'm never going to get where I want to get to with three to $5,000 jobs.
There's just not enough days in the year to do this. And so I said, I'm going to start landing 50 and hundred thousand dollar jobs. Like that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do it a few months while it wasn't even a few months later, probably three weeks later, I went to a poker game over at my buddy's house.
He just hits me up. Hey, I'm having a poker game. Do you want to come out? Sure man. Like I, you know, I'm kind of a home body. Most of the time we'll wanna hang out with my family. I was like, yeah. Okay. I'll do it. It was like Friday night, go out. And I ended up meeting this guy there. Who's also a local welder and we kind of hit it off.
Cause he was working at a shop that I used to work at and that I fucking hated. And he all, he also hated it, you know? So it was like, Hey yeah, fuck that place. We both hate that place. And A few weeks after that, he hits me up and he says, Hey, I've got an associate that works for a bigger shop. That's looking for smaller shops to sub out parts of their contracts that they get.
Do you want to meet this guy? And I was like, yeah, yeah, let's go meet him. You know, I want to grow my business. So at this point, my business is me. So me and this guy, his name's Mike he's now my VP of operations. He was the first guy that I hired. We go and we meet with this other guy. And he says, well, what I need is 2,500 linear feet of brushed stainless guardrails for the salt Lake city airport.
Or like the fuck did this dude just say, cause I mean, at that point, my largest rail contract was like 40 feet of mild steel rails for an old ladies board, you know? And so I'm like 2,500 feet of brush stainless. Like yeah, let's do it. You know? And so we, me and Mike were chatting and he's like, I'll quit.
I'll come work with you, like let's do this. And so, yeah, dude, let's do it. And so we took on, it ended up being about a half million dollar contract when all of a sudden Dawn and we got involved with that. We started hiring people like crazy. I mean, over the course of that year, we grew from just myself to, I think we finished out with five guys at the end of the year, by the way.
And of the following year, we’d grown to 10 guys we're sitting at about 13 right now and pushing to grow to 60 this year. And so it's been a wild couple of years, a lot of change, very rapidly, you know, to the point where like about, it's been almost two years ago now, I was like, Hey, I can't work in the shop anymore.
I have to run the business. Like I, I can't try and split my time between the two because I'm being ineffective in both places.
That is tremendous, man. That, that growth is amazing. I love hearing these stories. Do you so do you guys primarily focus on, on miscellaneous steel?
So we're kind of right now, our niche that we've found is in ornamental metals specifically non-ferrous and so aluminum glass.
Stainless steel, bronze. Those are the main ones that we've been focusing on. We do a little bit of mile steel powder coat and stuff. Generally. We're more inclined to do that if it has like glass panels in it. So for instance, where I. We're in the middle of a project right now for the St. Regis hotel in park city, they built seven private condominiums, and we're doing a bunch of glass balcony rails for the front of the building.
And so that's one we've been working on for the past few months.
Fair enough questions that just for everyone out there that doesn't weld for a living is when you talk stainless, you know, in 2,500 linear feet, what. Make stainless. So you know, different in welding and what makes it like a harder metal to, to work with and like your normal steel or anything else, right.
To where this is a huge project and a big undertaking.
Yes. So with stainless steel, it. It's generally presented in the raw state and like a brush form. And so you put a surface finish onto the metal and then. Beyond that point. You've gotta be careful with it because you've established this really nice looking grain and the material, whereas with mild steel and, and you can grind all over that, it doesn't really matter.
You're gonna spray primer on it. You're going to spray powder coat or paint over the top of it. And it's going to hide a lot of those inconsistencies. But with stainless it's what you see is what you get. You know, it's like, there's no way to hide if there's a scratch that goes across the grain on it. Same thing with bronze, which scratches incredibly easily.
But stainless, the other thing is if you weld it too hot, then you can burn out the nickel and the chromium in it, which is essentially what gives it its stainless properties. And so you can burn the metal and ruin it so that you're going to get corrosion. And you're not going to have that nice surface finish.
You're going to end up with rust on it. Which just looks terrible when you got that nice, bright, shiny stuff. Silver material. And then the other aspect of it is a stainless is quite a bit more expensive, just the raw materials than a mild steel is. And then by the time you add in the polishing as well because we polished everything in house.
There was another like $75,000 worth of polishing just to take the raw materials, which there was $300,000 worth of raw material on that project. So it was damn near $400,000 worth of raw material by the time it's polished and just ready to be built into rails. You know, so it's like, it's, the stakes are higher.
It's more specialized. It's easier to fuck up. Stainless likes to move a lot when you weld it. And so there was a lot of trial and error. There was a lot of figuring of how to make these work so that they would look good after you're done. Because when you heat up metal, it. Expands. And then when it cools it contracts, but it always contracts more than it expands.
So every time it goes through a heating and cooling cycle, it's going to shrink a little bit. So if you have a piece of plate like this, and it has a rail baluster that comes in on this bottom side and you're welding around that bottom side, right. That bottom side of the piece of metal just got smaller.
And so it pulls down like this and so compensating with bath bowing before you well, so that after it Wells and pulls, it pulls into straight is one of the things that we had to do or post-weld straightening is another thing that you can do by applying heat to the opposite side afterwards. But with stainless, once again, it's really easy to burn it and essentially ruined that corrosion protection.
But it has.
So this is the other thing, guys, right? Like when an expert actually talks about what they do, you know, that all comes through. Right. And these, like, that's, there's a ton of nuance in that. Right. And the heating, the cooling, you know, does it sit right? How long does it sit? The metals and material like your You're half metallurgist by the time you're done with this.
Absolutely. Yes. It's critical. You have to learn about the materials that you work with and how they behave because. Metals behave differently to welding aluminum versus welding, mild steel or stainless are like two different ball games. I mean, welding aluminum.
There's a lot of people that are fairly good steel welders, and they try and weld aluminum and they just can't do it because it has different mechanical properties. It has different physical properties. It has different melting points. There's different there. Even the oxide layers on them. I affect the metal in different ways.
So for instance, what gives stainless it's staying less ability or I corrosion inhibition is that it? I, if you clean it and you put it into a clean state and then allow it to be exposed to oxygen, the chromium. Reacts with the oxygen in the air and forms a thin layer of chromium oxide, which is mostly clear.
It's got a little bit of a shine to it, so you can see they call it passivation and it's a naturally occurring phenomenon, but a lot of people will act like it's some special thing that they do to their stainless. Oh yeah. We'll provide it. And it'll be passive. all that means is that you cleaned it and let it sit there for 48 hours.
And so it grows this oxide layer that is corrosion resistant. So if you don't allow it to form that chromium oxide layer, then it's going to be open to corrosion. And that's when, like, if you've ever seen a stainless rail that has rust around the weld. So that's because it wasn't cleaned properly.
Post-weld so it was aluminum, aluminum oxide. Melts at about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, but aluminum itself melts at about 1,250 degrees. And so what you can get, if you don't understand that is you can be heating up your piece of metal and the insight can be totally molten. At 1,250 degrees, while all of a sudden you get that surface oxide layer to 3000 degrees and it melts.
And all of a sudden, the entire piece just goes and disappears on you because that's another thing aluminum will not support its own weight at melting temperature, but steel will support its own weight at melting temperature. And so it's like, it's all of these little tiny things that you learn through experience.
You know, it's like, I've seen guys right. Preheating an aluminum beam and go to weld on it. And all of a sudden, the beam just goes and melts into a pile on the floor. And they're like, what the hell just happened? You know, that was an expensive chunk of metal. Well, you didn't understand the metal. You didn't understand how to work it.
You don't understand, you know, like the use of heat sinks to suck out some of that heat so that you don't overheat it or mechanically removing the oxide layer so that you don't have to Mel, through that 3000 degree melting point material to get to. The softer aluminum that melts at a lower temperature,
man, I, you are, you're definitely an expert in this field and in all things, welding, and metal and, and I, I can appreciate the hell out of that.
That's, that's really cool to hear, you know, it's kinda, I get it. It's like the carpenter, you know, that's, my background is in carpentry and you, you know, How different species of would react, you know, how different, you know, different wood products be plywood or, or to buy or lineal. So I, I get the, the mindset anyways.
I don't know anything about metal. Welding is one of the few things I've never even tried. Maybe someday you can show me, but so absolutely. So you're a genius in metal,
right? That's why I'm the welding Lord, man. You're the
welding. Tell me about the, tell us about the transition though, from going from, from welding Lord genius and metal to now business owner.
How, how was that in business owner with now a shit ton of employees?
Yeah, that that was a wild process for me. What happened was we ended up getting involved with building some bronze rails for some Mormon temples and. One of the temples was in Port-au-Prince Haiti. And so I went down to Haiti for two weeks to work on the install of these rails that we had built.
And while I was gone, I had to turn over control of my shop to my guy, Mike. Cause I was like, I, you know, you gotta run the shop cause I'm going to be in a different country. And so when I came back. I came out into the shop and I was like, you guys are just doing this, like, and I don't need to be here. I'm going to transition into just running the business.
Like, I'm just going to be the motherfucking CEO from now on, instead of Zach, the welder sometimes, and Zach, the motherfucking CEO for the second half of the day, or back and forth all day long, you know So for me, it was an identity shift because I, for the previous decade, almost a decade and a half, I had identified myself by what I did.
I would introduce myself as, Hey, I'm Zack, I'm the best welder you've ever met. And I'll take the Pepsi challenge on that. You know, like I wasn't scared because I knew my skill set. You know, I knew my level of mastery that I had over my craft. And so it was literally built into my identity, Zach, the welder, like that's who I was.
And so when I made that change, that transition into working in the office and doing human resources and doing sales and doing all of these other things that are involved with operating a business. I had to make an identity shift. I couldn't be Zach the welder anymore, you know? And so what I did was I did 75 hard and with the intention of changing who I was as a person, I was like, you know, I, I also went through an exercise.
Beforehand of deciding who I was going to be, who this next character in my life was going to be. Zach, the motherfucking CEO. How did that guy act? How did he think, how did he talk to other people? What sort of impact as you make on people when he would meet with them? Like, I. Intentionally designed all of those things, knowing like I'm not the person that I need to be to lead this company to where I want it to go.
So I'm going to have to change who I am as a person in order to be able to take this too. Where I want it to go. And so at that point I worked my way through 75 hard. I did phase one. I did phase two. I did phase three, completed live hard May 4th of last year, last week, I just finished up phase two of my second time through the program.
And so that was the key. For me was making that mental shift and it's, I mean, I'm a radically different person today than I was a year ago than I was two years ago, three years ago, four years ago. I mean, the last year I felt like I lived 10 years in a single year, which set a new benchmark for me, like, well, shit.
Now the water levels here. How do I live a decade worth of life every year from now on?
I love it.
You've done 75 hard. Now you've done the whole program one and a half times, which is mind blowing. We we've talked about the program a bit on here before I, I did 75 hard and that's it. I have yet to start phase one and anything else, but that alone for anyone who doesn't know about it, I would suggest you look it up because.
The commitment and the level of, of mental, not as mental toughness, mental bad-ass newness that you have to have to do what this man has just told us he did is, is outstanding. So hats off to you just for that part of it, let alone successful business. In the meantime.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean like
it's phase one can break you.
Like that's the, that's the hardest phase of, of all of them. Like I, I try
to do that. I did phase three phase one looked like a fucking cakewalk. That's true.
Yeah, like I try to do too much on the second term around phase one where I try to do like the calendar club and running, you know, my, you know, whatever day it is that Tony and I made it to like day 20 before just like broke.
The second time around on welfare. But through that, like the, it, some of this stuff like hit the emotion through, this is like a sign for how much he was happy. Well, how much you know, just how much Like grown through all of this is tremendous, right? From, from being in your, for welding and like saying, Hey, I want to go and do a business, right.
For somebody you were working for somebody else. And then just say, Hey, like I'm not growing here. I'm not developing anything. And then to go and do your own thing to then say, Hey, I'm not, I'm never going to make this in three and $5,000 jobs. Right. Which for a lot of people is pretty good. Right? You do that over a year.
Like that's living, you work a few hours a week and, you know, drink beer. People are like super happy with that in, in life. Right. But to say that you want it more to, to really pull on a lot of those opportunities to, to chase that, to say yes, right. To a random poker game. To a random thing to a random meeting.
Right. That, but all because you said that you wanted to land 50, a hundred thousand dollar jobs and then, you know, through the rest of this, right, like you, you said yes to this thing had to go to Haiti for, you know, weeks on end, right. Foreign country. And, and do all this work. You know that again, saying yes to opportunity.
I think most people pass that by they don't, they don't say yes, they don't chase that opportunity. And then they don't do other things that, that challenge themselves. You know, some people from the outside looking at this might see, like, I was just a welder or whatever, but like, man, the amount of like personal development and growth that you've done just in the last year through 75 hard is like, More than most people do in their lifetimes.
So to me, I see someone that wants to grow that is willing to change that has become an expert in their craft and is looking to not only continue to be the expert in their craft. Right. But to, to level that up, to, to own a business, to teach other people how to do stuff, to build a team of people that, that are experts in their craft.
Right. So it's not just a one man shop. It's a team of, of welding wards. Right. That's what you're creating and to. And this is this in and of itself is the thing that I think most people, I don't care what industry you're in, whether you're in construction or not, that people do not, you know, when you see it in construction, especially because it shows in the quality work, the thing that they're putting out is, you know, are you good?
Right? Do you have a quality product? You take pride in what you do, but then the transition that you have gone through in. Being somebody to not only be the master of your craft, but to be the teacher of other masters of their craft. That is a hard shift to make, because you want to, like you said, you tied your identity to being great at what you do.
And I think that. Do you, I mean, like S kudos on all this stuff. Like, I love talking to you, Zach, and the thing like you're so teachable, right? I remember being in St. Louis at the live in October and the Charles Covey, which I need to reach out and have him on, but you, we were sitting in that room and you asked so many questions.
Next thing, you know, you've done basically everything that they said, right? You're, you're teachable. You want to learn, you want to grow, you want to improve everything that you do. And I think if anybody takes anything away from this, and I mean, we're still going to go here, but you, you have to take away these things, right?
You have to be willing to grow. You have to be willing to seize opportunity. You have to be willing to change your identity, change your mindset and to. To know what you want. Right? You knew you wanted bigger jobs; you knew you wanted to build a team. You knew you wanted a decade in a year. And I think most people don't ever think first about what they want.
They don't know who they want to be or what that guy does. So just super kudos to you, man. This is, this is hats off and in everything that you've, you've done and you've become over the last
few years. Well, thanks, Dylan. I really appreciate that. It's a, it's been a wild journey, you know, it's like, I, one of the great benefits of 75 heart is all the books that you get to read as a result of that.
And so, I mean, I've read more books in the last three years than I read in the entire rest of my life put together. And they're all focused around me becoming a better person, becoming a better version of myself, you know? Cause it's like, I. I've got this dichotomy where I know that I'm a bad-ass, but I also know I'm not shit, you know?
And so it's like, yeah, I may be a bad-ass in some areas, but until I'm the best in every area, am I really that good? You know, I don't think so. I think there's still a lot of room for improvement. There's still a long way for me to go. I look in the mirror every day and go, is that the motherfucker that I'm supposed to be?
No, not quiet. Like I'm on the path, but I'm not there yet. So I still keep pushing. I still have to keep going.
And that's the, that's the true path of the entrepreneur, right? Especially the tradesman entrepreneur is you're, you're never at the top. You can always get better and to see that and recognize it, most people can't do that.
That's why most people don't do what you do or, or what Dylan does or what I do, you know? And it's, it's just a different mentality and it's, it's fun to have these conversations and, you know, I hope people are listening because. You know, we, we talk a lot about, about youth and we, we kind of started today with that, with, you know, what you went through in high school.
And, you know, I look at my three boys and if they don't want to go the college route, I really hope they watch this podcast someday and, and recognize that there's, there's other really easy, not easy, but there's other paths out there where you can blaze your own trail. You can, you can make it, you can do whatever it is you want.
You just got to start up here. Yeah, you got to have that mental toughness. You gotta be willing to sweat and bleed and, and, and when you gotta be willing to die for it, but once you hit to that, it gets to that point. There's a lot that's out there that you can do.
Yeah, you're absolutely right, man. I mean, it's, the trades are one of the few things where you can start as someone with zero experience gained the skills, gained the experience, start your own company, and become a millionaire, multimillionaire, or billionaire.
You know, it's like the story is as old as time it's been going on over and over and over again, it happens every day. You know, the opportunities are there and like you guys hit on. Saying yes to opportunities. That's really what makes the difference. I mean, opportunities are all around us, but it's picking and choosing which ones we want to move on.
And the way that you know, which ones to say yes to is by knowing where you're trying to go. You know, if you know where you're trying to get to, then an opportunity comes up. Yeah. Now, is this opportunity going to take me towards my destination? Or is this a good idea for you saying, Hey, what about this?
So what about this? You know, cause it's, you'll get that constantly. Oh, Hey, the more you open yourself to opportunity, the more you'll see them everywhere, but you've got limited time and energy. So you have to focus on what it is that you're really trying to accomplish and make sure that those. Opportunities are in blind with where you're trying to go.
And then you say, yes, you know, say yes, and figure out how to do it. That's I, first year I was in business. I heard that quote from Richard Branson and I embraced it, you know, and for me, like one of my top six human needs is growth. I have to grow. If I'm not growing, if I'm not changing, then I must be dying.
You know, I, I look at life like it's a treadmill. As long as you're walking, you can make forward progress. As soon as you stop, you're not staying in the same spot. You're going backwards. You know, if you stop pushing the Boulder up the Hill, that thing rolls back down such great analogies. And the next thing that I kind of want to hit on, you know, through this and in continuing this train of thought, is that poster that's right?
Yeah.
Helped really align you your company and everything that you do.
Yeah. So for me, I was fortunate to learn about core values at my last job before I started this company. And so I became aware of them, which that's like the first step is becoming aware that core values are something that everybody has, but are you being intentional with them?
And so when I started the company, I defined what my core values is just for me as a person where, and so it's. My honor doing the right thing, even if it's the hard choice or pride taking pride in the things that we do and the things that we're able to accomplish through force of will.
Sorry, respect, you know, for all of our daily interactions for the work that we do, discipline, you know, discipline is what keeps us moving forward. It's what keeps us on track. It's the oil that keeps our finely tuned machine moving forward. Ingenuity, we solve problems. You know, we're not here to make excuses.
We're not here to do anything other than solve situations. And industriousness, we work hard. We're here to work, you know, and then attention to detail. Because it's all of the little, tiny things that add up to the big things. So I defined those for myself. I made banners, I put it up visually before I had ever even hired anybody.
You know, I defined this as who I am as a person. This is what my company's about. This is the culture that we're going to have. And. You know, for me, I, I've never been a quote unquote normal person, you know, it's like, I've always kind of done my own thing and blaze my own path. I wanted to just be who I am.
And so this is, you know, having your own companies and amazing opportunity to just be whoever it is that you are.
I love that. And, you know, core values have become really kind of a catch phrase in the last few years. I think there's a lot of corporations that, you know, have, have them pasted on their front window or up in their conference room.
But it's, it's the companies that truly succeed are the ones that are taking those core values. And it's not just a poster, your posters, possum. But, but you're utilizing it, you know? Right. You're, you're pushing that into your guys, into your, your employees. You're pushing that into your ranks of leadership.
You embody it. Right. And so, and, and everyone grows and everyone feeds on that energy. You create. Once you finally recognize what those values are and you, you nailed it. Everybody has them. Everybody stands for something. You may, you may not know what it is yet. You may not like it when you find out. But, but you gotta do that, that soul searching at some point in life to, to determine what those are and, and what it is you really stand for.
And before you do that, you can't be successful in business. Not like what you're seeing now. You know, it doesn't happen cause it's, it's, it's too accidental if you don't do it.
Yeah. I mean, culture is a, in this crazy thing that a lot of people try to define. And a lot of people, it seems like a lot of people don't put the value on it that they should, and they don't choose to control it in an active way.
And so this was another thing that I was fortunate to learn at my last job was they started. Introducing this concept of culture. And as a supervisor, I went around, I started asking people like, Hey, what do you think the culture of this company is? And the most common answer I got back was I think it's pretty good, you know?
And it was like, okay, cool. Like, so what this means is nobody has any idea what the fuck culture even means. And so the way that I came to define it was culture is like this. Organic entity that is compromised of all of the actions, thoughts, mindset of everybody within the organization. And so if you don't define what that culture is going to be, it's just going to be this thing that grows based off of.
Essentially, whoever is the most dominant personality, you know? And so it's like if you have a dominant personality type come in and you haven't defined what your culture is, your culture is going to become whatever that person decides the culture is. And so for me, being a dominant personality type, I went ahead and said, this is who we are as a company.
Either you fit with this culture or you don't fit with this culture. And it's fine if you don't, you just can't do it here. Yeah. Almost. It's like where if you're trying to make an elite group of people, you have to understand that average people won't cut it. You and you can't be afraid to call out people for being average.
You can't be afraid to be selective. You can't be afraid to cut people off of the team because they don't meet the standard. You know, it's like, look at Navy seal training. Those dudes have a quarter of the people that apply that actually make it through. And so it's the same concept. If you want to be elite, if you want to be the best of the best, it's going to take extraordinary effort and it's going to take extraordinary people that are willing to put forth the effort required.
Mediocrity has a place. And there there's plenty of mediocre companies out there. There's plenty of, you know, really big construction companies where you could go get a job and, and you could find every gray corner and every shadow, and you could hide there, and you could build a career doing that. And then there's not necessarily anything wrong with that.
But to do the type of work that you're doing, that that we're doing, mediocrity has no place here. You have to always be striving for you gotta be trying to attain perfection. Right. You'll never get it, but if you stop running that race and you start sliding back into mediocrity, again, you can't do the things that you really want to do in this industry.
You have to always have that mindset and just charging forward and chasing the dream.
Yeah, I agree. Completely.
And with that, you know, one of the things that along with culture that. I don't know if it always gets enough limelight, you know, it does in our world. Right. And in personal development and the people that we listen to and follow, but an intent, right?
That your intent, your heart, your, you know, Intentions are in the right place. You know, you're trying to do the right thing and sometimes you might fall short, right? Sometimes it might not land the exact right way. But I think, you know, a lot of people understand where you're coming from, where your heart's at, and if you screw up, you own it, you come back and, you know, how can we make this right?
And usually, you know, it ends up for the best. There's always going to be one jackass that doesn't fall through on that. But usually, you know, intent is the. Is a cornerstone that I think a lot of people miss or don't give themselves credit for, for, you know, their heart being in the right place. And it might take a little longer to get there, right.
For your, for your company to get off the ground. But knowing that your intent and your heart is in the right place, I think goes a really long way. And, and not enough people give themselves kind of credit for, for
that intent.
Good before we get too far. I know we're getting towards the end here, but I gotta tell you, Zach, I spent some time on your website last night. Just kind of prepping for this. If you haven't been to this guy's website correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's Arnold quality.com.
That's correct.
Awesome website. It's, it's a combination of, of showing off all the cool stuff they're building and they're doing, there's some thrashing guitar rock in the background that that makes it, makes it really cool. You can see the culture you're breeding, you know, the joiner join our team tab, join our team tab.
The fact that you direct people to a write us a paragraph about their personal character is huge to me. And then B what really caught my eye is the direction to send it with the email. The subject line is, my name is blank and I'm a winner. I got to ask it. Do you get people that don't follow those rules still trying to apply?
Do you ever get, you know, just applying for the job guy or?
Absolutely every day, you know, it's like, and that is part of the whole idea of we're an elite team. It's not, Hey, we're accepting applications. It's follow these instructions to the letter. If you count, follow them basic instructions. Okay. There's no place for you on this team.
And so it's a, essentially, it's a pre-qualifier. Can you read through an entire page of information and do what you're asked to do if you can't then like that's cool. Just not here, you know, I
thought it was brilliant, man. Yeah. Yeah, really. It was really cool to see it. It speaks to your culture, you know, without even having to talk to you.
Well, that's, that's the whole point, you know, it's like we, we hire based on cultural fit, we hire based on core values. We hire based on who people are as human beings, rather than just what skillsets they have, because that's exactly it they're skillsets. They are acquired skills. There are things that I've learned that my guys.
My girls have learned, like they are things that is 100% within everybody's realm of possibility to learn and master it's whether or not they choose to put the time and effort forth to become that master.
yeah. You can find me on Instagram. I post on there every once in a while. My personal page is at welding Lord. My business page is at Arnold quality metal works that's I don't post to Facebook hardly ever because. You know, I get like three people that like my shit. So I don't really post to Facebook.
I should be better about posting on LinkedIn, but I'm kind of a wild man and you know, social media is not my biggest time spend good stuff. So I have one last question and I've been saving this purposely towards the end for you. Who is the white Samuel L. Jackson?
The white Samuel L. Jackson is my VP of operations, Michael holes. I love it.
Trailers.
It's
great. He's got, I bought him a mug for Christmas a couple of years back and it says.
Fuck you, you fucking fuck the white Samuel L. Jackson. Cause it's, I mean, it's like, that's who he is as a person too, you know? And it's like, it's, he falls very much in line with the culture that we have here. You know, like we're, we're a wild bunch. But we're also true professionals. You know, it's like in the eye of the public, when we're on a job site, we're there to outwork everybody.
We're there to do better quality work than everyone. When we're in the shop, man, we're a wild bunch. We like having a good time. We like, you know, laughing, joking around like the most bio things you've ever heard. Our daily conversation in the weld shop.
Nothing wrong with that, man. You gotta make it fun.
Absolutely. I mean, if it wasn't fun, what would be the point of doing it? You know, life's too short to be serious all the time. And I mean, I'm, I'm pretty serious about what I want, but I also like to have a good time and like, you see a smile on my face a lot of the time, because like, I mean, shit, when I went to Haiti and the first hour I was there, I saw two dead people on the side of the road.
And so I'm like, yeah, you know what? Utah's pretty fucking cool. I got a pretty good life, you know, like I, I'm pretty grateful for all of that. And so I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be positive because, you know, I want positive things in my life. You're, you're going to find whatever you look for.
Perfect.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's continued growth. It's, you know, pushing everybody to, to be the best it's pushing to, to continue to learn and grow. And some people won't be able to hack it. And that's totally fine. Right. They there's a place for them somewhere. It's just not going to be, be with you or, you know, or, or really for us.
But you know, everybody finds their place. Everybody finds where they're, they're meant to be and it's okay. Right. Like it's, it doesn't make anybody better or worse. It's just, you don't fit here. Right. And, and knowing who your culture is standing for it you know, it's, it's one thing when people actually show their culture who they are.
Right. And that's, that is us like through and through. If you fit here, You fit here, if you don't, you don't, we're not hiding anything, right? This is, this is who we are through and through. And I think a lot of places, they project one thing and then there are another, right? Like they're on their internals.
There they're completely different than everything that they project on the outside. So really, man, I appreciate you showing up as yourself, as you know, I'm sure this is the same guy that you get in the shop. As you get here on the podcast, as you get. You know, in a conversation, right? Like it's all the same.
And I, I can totally appreciate that. I think not enough people are or who they are. Some people might not agree, but that's again, that's okay. Right. Like maybe you
and yeah. Those people aren't called winners. So I'm, you know, not worried about them.
Awesome. Zach, any well, Matt, any parting words?
You know, I saved my Samuel L. Jackson for the very end. I already shot it. So Zach just want to thank you, man. It was fun. I'd like to continue this conversation someday.
Hell yeah, I appreciate it guys. It was it was awesome to come on and talk with other real motherfuckers, you know, it's like real recognizes real.
And so that's why you guys can recognize all these traits in me is because you have them yourselves, you know? And so it's like, it's always good to be in the company of good people.
Right on, man. Thank you.
Yeah, Zach. Thanks for coming on. Everybody decks links will be in the show notes here. I'll put them in the comments so you can go in and check Zach out.
If you're a wanting to be part of excellence in a weld shop, then you can follow the instructions.
Yeah, we are hiring right now. We're looking for good people. So if you're interested, Yeah, check out the website, the instructions are there. Yeah. And
you want to move to Utah, you know, that's the other, other piece, but Zack, thank you so much for being on really appreciate having you and for everyone else out there, that's going to be this episode of the construction corner podcast until next time.
Thanks.