record_id: 2bff8b3e-f83d-814c-811c-f8b9c63cbbec
created_time: 2025-12-04T05:38:00.000Z
title: 12-03 Interview: Operations Leadership Candidate
source_url: /

[TRANSCRIPTION]
Speaker 1 00:10:57
This is Braden. I'm doing well, Robert. How are you? Good. It's Wednesday. It's hump day. We're halfway there. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:11:24
Happy to do it. Thanks for reaching out to me on this.
Speaker 1 00:11:44
Sure. Be happy to do that. Sounds great.
Speaker 2 00:12:03
Sure. Right now I'm actually working for a family business. It's called Triune. It's a pool construction company. So basically post-COVID, I found myself at home with three little boys and then got asked to come help out the family business, kind of fix their operations processes and get them going in the right direction. So yeah, I am an ops guy. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I think, I think, you know, if you look at my resume, what you'll see is, you know, I'm an ops guy.
Speaker 2 00:12:46
I've kind of gone from industry to industry as I progress. And, you know, I think the reason why I've been able to do that, even, you know, shoot, I took a big jump going into the pool industry. And, you know, by the way, these pools, I think that... The reason why I'm gonna tie this to operations is these pools are actually being done for the most elite of elite. So in construction normally, a quarter inch is within range for the really good guys, an eighth inch is in good range.
Speaker 2 00:13:17
And with water, you know those infinity edges that they do, that, you know, those are within a 16th. So if you're over by 1 16th, all the water will flood to one side. And so you go, where are you going with this? The tricky part about doing this stuff is going, okay, how do you deliver a 16th of an inch every single time? Which got me into, oh, these guys don't really know how to measure, even though they've been doing it for 20 years.
Speaker 2 00:13:49
They don't really know what that metal tab goes back and forth. And so of course I had to learn it all in order to do that. So, But looking at each aspect of a process that goes, oh, what's really going on here is kind of what I've been doing for my entire career. I've been able to step back and go, what's going to go wrong here? And then basically apply processes that not only keeps up guardrails and gets everything going, but also limits the employee from jumping off that.
Speaker 2 00:14:22
And then we can, okay, what do we need to adjust? We can start evaluating employees from there. Do they need to be educated or do they need to be handled in a different way? That's a good question. With this company, what we've, I ended up getting rid of the entire tile crew.
Speaker 2 00:14:55
Um, I think, I think what I, what I like most about my current job is, um, every place I've ever gone, every place I've ever left, they've basically said, Hey, will you come back? Something changed when you left. Um, your people are great, but, but something changed. And what I've always been able to do is build everybody up. So basically I helped them understand why their job works, why they're good at their job and what they need to do to keep on building.
Speaker 2 00:15:26
And after a while, if you can get them to understand what they're doing, you create a culture that believes in the process that's already lifted up the process to a, to a point where it works, then you're just coming along and going, how can I help guys? Um, and so to answer your question, we're at a point now where I think in, six months here i'll be i'll be twiddling my thumbs i'm writing up processes right now it's it's cool to be able to look at guys two years ago i was being told um i was being told.
Speaker 2 00:16:04
a i could teach a woman more about giving giving birth than somebody else can teach me about installing tile and these are the masters of the industry and um in two years that that person is no longer working here and i have somebody who wasn't doing tile two years ago doing better tile than that guy was and uh now we've got a system where things are just happening and so i love i think that's my the most fascinating thing you know without rambling we really do some.
Speaker 2 00:16:38
of the most beautiful pools in the world and i'm not a i'm not a uh, an art guy if you will so yeah that's what they looked at but do you know what went into that to make that the fact that we got that 16th of an inch the first time you know and didn't have to demo anything didn't have to fix anything so i think building people up in that way um being able to come up with processes that work every single time um and actually seeing that actually.
Speaker 2 00:17:09
come to fruition which is where i'm at right now um is my favorite part so it's it's a little bit of everything um at one point in time i was boots on the ground in in six months i won't be um so, it's really the question of you know i actually since i got rid of everybody somebody had to.
Speaker 2 00:17:44
to learn how to float some of this stuff so there were a few times where um you know i actually had to get in there and grab the stuff going i don't understand why this isn't working for you guys uh because we really had to i had to understand how what what the processes were and why they were failing um so i don't mind getting my boots on the on the ground and doing this stuff i keep boots in my truck uh since we're looking at construction sites and different things but honestly i if i stay on the ground then i'm not doing my real job um so you know uh reconserve was.
Speaker 2 00:18:19
very um it was bakery waste um so you know i'm used to the to the uh dirty environments if you will um i don't mind getting in there if i gotta make a point and uh help and shovel or or whatnot but um like i said if i stay on the ground i think there's there's nothing better to help, the culture thrive than to be able to rub elbows with somebody you're working so seeing seeing the boss get in there sweat a little bit is good um and then and then get back in the office change.
Speaker 2 00:18:52
your shirt and uh start looking at kpis um it is kind of my my thought process um so i like i like to be close enough to to know what the pulse is going on um and then um because i also think that i have i have the ability to explain what's going on a little bit better than most people do um you, know why did that go wrong well well i just messed up no you you know you're human and so you make mistakes and so we measure things so let's have this you know when you do this have your helper.
Speaker 2 00:19:25
check you um and then on the down to you know if we're doing um we're doing production schedules or or uh you know maintenance on things like that what did that thing break okay i don't know let's let's do a five y and you know, and realized that, oh, when we did the maintenance on this thing, the mechanic didn't close the door and got into the grease pit. You know, and something went through and messed up the transmission. So I like to have my pulse on everything.
Speaker 2 00:19:56
But like I said, if I'm out of the office too long, then I'm not doing my real job. So I think you have to, it depends on what the needs are of the organization and the actual facility.
Speaker 3 00:20:16
Sure, sure.
Speaker 2 00:20:23
Actually, at Shriun, they didn't have any safety program. So I've implemented one of those. We do a, because it's at different job sites, it's more difficult to do that. But I've come up with a way where we actually have an online platform where we'll. We have a different, we have a series of videos that we watch once a month, or one each month per topic. We have to align with OSHA. So at Triune, what I've done is basically said, okay, it's hard to sit everybody down, papers, tests, all that good fun stuff.
Speaker 2 00:20:60
So I created a form through Microsoft Forms where they can just grab it on their phone. They can watch a 20-minute video, take a 10-minute test, and then we go over it with whoever the form is at the time. And I'll prep them before they go over it, so make sure that they understand they're on board. They can answer any questions. So I've instituted that at Triune. At Reconserve, I did the same thing and basically instituted an entire OSHA.
Speaker 2 00:21:36
OSHA compliant, that's the word I'm looking for, safety program where we actually went five years without any major injuries beyond a simple cut of some sort. And that was kind of the same thing. What I've noticed with safety is when I have a safety guy, I can actually come up with a program with him or they might actually provide them. But I've noticed the biggest thing in safety is.
Speaker 2 00:22:07
how often are we talking about it? How aware are we keeping everybody what goes on? So, you know, how often do people know that slips, trips, and falls are the 90% of all injuries? So, you know, when you see that extension cord running across, maybe we don't do it like that. You know, maybe we put something over it or, you know, highlight it somehow. So, and then being in manufacturing, you're always working around, you're always walking around. you know there's plenty of things you get to see um whether it be seat belts not uh buckled on a.
Speaker 2 00:22:42
forklift or or uh the mechanic deciding that he doesn't really need to do a lockout tag up for this thing because it's super quick um that's not gonna happen so there's there's creating the environment that respects i think safety is probably the biggest key to actually being.
Speaker 1 00:22:60
safe it's kind of my philosophy on that i would say that's a good question i honestly.
Speaker 2 00:23:26
i think that that at reconserve is probably my biggest um, I don't know if it's the biggest accomplishment, but it's the thing I'm most proud of in some ways. When I came over to Reconserve, I was a transportation guy, and they were having huge customer service issues, because they couldn't, so basically they would line up, line everything up with, their customers were all the bakeries, and bakeries had to get rid of their waste. We purchased their waste as raw material and we would.
Speaker 2 00:23:58
turn that into, we would turn that into basically an an ingredient for animal feed for dairy cows and cattle. Much of the same consistency as salt, so kind of, you know, it's not the same process obviously. I don't think you have to dry out salt, but you know, I'm sure it goes through shaker tables and hammer mills and all that good fun stuff. And so we'd end up with this sand, but, the customers, would throw this this material into the containment systems and because of weight restrictions and.
Speaker 2 00:24:32
whatnot that at some point in time the containment system would shut off and so now you have you know mission foods or or bimbo these huge um bread manufacturers or chip manufacturers, they had to shut down because little reconsider their waste guy couldn't get there in time to swap out the container so when i got there i just i realized that we were tracking all of their information coming in and um i i knew what every single bakery was thrown out so being that.
Speaker 2 00:25:11
businesses are what businesses are they want to stay consistent i could use that and lift it, and you know i basically analyzed all of their patterns and said okay i can tell you what every single bakery is going to put out every single day and since i know what size container they have, I know when they need to be picked up next. So we implemented this, tested it out, started actually proactively sending out the drivers before the customer would even call for pickup. And we were able to reduce overweight.
Speaker 2 00:25:41
We were actually able to reduce all of our overweight. So now we're not taking stuff on the streets. And, you know, I mean, some of these things were coming in, 20,000, 30,000 pounds overweight. So it's like, what do you do when you slam on your brakes and you run into a family of four? Um, but I think that the part I'm most proud of at that point was not only were we correct in all of these things, but, um, I noticed that it didn't work for our process.
Speaker 2 00:26:13
Um, it was an Excel spreadsheet that I came up with and we had, um, In order to actually implement this well, and now because all of a sudden now we have a driver that needs to be over there at say midnight. Our guys are leaving at 1.30 in the afternoon. What do you do? So we split out the entire schedule. Now we have 24-7 operation. We had nine drivers at the time. Eight drivers at the time. We're doing, I think they're doing 10-20 hours a week of overtime. Split that out. Now all of a sudden we're picking up on time.
Speaker 2 00:26:52
So we were actually able to drop, because we had 24-7 service, we were able to drop our labor down to six drivers. So and then with almost drivers to drivers. So you can't plan on everything. So I think we dropped it down to 10% overtime. But the cool thing was is I realized that. Um, yeah, here I am waking up at midnight to tell my driver that comes in at midnight what he has to do for the day and this isn't working. So I created a website that inevitably ended up being very similar to an ERP system that as they came in, they were putting all the information in and it was automatically calculating everything and then telling us when the next pickup is supposed to be. So now the drivers are all doing all this stuff, checking in and inputting the data.
Speaker 2 00:27:48
It's being verified later by, by my assistant, but we were able to create this website that grew into, we grew into not only handling transportation, but then we, we used it for shipping, bringing stuff in, sending stuff out. And I think a year after I left in 2021, they actually sent that website to throughout the entire nation. So the entire company uses it now. And so, since I wrote every letter of code on that thing,
Speaker 2 00:28:19
it's kind of been my biggest, the thing I'm most proud of. I think it's the most conceptually, I think it ticks all the boxes of, you know, what do you do with analytical thinking? It's got a process down. Doing that whole thing kind of helped me to form my ideology on process, because coding kind of works that way. So, that's kind of been my staple. Well, like I said, I'm working for a family company now,
Speaker 2 00:28:59
and I was asked to fix something. I've darn near fixed it. Like I said, in about six months, I'm gonna be twiddling my thumbs, and I, it's not big enough. I wanna get, I miss manufacturing. I miss... Kind of the chaos of operations and I feel like I fulfilled my commitment so now I'm just kind of ready to get back in and have a little bit more fun.
Speaker 2 00:29:49
Right now I'm targeting, you know, all in, I'm targeting 200, I know I gotta get back into, here I am going from a family company back into corporate America, so I know there's gotta be some flexibility there, but that's where I'm at.
Speaker 2 00:30:22
Um, I think, I think that, uh, bonuses based on performance are probably the biggest thing that I'm looking for. I like to be able to show that I, you know, as I'm doing better, um, and I can show it, you know, I like being compensated for that and get noticed for that. Um, I think that, um, when I'm looking for a new employer, I'm looking at their benefits, asking how well they've taken care of me. Um, you know, if, if you've given me, um, as little PTO as possible and, uh, you know, and my, then, then obviously the, or, or as little of, uh, um, medical benefits as possible.
Speaker 2 00:31:09
Um, I start asking the question of, so, um, what do you think about me? Um, So, because basically the next company I go to, um, i'm going to be there for a while um and i want to partner with the company that uh and i want to take better care of them than they are taking care of me i think it's a it's a partnership and.
Speaker 3 00:31:33
so i'm looking for somebody that wants to value me the same way i value that sure and and if i'm.
Speaker 2 00:31:52
being super honest with you i i've i've applied to a lot of them um but uh number one i think it is it's a production position it gets me back to where i am i think it's very close to what i'm familiar with um the the name morton salt i mean i've got morton salt in my, in my kitchen right now you know it's, And there's upward mobility there. You know, like I said, I'm trying to get back into these kind of things or into corporate America, if you will. And so I don't go to a place like Morton and go, you know, is this is this the last job I'm ever going to have in this in this role?
Speaker 2 00:32:38
So it's interesting to me that it's it's at the ports or near to near the ports, which I've got experience with. And and I mean, there's yeah, yeah, there's plenty of stuff that I'm sure you haven't even scratched the surface on with your with your job description. But it I I've never no, I've never actually worked at the ports, but at Reconserve we used to send stuff. So my my original background comes from.
Speaker 2 00:33:16
In transportation. dad owned a trucking company and we ran LTL and ocean operations and whatnot so, I'm familiar with that. Reconserve I had we were sending drivers to the port because we were sending product internationally and so yeah so I'm familiar with the ports I have not been.
Speaker 3 00:33:38
actually at the ports myself. Please. Great. Great.
Speaker 3 00:34:21
okay well okay yeah i actually have it on my screen yeah i i i believe it that that's.
Speaker 2 00:35:15
you know we didn't get we get about two stories call it every concern we would just.
Speaker 3 00:35:20
pour the pour the feed out and whatnot so yeah i completely get that yep got it.
Speaker 3 00:36:42
I get it.
Speaker 2 00:37:29
Yeah, we did 5 a.m. at Reconserve as well, so I'm familiar.
Speaker 3 00:38:26
Got it. Mm-hmm. Got it, right.
Speaker 3 00:40:09
Hmm, how long does that that whole process usually last four days? Okay.
Speaker 3 00:41:47
Great.
Speaker 3 00:43:08
Mm-hmm, right. Mm-hmm. I understand. Okay. Oh, I've got plenty of questions. Um.
Speaker 2 00:43:57
It sounds like this role is similar to a general manager role, in the sense of, you know, you're signing off on invoices, you're kind of the guy that's handling everything. Is that a safe assumption? Okay. So, and then organizationally speaking, is the production manager responsible for the coordinator and the safety manager as well?
Speaker 2 00:44:33
Okay. Okay. The, I noticed that the job's been open since August. Is there something you're not seeing that, or at least maybe this is how old the posting is, but what, is there something that you're looking for that you haven't been seeing or what's the deal with that? There's a better way I could ask that, but I think you understand.
Speaker 1 00:45:25
Oh, gotcha.
Speaker 3 00:45:33
Sure. Gotcha.
Speaker 2 00:46:14
So are you kind of losing people before you have a chance to give the offer. 
Speaker 3 00:46:37
Right, right. Right. Sure, sure. Well, so that was actually my next question about, you know, even the...
Speaker 2 00:47:51
um status of the equipment um when when i told my wife that i was going to interview with this she's like oh i've been there like what do you mean you've been there and so my my wife does um, fluorines and coatings epoxy so on and so forth and so she showed me a couple pictures there's nothing that really could tell me much much about it but there you know i believe because we're having some problems with you know salt corroding everything um but so what is you know so how is.
Speaker 1 00:48:23
the facility in general um maintenance-wise that's okay sure sure.
Speaker 1 00:49:09
Mm-hmm. That was my next question. That makes sense. Yeah. Those rules come both ways, don't they? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:50:18
Hmm. Okay. Right. How well does Morton support, basically, maintenance and upgrades of equipment?
Speaker 2 00:50:49
I'm trying to ask this in a way that doesn't sound negative, but I find that when you go into facilities that can be, I don't know if dirty is the right word, but, you know, I mean, some facilities, that's just what you do, right? It gets dirty, and that's what Reconserve was until we really started upgrading the plants. But the problem that I had at Reconserve was that the plant was... Built in 1962, and they just kind of put one machine on top of another on top of another.
Speaker 2 00:51:22
And if you don't do a good job of replacing machines that actually need to be replaced, You end up spending all your money in labor fixing stuff or you know in downtime or whatnot, so, How well did they support? maintaining equipment hmm.
Speaker 3 00:52:20
Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 00:52:59
How long was he there before you before they promoted him? Oh, wow Well, and then in the last five years how many how many managers have been there? Okay. Okay. I'm trying not to, you know, a lot of me is, once I start asking about equipment, but, you know, and I'm sure you're familiar, but, you know, but a lot of times when I start asking stuff like that to the HR guy, he's like, you know, I can tell you the basic process, but is it primarily just that they're bringing in, like, blocks of salt and just beating it down, or what is the general process. 
Speaker 3 00:54:29
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right, right, right.
Speaker 3 00:55:36
Mm-hmm to seal it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so good. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:56:33
Sure, sure. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:56:44
So, by the way, at Reconserve, they basically consider themselves part of the grain industry. So, I think your terms and my terms are going to be very, very similar. Yeah. And it separates, I'm imagining. Actually, it's going on containers? Or is it going back out on containers?
Speaker 2 00:57:15
Or is it going local. 
Speaker 1 00:57:19
Okay.
Speaker 2 00:57:21
So, it's like open top.
Speaker 1 00:57:30
Sure, sure. No, that's okay. That's okay.
Speaker 2 00:57:39
Okay, I mean, it sounds like a very similar process to what I did at Reconserve. Bring it in, grind it up, hit the dryer, grind it up more, run it over the screens. If it's not up to spec, you run it back through the screens. And then it gets dumped out into the gold pile, and then we come with our, we had a Cat 928 loader that we would feed in the loading bin and go up an elevator. Actually, when we did, when we did, we started sending it internationally, we had to do it differently because we were doing, we had to load containers.
Speaker 2 00:58:14
So we, instead of just loading over the top, we designed a, what we call a slinger. And so I'm sure you're familiar with the, those high-speed, high-speed conveyor belts that they load the holes of a ship with, with grain. what not to do with corn and so we've got a mini one of those that would that would load up the containers with those so um so that all sounds very familiar um what uh what what kind of.
Speaker 3 00:58:47
compensation range are you guys looking at okay um i'm you know i don't want to negotiate it against.
Speaker 2 00:59:24
myself but i am a bit flexible on that and i do believe in um i do believe in performance funds, there could be both sides of that but um but that was knowing that it's always weird uh with the with the different operations you've got you know like reconserve we had 20 people at the la facility um and and as i've talked to people uh you know interviewing for this job or that it's been cool but you only had 20 people and it's like yeah fuel if you only knew i i appreciated.
Speaker 2 00:59:58
i i appreciated your uh you said uh the word you used was renaissance in in figuring out the problems um it was yeah i think there's there's uh sometimes it's more about the operation than it is about the number of people and um so that was my first question um once we got there but, um okay i know we're short on time.
Speaker 3 01:01:01
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 01:02:18
Right, right. And that was actually going to be my question. Breakfast burrito was the term in my head, but I'm glad you said that, because I find that when I can offer a little bit of something to the guys, that goes a long way.
Speaker 1 01:03:19
Make sense. 
Speaker 3 01:04:01
Right.
Speaker 2 01:04:26
Oh, good. I'm glad you did that.
Speaker 3 01:04:36
Right. Well, there's the.
Speaker 2 01:04:45
yeah, there's the intentional benefits of what good culture can and when you win people over, you can get them to listen. So, I have a similar mechanic, at ReconServe. I think he's actually been there now for 30 years. Maybe 25. Same kind of thing. They would weld together a ladder, to get up to the next floor without using levels.
Speaker 2 01:05:16
Or even... consistently cutting the the rooms of the ladder um all at one time it was all my eyeball so you had one perfectly plumb side and the other one off the edge and it's like hey can we maybe just have a conversation about this you know um but i think that as you as you show them that you're hey i'm not here to change stuff i'm just here to talk about what what do you think what do you think would be a better solution here um and as you can win them over they they come to you hey.
Speaker 2 01:05:47
what do you think about this last time you had a pretty good idea um so i i had an issue with the, well i think it's you know i've got three relatively young boys i guess you could say um oldest will be 14 14 next month so it's 14 12 10 and i'm trying to get my oldest down, hey managers you know and of course he wants a boss everywhere managers just, They're top dog, so they can get everybody, they can tell everybody what to do.
Speaker 2 01:06:19
And everybody's got to listen to that. Leaders convince people to follow them when they don't want to. And that's the key. It's even when they don't want to, you know, so you've got to earn that trust. And so a lot of times it's just, without rambling, I know we're short on time or over our time, but, you know, work. No, no, no, I'm okay. I've got a few more minutes, but, you know, working, growing up, working for your dad. You know, you see all these managers coming through and they go,
Speaker 2 01:06:51
let me tell you, I came from big old company X. And let me tell you how the way things are going to go. Stop. Learn why, what we do. We are literally the best. Why don't you figure out why we are first. And then if you've got suggestions, we're happy to. Adapt and I think that you have to go in there with that senior respect no matter where you are because if not You're just gonna unmute me on your hand. So, okay. Um, I think we're uh, I think you've answered all my questions.
Speaker 2 01:07:25
Is there anything that you? I haven't checked the box for you yet that I might need to clarify honor or.
Speaker 3 01:07:35
Mm-hmm. That'll work for me. I appreciate that. All right. Likewise. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 01:08:08
Take care. You too. Bye-bye.

[AI_SUMMARY]
The candidate has extensive experience in operations, currently optimizing processes in a high-end pool construction family business, focusing on precision and employee development. Previously, they improved customer service and operational efficiency at a bakery waste management company by implementing predictive models and a custom ERP-like website. They have also established safety programs in both roles. The candidate seeks a production role at Morton Salt for its alignment with their experience and potential for growth, targeting a salary of $200,000 with a preference for performance-based bonuses.