record_id: 309f8b3e-f83d-815e-9cbb-d8667e06bbd2
created_time: 2026-02-16T22:03:00.000Z
title: 02-16 Interview: Brayden McLeish - Director of Operations
source_url: /

[TRANSCRIPTION]
Speaker 1 00:00:22
Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:02:03
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 00:03:28
hello great and good afternoon how are you today ron i'm doing fantastic how about you i'm doing well thank you where am i catching you on uh on a monday president day afternoon or i don't know maybe yeah afternoon even if you're a pacific time yeah you've got.
Speaker 3 00:03:48
that you you've actually got me at home i'm in construction now so it's it's raining like crazy in california and uh so yeah i i know is it so yeah it's raining today we're actually expecting two inches today so we said we're not oh my god yeah, Yeah. So I'm sorry about that. No, you know what? Being in construction, anytime I can spend more time in front of a computer and figure out my world, I like it a little bit better. So that's that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. So it made it easy to make this happen as well. So that worked out for me.
Speaker 2 00:04:27
Awesome. Well, first and foremost, I want to thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. And of course, for taking the interest in this position that we're trying to fill. My intention is to spend the hour and get to know you a little bit more than what I know you by now.
Speaker 1 00:04:53
Sure.
Speaker 2 00:04:56
And I want to try and maybe divide it through three sections, one being I want to hear about you, your experience, your background, you know, what what you like doing, what you don't like doing, how how do you think this role is a good fit for you and. And, um, and, and definitely the things that you've done in your past and in your experience and your background, how that leads you to this role.
Speaker 2 00:05:26
Um, I also want to know a little bit about you generally speaking, just, you know, as, as a person, as, you know, as, as a human being, like what you like doing, what's if you want to, whatever you want to share, of course, then I want to take a few minutes to also share with you a little bit about the company, a little bit, what we're looking for and, and what we're doing and how we're doing because, um, Brandon, I'm, I'm a big believer that, you know, we would like to find the best candidate and the right fit for the job.
Speaker 2 00:05:56
And, but there's also at least 50% of it that, that it's you, that you need to make sure that this is the right fit for you. And you want to, um, put your, your trust in, in, in this company and, and, and all that. And at the end, I definitely want to leave enough time for you to ask questions if you have about the company, about whatever. There's no off-limits question or subject, okay?
Speaker 2 00:06:27
Just one housekeeping comment I have right underneath me here. I have a pad. I'm a note taker. So when you see me looking down, I'm not texting or doing anything in the background. I'm all yours. I'm listening to you, so I'm just taking notes. So just keep that in mind if you see me looking down. I'm all focused on you, okay. 
Speaker 3 00:06:50
I've got the same. I've got a notepad and a few screens going on just to make sure that I don't lose anything. So same. I'm all yours.
Speaker 2 00:06:60
Awesome. So let's start, Brayden. Tell me, by the way, I got it totally from the email. So it's Brayden McLeish. Is that the right, am I saying it the right way. 
Speaker 3 00:07:09
Yeah, McLeish, but, you know, even my wife says it wrong. So, but, you know, so we don't put so much emphasis on the, you know, McLeish, McLeish, you know, it's my dad says it one way, my mom says it the other, and I've just kind of taken both of them.
Speaker 2 00:07:28
You got it. All right. So I'm all yours, Brayden. Take us through.
Speaker 3 00:07:34
Yeah, so I think if you're, if you want to know really where I come from, it's, you know, without telling you my life story, I was driving forklifts at eight years old. My dad owned a trucking company, you know, my grandfather started it, my dad came in to kind of run it, and he was the driving force behind. What operational efficiency look like? How do we start building all of these things? And then both of my parents were workaholics. So we we spent our our summers, our free time at at the company kind of, you know, we played tag on Pallet Jacks and whatnot.
Speaker 3 00:08:18
So, you know, and I won't step you through my whole life story. But the reality is, is that when you grow up, actually part of a company at a company, you start with that whole idea that says this is mine or this will be mine one day. You know, I like I said, I was I was doing I learned how to drive a forklift at eight. Dad wasn't so happy about it. Grandpa was thrilled. And, you know, but I was running the warehouse when I was 13. Every time I showed up at work, all of the admin assistants and so on and so forth, customer service, like, okay, great. What did you do? Because my punishment was, okay, now you got to go spend spring break at work.
Speaker 3 00:09:01
Um, but I think what that does is it changes your perspective on how work happens. You know, my parents worked way too much in my opinion. Um, but, but that's all we knew. And they were trying to, they were trying to drive this business and eventually you get to a point where you bleed. And then the next thing I know I'm working for them full time at, you know, 19 and 20 and I'm working 90 hours a week. Um, because it's, you know, my, my dad had this, had this, uh,
Speaker 3 00:09:33
phrase up on our dispatch, um, window that said, all I know is I will not fail. And it was just like, you're going to drive and you're going to drive until you get there, you know? Um, So I come from when I when I went to go work for him as a full time job, I quit college. So this isn't for me. Ended up going back to college later. It was only supposed to be a three month, four month break. I needed to get my head straight. Ended up. He used me for three and a half years and then said, OK, fine.
Speaker 3 00:10:07
If you have time, you can go make college happen, which I did. But, you know, that's where he kind of pulled me under his wing and said, you're not going to look at it. You're not going to be everybody else. You've got to look at things this way. And I think that's that's where I started looking at, I think, understanding business on a different level, being able to see the bigger picture. You know, he's constantly telling me. Hey, son, you're looking at the tree. Come back to the hill where you can see the forest.
Speaker 3 00:10:40
So without going too far into that whole, you know, hey, here's who my dad is. When the company went down, with the economy in 2001, we never caught up. Our cash flow just wasn't there. And it took three years to four years or so. No, I'm sorry. My timeline's all messed up. But 2001, we basic. Yeah, it took us took us till 2003, 2004 is when they sold the company and things started changing.
Speaker 3 00:11:15
They just couldn't keep up the cash flow. I ended up, you know, nobody wanted to give me a chance. You know, nobody wants to turn the whole terminal over to a young kid. So I took that opportunity to go back to school, kind of rebuild myself, so on and so forth. I was a transportation guy that worked myself through Reconserve, at which point Reconserve is really, I spent 14 years there. And that's where I really was able to shine.
Speaker 3 00:11:51
When I got to Reconserve is where I started realizing that everything comes down to a unit cost. And I was able to look at everything from a tonnage perspective. And what are we bringing in per ton? What are we bringing in per hour? What's going on here? What's going on there? And that's how I kind of started branching out. I went to become a plant manager from there. And I'm babbling, just telling you my story. I'm kind of getting caught.
Speaker 2 00:12:17
I'm enjoying it very much, by the way. It's very great to hear that.
Speaker 3 00:12:21
I don't want to talk too much, but I...
Speaker 2 00:12:25
Brady, you're doing great.
Speaker 3 00:12:27
Okay. So about a year after I took over as transportation manager, my boss was running as a general manager of Reconserve in L.A. And he wanted to play Solitaire the whole time. I didn't. You know, I never wanted to be in transportation. I wanted to move beyond it. I saw an opportunity. I said, hey, listen.
Speaker 2 00:12:51
I remember that game. That game was one of the first ones on those old computers. I remember that.
Speaker 3 00:12:56
Yeah. And so he'd be happy to play on it. And I said, listen, you can have what you want. Just teach me about the plant. And so he did. He said, here's what I look for. And then basically said, do what you want. Just don't screw up these numbers. And so from there, I basically grabbed the maintenance mechanic and we walked the plant every day. Hey. Okay. So tell me again, it goes from here to here, to here, to here. And Reconserve was a.
Speaker 3 00:13:29
bakery waste recycling company. They brought in bakery waste from all the different bakeries, whether it be Bimbo, Oral Wheat, Sara Lee, even Frito-Lay, Mission Foods. And what they're doing is they're bringing in their waste, drying it out and sending it out as an ingredient, to animal feed for cows, cattle, dairy farms and whatnot. It's high in fat, high in protein. The animals actually like to eat it because it's sweet or fatty. And so it would go in as.
Speaker 3 00:14:06
a subsidy for that. So I started making tweaks here and there. I said, hey, what's this machine here? That's a moisture meter. Why do we need a moisture meter? Well, we're trying to dry it out. Well, why don't we use it? Um, well, because we kind of just, okay. And then I started talking to sales and saying, okay, well, what do you guys want? Um, and that's the point where we were actually drying everything out to about 8% at, at.
Speaker 3 00:14:37
Reconserve. It's all about energy. So we had this big burner going into an 80 foot long, um, dryer, 12 foot wide cylinder, and we're just throwing heat at it like crazy. It's like, so wait, let me understand this. Our main driver is energy. We only need to be at 14% and we're drying it out to 8%. I'm, you know, and so, okay, what does it look like when we adjust it? So we worked our way there.
Speaker 3 00:15:09
We started seeing our therms per ton going down, our, our kilowatt hours per ton going down. And actually things started running through the plant a lot easier because, We weren't overdoing everything. And that kind of, again, that's where I started looking at things going, there's more I can do. And we started tweaking things from throughput, finding bottlenecks, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3 00:15:40
And so I was actually able to take that plant from about 30 tons an hour to about 52 tons an hour. And we were doing, I think we were doing, we got down from $8 per therm down to about $4.60 or something like that. The cool thing about the L.A. plant is it was just this, it was.
Speaker 3 00:16:16
It was completely oversized. So it had the capacity to run about, I want to say about four or five times the amount of product that we actually had the availability to put into it. So what I started doing is, you know, we're just going to shut down. The plant was in 1960, was built in 1962. And so I say, you know, what we're going to do is we're going to shut down. So we were limited on raw material by what came in. So we can't produce more waste than our customers are actually putting out. So what we would do is we would store up as much as possible. And then when we were full, we turn on the plant and go gangbusters on it. And that way, what I could do is I could feed the plant more once it got to its highest range.
Speaker 3 00:17:08
So once we were up, we're going, there was no startup, no worry about shutdown. We just kind of started going. That's where I was really able to drop the therms per ton down to four because we weren't doing this up and down aspect. We were able to just kind of feed it and keep going. What happened is the material that was inside started acting like a heat sink. So we throw more heat at it without having to worry about actually overheating the dryer, having any fires and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3 00:17:41
So next thing I had is I also did my backup for a second. And another thing that I did was with the transportation, I actually completely rewrote how we did everything. So when I got there, our biggest problem, we were losing customers left and right because ultimately we provide them these compactors at their locations and they would just be overflowed.
Speaker 3 00:18:12
And so when you have a company like Mission Foods. And they have to put their product into the waste system because we're paying them for it. They can't put it on the floor because then it's a health hazard. And so when we have a point where they can't put any more material into the bin, they have to shut down their production line. The last thing they want to do is shut down because this podunk waste company didn't come and pick up their product. So I kind of sat there and said, OK, businesses being what businesses are, they're going to have a certain percentage of waste.
Speaker 3 00:18:49
And so what I can be pretty certain of is that they are going to output the same amount of waste every month. And if I know what they have on hand there and I know what we've picked up from there and I know the size of bin that they have and how much it can it can hold, I can determine. how much they're putting out per day, how quickly they'll fill up each bin and based on our last pickup, when their next pickup will be. So I ended up putting a spreadsheet together,
Speaker 3 00:19:27
downloading all of our data from our in-house website and putting in an Excel spreadsheet to give you an idea. This was, this was 07, something like that, 06. I had an eight megabyte Excel spreadsheet. So it was huge at that point because it was just looking at all these different angles. But what that did is I could start saying, okay, this customer is going to be picked up at this.
Speaker 3 00:19:59
time. In fact, I had my office admin, office manager at the time go, there's no way this will work. You're going to create more work for me because I'm the one who has to take all the calls from all the angry customers. Okay, well, let's try it. So I said, looks like we haven't heard from Noah's Bagel. I'm seeing that they need to pick up. We're going to send a driver out. Let's see what happens. Now, I couldn't have planned it better. But as the driver's two minutes away from Noah's Bagel, Noah's Bagel calls and says, hey, we need to pick up. We're full. And we were able to say, driver's two minutes out.
Speaker 3 00:20:35
And as we started having more success with that, customer calls started going down. All of a sudden, we were able to, we had, we were able to lower our labor force by 40% at that point and actually reduce overtime. Sorry, we reduced our labor force by 25% overtime by 40%. What we did there is we expanded our service hours to 24 seven. And.
Speaker 3 00:21:06
And then basically from there, we were able to show up at any time we needed to, because these, these guys, I wish you could have a perfect number that was going to say, you know, Hey, guess what? You're always going to show, you know, we're always going to be full between eight and five, but that, that wasn't quite the case. So, um, once we did that, I actually wrote some software. I taught myself how to code, wrote some software. We created a website where the drivers could actually start checking in, um, and seeing what their next stop was, which would also tell them how they did on that stop and how they compare to the rest of the drivers that go to that facility.
Speaker 3 00:21:46
So they can say, why am I the slowest one? Or, Hey, bad on the back. I'm doing a great job. I'm faster than everybody. Um, so after this happened and I started having the, the, um, benefits of taking over the plant soon, they, they sent that, I'm sorry, Ontario, um, our Ontario facility was having problems and they said, Hey, can you go do that over in Ontario? Sure. So I did that. Um, and then we had.
Speaker 3 00:22:19
a, um, so at that point in time, I, the, the first off the, the manager over in Ontario, was one of those guys had been in there forever, rose through the ranks. He was a mechanic. He started out and they basically said, Hey, listen, you're going to run it. Braden, you're going to run it. And he's going to report to you, but he doesn't know that he reports to you. We don't want to offend him. And all that good fun stuff. And so it was always this, you can imagine that the problems there, but we were able to go in and go, hey, I need this to happen, this to happen, this to happen. And pretty soon I was running the transportation by itself and then giving guidance on the plant aspects.
Speaker 3 00:23:11
Fast forward, they asked me to take over their top notch facility. They couldn't figure out why they weren't hitting their numbers there. I went over there and said, hey, it looks like you're bottlenecking over here. What's going on? We don't know. Everything looks clean over there. We opened up one of the mills and I was able to say, hey, do you see how this blade here is notched in a squared and on the other side it's circular? Well, yeah, it's supposed to be squared on both sides.
Speaker 3 00:23:44
Really? Yeah. Well, they'll never approve for me to replace that. Well, good news, we don't have to replace that. You know, it's a three phase motor, we're gonna switch the wires, we're gonna turn it backwards. And it can go the other way, we'll run this out. And then we can put in right now, you know, for new blades and tell them that they're going to need some in a couple years. That way, you know, when it comes, it comes, they're ready. And when I request things, typically, I get it. So we're okay.
Speaker 3 00:24:16
And so we were actually able to take that plant, we doubled their, when I was able to fix that, that bottleneck went away. Then we had problems with their shaker systems, because now it was getting overloaded. Pulled out the manual, read it, hey, look at that, we can change the way that it shakes. We did that. Next thing you know, everything's flying, and we're able to double their throughput there. Um, Reconserve was probably my most fun, um, um, place of business. I, I, I love Reconserve. I was there for 14 years. Um, I was, uh, my mentor or the owner of the company was my mentor. Uh, his name is Meyer Luskin. He's got his name on all sorts of buildings over at UCLA. He's a, he's a big deal.
Speaker 3 00:25:14
Um, he's actually a hundred years old, still shows up to work every day. Um, I hated to leave Reconserve. Um, one day Meyer hired his son. He swore he'd never hire a family and he hired his son. I, uh, I said, you know, Meyer, we, we really need to, to close LA and send everything over in Ontario. I'm seeing problems here. Regulate, you know, all, all the regulations that are.
Speaker 3 00:25:45
happening. I'm getting regulators at my door. You know, I think I had 21 different regulators, and, uh, and the money works. Here's, here's a little spreadsheet I made up 400 grand a year. That's what you'll save. Um, Braden, this is awesome. Let me look into it. I'll get back to you. Um, six months later. So I came to him with a different idea. We were having, we were having sales issues over there. We were, um, the farms and dairies want to leave California. And so I.
Speaker 3 00:26:17
got the sales and I said, Hey, what can we do? And, um, the, the sales guy I was talking to was actually the VP of sales nationwide. And he said, you know, Braden, I've been itching to go internationally, but I can't get a plant to do it. And I said, I'll do it because we're going to die if we don't do it. So we started doing it. We started doing it successfully. We came up with a different way to, we had to design and have somebody build a machine.
Speaker 3 00:26:47
for us to, usually we would load over the top of a trailer. And instead we, now we've got containers that we have to send overseas. And so now we have to load from the back automatically. And so we came up with a, we called it a slinger. It's a high-speed conveyor belt that they use in the holes of the ships that they want to look grain with. And we turned it into a mini version of that, that would shoot the feed in such a way that.
Speaker 3 00:27:17
it would build off of itself. So it creates a... a uniform pile from front to back so that way we wouldn't have any weight issues on too much weight on on any of the axles it was as it went to the port so shortly after that I realized that, one of the issues that we were having was that there was too much downtime in between with our drivers we were having a hard time meeting all the needs of the customers staffing.
Speaker 3 00:27:53
appropriately and keeping them busy all the time so I said hey let's let's go ahead and we've got all of the equipment all of the containers of the ports let's go ahead and get all of our drivers. it's a you have to get yourself a twit card which is basically a certification to go into the port, Say if we've got extra time, we just take some of these containers to the port ourselves instead of hiring this outside company to do it for us.
Speaker 3 00:28:28
That way we can ensure that our drivers are staying busy. We're not losing money by them sitting around and maybe we can make some money on the side of it. So, again, I kind of start doing my spreadsheet, approach the owner of the company and he says, Braden, you really think we can make 200 grand a year if we do this? I said, well, if we've got back end of sales, if we've got basically if commitments are made where we're actually getting the contracts for this, then yes, we can.
Speaker 3 00:29:04
But that has to happen first in order for us to do it. And then obviously, but if you guys are good with doing a sample run on this or whatnot, then happy to do that. And he goes, Brayden, if you make this work, you're going to make a lot of money working for me. And I said, Meyer, and here's the key. So Meyer, this is 200 grand a year. I gave you six months ago, I gave you this Ontario, shut down LA, moved on Dario deal.
Speaker 3 00:29:37
It's 400 grand a year. Why haven't I heard anything about that? You know, I don't know. Let me check into that. And the next day I get a phone call from his son. Son, don't you ever talk to my father about Ontario ever again. Oh, OK. What what did I miss? Well, you think that that's the way to go. It's not the way to go.
Speaker 3 00:30:08
OK, can you explain that to me? No. Did you look at my proposal? No. Would you be willing to look at my proposal? My proposal? No. Braden, I can see you're not going to let this go. And I said, hey, listen, I'm not trying to disrespect you here. You've asked me to run the shop. I'm giving you numbers. I see a lot of money to be made here. You're a smart guy. I'm just trying to figure out what I did wrong here.
Speaker 3 00:30:41
And he said, listen, I'm not going to look at your stuff. If I was going to do anything, I'd shut down Ontario and move it to L.A. because L.A. is a bigger plant. But I'm not looking at your stuff. And this is the last we're going to talk about it.
Speaker 2 00:30:54
Braden, I'm sorry for interrupting. I'm just looking at the time and I want to be, respectful of your time. And... So far, it's fantastic, really, seriously. Do me a favor. Let's fast forward to your current job and your responsibilities, your P&L ownership, and some of the initiative you implemented. Let's focus on that for now.
Speaker 3 00:31:20
Sure. Now, as I go through that, and the reason why I kind of emphasize Reconserve is because I think that that's the best aspect. And the reason why I do that is because I had full P&L everything there. Here, I do and I don't. So I work for Triune. Let me explain. You're going to tell me that this is all crazy, and I see your eyes getting big. After I left Reconserve, my cousin asked me to come work for him. That's Triune where I work.
Speaker 3 00:31:53
It's a pool construction company building literally some of the nicest pools in the world. If I start giving you names, you'd recognize the names of the people that we're building for. Million dollar plus pools. He wanted to scale. I got brought on as director of operations and supposed to be taking over everything in a manner to which we can make processes efficient. And then we can make them redundant and we can move from L.A. into Orange County and then even into Texas.
Speaker 3 00:32:31
Great. How's your team? My team's awesome. Awesome. We can do this. When I went in, it was completely different. Not only was the team not good, but he didn't want to share any of his information because then I can find out, not that I care, but then I can find out how much he's making. So we don't actually do a P&L. But we do a budget on every single job. And from that budget, I can derive all of the necessary KPIs that I need.
Speaker 3 00:33:07
The problem is, is that as I look at things, you know, when you go into any operation, the question is, is how am I doing? And if you're going to if you're going to ask that question, it's got to be measured. So maybe in this circumstance, it's, well, how are we doing as far as tile install, you know, square footage per tile? How much is that? Or, you know, how much does it cost per square foot of tile to install?
Speaker 3 00:33:40
We didn't have any of those numbers because so when I went to when I went to our accountant, I'm saying, hey, what's going on with this? How are we doing P&Ls if we don't know? How are we doing anything if we don't know anything? Well, we have all the numbers, but I can't get the owner to give me any square footages. I can't give, you know, I'm missing the unit part of the cost per unit. So I've got, I can't fill the formulas. What happens when you ask? Well, he says, sure. And then never gets back to me. So how's he determining whether or not we're making money?
Speaker 3 00:34:17
Well, when his bank account is high, he knows we're making money. And when his bank account is not high, we're not, you know, now I'll give it to you. This is, this is a guy who's incredibly smart. He's my cousin. He's like my brother. He's got an MBA. He knows better. We've got cost codes on every single thing when we, when we look at things. So I've had to, and I think as I went into it and started looking more and more.
Speaker 3 00:34:54
So everything that I went to go say, hey, we need to do this. We need to do that. He went, yeah, that won't work. That won't work. That won't work. And what ended up happening is he said, I need you to fix the tile crew. OK, no problem. And by the way, when you when you go to fix the tile crew, you're going to take away their hour breaks. You're going to reduce that to 30 minutes and you're going to take away this and you're going to take away that. OK, so you expect me to go in there, get them to trust me by taking away all their stuff. It's got to happen. OK. The Reader's Digest version of this is we also the economy hit us a little bit in a way where we had to.
Speaker 3 00:35:45
We had to regroup in a couple of ways because we lost a couple of jobs. The sales cycle on these pools is about two years. So, and I couldn't get the existing guys. They weren't doing what we were asking them to in the right way. And because I had no, I mean, I couldn't get them to get on my side because I was the guy that came in and took away everything from them. I couldn't create a culture that was successful at. And so what I had to do was blow it all up and start from scratch.
Speaker 3 00:36:17
Being that we had a dip in sales, I decided to use that to ride our way down and then train to get all the way back up. So what we've done from there is the entire team has been reconstructed. I took a guy who was a helper two years ago. He's now our top guy. And we are doing. We took quality to the highest point. There are now mistakes are just about zero at this point.
Speaker 3 00:36:52
And we're, we're actually starting to rebuild where we're flushing everything back out to where he's he's actually running the cruise himself. He's training. And I'm at a point where I actually feel this is one of the reasons why I'm starting to leave. It's like, okay, I did right by my cousin. I fixed the thing that he was having problems with. And I can, I can leave with everything back in tact in a way that's actually water, water chemistry, water proofing tile.
Speaker 3 00:37:25
There's so much stuff that goes along with it that it took forever to figure out how to do it properly. And, but I was able to, so I track everything myself. Now I can tell you what we're doing from pipe details, the membrane to. concrete sealer, waterproofing, tile system. I can break every single one of those items down for you. I could break down where our mixes are. And as far as P&L is concerned, I don't actually get a P&L here. And I'm going to tell you, this company is meat and potatoes.
Speaker 3 00:38:02
compared to what I did at Reconserve. I run a crew of 10 guys. One of them's a manager, manager, two of them are managers. And we have a maintenance side that I think is adjacent to what you guys do. And we've got a plumbing side and a tile side. The plumbing side, I don't touch because he's afraid I'll do the same thing that I did to the tile crew, which I wasn't the one that blew that up. That was him. Except I have won the.
Speaker 3 00:38:39
I have one over, the head of plumbing, where he's calling me with all of his problems saying, hey, I've got, what do I do in this situation? So I'm the counselor, if you will, and I oversee safety, I oversee payroll and so on and so forth. But I think that's probably a good stopping point so you can figure out what to do with this.
Speaker 2 00:39:09
So I learned a lot. I would like to hear more, Brandon, about your responsibilities, how you translate that into the day-to-day. Are you a P&L owner? What kind of operational initiatives you implemented recently? Give me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 00:39:34
Sure. So, again. I don't want to say I'm full P&L owner because he likes to make all his own decisions. But that being said, when it comes down to, I've got it down to a point where I say, hey, what do you want to see out of this pool? Because every pool is custom. So once I can get those variables aligned and I know what he's trying to accomplish here, then it's mine from there on out. So first issue that I had was safety.
Speaker 3 00:40:08
Safety, our work comp, we actually had to start up another company and transfer all of our employees to another company because we everybody's getting hurt. And that was largely because of that cultural issue that I that I named earlier, because most of those claims were false. But it was that bad. He was he was treating our employees that poorly. Any mistake turned into a thing that got blown up. And so culture sucked. I'm a big believer in culture first. Figure out who's here, who's here for you, who's not here for you.
Speaker 3 00:40:44
If you can't win those guys over, they need to go. And so once you get to a point where everybody is here for you, then it becomes a question of motivation and education. And I was able to work with that. And that's the the aspect that I was able to get this helper up to a, you know, full installer team lead and whatnot. So we initiated monthly safety meetings company wide. We haven't had an incident in a year and a half so far.
Speaker 3 00:41:22
As I as I started going through everything, I realized when we when we started looking at quality. He didn't know how he wanted to be able to say, hey, I know that every pool is different, but I want to be able to install at this number. I want to be able to install at one hundred and ten dollars per square foot. But that couldn't be done in the same way that he wanted to make it happen. He wanted to break every cost code out and then we would track all of that.
Speaker 3 00:41:54
But he never actually looked at that to see, are we actually making that? So by the time I figured out where everything was, I could look historically to see where everything was. Because I realized that we've never actually done it in the way that he wanted to. And if we weren't going to sacrifice quality, then we had to figure out how to attack all of this. First thing I did was I switched us over from when they were sort of waterproofing. They were doing it all through by hand, essentially. So I got with the rep for Miracote, which is our waterproofing product.
Speaker 3 00:42:28
They're the manufacturer. And I said, hey, somebody's got to be spraying this on or something like that, right? So, yeah, let me call a couple of my guys and I'll get you some ideas. So next thing I know, I've got a sprayer and we're now spraying it on. I've got a compressor to back it up and we're able to drop our waterproofing expenses by 70%. At that point in time, I've got money to play with. So I can start putting that into everything else while I'm still learning how to do this. From there, I attack the concrete sealers.
Speaker 3 00:43:03
Essentially, you'd have one guy. I don't want to take you into too much of the processes themselves. I then I started looking for each one, how to attack each different cost code that we approached, knowing that I have extra money in the bank. And how do I start bringing each one down? Because I couldn't figure out how to get tile install down. And so I reworked how they did, you know, each from concrete sealer to so concrete sealers.
Speaker 3 00:43:34
I reworked how they did that. So bought extra sprayers. So multiple people can be working at the same time. Worked my way into our pipe penetrations, how we waterproof everything that comes through. Anything that makes a hole in our waterproofing, how do we detail that? That became a because there's nine different applications for that. I said, you know, that's something we're going to work on as we have free time. You know, those things are always there. You know, when you're waiting, when you're in between here or there, you know, one job to the other.
Speaker 3 00:44:08
We're going to work on that. So it just becomes filler time and not time that we're going to spend figuring out what we're supposed to be doing right now. And so we were able to drop that down. Currently, I think we've been able to drop that down by 40 bucks per unit. And so each time, each one of those, our biggest issue with that, though, and most of these things is that we want to do everything according to manufacturing specs.
Speaker 3 00:44:41
When I start looking at these or when I read detail sheets from a manufacturer, I fall asleep. So how can I expect my guys to read these sheets? And so I came up with an app. So I created a little app where the guys will, because also they couldn't do the math right on all the mixes. And so we wanted to verify that. When it says, hey, put in whatever, 1.6 liters for every pound of powder, you go, how do they know this?
Speaker 3 00:45:13
They didn't have good scales. They didn't calibrate the scales. They didn't ensure that there was no actual quality assurance going on. And so I created an app that you could select the product. You would put in how many pounds of whatever you'd want, and then it would do the calculation for you. And then I had a chat GBT readout that would come out below that in a high school level detail. It said, step one is this, step two is this, step three is this.
Speaker 3 00:45:44
Do you got all this? And for a while, I was watching them to make sure not only, and even when I had to, you know, jumping in there next to them. Because sometimes you just can't know unless you feel it yourself. I'm not the guy. I'm a guy always willing to do what's necessary, you know, as somebody who grew up on the docks, if you will. I don't want to be that guy. But I think one of my biggest struggles here has been.
Speaker 3 00:46:15
that I believe that once you kind of have that plate spinning, you just got to keep on spinning it. You don't actually have to be there watching it spin. You know, you just got to come back every once in a while and go, how are we doing, guys? And if you've got that trust, if you've got that.
Speaker 2 00:46:33
culture, you have the ability to do that. Let me ask you a question. So I can hear a lot of passion in your when you talk about different things and all that. And I love it. That's great. What is the reason? You are looking for a job now or are you at all looking for a job or they just kind of like landed on you with with trying to get this job.
Speaker 2 00:47:06
So share with me a little bit what what you're looking for and if you're looking and all that.
Speaker 3 00:47:13
I'm looking. I'll say that first. I'm not just showing up to an interview. You know, I left Reconserve and I wanted to go out on my on my own. And I started up. If you look at my resume, I started up a company on the side, primarily because I had three little kids during COVID. So what do I do here? So I tried to start up this e-commerce business. Wouldn't it be great if I could start this thing up and life works out?
Speaker 3 00:47:44
It didn't work out that way. At the same time, I was asked to go to to work with my cousin. I thought it was something I could build. I thought it was something that we would partner with. Um, he, he's got charisma just pouring out of him. Um, the fact that he can go and, and talk to, you know, I mean, literally he's, he's talking to the, the Supreme, you know, the top dogs, we've done all the cart, the Kardashians, we've done all of these people.
Speaker 3 00:48:15
I mean, I'm not that guy. I'm not a sales guy. I can, I can work with sales. I'm the guy that tells you, Hey, I got this for you. And you believe me because, you know, that's my kind of sales. Um, because I understand what I do. Um, ultimately the commitments that we've made with each other, my cousin and I have not been fulfilled on his part. Um, I thought this was something that I'd proved myself and then we'd, we'd, uh, we'd, work together on.
Speaker 3 00:48:47
And each time I hit a benchmark, it's changed on me. And that was OK. You know, I'm loyal. I can. It's not OK. But here we are. Right. I've poked my head around here and there for different companies and it hasn't worked out. But at the same time, I've got I've got an integrity to uphold. And so I'm going to keep on pushing through trying to be successful in the meantime. You don't really got me is when we let a guy go who was making forty dollars an hour.
Speaker 3 00:49:21
And he was the guy that we were going to we were going to he was running the tile crew. We got another guy that I took from twenty two dollars an hour who was a helper two years ago, who was doing better work than that guy now. And he's asking for thirty five dollars an hour and I can't get it to him. And how dare he, you know, after two years, ask for more money. You know, can't they be like the plumbing crew after five years hasn't asked for any money?
Speaker 3 00:49:54
And and the conversation switches every single time. And the fact of the matter is the guy's here because he believes me. When I say that he can make good money here, he believes me. And I'm using up my equity that I've built with this guy because you don't want to pay him. I can't build like that. I can't. I'm constantly fighting to do right by you against you. You know, when I'm hiding stuff from you because you're going to respond poorly and you're going to shoot yourself in the foot, I'm I'm too transparent for that.
Speaker 3 00:50:34
If anything, I've I've told you stuff that, you know, I kind of went into this going, he might not like it, but I'm going to be honest. I'm not going to have you come back to me and saying, wait a minute here. You know, you told me this. That's not who I am. up. I'm going to work hard. I'm going to, I'm a problem solver. I see things at their root level. I'm going to figure it out for you and I'm going to fix it. Um, and, and ultimately I'm going to create an environment where I don't need to be there every day. I probably need to be there every.
Speaker 3 00:51:06
two weeks. That's kind of my, you know, I noticed that when, when I started traveling for Reconserve, if I was gone for more than two weeks, things started changing. Um, and I could show up and say, Hey guys, how you doing? What's going on here? You know, and, and, uh, everything, you know, when I'm really good friends with the guy that took over for me when I left Reconserve. Um, now he only took over for me for a short period of time before they turned it over to somebody else. He was calling me afterwards going, they all know what to do. I just have.
Speaker 3 00:51:39
to give them a pat on the back and ask them what they need. Yeah. And all those guys are still there. I had dinner with this guy the other day. And, you know, ironically, so just not without finishing my story, but the whole thing was the son pushed me out of Reconserve over that whole Ontario deal because the dad said, why can't you be more like Brayden? And he shared that with my buddy. I had dinner with my buddy on Wednesday who said, guess what? They're shutting down LA and moving everything to Ontario because they realized they can.
Speaker 3 00:52:13
no longer do this. So funny story, you know.
Speaker 2 00:52:16
So much for that, right. 
Speaker 3 00:52:18
Right. But.
Speaker 2 00:52:20
So, Brayden, did you have the chance to, I want to make sure that we'll have enough time for you to ask questions. So did you have the chance to talk to the track team guys on your compensation expectations. 
Speaker 3 00:52:36
Yes. Yes, I did.
Speaker 2 00:52:38
Can you share that with me. 
Speaker 3 00:52:39
I told him that I'm looking, I'm currently in the 140 range. I'd like to get to 150.
Speaker 2 00:52:47
Understood.
Speaker 3 00:52:48
Ultimately, if I'm being, you know, completely honest with you, I see something with you guys. My career at my point in time is weird because I switched over this construction business and everybody wants a unicorn. You know, it's a hirer's market, if you will. And I have to adjust a little bit. The reason why I find you guys interesting is because I know I can do it. And I see you guys expanding.
Speaker 3 00:53:20
And there's an opportunity there for more. I love the idea of building. I love the idea of, you know, if I could be the guy that came in, you guys said, go fix all of this stuff, right? Hey, we just got another one. Go fix it. Or, hey, we're. We've got, whatever, five in California now, and we want you to oversee all of that. You know, I think if I'm reading what you guys are doing right, that's the direction you're going.
Speaker 2 00:53:48
So let me give you an example. So we have an issue in one of our locations in California with very inefficient inventory management process. Let's go this way. Let's say you decided that this is the right fit for you. We decided that you are the right fit for the company. Everybody's happy. Today is your first day. Maybe not the first day, the first week, because on the first day, it's not something you dive into, shit like that.
Speaker 2 00:54:20
But let's say it's the first few days, and you remember Ron telling you back, you know, I don't know, in February 16th, that inventory management is one of our issues. So how are you addressing that? What are you looking at. 
Speaker 3 00:54:39
Obviously, I want to know what we're doing right now. So, hey, so-and-so, step me through what we do for inventory management as it is. A lot of times, most of the answers are solved right there, you know, where you go, well, yeah, if you're ordering everything right, you know, when you're out, it's wrong. You know, I don't want to take up more of your time. But ultimately, you know, there needs to be a system where you always have what you need, you know, whether there's going to be certain parts that you need to always have extras on hand.
Speaker 3 00:55:12
I can easily call one of the, you know, other, you know, facilities that you guys have and go, hey, what do you guys do? And see what the similarities are that we do and what it is that we don't do. But. Ultimately, I mean, there are there are so many different inventory systems for whether that's a pull system, whether or not we're putting in a dumb little sticky note, a yellow sticky note says, hey, when you see sticky note, order another part.
Speaker 3 00:55:45
Or there's plenty of apps that can track all of that stuff. They're overpriced for me, but Granger will come in and do all of that stuff. I know it's a little bit different seeing that you guys are doing garage motors or whatnot. But I oversaw inventory. I'm overseeing it now. I oversaw inventory at Reconserve where, you know, the plant would break down at any minute. We had to have whatever whatever it is that we needed on hand because we can't afford downtime. There is no with a plant.
Speaker 3 00:56:16
There is no switch it up, send another truck out. It's get it up, get it up right now so we can keep on going. So there there whatever it was, you assign a priority level to it. And depending on how high of a priority do we need it right now, is this something we can wait for a week for? You start ensuring that you're checking all those boxes.
Speaker 2 00:56:41
Okay. So I tell you that there is currently an issue with our inventory management and inefficiency. And you're saying that the response is you need to make sure that you have everything when you need it. Is that the way you look at it? Is that your initial approach. 
Speaker 3 00:57:07
I think the first question is why. Why don't you have what you need? Who's overseeing that. 
Speaker 2 00:57:14
I didn't say we don't have what we need. I said inventory – poor inventory management. I didn't say we don't have what we need. I said poor inventory management.
Speaker 3 00:57:23
But ultimately, you've got a problem that – I think without determining it, you've got to figure out the root cause of the problem, right? So when you say inventory management, and I don't know what kind of answer you're looking for. How much do you want me to ask? I can dive deeper.
Speaker 2 00:57:40
I want you to figure it out. Ask me the question as if I'm one of the warehouse employees, and I'm not even there as Ron. Sure. And all you remember is like, hold on a second.
Speaker 3 00:57:53
Sure.
Speaker 2 00:57:53
Back then, Ron said there is an inventory management issue. You walk in. You met Joe. Joe is the warehouse manager, and he doesn't say anything to you. He said everything is great in his mind. But all of a sudden, he's like, hold on a second. Ron said something along the – Okay. Along the lines of poor inventory management, right? What are you doing? I'm not there. You're there.
Speaker 3 00:58:17
No, that's okay. That's okay. I'd probably go and ask Joe how we're doing on inventory, right? How we're doing on inventory management. And I'd say, Hey, I may be wrong, but I could have sworn I heard something about inventory management that I need to look into something like this. What do you know about that? It's very likely that Joe would say, no, everything's great. And so I understand you also have a legacy manager there where I'd go and say, Hey, Mr. Legacy manager, what's going on with inventory management?
Speaker 3 00:58:49
Oh, I can make it up from here, but Joe, we're constantly running out of model S223s and that's our main unit. And we seem, you know, we honestly, we, we go through three a week and it seems like every, every other month we run out and we have to wait two weeks before it gets here. So I'd go, okay. If we've got a problem here, we probably have a problem with other models, other needs.
Speaker 3 00:59:21
I'd try to figure out if you guys already had something where the inventory is, do we know what we have? What is here on stock? And then I'd start looking at what our usage is. And then I'd compare what we have on stock. Is there anything that we're ordering automatically? So what's coming in? What's going out? What's currently here? What do we have that's taking up space here that is never getting used? And what is it that, you know, do we need to look at how the different, how our different vehicles are supplied?
Speaker 3 00:59:58
If this is our main unit and. You know, we've got, I think it's six techs, something like that. And we're using, you know, six a week. Well, then shoot, just keep it on the truck. I don't know what type of trucks you guys are using or if they're coming in here each day or whatnot. And we know I'd have to learn a little bit more about your system. But what are the inflows? What are the outflows? And that's math at some point in time that says, let's make sure that we're on top of that. And then there also needs to be an understanding on why did Joe miss this?
Speaker 3 01:00:32
Is it because he needs to be educated or is it because Joe really just wants to play solitaire? You know, I hate to bring that back around, but, you know. Go ahead.
Speaker 2 01:00:47
Brandon, I'm sorry for interrupting. We're coming up on time, and I do have a hard stop. That's okay. But definitely, I would be not doing any fairness and justice to you if I didn't allow you a few minutes to ask questions, because it's important for you to ask questions. So let me be quiet and allow you to ask a couple of questions. Please. It's important to me.
Speaker 3 01:01:12
Sure, sure. I think I have to ask the question of how are you feeling right now about me as a candidate. 
Speaker 2 01:01:21
I think your background is so wide that it's hard for me to think of an example of an issue that you wouldn't be able to tackle in that perspective. So I really think that you bring a lot of depth. Of experience and range of experience to the mix.
Speaker 3 01:01:53
Okay. The manager that's currently there, is he going to do bigger and better things? Is he going away? What is the . 
Speaker 2 01:02:06
Yes. The answer is yes.
Speaker 3 01:02:09
Okay.
Speaker 2 01:02:11
He's going to be in the background, not in Orange County. He's going to be in the background as a platform, but not in Orange County.
Speaker 3 01:02:21
Okay. But the idea is – because if he's going off to do other things, then we're not necessarily unhappy with everything that's going on right now. It's probably in a good spot, but everything has the ability to be tweaked. What are you looking for, I think, for the candidate coming in, first six, 12 months? What is the biggest thing? What is the biggest thing you're looking for. 
Speaker 2 01:02:48
Um, that's a good question. Um, for me to implement, I will first identify and then implement the operational improvements that are long needed, uh, in many aspects of the business. One of them, by the way, I wasn't joking. One of them being inventory management, um, and purchasing. It's not as simple as how many of the 21-20 we use a month and how come we run short and all that.
Speaker 2 01:03:26
It's way more involved in that than the simple, do you have enough what you need to do work with? That requires asking the right questions. Obviously, you don't know when you walk in the door because you look at the shelf. You don't know if what you have on the shelf is enough, not enough. It's the right thing. It's not the right thing. We need it. We don't need it. By asking the right questions is where you dig in and get the best information and knowledge.
Speaker 3 01:04:06
It's 1.59, and I know you said you had a hard out. I don't want to ask much more than that because I want to respect that.
Speaker 2 01:04:17
Well, Brandon, thank you so much. It was fascinating, literally, listening to you and your background. Let me revert to the track theme, with a bunch of notes that I took here on my thing. And I'll get back to you as soon as possible with some next steps on the horizon.
Speaker 3 01:04:42
Okay. Ron, I can blow this out of the water for you. I'm not even slightly intimidated by it. So I'll leave it there.
Speaker 2 01:04:54
Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 01:04:56
All right. Thanks, Ron. You have a good day.
Speaker 2 01:04:58
Thanks.
Speaker 3 01:04:58
You too. Bye-bye.

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