84: How to Scale Your Business Without Going Broke

Paden: [00:00:00] you can really grow a business rapidly and absolutely go broke. Hello everybody. Welcome to Behind Their Success Podcast. Today we have on Roggen Frick. Roggen is a dynamic entrepreneur whose journey from motocross enthusiast to manufacturing innovator. I. Is as inspiring as it is in instructive rage in the world of heavy machinery through his father's construction business, Roggen’s early exposure to Hands-on Work sparked an entrepreneurial spirit that would eventually lead him to found Bear Iron Works. A company that has grown from a modest college side hustle into a powerhouse serving the excavation and construction industry nationwide. Roggen, welcome on Behind their Success.

Roggen: Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm really looking forward to our conversation we're gonna have today.

Paden: Yeah, absolutely. Roggen, so tell us about your business. Tell us about Bear Iron Works and, and, and what is that?

Roggen: So Bear Ironworks is a company that we made because we saw a [00:01:00] demand

for certain products in the civil construction industry, that wasn't quite being met or fulfilled. Like

the products that we make are, can be hard to find at times. Um, and it seems like there wasn't,

you know, too. Good manufacturers out there that brought good value to the table.

and that's what we see now. It originally started out as just the idea of, like you said, side hustle

in college, I was, I would weld up our main product, which is a, a grizzly rock screen for

screening out soil and getting rid of big rocks. Um, and I needed a shop to put my dirt bike in.

And so. Uh, I decided, well, I'll get a welding shop.

I can put my dirt bike in there and work on it, and I'll just make some of these grizzlies and I'll

sell them, um, at like a Richie Brothers auction or whatnot. And I built a website so I could

advertise it, and pretty soon I started getting so much business that I was in a bigger shop and I

had a couple employees, and then it was a little bit too [00:02:00] much to try to keep up with

school and everything.

paden: Yeah. Yvette. So this was all while? Yeah. All while you were in college, right?

roggen: Yeah, this was all, this was my freshman year of college. It was, I,

paden: Yeah.

roggen: I rebuilt a dirt bike of my buddy's, the engine was, uh, toasted, so I rebuilt the engine,

got it running again, and sold it. And that paid for the first month's rent to the shop. And helped

me get the welder, uh, so that I could start making it.

And, uh, yeah, it's been quite the journey. You know, I've learned a lot along the way. I learned

how to weld. Um, just because my dad's construction company, you know, I had hands-on

experience that, and then in my good old high school ag class, I got a lot of time to practice

welding. And so that taught me a skill that, uh, helped pay the bills and, um.

You know it, when it first started out, it was kind of crazy. I remember my first shipment of iron I

got, I wasn't ready for it. I built a crane so that I could unload the truck and I didn't have the

crane ready yet. The iron shipment was supposed to come the following day, and this is lesson

number one, is that it's okay to say no and reschedule truck.

'cause the truck [00:03:00] came up and I was like, oh my gosh. So I leave class and I, uh, I

drive really quick over to my shop and I get there. I meet the driver and the crane's not ready. I

pick up the crane or I pick up all the iron with the crane and I have him pull out from under it.

And because it wasn't set up quite right, the iron just started to kind of like swing and it went

straight into the wall and it took up. Yeah, first little iron. It didn't go very well. And so, uh, that

was lesson number one I learned right away. Is it okay to say no? go ahead and reschedule for

the time that it was supposed to be here so I could have my crane ready. Um, but now, you

know, we're, now, we're a full on operation. We have, uh, six production employees, uh, you

know, very professional.

Safety's number one priority in our shop. We have proper cranes, forklift certifications and

everything. And it's come a long ways from the humble

paden: From, yeah, from the beginnings. Yeah. Yeah. That's kinda interesting. So, you know,

it's, it's kind of interesting story, right? So this kind of started, as there was no grand plan at least

my assumption here, what I'm [00:04:00] taking away from your story, right? It was, Hey, I

started, uh, doing this.

I'm gonna play route stuff. I just need to make a little bit of money, so I'm fixing a dirt bike. And

you kind of turned this into just one thing led to another and it kept building right?

roggen: Yeah, because it was never the plan to actually working in manufacturing. I actually got

a degree in construction management and was gonna work in construction. And even when I sh,

I shut the business down midway through college just so I could finish my degree. And I went

and worked in, uh, commercial construction for a couple years.

I.

paden: Mm-hmm.

roggen: my dad decided, hey, he was working in, uh, for a big construction company, Kiewit,

and he was kind of getting tired of working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, you know, and

he was living in Louisiana instead of at home. And it was just becoming a little much. And he

said, you know, that the grizzly business seemed like it had good potential.

What if we, you know, started that back up as a team? Added some product lines and

everything. And so I kind of focused on the marketing side 'cause my website [00:05:00] did a

pretty decent job at getting me business. Um, and then he worked on setting up the operations

while I was still working at the commercial contractor, so that way I didn't have to take a salary.

And it kind of helped get the business up and going a little quicker. Um, and then eventually I

was able to come on full-time and now we, we work as a cohesive team and

we've, we've done great things together.

paden: Yeah, how old are you now, Ron?

roggen: 26.

I would've been 18 when I started it.

paden: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, starting that out, right? Like, for example, right, that crane

situation, or you were, you know, you were in the middle class, you were dealing with several

different things.

A lot of people wouldn't have Continued down that path that you did there, right? They wouldn't

have taken that chance. They wouldn't have ordered that big thing of iron and start, you know,

trying to just slap together a crane and, and make it all happen.

Right? What, why do you think you did? why did you make that choice if you

roggen: You know, I think

that because of the experience that I had growing up, I wasn't like [00:06:00] buying iron and

building things and using my hands to make something wasn't as scary of it. Like an experience

as maybe a lot of people are who's like thinking about moving into starting their own business

where they have to do some type of hands-on production or something.

They never. Done before, you know, I felt comfortable welding. I had, I had sold, I had made one

of these and sold it in high school, the first one. and the customer liked it. It w it was built Well, I

did it, you know, I was getting to be a good enough welder at that point that I felt confident I

could make.

Um, and I. Just that exposure. You know, I feel like, uh, a lot of kids don't get exposure to hands-

on things anymore. And when they get up, you know, into an adult age, you know, reading a

tape measures still kind of a new skill can be at times. And so, and when, when you're talking

about building something, any, Hmm.

Anything complex, um, these are simple, but really, but, you know, anything, it can be

overwhelming for a lot of people.

paden: [00:07:00] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So, Obviously, you know, you were

young starting out, you know, starting out your own business, young entrepreneur, um, I'm sure

you've had to learn, learn some lessons along the way. Um, tell us about, one of those

experiences, right?

Where maybe you, you made a mistake or, something went wrong right in, in the business. Like

I said, you know, all of us have plenty of those. You know what, give me, gimme one of those

stories and, and kind of what was your takeaway? what did you learn from that?

roggen: Yeah. So I mean, like I, I feel like as you build a business and you grow with a

business, your roles change. Right? When I first started it, I was cutting the steel. I was welding,

I was doing accounting. I was doing every single thing that is involved with the business, right? I

was even doing the deliveries and that was something that.

I was doing like free deliveries for the first 200 miles and that was just

paden: That's a long drive.

roggen: Right. And so, yeah, learning how to do, like manage like what you're good at, um, and

just kind of learning things. 'cause I didn't understand how the. How the freight industry works

and how to ship anything.

but [00:08:00] as you grow with your business, you know, then you're gonna start turning away

from being the hands-on guy and you're gonna start putting on your business hat and you have

to start using some business mindset. And one of the first things that we kinda learned was cash

flows and how important it is.

And I had a little bit of exposure to it in the construction program 'cause that's very important for

construction projects. Um, um, we were building a lot of these and. We were doing like net 30

terms, and so we didn't have very good cash flow coming in through the business. And it's when

we started getting a larger volume of orders, it started to become a little bit

paden: no problem.

roggen: that.

And it's like, okay, are we gonna get payroll paid and everything like that. And so we also had,

you know, some customers that probably shouldn't have trade, credit terms, and so

paden: do you, what do you mean you got old accounts receivable? No one's gonna pay, huh?

roggen: Right, right. Yeah. And it's like finding those customers there that, uh, that are genuine

[00:09:00] in making a vetting process for that.

And so that's when I decided, well, what if we switch to e-commerce? Because it, it makes it

more convenient to buy the product

paden: Mm-hmm.

roggen: that they're gonna check out right away, for the most part. And then you're getting your

cash up front to pay for the materials, and so then it helps everything go a little bit smoother.

And then once you got some cash going up in the upfront, then you can have some inventory,

which also helps drive your sales up because something's ready to go and you just, you, you

constantly shifting, you know, I didn't, I started out as a welder and now my role mainly in the

company is being the business leader and a software and web developer, which is something I

never really imagined myself doing.

paden: yeah. Right. Yeah. Like, same here. It's like I'm like the full blown marketer and I'm like,

that's not at all what I went to school for. And, you know, you, you made a couple, a couple great

points there. I wanna circle back for the, for the listeners there, you know, when Ron was talking

about net 30, um, that, that's like an accounts [00:10:00] receivable term.

So basically, you know, he sells a product, delivers it, and the customer's got 30 days to pay.

Right. the amazing thing is, this is a great example of how you can really grow a business

rapidly and absolutely go broke, um, and be a very profitable business and have no cash and be

broke, right? Because when you're dealing with physical products like Rogan is, and, and his

business is, you need inventory and you're, you know, if you're, you're continu lean to grow, you

gotta continue feed inventory and you need more and more capital to do that.

And eventually, if you're on net 30 terms with all your customers, is. Holy moly, there's no cash

left in the business, even though everything seems like it's going well, but all the money's gone.

Right? Um, so you really gotta, you know, in a construction business or product type

businesses, cash flow, like just profitability is not the only thing you need to be looking at.

It's, it's the timing of cash flow is extremely important. the other thing Ragan was talking about

there is, is really his shifting roles, right? You know, he talked about in the beginning, right? It's,

[00:11:00] it's similar In my situation, in the beginning, I did literally everything.

It was me and my computer and, and, uh, you're wearing every hat in a roll, but like. as you

move up that success ladder, as you start to grow the business, your role needs to shift, right?

You need to shift out of the guy that's wearing every hat and into, um, you know, more, more

your zone of genius and, and what you should be working on and, and replacing a lot of those

other roles, right?

With other people that are skilled at those specific things.

Yeah.[00:12:00]

Yeah, well.

Yeah. Yeah. And you need to be constantly trading in or trading off like, you know, tasks that.

You shouldn't be doing and, and trading them off for higher leverage tasks, right. For your time

as the owner. Right. And that's, that's a, process entrepreneurs should always really be thinking

of is like, how do we push the work down?

How do I, get other people? You know, I don't know if you've ever read the book Who Not How

by, um, Ben Hardy and, and Dan Sullivan, fantastic book, about, anytime something new comes

up to your business, it's not like, how am I going to do this? It's like. Who is going to do this?

Um, do I have a who in my business that can do this or do I need to go find a different who?

but asking the question of who is going to do this is a whole lot more opening in your mind.

Instead of how, because the [00:13:00] entrepreneur usually goes to, oh my God, that's gonna

be me. How am I gonna do that? Um, I can't do another thing. and so

you're

right. Like every level of the business, there's always a million things you need to be doing.

and it's just. Focus and clarity and trying to find the few linchpin items or the bottlenecks in your

business currently that you should be focused on and pressing into, because that's gonna

release. And then you know, guess what? You're gonna have a new linchpin that you're gonna

have to work on after that because the game never stops.

Yeah, and you [00:14:00] know, that's one of the biggest problems humans have is that they

think they shouldn't have any problems. Um, they expect some, you know, so there's this day

where, you know, my business is in a place and it's like the money rolls in. I don't have any

problems. Everything works perfect. My clients get me exactly what I asked for the first time.

And, you know, everything's perfect. But that, that never is right, because we're in, you know,

we're in a dynamic world. Things are always fluctuating. There is no stagnant world to build

some perfect thing in. Um, you're always gonna have problems. So, you know, we, we kind of

talked about one of, you know, one of the bigger mistakes you made, Robin.

Tell me, through all this, you know, as a young guy, you know, 26, pretty impressive kind of, you

know, what, what you've built, what would you credit as their best decision you've made on that

journey that, that has led to your success?[00:15:00]

Mm-hmm.

What's the.[00:16:00]

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like templates and, and, and all these types of things and yeah. And especially with

today's technology with AI and gosh, everything that's out there, like the ability to, really close a

lot of holes, in your business or, and you know what I think he's saying there is really is like

systems, right?

Um, you know, you started out as a college side hustle and it's like, ah, just trying to make some

money and like. That's cool and that's great, but like you can't build, that's not a business, right?

Like, to be a real business one that operates and [00:17:00] doesn't necessarily take all of your

life and, um, you know, all of your stress and everything, you've gotta start building systems and,

and systems that allow your business to scale.

I give you great data, like he's talking about that tracks and 'cause what's like tracked and

measured is, is going to improve. Um, and, and it's really just, hey, you know, I, it, it's going from

almost like an amateur to a professional, right? There's a, there's a great book called, uh, gosh,

what did by Stephen Pressfield?

gosh. it's about becoming professional, like, and just, you know, as entrepreneurs that they, they

need to, start becoming professional in all their different areas of life and taking things seriously

and not just playing with things and, being an amateur, to be honest with you.

[00:18:00] Yeah. it's really just things that, Get everybody on your team, you know, kind of on the

same page. Right? And everybody's agreeing on the same data and facts and everybody knows

like the language and, and what's going on there. Right? And, and you know, you don't need

that when it's just rocking welding, you know, metal together, right?

Yes. But that doesn't work when there's six other people in there, right? And, and things start

just. You know, when you start building that and putting things together, things just got, start

getting infinitely more and more complex. That systems and automation need to be built.

Otherwise, yeah, you're just gonna create chaos a lot.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.[00:19:00]

Oh, for sure. Yeah. And, and, and that's, you know, that's just the continuous improvement loop,

like, right? I mean, there's. Once again, we were talking about earlier, like, there's always gonna

be problems to solve, right? Um, always problems to solve. And I think the, the important thing,

or where a lot of entrepreneurs get lost is that they don't take enough time to necessarily think

about, okay, what is the number one problem I should be solving?

Right? I try to think about business problems in a way of like, okay, what, what's the number one

problem that if I fixed, it's like, has the biggest. Outcome on the business. Right? And, that's just

like kind of a way of prioritizing problems of like, what is our biggest problem that would help

overall, okay, let's solve that problem.

And yeah, I, I got a list of 700 problems, but at some point you just gotta pick one to start

solving. So you need to start solving with the, you know, the one that's gonna, you know, maybe

you solve that first problem and it fixes 10 [00:20:00] other things on the list that you didn't even

right.

Yeah. And that's where it's, you know, focus and clarity and knowing exactly, you know, what,

what you're building, like what you're trying to build, like as specific and as clear as possible.

And if you get super clear on that kind of stuff, it, it. You know, the priorities of problems to fix

become a whole lot more clear.

and often, you know, those problems, those linchpin problems are, are the ones that maybe

we've been avoiding or the ones that we're not good at yet, because that's why they haven't

been solved. Right. So it's, it is always a, a, a time of trying to challenge yourself as an

entrepreneur to step into whatever problem that you've either avoided or didn't know it was a

problem.

But now, c. Um, to be brave enough to kind of step into that and, and, and start working on that

problem because we wanna work on problems that we're good at and, and can solve real fast,

because that gives us that dopamine hit and makes us feel good. Um, but it really doesn't move

the business forward, right?[00:21:00]

Yeah, yeah, there's a big difference between activity and like productivity, right? Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

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paden: So, you know, you talked GaN earlier about, making the shift into e-commerce and can

you, tell us a little bit about that, you know, you, you know, as a construction industry that, or I

say construct you, you're a manufacturer, but like, speak to that a little bit and, I can definitely

see how that, dramatically changed your business.

For sure.[00:23:00]

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Volume. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah.[00:24:00]

Yeah. Yeah. And, and that automates a lot of stuff on your side too, right? It takes out, you know,

you're not, you're not tracking out payments, you're not going back and forth with customer to.

You know, customize something, right? It's, you guys, you know, even as a business getting

focused and clear of like, okay, here's our products.

Here's all the, you know, maybe, you know, we got 10 ways to customize this or whatever. We

can't have a thousand ways to customize this, but you know what I mean?

Yes.

Mm-hmm.[00:25:00]

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a big logistics thing, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, yeah. Yeah. That's,

yeah, that's a huge advantage, you know, for you of building that system. Is that, yeah. What do

you want? I, you know, this is what I have. Do you want any of it? Right. Like it's here. Um, and,

and, and [00:26:00] you're right. I, you know, I just assume you probably do get a bunch of

business of, um, people are just showing up and like, oh crap, I need some product.

Let's order this now. Um. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, you think of construction projects, I

mean, they got millions and loans out there and every day costs x number of dollars in interest.

And, and you know what I mean, like, time is very, very valuable. Um, and those, those types of

projects. Yeah. And you know, and it comes back to like simplifying your offerings and, and

whatnot.

There. Like I think, um, I don't know. I saw something online they had a couple weeks ago and it

was like McDonald's like original menu and it was. Hamburger cheeseburger, french fries, ice

cream cone. That was, and like a soda, right? Like, and they like three different types of soda,

but like, they built a model that was so simple and they squeezed every efficiency out of that.

And by keeping this menu very simple, it allows it to get insanely [00:27:00] efficient, right? From

the production side and, from an inventory side and mandatory, you know, like if you got 10

million SKUs, inventory becomes a freaking nightmare, right? Like, and the more you simplify

that and speak to your direct customer, like man, there's a lot of efficiencies there.[00:28:00]

Yeah, everything's.

Yeah. And, and

they, and when they're so simple too, they have all the data and then they can predict customer

behavior and then they can even be more prepared and like, you know, it's all just builds on

itself. Right. Um, yeah. Yeah. That's Simplicity for sure. So, you know, Ronan, you know, you,

you've built stuff, you're still 26, right? Uh, young guy. what do you see for the future, you know,

for you for business? Like, uh, what's, uh, what's your goals here?[00:29:00]

Yeah.

Yeah. you know, you've figured out a few things, building your own systems, and now you can,

you can certainly help people, uh, get a little better. Um, so yeah, still.[00:30:00]

That's very cool. And, and that's, I mean, that's the journey though. It really is. It's like a lot of the

entrepreneur journey. It's like, okay, you go through this journey, you figure a lot of stuff out. And,

and I would, I'll say the good entrepreneurs, but the, the people that go through all those battles

and figure a lot of that stuff out, they end up turning around and trying to teach that to people.

Right. And, and, and that's kind of like the whole point of this show too, right? Is to, is to help

people skip a few steps and not. You know, maybe not run into the crane problem you ran into,

or Thousands of problems I've run into and, and beat my head against a wall when, when I

could have maybe listened to, you know, a show like this and, oh, I should do it this way, not that

way.

Yeah, those don't hurt as much. Do.

So, man, this has been a great conversation. tell people like, what's the best way people can

connect with you, Robin, get to know more about you, or anything like that.[00:31:00]

Yeah. That's awesome, Robin. Anything else, man? Anything else you wanna leave for the

listeners before we go? Any piece of parting pieces of advice?[00:32:00]

Yep. Yeah. You know, the, uh, humility, right? Always, always important to keep the humility. Um,

'cause you'll never learn anything new without it. Um, you know, when you're talking about the

welder again there, it just made me remember as about a 5-year-old kid, um, being with my

grandpa and taking a welding stick and just going right over my thumb with it.

You know, this was, you know, 30 years ago and, um, yeah, I'm like, I just ran around the farm

and did whatever I want. And apparently I was playing with a welder,[00:33:00]

but I just thought of that story anyway. But yeah. Yeah. You know, the humility and, and you

know, uh, yeah. Just always be open to learning. Right. Um, for sure. Well, man, I appreciate

you coming on the show. Um, and listeners, we'll get you next time.