Mike Fricks, president of Bear Ironworks.
Tell me about your vision, man.
You've built something incredible
and I wanna hear all about what it is, where it's going.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
So I was in the construction business.
Since I was 24 years old, I had a construction business.
My dad was a contractor.
He kind of sold out and then bought a cattle ranch
in Western Colorado.
So I was on a cattle ranch, raised there.
My dad, as everybody well knows, back in those days,
cattle ranching wasn't that great.
And then he had the opportunity to do oil field work,
building the pads for the drill locations.
And so at a young age,
I learned how to run heavy equipment.
And so I went to a school in Rifle, Colorado.
And during the 80s,
Rifle, Colorado was known for oil shell.
It was a big deal.
Yep.
And Exxon, Amaco, all the heavy hitters
were trying to figure out how to get the oil out of the rock.
And so meanwhile, the high school that I went to
was a very small high school
until everybody started moving in.
And they had a really cool welding program
that was in combination with the high school
and the college, Colorado Mountain College.
And so I learned how to weld through that program.
And so I took part high school classes,
and then at night I would extend it into the college program
because I wanted to learn how to be a pipe welder.
So anyways, as time goes on,
going to construction business,
and that's kind of what I did for a long time.
And these rock screens were kind of unique.
They're something that nobody really knows about.
The people that do know about them are like,
oh yeah, they're for separating big rock.
And really the reason they were used back in the old days
was to separate the fines out of big rock.
So they could use big rock for what they call riprap.
It's R-I-P-R-A-P, riprap.
And what riprap is used for is erosion control,
like around dams maybe, spillways,
highway structures maybe or whatever.
So that's kind of what they were used for,
nothing else really.
And one day I'm golfing at a golf course
and I look over at the maintenance yard
and they have a small one, like for a skid steer.
And I'm like, man, that's such a good idea.
One of these days I'm gonna build one
and maybe I could sell them or something
or just build one for myself.
And it was probably 20 years later,
I had a bunch of iron leftover
and I had a kid that worked for me,
wanted to learn how to weld.
And I says, hey, we're gonna make one of these things
to see what happens.
And so we made it and we made a few of them actually.
And we took them to an auction
which is called Richie Brothers Auctioneers.
They're a worldwide auctioneer company,
one of the biggest in the world.
And so we took it to Denver, sold it, made some money.
And I thought, this is a pretty good side gig.
So I started making them on the side
and it was just for skid steers, little skid steer loaders.
And so I was able to teach my son how to weld
and we got going on that.
And I was just selling them on Craigslist
and taking them to auctions and just on the side is all.
And so he went to college
and he's kind of into motorcycles.
He's a motor cross racer.
And he was going to Colorado State University
in Fort Collins, Colorado for construction management.
And he needed a job, couldn't find a job.
And I said, well, you should find some farmer
and ask him if you could maybe use a little barn
or whatever shop and make some of these,
make a couple of months and it'll fit your schedule.
It won't interrupt with your school
and you can make them whenever you want and sell them.
So he did.
And he was really good at websites.
So he built a website and they started selling pretty good.
They started selling all over the nation as a matter of fact.
And he got so busy building them
that it interrupted his school because he was so busy.
He was going to, he was hiring his buddies,
like engineers and they'd matter whatever in classes.
And like, hey, you wanna learn how to weld?
I'll pay you.
And he was doing everything with jet.
He had a workers' comp.
He was paying all the taxes, all that kind of stuff.
And he was busy.
He was delivering them and I delivered some.
But meanwhile, I was working in Louisiana at COVID
and I got sick with COVID
and meanwhile, he decided to shut the whole thing down
because it wasn't doing good with school.
He wanted to finish and get his degree in that.
So I kind of got done down there and I says,
hey, what do you think?
I says, how much time do you think he was putting into that?
I mean, compared to what, if you did it full time,
how much time do you think he was putting into it?
And he goes, I was probably putting 10% into it.
And I said, so we did this thing 100%,
we could go do it pretty big, right?
And he's like, yeah, I think so.
So I did, we braided in COVID about August of 2020.
I didn't have a shop.
I came from Louisiana.
My mom and dad had a little shed
that literally measured 16 feet by 20 feet.
And I was just making them out
of that tiny little shed basically.
And we've got the website going back up.
And next thing you know, people are going,
man, I need it, and we started shipping them.
And next thing you know, he gets his education
and he becomes part of the company.
And we started adding more products
and designing more things.
And I guess, the other thing too is in Louisiana,
when I worked down there,
the bedding boxes part of our products,
we couldn't get them.
We was bringing them in a thousand miles away.
And so the rental companies like United Rentals
had to bring them in from, like I said,
a thousand miles away.
And I thought, man, I can make them.
I know how to weld.
I know how to make these things.
And so we added that line to it.
We was the first ones to build bedding boxes
for many excavators.
And then we've been done well with those.
And we make great big ones for large excavators.
And our screens now, we make them mega huge screens.
And our newest screen is one that you can just shovel.
And if you're a person in your backyard
wanting to make compost or screen out your deck
or the block or whatever, you can screen it out.
Oh, that's cool.
And all the way up to mega machines.
Wow.
Oh my gosh.
That is so cool.
Okay, Vision Pros.
One of the things I'm gonna do on behalf of all of you
is I'm gonna take this specific episode
and I'm gonna ask Chad GPT to create us a guide
of all the principles that we can learn
from that one tiny story.
Mike, that's freaking incredible.
Mike, everything that you've done
with working with your son on this,
teaching him and empowering him to hire things out,
delegating, understanding you don't have to be 100%
from day one.
Like there's so many principles about the story
and about how you came to build this out
that reminds me of a mini version of Rockefeller, right?
That reminds me of the paths that I've seen.
And for those of you who don't know,
I don't talk about this a lot
because we're usually talking technology stuff.
My grandpa was the first man to drill
a successful horizontal oil well
in the state of New Mexico.
No kidding.
And he ran a little company called
the McNutt Oil and Gas Tool Rental Company.
It was the largest tool rental company
for oil and gas in the world.
I know that name.
Ah, you know Herb McNutt?
Well, I know the McNutt.
That's great, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, my grandpa was also known as the,
like the best fisher in the business.
So back in the day, for those of you listening in,
you know, something fell into the well,
you had to figure out how to get that thing out.
I didn't have all the technology they have now.
And so he'd fly over all over the world,
Panama specifically a lot to go down
and help out when something like that would happen.
And my dad, when I was 18 and in college,
was on my way home and he said,
hey, I'm staying over in rifle
and I work on a well out here.
Why don't you come by?
So I hit rifle Colorado on the way down.
So it's all this blue collar stuff.
And again, another secret vision pros,
the more boring your business is,
the more I get excited.
All right, the more legitimate,
the more like, oh wow, everybody's overlooking
the needs associated with this.
And so Mike's tapped into something
absolutely incredible with this process.
So if your vision is something that seems obsolete
or seems unrelatable to what's on mainstream media
or what's on the everyday news,
that does not make it an unimportant vision.
In fact, you might have a vision that's essential
to helping us be able to enjoy the sports
and enjoy the gossip or whatever else people
are trying to enjoy on mainstream news.
So Mike, thanks so much for sharing this with me.
Like this is so cool to see.
We're gonna close out pretty fast
on this particular episode.
I'd love to have you back though.
And I'd love to dive in deeper
because there's just so much we can learn.
If you're willing to honor us with your time and come back,
we'd love that.
In the meantime, I wanna know what's your why, man?
What drives you?
What gets you going?
You know, I've always, I've tried to work for other people.
I've been working for myself most of my career.
And I tried to get, like I said,
I worked for one of the biggest construction companies
in the world in Louisiana and as a manager.
And I still couldn't do it.
I still had a hard time.
And I just love working for myself
and getting up in the morning
and this is what I gotta do today and self-driven.
And it does, it motivates me a lot.
And like when I work for somebody else,
it's like, I don't wanna get out of bed this morning
to go to work.
There's some limitation there.
I was fired from almost every semi-corporate job
I ever had.
So no, it just does not for me.
I need to be able to learn more
and control my day a bit more.
Yeah, so I do, you know, for that,
my son being able to work with my son is really fun.
And then he's come up, you know, he's done really well.
He's automated basically the whole company.
I mean, it's in the businesses
in Grand Junction, Colorado.
I live in Phoenix.
He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
Oh.
So we can watch it live all day long
when the welders clock in on the item
that they have to build.
And we can sit there and see what's going on,
you know, material ordering or shipping or whatever it may be.
And you can go sailing in Charleston.
I did that a couple of years ago.
Right, did you?
Yeah, we have this, there's a new studio there.
Again, all you vision pros are gonna benefit from this.
There's a state of the art podcasting
slash virtual conference studio.
It's got one of those virtual media rooms
that's just out of this world.
It's one of the few like it in the country.
And so a company I was working with
rented that out for their virtual event.
You guys might pop in someday and just take a look.
And I'm sure if you look up virtual events,
podcasting studio Charleston, it's easy to find.
But I'll also provide that in the show notes
for anybody interested.
And Mike, we look forward to having you back on the show.
This was an absolute pleasure.
Okay, good deal.
I wanna come back.
Vision pros, we'll see you guys next time.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.