The CWB Association Welding Podcast
The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that covers what’s happening in the world of Welding. We speak to people passionate about the world of Welding and fabrication. Get the right tips and industry information to stay on top of what’s happening in the Welding industry.
The CWB Association Welding Podcast
Episode 255: Beyond the Weld with Kolt Tebb
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that connects to welding professionals around the world to share their passion and give you the right tips to stay on top of what’s happening in the welding industry. Subscribe, listen, and stay connected to the people who keep the world welded together
Some welders build their reputation on quality, while others build it on price, but Kolt Tebb is proving there's another way. In this episode, Kolt Tebb, owner of True Repair Welding, shares how he built a premium mobile welding repair business by putting customer experience at the center of everything he does. From developing his skills through fabrication and repair work to introducing fixed-price packages, investing in marketing, and creating a seamless quoting process, Kolt explains why challenging traditional business models has helped him stand out in a competitive industry.
Follow
Website: https://truerepairwelding.ca/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tebbfab/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Truerepairwelding/
Enjoyed the show? Subscribe, leave a rating, and share it with a welder who needs a nudge today.
There is no better time to be a member! The CWB Association membership is new, improved, and focused on you. We offer a FREE membership with a full suite of benefits to build your career, stay informed, and support the Canadian welding industry. https://www.cwbgroup.org/association/become-a-member
What did you think about this episode? Send a text message to the show!
Welcome And Meet Colt Teb
SPEAKER_02Welcome to the CWB Association Welding Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Hawaii. Let's flip up the lid and spark some conversation. Welcome to the CWB Association Welding Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin, and tonight we have a great guest, Colt. So Colt, it's just Teb, right? That's the last name. Teb. Yeah, Colt Teb. Teb is my last name. Very cool. So welcome, Colt. Thanks for being my guest. Thanks for having me. So, Colt, where are you from? What do you do?
SPEAKER_00I'm from Carstairs, Alberta, and I own True Repair. I specialize in high-quality welding repairs and put an emphasis on customer hospitality.
SPEAKER_02Cool. Yeah, and I'd love to dig into your business model too here in a little bit, but let's let's rewind. Where did you first get your touch of welding? When did you discover welding?
SPEAKER_00When I first discovered welding, I was in grade seven. I had an old truck. It was a Mazda B2300. And I got it for $500. And uh it had rusted out fenders, and I brought it over to my grandparents own a trailer shop and they had a bunch of welders there. I wanted to fix the rust and brought it over there. And they had a couple welders in the shop who were helping me out with that, helped me cut out the fender, and that's when I first first time ever MIG welding actually was in that shop, just on some scrap
First Sparks In Grade Seven
SPEAKER_00plate, and uh trying to trying to figure it out. It was it was tricky. It was tricky. It's like it felt like hot glue. It just uh wasn't wasn't too sure what I was doing back then. So then uh I I did like the idea of welding. I thought that welders were super cool and I wanted to be like that. So my mom seen that I enjoyed that and genuinely enjoyed restoring my truck and all that, and she enrolled me into a couple of summer courses at SAIT, actually.
SPEAKER_02Oh, very cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So then I went to uh SAIT that summer and with a buddy of mine, and we built dinosaurs and spiders. I have some of these in the garage still.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I can see the spider on your wall there. There's uh there's a scorpion up on the shelf.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that's from that summer that when I first started welding. And I also have a little, it's like a tree trunk that has an axe in it, and you can see around the top there's a ring of porosity. So basically I just weld it all up and make it look like a tree, but there's a ring of porosity because when I got back from lunch, I forgot to turn back on my welding gas. And I didn't know any better back then, so I just kept welding, and I'm like, huh, this is kind of bubbly. This is weird. I don't remember it being like this before lunch, but uh yeah, and then I so yeah, it's kind of cool just looking back on that stuff and how how I first got into it and how little I knew back then, and I still have those little trinkets, so yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, it's very cool to keep the things that that remind you of where you came from, and that's kind of funny. Like you've got a bunch of porosity, but that just adds to the art, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. Adds to the story for sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. And also, I've never really heard of anyone falling in love with welding doing bodywork. I absolutely hate doing bodywork.
SPEAKER_00I'm with you on that now. I decline all the bodies. I I think that it was just because I was 14 at that time and it was my first truck, and like doing the bodywork on your first vehicle feels cool. That feels like like you take pride in that, right?
SPEAKER_02So, yeah, working on your own stuff. So it was thanks to your mom that uh you got into welding. So after those summer courses, what uh yours you're in high school, obviously, did you pursue that throughout high school?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I was actually in middle school at that time, and then uh going into high school. Well, so then that same shop, my grandparents' own, I got a job at, and I would do occasional welding there, just fixing up stuff and welding, welding stuff together, working with the journeyman, and this was just during the summer, and then I actually I never got really into it until about grade 10. So in grade 10, I took off to Australia for a month with my school, and when I came back, um I got a job offered to me from the school at a place repairing propellers, boat propellers. So it was a welding gig, and I'm like, okay, this sounds this sounds pretty cool. I mean, I I love welding, I love building stuff. My passion really is with building stuff rather than welding alone. I'm a skills guy, so welding just kind of comes with that. But yeah, so then I I got enrolled into the rap program, the registered apprentice program. And so every day at lunch, um, in grade 11 and 12, this would have been, I would go to work and I would go to this propeller shop and fix boat propellers, and we would fix uh brass propellers, aluminum,
SAIT Summer Builds And Early Mistakes
SPEAKER_00stainless, and they were all TIG welded. And we also did custom fab on the side as well. But I would go there, I would just literally work on propellers all day and bang them out straight. And then if there's misses missing pieces of metal, um, I'd sit there with the TIG welder, I'd be practicing, filling up, just weld after weld, hours upon hours filling up and then take it over, grind it all down, rebalance it, and yeah, so that was that was really where I started to actually develop TIG skills. And TIG is my specialty now. I'm I'm pretty good at TIG, I would say, above average, um, just because I've spent so many hours on it. Like back then is nowhere compared to like other other jobs that I did.
SPEAKER_02We can get into that later, but yeah, yeah, that was uh yeah, literally sitting there yeah, 3D printing with aluminum or brass or stainless to build these things back up. That's like I find a lot of fun in doing that. I do a ton of aluminum repair too, and it's I don't know, it's kind of cool taking there's nothing there to like look, it's brand new.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly, exactly. And yeah, the brass props are actually Nibral and welded on AC. So it's nickel, bronze, aluminum. So it's kind of a kind of a different metal to work with too, and that kind of got me started into doing a little bit different metals.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that sounds tricky. Like I've I've welded some brass before and that's got its own challenges, but what was tricky about the that material in in particular?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean back then I I didn't have a whole lot of skills to begin with, but uh it's by the end I had done it so much that it wasn't tricky anymore. Like, you know, when when you just do stuff all the time, eventually it's like okay, this isn't so bad. But uh it's it's welded on AC, so it's a bit more like aluminum, it's a little bit more fluid, um, and just trying to keep the puddle from falling through, especially because you're just building up a blade, so you don't really have any backing. It's just weld over weld and make sure that you control your heat really good.
SPEAKER_02So, where did you go from there then? So you did this this wrap program. Um so obviously you're building up hours, you're working towards you know your your apprenticeship levels. So, what happens after that?
SPEAKER_00So then I did that for two years, and I did that until I got out of high school, and I always wanted to be a TIG welder. I really liked TIG welding, and I was doing super good at it, and I went off to my first year uh technical training for apprenticeship at Olds College, and while I was at Olds College, I had heard from a buddy about this shop that only did TIG welding, and I'm like, well, that sounds pretty cool. I don't actually love the job that I'm at anymore. I want more growth, and I was just working like a dog all the time, fixing propellers, and it's the same thing every single day. And I'm like, I'm I'm not I'm not doing what I want to be doing here. And so I was making $20 an hour at that propeller shop back then, and I took a pay cut to $18 an hour to go work at this um stainless steel and aluminum fabrication shop in Olt's. And I just walked in there one day with my resume and I'm like, hey, are you guys hiring? And he's like, uh, he's a German guy, and he's like, Well, we're not really, I probably can't keep you busy. And I'm like, I I don't really care, I just I just want to learn, and this uh looks like the place that I want to go to. And uh he's like, Okay, well, send me a couple of pictures of your welds. And I'm like, okay, so then I left and I sent him a couple of photos of my welds, and he's like, You're hired, you're hired.
SPEAKER_02So what what year was this? Yeah, what year was this? Because you know, like you don't you don't you didn't hear about these things happening like when I was coming up, like you know, pictures didn't mean anything. It's like who do you know or where did you work before? So how like what year was this?
SPEAKER_00This would have been 2020, I believe. 2020 going into 2020.
SPEAKER_02So right right during the COVID days.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Oh, yeah, right during COVID.
SPEAKER_02So you got hired, and was he able to keep you busy?
SPEAKER_00Uh for the most part. I mean, in winters and stuff. He's he's still a small shop and he's still getting his thing going at that time. So, I mean, it was a little bit off and on, but I'd always been doing stuff on the side, anyways, like running my own little business. And so it ended up working out good. Um I was uh I ended up being a subcontractor for him, and we like we would do a whole bunch of nice railings and pergolas and all sorts of stuff for fancy houses in Calgary. Um, a lot of kitchen sinks for hospitals, learning how to blend stainless nice, learning how to learning how to make sure that I'm not warping too much and keeping my heat uh heat affected zone to a minimum and blending aluminum and just all of the stuff. And that that actually that job really stressed me out, but really upgraded me because I was I think just past 18 at that time, 18 and a half-ish. And he would just give me a drawing, and not like
RAP Program And Propeller TIG Skills
SPEAKER_00a not like an actual shop drawing. It was just something that he drew up on the laptop that had a couple of measurements on it. And he's like, here, go build this. And I would be like over in my booth, kind of workstation, just like just building stuff and trying to figure it out, and uh so stressful. I felt like I was messing up all the time. Like I it was also a shop that was all in metric, and I had been so used to working in Imperial, so now I'm using a different form of measurement and messing up numbers and trying to I felt so bad for so many days. I'm like, Christ, why why can't I get this right? Why can't I get this right? And uh I think I think that that's important to put yourself in those positions because that's really how you grow, because it was really the strive for trying to get it right that like you learn so much in that. You learn so much rather than just having somebody who does it all for you. And he was such a nice guy and great boss to work for, he was understanding, and if we did mess up, he wasn't yelling and whatever. He's like, Okay, well, here's what you have to do in order to make this bend right. And exactly, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Here's here's what happened, here's what we can do to fix it. And like you're absolutely right, and that's a great attitude to have is like you're you're going to make mistakes, it's just how you find your way out of there, and you do you do gain more skills from making mistakes, which sounds funny, but like if you get it right every time, you'll never learn anything.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02I learned a lot of stuff too from from an older German fellow about stainless steel and how to blend, how to finish, how to you know deal with warpage. I think it's how they how they grow up, how they go through school when they're you know younger that that teaches them that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they have quite a cool system over there by the sounds of it. Like just for from the little bit that I've heard, it's they got a pretty wicked system going. But yeah, I mean that was uh that was definitely a one of the best decisions that I did that I have made was taking that pay cut and going and working for him because that just it was I learned so much skill, so much skill there, and especially around custom fab where you have to know how to how to think, how to think like four steps ahead. Okay, I'm cutting this material and we gotta make all these bends. Well, these are outside diameter or outside dimension bends, so we need to minus material thickness and make sure that we get our lines right and so that you don't screw yourself like at the end. So yeah, that was uh yeah, there and I was I man, I would study how to make myself smarter so that I could be better at work. I would like take alpha brain and I would eat good meals and I would make sure that I get my workouts in every morning and try and get as much sleep just so that I could stop messing up so much at work. And so yeah, that was uh that was really really pivotal moment. And then another thing that came from that, and
Taking A Pay Cut To Grow
SPEAKER_00this was probably one of the biggest parts of my career, was copper welding. I was welding a copper roof, TIG welding outside, and uh that was with this same German, and so he used to work for Flynn Roofing, and they do a style of roofing that needs to be welded all the way around, and we would TIG weld everything. Well, he won the bid on a job in Calgary um at the Stampede Park, actually, and it's the train station there that's all copper roof on both sides, and also another building right kind of in front of Cowboys Casino, and he just sent me out to that job, and I was how old was I at that time? 20, 21, maybe, yeah, and so I'm just this kid showing up in my beat up Ford Ranger and uh with a welder in the hand, and I'm working there by myself with these uh roofers who just don't care about me whatsoever. I am just I'm I'm the welder who's always complaining about their fit up, right? Because they would have half-inch gaps all over, and I'm trying to weld this one millimeter copper, trying to figure that out, and uh outdoors in the wind, in the rain, in the 30 degrees and negative 20. It was in the snow, like it was that really hardened, like toughened me up, I would say.
SPEAKER_02And it definitely tested your patience. Like you've got everything thrown at you, and welding copper is not easy, it's not not at all easy.
SPEAKER_00So, like especially when you have bad fit up and there's a lot of bad fit up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, kind of tough to to to build up on your filler, like because you know, explain to the people like copper takes a lot of heat, it's very conductive, right? So you need a lot of heat to get it going, and then once you get it going, you have to control it.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, you have to control it, and it was it was so bad that when the sun would come out from behind a cloud, you would just burn a hole right through because you're it's it's a millimeter thick, right? Like it's it's so heat sensitive, but it takes it takes so much at the start, and then you really have to ease off because it just starts taking all the heat, and it's like, yeah, it was uh that was that was a big uh that was a big learning curve. Um and also just dealing with tradesmen, like dealing with other tradesmen on site and uh just making sure that uh I can uh I have the necessary stuff to do my job uh correctly, uh, but also with people who don't necessarily want to help.
SPEAKER_02And yeah, and people who don't necessarily yeah, they don't understand the process of what you're going through. And and yeah, I've been on those sites too where people just don't care and they'll kick your stuff over, and like you're you're doing something very critical, and at that last moment, well, somebody decides to switch your machine off because it's funny.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah, and the amount of homeless around there too, like we'd be up on top of the roof welding, and uh this this one time I had I had another guy with me, but I was mostly alone, and some homeless guy came and shut off our generators that we're welding with. Go back down, and yeah, every single day you gotta pack up all the tools, and I would put in 30,000 steps a day just carrying welders and carrying all the stuff because we had to lock it all up behind a fence so that nobody would steal it, and just it was it's a brutal job, and I would go and do that every single day, sit in traffic. I mean, that's normal for people to sit in traffic, but I'm from Carstairs, small town, so yeah, a little bit less normal, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so like after that job, were you fried? Were you kind of frustrated? Like, what did you keep working for Mr. German?
SPEAKER_00I quit. I quit actually.
Custom Fab Pressure And Learning Fast
SPEAKER_00That was the job, that was my last job, and I didn't even really care to finish it. I so I always had to plan to go to Europe for three months, and I wanted to do that while I was young. I was making decent money on this copper job, and I've always, always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And the whole thing was is that okay, I'm going to work and bust my ass on this copper roof until I go to Europe in February. And I would I was working seven days a week and ten hours a day trying to get that copper job done before I could go to Europe, but then the roofers weren't fast enough and it just turned into a big mess. And so I finally, the day comes, I go to Europe. I uh travel Europe for three months, and I was gonna come back and just start working for myself and just all done, all done working for welding roofs and all that. Near the end of my trip, is like the last couple of weeks. He texts me again and he's like, Hey, so they haven't done anything since you left.
SPEAKER_02What? Oh, that that's like the epitome of like going on vacation and no one around you does anything because they know you're coming back. Like, oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah. So he's like, Okay, I can give you, I can I think that he gave me like a $12 raise to come back and finish up the roof. On the spot.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So I came back from Europe and I think that I was on that job for four more months and finished up the roof. And I'm like, okay, after this job, I'm done. I'm I'm going out by myself and I'm gonna figure it out. Yeah, so that that brought me to November 28th, and um in Canada, November is pretty much the start of the slow season. So yeah, I'm like, okay, uh, I so I quit my job with the copper roof, and I'm determined to go out by myself. Meanwhile, I have no clients, and I I had just bought this house actually, and uh took on all these bills. That was in August. I bought this house, took on all these bills, all this stuff that I'd never had expenses for before. No clients, and I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna go out by myself and I'm gonna figure it out. Going into the slow season and with really no work. And I'm I was just determined.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I gotta ask you. So we we kind of caught a little bit off track here. So you did you finish your apprenticeship? When did when when did you when did that happen? Or are you a journeyman now?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. So I've been a journeyman since I was 20, four years ago. Yeah, so I I graduated top of my class every every year. I would work every single day. Um, after like all the other guys, they'd go out partying or whatever. I'd go to that German shop and I'd do custom fabrication every day after school, and had 90s all throughout school. So it is possible. It is possible to do that. And uh yeah, so the rap program, the registered apprentice program, really built up my hours, and then I could kind of just bang off the technical training, and I had my anniversary dates and all that had passed. So yeah, I wanted to get it before I turned 20, and I was a little bit disappointed that it was like a couple months after I turned 20, is when I got my Journeyman Red Seal.
SPEAKER_02So you know, I'll tell you this like one of my biggest regrets in my welding career is not starting earlier to so to. A guy like you're like, I'm gonna do this, you know, like right. I'm I'm in high school, I'm doing this right now. I'm gonna do it before I'm 20, and then you're mad that you know it was a couple months late.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well uh yeah, that was uh that was a big goal of mine, but they they didn't have the course open or something. There's some reason that I couldn't get in there before before I turned 20. So we got we got her a couple months after, so that was good. That was good, and I got the red seal on the first try. So I was quite proud of that because I know that there's uh few people who took a couple of tries to get get that.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it's uh you know, you're skilled enough and fortunate enough to pass the first time. I did it the same way, and kind of like you, like you see your buddy that didn't, and like the stress of going back, of not knowing, like some people get the practical the first time but fail the written, and it's just oh my and then you know, second try, third try, oh my god, stressing out.
SPEAKER_00And I mean, I don't blame them. That's a hard test. That's a hard test. Like you gotta you gotta know how to think in order to to get that one. But yeah, that was uh that was that was good. That was uh I was happy. I was happy to be able to get that at such a young age, because even that by itself is kind of like a flex to my friends. Oh yeah, look at me, I'm a journeyman red seal, you know. Yeah, that's uh bragging rights.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what are you doing with your life?
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02All right, so you got your journeyman's, you traveled, you came back, you bought a house, you racked yourself up with bills, and then decided to go to work for yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yep, yep, and that was that was the start of this journey. Then I am well, I don't even know. It's changed so many times. So back
Copper Roofs And Jobsite Reality
SPEAKER_00then, I I was a yes man, and I would just literally take everything and anything that could come my way, and I had no idea what to charge at all. I I'd do stuff for 30 bucks, 50 bucks, whatever. I'd $25 an hour, and I'll come weld your stuff. And I would just the cheapest, cheapest possible, and it wasn't getting me anywhere. I was working like a dog, and people were always mad at me, still saying this is too much money, this is too expensive, all this stuff, right? And I'm like barely even getting by by the time I got to buy consumables and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you're not uh yeah. If you're out by your yourself, you are not making money at 20 bucks, 30 bucks. Like travel to travel to a job site with gas prices, and you just you you pissed away an hour, pardon the French, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly, exactly. And like I would charge $150 for something, but I take such pride in my work that it would take me five hours to do it because I've I was a perfectionist back then, and I'm like, okay, well, I'm starting up my business, I need to make sure that everything is 100% perfect, I need to make the customer happy, I need to all this stuff, and then I would never see them again or whatever else, right? So that was that was tricky, and I actually ended up getting called back by the German guy, and he needed help for a railing, and I was dead broke at that time. I had no money, and I'm like, I I I need to go do this because I don't know what else to do. I still want to be an entrepreneur, but this is just gonna help me kind of float and get by into the summer. That was in May at that time. So went and did that job. I must have made like eight grand or something doing that, and that gave me enough money to kind of get into summer, which work starts picking up a little bit naturally. And then that was the time also end of May, beginning of June, I was like, okay, I need to start a website. I need to start marketing, I need to start getting my name out there so that people can actually find me so that I can sell work. And that that was a very pivotal moment because now that's a lot of what I do. Almost 99% of my leads come from my website and come from marketing. And so that was kind of yeah, that was kind of my first first uh getting into that. And I remember it was like three days, three or four days after I had the Google Ads Live and my website live, and somebody sent me this bench, uh drawing of a bench, and he's like, How much to build this? And I'd spend two hours quoting it, oh yeah, it's this much, and then he'd ghost me and I'd never hear from him again.
SPEAKER_02That is, I mean, that is a struggle. I've been through that myself with the stuff I do, you know, outside of work, and like you take all of this time and you make sure everything is perfect, you dot your I's, you cross your T's, and then it's like uh well, no, or uh too expensive, or no, I got somebody else. And how did like how does that make you feel?
SPEAKER_00Uh I mean, back then I I've really changed up. I've changed up so much from back then, but to begin with, I thought that that was just part of the game because I'd I didn't know. I don't have any business skills coming into this. I'd never been around people quoting jobs, I'd never I was just the worker in the shop, right? So I didn't I didn't know what even to price stuff, I didn't know where to even get stuff from. Like if I need something CNC cut, well, I don't have a CNC. How do I how do I do all of this? So that was that was a big struggle. And I continued to do that for I want to say two months. And my whole thing back then was I would use Chat GPT a lot because I had no no idea what the hell I was doing. I would just ask AI, okay, what what should I what should I be doing? How how do I build a website? How do I like I don't know how to code, I don't know how to I don't know what website to use. I don't know, I don't know anything back then. I'm just a dumb welder.
SPEAKER_02And uh above average welder.
SPEAKER_00Above average welder. And uh so so I yeah, I'm just relying on AI. I don't really even know how to talk to customers. I'm an introvert and I just get focused in my work, right? So um using AI, leaning on it so hard and just slowly trying to figure out what is the best way of doing this. And I landed a couple of good jobs and they'd be worth 750 bucks, thousand bucks, whatever. And but by the time I would quote the job and do the job and get the material for the job and everything, I still was not making any money. Like I still everything's so expensive, and every time that I would quote a job at a scary price of what I thought what I thought was a scary price back then was like two grand or something, and I'm like, oh, this person's gonna say no, whatever. I'm just take off a couple hundred dollars, whatever.
SPEAKER_02And uh it's the literal guilt of of you know charging what the job is worth and what you're worth. I've gone through it too, where it's like, you know, I look at the number at the end and it's like ooh, like I wouldn't want to pay this, but like it that what it needs to be, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And customers don't quite understand all that goes into fabrication, and they don't understand kind of what it takes to get something to actually come to life. So back then, what I was doing was uh I thought that this was brilliant, and it was email photos for a fast quote, and I used ChatGPT to help me devise this thing to it, it was a button that they would go on to my website and they'd hit the button and it open up their email, and it would they would attach their photos of what they're needing built and they would send it to me, and then I would get it, I would look it over, I'd quote the whole job out, and I am a very detail-oriented person, so I would make sure that like every penny was accounted for and spend way too long doing this quote, and I would just do that pretty much all day and maybe land one job a week or something. Like it was it was so brutal because everybody, everybody is just price shopping, and they're just like I mean, that was that was my experience at least, was if you don't really have trust with customers and your marketing is just
Quitting Then Returning To Finish
SPEAKER_00to everybody, well, then you're gonna get everybody, and a lot of people don't know how much it costs to get something built, they just they just are curious about it, they got the idea and they want it built, but don't necessarily want it to pay. So that brought me to it must have been September, September 2024. That was the moment that I was like, okay, I was looking at all of my data, and I'm like, these custom fabrication jobs, I'm spending so much time quoting, so much time, and these repair jobs I'm actually landing very fast. Like they a couple would come in, they need this done. Um, well, I got time. Let me let me come do it today, let me come do it tomorrow, and it would just sell like that. And I'm like, why am I wasting my time with this custom fab stuff? I considered myself a custom fabricator and it was kind of an ego thing, I think, because I'm like, it's cool to be a custom fabricator and I love building stuff. But financially, it just wasn't viable the way that I was doing it, running the whole thing, running the whole show by myself, trying to figure it out. And all of these all of these uh repair jobs, I didn't need to I didn't need to buy material most of the time. Most of the time I just needed a quick weld, or I could just use some cutoffs or scrap or whatever. So I'm like, why don't I just take this trend and follow it and only focus on repairs, kind of niche down and start turning away this custom fab stuff. And then that was that was very that was hard for me to do. That was hard for me to do because I think that it was the ego thing where it's like custom fab is just it's so much fun to do. I enjoy it so much, but I also enjoy putting food on my table and paying my mortgage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you gotta find that balance, but you're absolutely right. Like, you know, you could let's say you're fixing a skid steer bucket, you know, you'll spend three hours on it, barely any material, and you're gonna charge whatever you're gonna charge, or you're gonna spend three plus hours going to measure a railing and then figuring out how much material and this, this, and this. You got so much time into it, and the bucket's just like there's a crack. I'm gonna grind it out, I'm gonna weld it, and I'm done. You know, like it's yeah, you know, you get paid now.
SPEAKER_00It's so much simpler. So it was kind of at that time, too, where I switched over from email photos to text photos. So that's that's kind of my whole thing with my business. That's what I try and push a lot is text photos, fast quote. And so, with the nice thing that I found about repairs, and I like I said, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I follow Alex Ramosy um a lot, and I love how he's built his business and just kind of looking to him for guidance on how to build a scalable business as well. So repairs seem to fit more into a repair isn't custom fabrication, like you can kind of package it more. And so Alex Ramosy's whole thing is if you can if you can get away from hourly and start packaging stuff and adding as much value as you possibly can into the package, then you can make more money because you're not limited by hourly, and you can deliver a better outcome. So if I work for three hours and I'm capped at $130 an hour or whatever it is, I can only make $130 an hour or whatever that is times three. Where if you bid on a job, say you bid on a job and you give them a fixed price quote and you guessed that it would take you four and a half hours, but you did it in two hours, your effective hourly goes up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I that that idea really appealed to me, partially because I was broke, but also another part was the jobs that I was landing while I was hourly and racking up hours, I would feel so guilty at the end bringing them the bill and being like, here, I worked eight hours at $120 an hour. Here is your bill. And they would be like shocked and be like, Oh, I really didn't think that it would be that expensive. They thought that they're just hiring a young welder, right?
SPEAKER_02So getting a getting the deal off your back.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So I I didn't like that at all. And I'm like, okay, we need I need to I need to switch this system up and I need to start quoting up front, and because I I don't like that. And that that really man, it's it's been tough. It's been tough.
SPEAKER_02Take me through because like I there I discovered you, I want to say, on Instagram when I saw your ad and you basically listed off like here's my package for this, and here's my package for that, you know, and like you know, kind of pump in your credentials and stuff. So how how how do you base your packages? What are your packages? How does that work?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's uh that's a that's a tricky one. So the packages are based on a lot of things, and a lot of it is just me watching the data, watching my own data and watching the market. So another important thing is I switched over to the package model. So right now I only do repairs, I turn away all custom fabric, and I I don't do hourly. I don't do any jobs for hourly, I only do them in my fixed price packages, which is very against the industry norm, and a lot of people don't understand it completely, and a lot of people don't a lot of people who are used to hourly don't necessarily like it. They they want you to do time and materials, and they they think that that's a better deal, and maybe it is in some cases, maybe it is. So basically how I started it, because again, I had no idea how to do my pricing whatsoever, and I was so used to working hourly that I couldn't get my brain wrapped around how do I do a job without charging hourly? Like, how do I? And I was trying to like tie it to hours, and I was trying to like wrestle with this into my head, and this is again going into the next slow season.
Going Solo With No Clients
SPEAKER_00So I switched over to fixed price packages November 18th, which is nine months ago.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, last year, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, and uh so my whole goal, I had I had about 20 grand saved up, and my whole goal was to just make it through the winter. I didn't I didn't have 20 grand, I had like 12 and make it through the winter. You forgot about the taxes, yeah, exactly. And taxes have really screwed me in the past. I'm good about them now, I'm good about them now. But um I I wanted to make it through the winter and try this new model, and I really believed in this new model, and just it it felt like a better way. And I'm like, I'm young, I don't really have a lot to lose, and this just seems smarter to me. Customers, I don't I don't have to explain to them at the end of a job, okay, why why does this cost this much? I'm like, here is here is the price before before I even do the job. If you don't like it, you can you can go to an hourly shop. That's okay with me. And by this time I had really figured out how to market because I'd spent so much time. Another important thing is I live alone and I work alone, and I just work all the time, seven days a week, 16 hours a day. Like it's just trying to get this thing going, right? And uh so I I spend all my time focusing on marketing data, focusing on okay, what what did this client say? I'd go and do a job, and if they would say, Oh, I really like this, well, then I'd lean into that and I would start going that way. And I would just constantly, consistently listen to what everybody was saying and also trying new things. So I would get an idea late at night and I would get up, go, go to my laptop, start trying to ask Chat GPT, is this possible? Can I even do this? What what would be and I would use that to pressure test it too and be like, okay, what play devil's advocate on why I shouldn't do this idea. And I think that that's a very great thing to use ChatGPT for for is just trying to prove yourself wrong because a lot of ideas they sound really good on paper and in your head, but yeah, in reality they don't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's tough when you're uh a one-man show and you don't really have you know the an advisor, you could say, or you know, you know, an older tradesperson that's kind of guiding you in which direction to go, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. So yeah, basically, my when I first started out with the packages, I'm like, let's just price these as high as we can, uncomfortably high, and let's see if they sell. And we're just gonna market and we're gonna like I'm there's there's no goods place to start, so we might as well start at the higher end and we can always lower it later. That was kind of the idea. And then uh I started started going hard on the marketing, spending money on Google ads and all that stuff. And man, December was good. December was good. I landed a couple of good jobs that really boosted me up. I probably did eight or nine K of revenue back then, which was super good. And January, nothing. I no leads.
SPEAKER_02People like to tighten, yeah. People like to tighten their belts after Christmas, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and then jobs would come in and I would get leads, and I would be like, okay, well, this repair costs $395 or whatever it was, and they'd be like, that's too expensive. And I'm like, yeah, okay. On to the next. And it was it was so psychologically brutal because I I made the I made the promise to myself that I wasn't gonna discount unless the data really told me so. And I didn't want to assume that the data was telling me so in the slow season. I wanted to see what the slow season would do with these higher cost, fixed price packages, and uh until I could make it into the into the summer season. So January sucked. Um February, I was still in the red, but it was starting I could I could start seeing a little bit of hope, a little bit of shimmer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so help me understand something. So you have a package price, let's say 350. You kind of mentioned that. So the job you think takes 350. So you saw the job at 350. If you're there for a day, it's still 350. If you're there for two days, are we still at 350? Uh yes. Okay, so uh there are opportunities to lose money on this model. Uh 100%.
SPEAKER_00A thousand percent.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so that has happened.
SPEAKER_00That is that is part of it. Um, I don't actually know if that has happened. Uh because I because I work alone and live alone, like it does my hours don't mean a whole lot to me, especially while I'm just testing stuff and starting my business. Like, I'm not paying somebody to go do these jobs. It's just me going and doing them myself and collecting data. Every every single job that I do is just data collection. I would price at $395 for I I call it I still have that price. I haven't actually changed my prices. My prices are still what I decided back in November. They haven't gone up, they haven't gone down. I have just learned how to add more value into them and make them better for the client, which takes a lot of figuring out on how to do that. So the package for $395, that is just for one simple fix. I sell the outcome, I don't sell the hourly. So if the if if somebody and the whole thing is text photos, fast quote, it all works together very well. But if somebody takes a picture of something and sends it to me, I quote what is in the photo and whatever short description, I have them send a short description as well. It takes three to four photos with a short description. And whatever and in my quote, it says if if there's something on site that is not in this photo, then that is quoted on top.
SPEAKER_02So would that be another package, like another 395?
SPEAKER_00So that not necessarily, because that gets a little bit expensive if I go to site and they're like, oh, while you're here, can you just fix this small little crack? I can't really be like, oh, that's $400.
SPEAKER_02The classic while you're here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that which is so common, which is so common. And so that that it goes into the upsells. And the upsells are, I mean, I hate calling them upsells because it it sounds like it's predatory towards the client, but really it's just protecting my time and what we agreed upon before I agreed to the job. And uh so once once I get to site, I am
Marketing, Websites, And Quote Fatigue
SPEAKER_00I'm under the impression that I'm just fixing what I have seen in the photos, and I've only brought tools really. I mean I bring extra stuff too, but for what I am prepared to do. I'm not I'm not bringing full sheets of aluminum to custom fab stuff if it's not in the photos. So that all that all gets added on to top. Same with mobile. Mobile is also an upsell. It's I mean, again, it's it's it's it now part of a package. So I have a mobile precision repair package. Um, because a lot of the stuff that I do is mobile because I market to Calgary but live in car stairs because Calgary is where the whole market is and where people actually buy from me. And so I yeah, I would just uh learning how to fill up the packages so that it wasn't predatory towards the client. I really had to listen to what the clients actually want. And clients don't actually seem to care what the weld looks like. That sounds bad in this a welding podcast, and probably gonna get some hate for that.
SPEAKER_02But no, but here's the thing, they they don't know, you know, like a pretty weld is cool, but it most of the time it just has to hold, it has to do the job.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. They want a competent welder to put down a sound weld. That is, they don't know anything else about it, they don't care if you stack dimes, they don't care, it's just the people on Instagram and the other welders in the shop who actually care about what the weld looks like. Um, they just they just want to know that the thing is fixed. And so I started leaning into that. I still do pretty work and I do it because I take pride in my work, but it's not the center of my business. My whole business is not focused on, okay, can I lay the prettiest weld on this? My business is now focused on, okay, how do I make the customer experience the absolute best possible customer experience that I can and make them getting their repair, which is usually a stressful time for a client. It's like something something broke and they need it fixed and they don't know who to call. They probably don't know much about trades to begin with. They and you hear stories about guys in trades screwing customers all the time and whatever else. And so I'm like, what what what does the client actually care about? Well, they care about communication. They want when they call you they want you to answer your phone. Like they they they want to stay in the loop. That kind of depends on the client. Every single job that I go to, I make sure that I text the ETA of estimate time of arrival before I get there. Just I think that communication is such an important thing and letting the customer know, like, okay, if I'm if I can't make it, if I'm gonna be late, if I'm gonna be early, I want you to know I don't really want to surprise you. And then also I'm gonna give you the price up front so that when the job is done, you're not shocked by the bill. I think that that me as a consumer sometimes, I'm not really a consumer. I I I'm very, very frugal. But I I don't I don't like surprise bills. If I am getting something fixed, if I'm getting something, I want to know the price so that I can be mentally prepared for it before the work is done. I yeah, I I don't like surprises, especially when it comes financially, right? Yes. So then the other thing is can you stand behind your work? Like how how do you know that who you're hiring is gonna do a good job? So that's also where my 12-month warranty comes in. So every every single repair that I do, I stand behind a 12-month warranty. I it's important to know that you're not just paying a bunch of money for some piece of garbage thing that's gonna break in a week. Like that for a client who knows nothing about welding, who knows nothing about repairs, who just needs their thing fixed, they want to know that this repair is actually gonna last, and I'm not paying some crappy kid to come and charge me a bunch of money and not fix the thing correctly. So I think that that is a big thing for trust. All of this kind of goes back to trust. Trust is such an important factor. Yeah, trust in communication is huge. Yes, yes, exactly. And so the other thing is another one of my guarantees is if I can't weld it, there's no charge. And that's that one gets a lot of slack on uh other welders commenting. I mean, my whole business model gets a lot of comments from other welders, not it got it got me interested, right?
SPEAKER_02Like, because I know I I wanted to try to understand it myself, and like I can see the value in what you're doing. Um, I can also see where you know it can go a little sideways, and you're you're putting your whole life into this thing. So, where where do you see yourself or where this is going in like the next five, 10 years?
SPEAKER_00So I only really think on a 10-year timeline. That is my whole like I I don't think necessarily like okay, what is this next month gonna look like? I'm like, okay, what type of business do I want to build so that 10 years from now it's scalable and I am in a good spot. I'm very into delayed gratification and doing the hard thing now. So I don't know what my business is gonna look like in 10 years. It's so hard to say because it changes so often. It changes so often. And like if you just look at this last if you look at the last two months of my business, it's literally a completely different business. I rebranded, I brought on Sasha, who is my client care coordinator, I have apprentices working
Niche Down Into Repairs Only
SPEAKER_00for me part-time. I have like it's just such I move very, very quickly because it's all that I focus on and right now it's working good and it's in a good spot. Um so to say to say that I know where it's gonna take me within 10 years, uh ideally I want I want to be the most trustworthy repair shop. I want I want when people break stuff in Calgary, uh they know who to call and they know who's gonna come do a good job and be able to stand behind their work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Where would you like where would you like to see it? Do you want to one day have employees? Do you want to just be kind of you want to manage, you know, the way it's going or yeah?
SPEAKER_00So I don't actually think of myself as a weld. I mean, I am a welder. Uh welding is my trade, but I don't see myself being on the tools for and give me three to maybe five years. I love training. I teach people how to tag weld on the side. I'm I'm a very patient person. If you watch some of my videos, you can tell that I'm like I I love teaching. I love teaching, and I will show you exactly how to do it. And if you do something wrong, I'm not gonna get mad at you. That was how I was trained as an apprentice, and that's a good way of doing it. I don't want to get away from the business. I'm not in the business just to make money. Like, that is not of course, that is a factor, and that is an important part of being in business, but again, this kind of goes back to I just like building stuff. I love building stuff, and right now I'm building a business. And in my mind, I'm building a business, and I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm using welding as the container for the business that I'm building because welding is all that I know and all that I kind of grew up with. So it's it's stressful, it's hard, it's it's not easy by any means. It would be so much easier, I feel like. Well, I don't know, but if I just did hourly and kind of figured out the hourly model and just did what everybody else does and go go do. I mean, I would still be broke working. I just went through.
SPEAKER_02But you're actually you're you're doing something different. That's that's you know, people have to try new things. Now, let's say the shop down the street or the guy down the streets, you know, starts following your model. How does that look like for you?
SPEAKER_00Uh, that's that's completely fine. I'm not concerned about that whatsoever. I think that it would be good because fundamentally, I truly believe that my model is a better product for the client. And I think I think if more people start following it and learning how to charge slots, but also deliver, like have it worth what you are charging. Like, okay, this is expensive. I don't compete on price. I am probably like if you compare me to hourly shops, I'm probably gonna be more expensive 99% of the time. Um but the amount of value that I try and jam pack into the model and jam-pack into the customer to make it the absolute best possible welding experience that they can have. I think if more people followed that, it would be good. I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing, and I don't think that comp I'm not scared of competition. I think with everything that I've learned and all the experiences that I've had and like just who I am as a person, I'm gonna be fine doing whatever. And if if welding repairs for whatever reason doesn't work out in five years' time, which I no part of me believes that whatsoever, um things are gonna continue to break.
SPEAKER_02Actually, more and more things will break.
SPEAKER_00More and more things, exactly. And as my brand starts, like I'm still such a baby business, I'm still so new. Like it's it hasn't been that long. Yeah. And once stuff is really compounding, and it is already, I I can already see the compounding coming in. Uh basically, I I think that it's I think that it's good if I have competition because that just that pushes me to do better. Like if somebody, if the guy down the street is adding more value into his business and clients are going there, it's like, okay, what is that guy doing? What can I learn from that guy in order to make my business better? And how how do I make my business better than that guy so that customers come to me? Yeah, even more data for you to analyze. Exactly. Because right now there's nobody to look to. There's nobody doing really what I'm doing with the fixed price packages. Like it's just something that I'm kind of I I feel like I'm kind of steamrolling it and just figuring it out as I go, which is really what I am.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've you're kind of you're kind of a pioneer on that side of things, and like, you know, I I hope it works out for you. Like, I wish you the most success. And you kind of touched on something here. Like, let's say, you know, three to five years this isn't working. You're very passionate about welding, you're passionate about being an entrepreneur. Um, is there something else you would do or you would want to do?
SPEAKER_00100%. And it would probably be around teaching, because I do love teaching so much. And I think I think that I have enough credentials and I'm good enough at what I do and pay attention enough that I could really make an impact teaching TIG welding. And I don't even know, I don't even know how far-fetched that is. That might that might just be something that naturally comes. We'll see. I kind of just started doing content what three weeks ago now, and the content really seems to be kicking off. Like that's how you found me. I'm doing this here now.
SPEAKER_02I feel like I was targeted.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00You were to some extent. Yeah, no, but yeah, my marketing, like I I go, like I said, I'm a detailed guy, so I go super deep into that. I know pretty much my exact client avatar. I have all of my marketing points towards the person who I can serve best with my business. I also have no problem saying no to people who I don't feel are my actual avatar. Like, I like again, I'm not right now. I am not a yes man, and I probably won't be again. I'm very niche down, and I'm like, okay, these clients here I can serve best. So let's focus all of our targeting, all of our marketing, and make the experience for these select few people the best that we can. Because you can't make the experience the best for everybody. Some people just enjoy a cheaper product. Some people just need their stroller welded up and they don't care about the experience, they just need it held back together. That is not my that is not my client. They can go to an hourly shop, they can go to the guy down the street. I don't compete on price, I compete on the experience of it. So yeah, there's there's a lot of stuff like that. And then also for data collection, Sasha has been a big help. She is uh she's my client care coordinator, she's my admin girl, and I have all these systems. I I'm a systems guy too. I have so many systems for stuff, and it and it works so good. But
Packages, Warranties, And Customer Trust
SPEAKER_00um all of the data, every single lead that comes in, I put down into a Google spreadsheet that me and Claude AI have drafted up, and it brings out all my marketing data so I can see okay, what packages am I selling more of this month? Who are my top clients? What what do they look like? Um, what days of the week am I getting the most amount of leads? Where are the leads coming from? What is our close rate on the quoted leads? What is our close rate? Like, I I completely nerd out on all this all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_02I feel like you need to nerd out on it. And like when you're you're you're building something that's I guess I've never heard of it, I've never seen it. So you have to be passionate, you have to do what you're doing. I guess while we wrap this up here, Colt, can you tell me your favorite welding story, one of your biggest successes? Or actually, you can go the other way. What was your worst welding experience?
SPEAKER_00Okay, let's let's do the worst because that one is still a little bit too fresh, and it's it's uh well it's fresh to my mind, fresh from my mind enough to tell it. But um, so it was this job probably two or three months ago now, and it was supposed to be super simple and same-day repair. Um, it wasn't even really a repair, it was a cast aluminum drain pan underneath the car, and it needed a little bung welded on it. And the client calls me and he's like, Hey, can you come do the same day? Like, we need this done ASAP. And I'm like, Okay, yep, I can uh I I'll I can load up, but it's gonna be $800. And they're like, Well, that's that's too much. And I'm like, that's okay if you don't want me. I can come same day, but if you don't want to pay that, that's totally fine. I can just wait for the next job. And so they kind of muddled around or whatever, and then they call me back about an hour later. Hey, can you come out? Yep, load up my tools right now, and I'm coming out. And I go out there, and yeah, sure enough, it's cast aluminum welding on the bung, and they got all the oil out of the car. I'm like, okay, perfect. It's a pretty quick weld, you know. And uh, I went over it twice and I like tried to make sure, like, okay, do I see any uh porosity? All looks good, whatever. And the owner was super happy. He's like, Oh, you you charge a lot, you know that? And the next shops came in at like 400. And I'm like, yeah, well, that's just my prices. And uh he's like, You got warranty? And I'm like, Yep, yeah, I got 12-month warranty. And I kind of walked him through my whole model, and he was giving me hugs, and he was super happy. And I get home that night and I get I get I get a call, and they're like, Hey, there's a small drip coming out, and I'm like, Oh my goodness. So, okay, I'll be out there first thing in the morning and I'll come fix it. I'm super sorry about this. I this this is totally my fault. I this is yeah, I'll come fix it. And so I was planning on like an hour or whatever, and when I got there, I was hoping I could just kind of grind out the little spot where it was dripping and reweld. And I hit it with a die pen test to make sure that I could see where it was leaking from, and um tried that, but because they had already filled the car back up with oil, every time that I would try and light up to fill in that little tiny pinhole, it would just uh spewing oil out. And yeah, in the end, it it was about five hours there. I had to cut off the bung, spray and brake clean in it. Stuff was lighting on fire. Every time I'd light up the arc on it, like jet stream out from spraying the brake clean, and I'm just trying to get this job done to go to my next job that I had booked for that day, and it was just such a headache, such a nightmare. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh I've been there. Uh oil pans are super fun, and um I always now take it off the vehicle, just
Worst Repair Story And Wrap Up
SPEAKER_02bring it here, make sure it's clean. That's how you learn, though, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. And that that is how you learn, and you gotta do a few of those jobs to smarten up. Like it's it it the money looks good. Oh, 800 bucks to just go do a simple weld, yeah. But no, it turned into yeah, complete mess.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Colt, thank you so much for uh sharing, you know, how you came into welding, what your business looks like now, and kind of what you're pioneering. So um, I mean, please shout your socials out who you are, and you know, we can maybe send some people your way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. So I'm Colt Tab. Um, my socials are True Repair Welding. Um, that's on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. I think it's just true repair. I'm not a big Facebook guy. Some somehow I got 10k followers within the past three weeks, which is crazy. I started off with 11 followers three weeks ago. Probably all of the haters. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So go check that out. Um, yeah, I'm still still new into business, still figuring it out. So give me give me like three years and we'll see. It'll be interesting to see what happens. And because I ain't gonna quit. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going and I'm gonna keep collecting data and keep following it. So sweet.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm gonna check back in in three years. I'll make sure to do that. And I want to thank everybody for listening to this episode of the CWB Association Welding Podcast. Make sure you like, share, and follow, and uh tell your friends about it. Thanks very much. Thanks, Colt.
SPEAKER_01You've been listening to the CWB Association Welding Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwbassociation.org to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions of what you'd like to learn about in the future. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.