The Grind-Cast Quarantine Edition / Special Guest – Emre Basman

Count money, man.

Money that grits is fine.

Trying to talk, trying to talk to my beast blood.

What's up, gang?

Welcome to the grind cast.

Simon Areas here.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

What's up, gang?

Welcome to another episode of the grind cast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

And today I got my man from Armenia.

Stone.

I got my man every in the house.

I've been waiting.

I've been waiting for my, you know, you could tell I haven't

practiced it.

It was that bad.

But, you know, if you're in Pittsburgh, then you've probably heard my man, Emory's

commercial that they do on the radio for Armenia, for Armenia's stone.

And it's a jingle.

And anytime I hear it, if you're not in Pittsburgh, I'm telling you, if you hear it, you then

end up, it's one of those things.

You start singing it for the rest of the month and stuff.

And my daughter, that's like her favorite one to hear.

And she sings it.

And that was before I ever met Emory.

And I got to learn a little bit about him.

And I'm thinking, man, what a special person you are.

Super, super successful in business.

You have a great, unbelievable story, not even, you know, being from this country.

And you have a heart of gold.

You take care of your mom.

You take care of people around you in business.

People, people love you.

And it's so rare to find that blend of someone that's super successful, but also humble with

the huge heart and cares for others.

And you just do it, you do it the right way.

So what I want to do is us today, just talk how we would normally talk and stuff.

But I do have questions that I want to guide this for the listeners to be able to learn

things from you.

Because I think there's a lot of value that you can bring to people and impact people's lives

over the next 45 minutes or so.

So every you mind, start now and kind of walk in people through your story briefly.

Who you are.

First of all, I would like to thank you, Simon.

Brother, whenever I see you, whenever I hear your voice, I am pumped.

You have the charisma, man.

I love your style.

Thank you.

And thanks for the opportunity to letting me talk to you on this podcast.

And my name is M. Red.

Last name, Basman and I own Armenia, Stone in Pittsburgh.

We have two locations.

One of them is 60,000 square feet.

We have our factory in here.

We have another location in Robinson, which is very close to Pittsburgh airport.

It's about 10,000 square feet and it's a, it's in a shopping mall.

And about me, myself, I born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey.

And I always say I am a patriotic American and proud immigrant.

So as an immigrant, I came to United States when I was 23 years old.

Now I am 43.

And I was born in Istanbul and I was less than lucky to born in Istanbul because Istanbul

is a beautiful city.

And it is about 15 million people.

It is a passage between Europe and Asia.

And I was blessed to have beautiful parents.

My father was a businessman.

My mom highly educated.

But she decided to take care of me and my brother after we born.

And she is an artist, she is a painter.

And when I was in Istanbul, my dad sent me to private schools.

I started learning English when I was nine years old.

And I finished my high school and then I went to Cyprus.

Cyprus is an island in Mediterranean.

I have a great half-terge.

And I finished my undergrad degree in international relations in Cyprus.

And then after that I decided to come to United States for my MBA in Washington, DC.

And I finished my MBA and I had two options.

I was either going to go back when I was going to stay.

And I decided to stay with my dad's guidance, the advising to stay.

And he said that son, learn your business.

And then I will help you to start the initial capital and then you take it from that.

And I worked for a company for about four years, the same business that I do right now.

And I learned all the details.

Because in business life as you well know, money is important.

But more important than money, this is my personal opinion.

But everybody may agree on that.

It's know how.

Because money comes and goes.

Money you can always make money.

But that knowledge, that know how, that experience is extremely important.

So my target, my goal was to learn the details.

And me as being in United States, this is different culture, different country.

So I learned almost every single detail about our business.

And I decided to open my own, back in 2008, in Washington, DC.

I opened as a whole family.

And which means that I was important containers.

And I was selling them to East Coast and some Midwest as well.

And yeah.

And then, yeah, it exploded.

And that part, yeah, that's like boof, that's what that is.

That's boom.

And you blew it up.

And I know it's tough to struggle talking about your successes.

Because you don't want to come off as not grateful or arrogant.

And I get it.

But I know you have a box at the Steelers games,

which you invited me into.

I mean, you just very well known, probably the best at what you do in our area, definitely

in the state I feel.

And so I think, first of all, everything that you say sounds cooler coming from you that

it does for me.

You know, you say, when you see me, you get pumped up.

When I see you, I smile.

And anything that comes out of your mouth is just going to be awesome.

You ought to be.

I appreciate it.

I love that.

So, you know, and something that stuck out to me when you were saying about getting the

knowledge, you know, I forget who said it.

I think it was a rapper, but, you know, it was asked for money, get paid once, ask for advice,

get paid twice.

And that's how you really ended up doing it.

You know, so if I can ask for your advice, you know, for others, you know, how, you

talk about a proud patriot, you know, American patriot, but also I'm proud to be an immigrant

in some of those lines.

You know, that, I just did a video on the immigrant mentality, you know, the mean of, the

one thing that I admire and everybody really, when you think about it in America at some point

was an immigrant, you know, their family was, everybody kind of migrated here.

And, and you know, when you look at it, you know, nowadays, and I, I mean, I got friends

that fought for this country and, you know, I got people that done, did a lot to give

us the opportunities that we have.

I don't knock it, I don't say it to, to, to be disrespectful to the country that I love,

I love this country.

We're blessed to be in this country.

But I do, I'd be lying if I didn't say that not all.

There's a lot of people got great work ethics here, but there's a lot of, a lot of people

that I've seen that are immigrants first generation right now to this country, like yourself, and

or second generation, you know, to this country.

We're immigrants came here for a different opportunity.

And they've been able to seize the opportunity, you know, not just see the opportunity, but

seize the opportunity when it's not a country that they were born in.

They didn't really have a head start in that country.

You don't even speak that language perfectly, and you start there, and then you explode

something.

So what, what things do you think you've, you've got in you to make something like that

happen?

I always want to be different.

If you try to be with like everyone else, you're a fallover.

I always want to be different.

That's why I picked to stay in United States after my MBA, because United States is the

strongest country, economically, military, whatever you name it, in every aspect.

United States has about $19,000,000 GDP.

The entire Europe, including Germany, Italy, Spain, is less than that.

And United States is the biggest window that opens the entire world.

I mean, if you look at Elon Musk, he's trying to take people to Mars.

He's not living in other countries trying to do that in United States, and he's not

from United States.

He's an immigrant as well.

And when you have the opportunities, the way that you have in United States, your

features very bright.

So everybody in United States is very blessed.

The people born in United States are more blessed than people who did not born in United

States.

That's how I see it.

So I was happy to make a decision to stay in here.

Reason why?

Because right now I have about over 100 employees.

And in my fact, I use the highest technology.

At the same time, I am traveling around the world, and I experience different cultures,

and so on and so forth.

And the product that I bring to United States is appreciated.

And people admire that and they buy from it.

And we keep growing and we keep helping people.

And what is an immigrant?

Then I will say for myself, I had mostly advantages than more than disadvantages, because

when I was little, I used to go to summer schools to London for my education.

And I always had that European background in me.

And when I came here, my focus was to be successful in business life.

And I worked so hard.

And I discipline myself so hard to achieve the 13th success.

Because as I indicated, I did not want to be like everyone else.

I want to do the same thing.

Let me ask you something.

So when you say, I work so hard and I discipline myself, and you talk about, I wanted to not

be like everybody else.

And so that's, I preach a lot so many times that if you want to get something that you've

never got before, you've got to do something that you've never done before.

And the problem with that is when you're trying to pursue greatness and excellence, it's

usually different than what everybody else is doing.

So you look like the outcast or you look like you're weird, but you didn't want to do

what everybody else was doing because you'll get what everybody else got.

So what is that when you say I discipline myself, how so?

When you say I work really hard, what does that mean?

Work hard because people think they work hard.

How would you really explain working hard and what that took for you to get to where you

are?

Beautiful.

You know, if you are talking about early ages, early 20s, you need to finish your college,

but you don't go to college to have a piece of paper.

You go to college to have knowledge.

Then that knowledge will help you significantly to be successful.

That doesn't mean that if you don't finish the college, you are not going to be successful.

There are many, many successful businessmen who hasn't finished the college, but they

succeeded big time.

But college helped us for sure.

And after I finished, I had been thinking about what should I do to help me to be successful

in life?

And there are many, many different products.

There are many, many different things that you can do.

So I want to do something that is related with import and export.

And I always wanted to travel and meet with different people, different cultures.

So I decided to go into Marble and Granite business, because it is mining.

You travel to different quarries around the world.

You meet with different cultures from India, from Brazil, from Italy, from Spain, and

so on and so forth.

So dealing with different people, different cultures helped me to improve myself.

Because if you are able to deal with all different kind of languages and all different kind

of cultures, you are trying to balance that relationship between different cultures.

And for one good goal, what is that good goal?

You are trying to find the right product in a right price.

Then you bring it back, you will be able to sell it.

As you know, there is a saying, they say, you make money, not sell, you make money,

when you buy.

So I was going at top of the mountains, in the quarries, dealing with different kind of

people, trying to find the right product to put it in the container and bring it here,

put it in my warehouse and do marketing and sell.

So I enjoy doing that.

I still enjoy a lot.

And when I came to Pittsburgh five years ago, I opened as a wholesale, the Bekin Washington

DC, I was in a wholesale business, which means that I am poor than a wholesale.

But I just...

decided to change my business from being a wholesaler to a manufacturer.

It was a very challenging decision at that time for me.

But I studied my homework for Pittsburgh.

I invested in here and after that we grew big time because we became customers

I mean to vendor to home people, to IKEA, to top home builders, top general

contractors.

And people admired what we are doing because as I indicated we have different products

in our warehouses and we have the best service with our team and with our technology.

And I always believed in technology because the business that I do is engineering.

We laser template, we fabricate with CNCs and water jets and we use special techniques

related with technology during installation process.

So every single aspect that is involved in my business I learned when I was early 20s

to be able to have that know how and discipline myself with hard working.

So that know how my willing links in me to learn bring me a commitment to this.

To learn everything.

willingness to earn to learn early all the details top to bottom.

That's key.

A lot of people just want to skip to the top instead of learning all the things that you

really need to know.

So then you talk about the hard work.

Can you summarize what you mean by hard work?

What is hard work to you?

Most of all you will never let the sun rise on you.

You will always wake up before the sun rise.

That's the first priority.

Second of all thank you.

For second of all you will find the right product and you will make sure that you are buying

from the right source and you are going to find the right people to sell it and in between

you will put the right team together.

So your leadership, your sales skills, your purchasing skills, everything is in that hard

working and there are many many different aspects in it and it is not easy and you need

to make sure that everything goes as perfect as possible because one small mistake may

put things upside down.

So many many sleepless nights, many thinking you are not by yourself because you cannot

do everything by yourself.

You have to have your team players and you need to motivate them and you need to make them

to believe in you.

If you cannot make them believe in you, they will not work as hard.

Second of all they will not do the right work.

They will just come to work just to get salary and you will keep failing.

So you need to cheer up and pump on everybody that works with you and take it from there.

That's one hard working.

How do you think people quit, give up or fail?

Not just in your industry or business, but just in the pursuit of excellence in general,

a lot of people that start don't finish.

Why would you say or what have you seen that stops these people from going to where they

want to go from that perspective?

Work ethic.

They want to be rich and they don't want to work too much.

They want to earn easy money.

It doesn't work that way.

To be a successful business man, it is painful and it will be painful.

At the same time you will enjoy doing that.

That struggle, that hardship will improve you and then you will catch the success and

you will maintain the success.

Catching the success, for example Simon, when you make 50,000, $60,000 different life,

when you make $500,000 different life, $1,000,000 different life.

For example right now as a person who makes meeting or so, I want to be a billionaire.

The race will still keep going.

The race will keep going even when you become a billionaire.

Every step has different challenges but you need to have that eager feeling in you to

be able to keep going.

If you try to shorten things, if you are very weak on pleasure, what I mean by pleasure,

you want to sit at home, you just want to watch TV.

You don't want to take reasonable risks.

It doesn't work that way, brother.

It doesn't.

It will not.

Unless you hit the lottery.

You notice statistics on that.

It's mind blowing.

I hate knowing them but it's mind blowing when you look at how many people hit the lottery

and end up broke.

Again.

Exactly.

I mean, it's mind blowing.

Quarantine life right now.

I miss you in Andrea.

I don't get to see you guys.

What have you learned over quarantine?

Anything you've learned, anything you've started doing?

You know that you weren't doing?

I thought I had realized it was like a sudden break for everybody.

I'm no one was expecting something like that.

There are two things.

One, in personal level, I have realized that God is great.

We are blessed and we are healthy.

Some people were not as lucky as us Simon.

They die or they are in ICU right now as we speak and I'm very sad and I pray for them.

In business life, we stopped about two or three weeks.

We were shut down but as you know, I applied for a waiver and an exemption and I got my exemption.

We've been working since the second week of April for the last 15, 20, some days.

We are doing maybe 20, 30% capacity production and installation.

It's more of construction business is opening again which is a blessing and we will be 80,

90% capacity.

For rainy days, people should save money.

People who did not save money, unfortunately, will have hard times.

This is a lesson for everybody.

At least you need to have six months to eat your savings.

If something happens, not the virus itself, you may have a cancer, but for that.

You may have a heart attack.

Even that virus stuff reminded everybody.

The life is not always like run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run.

Sometimes you need to sit back and take a deep breath, think through it and if something

happens, what I saved.

It is time to give.

Right now if anybody needs help, you are a business man, I am a business man.

We have our limits of course, but anything that we can do, I am at your service for

others.

You know, I mean healthcare workers, policemen, whoever, we are here to help.

Amen.

That is how we roll.

That is what we do.

We roll the rolls.

That is how we got together.

That is how we got connected because of your heart and similar interests and feelings.

Is there anything that people misunderstand about you?

Is there anything that people maybe that don't really know you that well would misunderstand

something about you?

I always approach everybody with respect and love and I will have a hard time for people

to misunderstand me.

But one of the funny things, funny misunderstanding, I will put it that way.

Because I am working with my guys sometimes in the factory, sometimes I go to installs.

I am in the showroom.

So when someone walks in a customer or whoever, they don't think that I am the owner.

So they start talking to me like one of the employees, which is perfect.

I love it.

Don't get me wrong.

And you know, my operations manager, my jam, you know, walks in and say, oh, you know,

he's our company owner and CEO.

I pretend like I'm still not the owner and just keep talking.

I'm trying to help the customer or whatsoever.

And I love it.

Other than that, I don't know.

What advice, or maybe not even advice, what would you say to yourself of the 10 years

ago?

Let's say, Emory of today, you know, talks to Emory of 10 years ago, what would you

say to that person 10 or 15 years ago?

10 years ago, I was in Washington, DC.

And I wish I came to Pittsburgh 10 years ago, not five years ago.

Because big cities like New York, Washington, DC, it is fun to live, shopping, you know,

restaurants, bars, big crowded.

If you like that kind of a life, it's fun to live.

But what I have realized, I wasn't thinking that I would be able to live in a Pittsburgh

is not as small city, but it's not as big as Chicago, New York city.

It's in between.

So I wasn't thinking myself living in a city like Pittsburgh.

And after I started living here, I have realized that the life quality is much, much better

than mixed this.

So when you asked me 10 years ago, what were you going to say?

I wish I came to Pittsburgh 10 years ago, not five years ago.

What is that life quality you think is better?

Because I agree.

I love Pittsburgh.

You know where else I love?

You love the same place.

Florida.

No more.

I love it.

I used to be like you, snowbird.

Natalie put that to the halt with the kids.

What things do you think stick out to you?

Because I love Pittsburgh too.

Other than it not being the beach, everything else about it I love.

Pittsburgh has been a trade center for the last couple hundred years.

And when I studied Pittsburgh, I was extremely amazed with history.

You know what French conquered here and then British came conquered from French and then

British and George Washington came to an agreement.

And the US bought the silver from British people.

And the first factory in the United States was established in Pittsburgh.

And Pittsburgh has been the trade center of the world.

Even though we are not on an ocean, Pittsburgh was the biggest port in the United States.

And the Carnegie Mellon and many, many successful businessmen was in here.

And education like University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, it's amazing.

I mean plus you know, Mellon terms and the nature is beautiful.

The downtown city is amazing.

Sports.

This time sports fan in every aspect.

I was a professional soccer player and stillers, penguins, pilots, I mean having those kind

of teams in the city that you live is amazing.

And people, people are pigeon.

That's the point.

I mean, the people in Pittsburgh are very welcoming.

They are hospitable.

And if you are working hard and they see that you are trying, they will help you.

And you know, Pittsburgh lost its popularity when business went to China.

And it did not bankrupt but kind of like bankrupt.

The transition from being a still city to IT technology, finance, oil and gas is tremendous.

And back in 2009, when President Obama did the G20 in Pittsburgh, it caught my eye.

I said to myself, why not in Miami?

I mean why not in Chicago?

Why big G20 is in Pittsburgh?

And he made a speech about it.

He said, Pittsburgh.

network is one of the best cities in the world as a role model to other cities, from being

a totally different industry to newer industries.

I mean Uber has a center in here, they are testing cars without drivers.

Google has about almost 10,000 employees, they are doing some significant researches

here. Almost all you know has many warehouses in here.

It's tremendous. The potential in this work is amazing.

Man so you like it here, huh?

I love it. I love it.

That's love right there. I don't know if I asked people say something good about me

if I have all those, that is great.

What are you as we wrap it up? People getting to know you.

You mentioned sports, what type of things, interest you outside of your business life

and anything outside of that, you have interest in?

As I mentioned, sports, I am a big fan of Steelers, I go to hockey games.

I am not into very much baseball but sometimes a couple times I go to baseball games.

And of course I watch soccer games all the time on TV from Europe mostly.

And we have a soccer team in Pittsburgh, I don't know if you heard about them, rivers

hound.

And I go to their games sometimes.

I am into traveling. I love traveling.

I love going to Italy, Spain, Germany, Brazil and Mexico.

I love traveling.

You know, we have a summer house in Fuloria.

Fuloria is our second destination. I love being on the beach and warm weather during winter

time is the blessing thing.

And in addition to that, I love fast cars, fast sports and reading, watching movie.

I love it.

Yeah.

Love it. Love it.

When you were talking about the Pittsburgh thing, how much you like Pittsburgh, I think

I got lucky that way.

You know, when personally when I opened up my business here, I had no idea how good of a

pick that I made to come to Pittsburgh because I'm not from Pittsburgh.

I think I've been here for going on about 12 years right now.

And I've had the same feelings.

And I mentioned I was spending time in Florida, spending time in Pittsburgh.

I did that for about five years, six months there, six months here.

And when I came back here full time, I realized and remembered how much that I just, you know,

I loved it.

Our business exploded.

You know, from me being here, you know, the full time.

This is where our corporate headquarters was.

And you know, the sporting life, you know, like you were talking about just sports constantly,

like great downtown, always something going on, something to do, great people all the

same, same vibe.

And I know those are a lot of the people that you serve.

Anybody that would want to get a whole of you or anybody that would want to either seek

out your business, maybe they need your products, some stones, some marble, some granite,

or just people that want to follow you in general.

How would people follow you or get in touch with you?

Armino Stone is a very strong, existency in social media.

We are on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and our website, arminostone.com.

They can reach me through our general email info at arminostone.com or emr.

EMRE at arminostone.com.

You know, anyone in Pittsburgh or in Eastern Ohio, Northern Ohio, down to West Virginia,

Morgan Town.

We covered about 200 miles as you take Pittsburgh as a center.

And if they want to reach me personally, they can reach me through LinkedIn.

I have a LinkedIn account.

They can message me.

I will have to answer them or through my email.

So.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Well, we appreciate you coming on the grindcast today.

A lot of wisdom shared there.

A lot of stuff makes sense.

And I know a lot of people will find a lot of value in everything that you said.

Appreciate you taking time out.

Thank you so much.

I know what you do.

Given some of yourself and to help others, that's your heart.

That's what you do.

You give and you love people and you care about people and you work hard.

And you're one of those great people that I've had the opportunity to meet in this world.

And I'm just so grateful that I had an opportunity to meet you, bro, because you're to make

it.

I'm just missing you in person.

So.

Like what?

But thank you.

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the grindcast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

Count money, man.

money, man.

Get riches.

I'm trying to told you.

I'm a beast, bro.