Special Guest Bobby Steele PT2

Count money man, money that gritches.

I'm trying to told him, I'm a beast book.

What's up gang? Welcome to the grind cast.

Simon Areas here. Get ready. It's a new day.

You know, let's be kind of meeting them head on.

What does that word adversity mean to you when you hear that word?

Oh, it's the diverse. It's just challenge. Let's go.

You know, I mean, that's what it means. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Let's get it. You know, you say it can't be done. I'm the first one to be like, let's do it.

Yeah, we're going to climb out. I was talking a good friend of mine recently, you know,

Marcus and I'm like, man, I don't, I don't, I like no obstacles, adversity,

catastrophes, but it feels like personally because I grew up with so much chaos.

All right. I'm at my best during chaos. It's like, when, when, when, when the chaos comes

instead of me running, you go, we run to everybody. And I'm not patting myself on the back.

And just everybody knows it's going to be an elevation when there's, when there's shots fired.

It's, it's being able to handle that adversity. What, I was going to ask you, what,

what things stand out to you about just being successful in general and in business?

You know, what three things tips could you give to somebody or three things stand out to you,

traits of people to build a business or to be successful?

It would just be honest. Be honest to you yourself and be honest to your business and be honest

to the people that you're dealing with. You know, you'll be ahead of 90% of the people doing that.

I think so too. I think if you do that, you mean, just, just be honest and expect,

expectations are another thing. You know, just living your expectations,

set them, get them and then just move on to the next set. You know, set your goals,

keep, keep going. Don't let people tell you that you can't do things. You know,

don't, don't let someone say, oh, I got a felony. Do you? I can't be a, I can't do this.

So I've gotten in trouble or you know, I mean, don't let that hold you back. You know,

it's a new day. You know, try, get out there every day and do your best, man. Put a hundred percent in.

Sure. I'm telling you. And a hundred percent of the time things are going to go.

People always say, man, if, if they can do something over, what would you do over?

If you, if you had a chance to do something over, like what would you do from the beginning?

I would invest it in Bitcoin. I guess.

Yeah.

Not recently.

No, no, like five, four, yeah, 2010. What I came home, I took all that,

like a couple dollars I had put it a bit going.

But other than that, you know, what I think what I've done in my life has made me who I am today.

I think it's made me the father that I am. I think it's made me the, the friend that I am.

And it's made me, you know, the business man that I am.

It was a, like, it was a long time that I thought that my story would, would hinder things that I did.

Like what would stop me from doing like the bigger, nicer, better jobs.

And I was in a house a couple of years ago, you know, nice house, huge, beautiful home.

And this lady came up and was like, Hey, can I give you a hug?

I read your story.

You know, I mean, and I have a son who battled through addiction and prison and this and that.

And fortunately, we lost them.

And I just want to tell you that you give us hope, you know, that your story really inspires us and gives us hope.

So thank you.

And from my think that point on, I'm thinking, wow, maybe it isn't, you know, I mean, maybe it needs to be told a little bit more.

Maybe people need to know that sometimes you wonder if the struggle wasn't a calling of

it had to be you to make it to the other side because now you're the person that can explain and inspire other people to say it can be done.

Right.

Sometimes I feel like, you know, like the catalysts.

Like, you know what I mean?

Where other people have stopped and said, Hey, you know, I mean, I'm not going any further.

I'm like, just put another, put another 10 pounds on my back and let's keep going, you know, let's go.

Let's be on your back.

You got a bunch of tattoos on your back.

I wanted to know about your about your tattoos.

Nice tattoos.

So what are you, you got them all over?

This one looks like a couple of stuff.

Like what memorable, which one do you think stands out the most or what meaning to something on there?

So I am pretty much covered, you know, everything but my chest and stomach,

the rest of me is covered.

I'll tell you on my back, I have a giant, I have a cross with my wife's face in the middle of it behind it.

It's behind it.

It's like 3D.

And then all my four children are angels around the cross.

And at the bottom, it's like skulls and buried like my past.

You know, pretty much like I had to go through hell to get to heaven where I am and live in this life that I am.

And it reminds me constantly that, you know, they all watch out for me.

They all got my back no matter how much I think that I'm taking care of them.

They're taking care of me through like, you know, words and love and just always encouraging me to do better.

And so that's one.

And then my leg, I've let my kids pick.

I know nothing about comic books and Marvel or any DC stuff like that.

But I've let my children pick everything on my right leg.

And there's like the Hulk and cat woman.

It's bad men and I'll be out places.

People come up to me.

So you let them just camouflage my leg with everything.

Yeah, every bit of it.

My one right leg is tight.

That's tight.

My daughter came and said she wanted hello, Kitty on my foot.

I'd put it on there.

I guess you know, but that's all there.

That's nice.

And I'll be out and people will ask me and I'll tell them like, listen,

I really don't even know who they are, but my kids picked them.

So we put them on there.

And yesterday my son picked the Hulk.

So we put him in the back, back here.

Race it.

Yeah, that's a new one.

How long?

How long last night?

I was in there for five hours.

Five hours on.

Yeah, I'm getting old.

They heard.

Oh, they heard me too.

Perms my moral support when I get to that.

Now we go together.

Like, first, like what are we doing?

I'm like, we're going to get at it.

For your moral support.

For your moral support.

We got it.

It's because most time you got another hour, you got another 30 minutes.

Let him stretch for a minute and you tell him.

Yeah, let him get up, man.

We talked about how long the tat take.

In the beginning, starting your business, you know, your first couple of years in business.

How many, how much time do you think you put into your business first building it starting

out?

I would say probably one in two hours a day.

You know, every minute of every day was like trying to make a brand.

Not only would it be nice.

That was nice.

Yeah, well, there's two hours of sleep.

We're great.

I enjoyed them.

But we were building more than just a business.

I think we were building a brand.

I think we were building like a culture.

We were trying to build, we were just trying to build something better.

You know, we're where we wanted all of our employees to realize that we cared about them.

You know, we looked out for them and we wanted them to be better also.

But we were in there.

I mean, I didn't know either too.

I didn't come from a construction background.

My first big construction job, I Googled it on my way to the meeting.

Thank you.

That's great.

I didn't know nothing about it.

I got a call and they were like, hey, do you want to do 40,000 square foot of flooring?

And I'm like, let's go.

Yeah.

Let's try it.

So on the way there, I'm like Googling it.

I'm getting the prices, like median price for Pittsburgh P.A.

And I said, look, we'll make us or break us.

So we won the bid.

Then we left and then we had to figure out how to do it.

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

So we leave.

And I'm like, what are we going to do?

We got figured it stuff out.

So I go.

And I find a guy who I knew that was a union towel setter.

Well, actually, she was a girl that used to work for us.

Her husband was a union towel center.

We call him up.

He's like, hey, I'm laid off.

I'm like, cool.

Well, you do this.

Like, literally, if I don't lose money, I'm happy.

I don't care if I break even.

It's just a stepping stone to get us to where we need to be.

It's a job.

Yeah.

So we got to the top of his guys.

We knocked it out.

We killed it.

Then he was like, hey, you guys want to do all the drywall?

And I'm like, sure.

You know, we'll do it.

So we start drywall and then we did the paint.

Then I met, I said, I met Josh Adamak down in Lawrenceville.

I get a phone call.

They call me up and they're like, hey, got a guy that needs this building painted.

You want you interested?

I'm like, yeah, let's go.

So I go down and we met him.

We measured up.

And we were talking.

We hit it off from that moment on.

I started painting Josh's projects three years later.

I built all of his new construction for him.

And what a relationship.

What a great guy is, too.

Great deal.

Great deal.

So I've learned a lot from him.

And so we, that's how we all really started to get connected.

That's how we all started through Josh and Emory.

And then you know, you just started and Ryan and we just grew to like his big family

of not only business side but real personal side as well.

So when people, you know, there must be nice.

This is what I try to encourage people on, man.

They look at the end result.

And they're like, man, you must have got lucky.

You must have been, you know, but how about 22 hour days?

That's it.

How about a couple hours of sleep?

How about taking the job saying yes and I'll figure it out.

And finding a way like, I don't even care if I break even.

I just want to launch from this.

It ain't even about the money.

I want to prove myself to people in things of that nature.

You know what I mean?

Those are the little things.

So, you know, starting the business, did everything go smooth or did you have any bumps

in road that you could think of if so?

Like what, how do you overcome some of those things?

You know, we still have bumps, I think.

You know what I mean?

We just got a big bump with this price increase on material and everything.

You just got to work around it.

You know what I mean?

You just got to keep going.

At the end of the day, you got to play the record all the way through.

You know what I mean?

It's easy to look at the tip of that iceberg and see, oh, wow, they're beautiful wife,

family, cars, vacate.

You know what I mean?

It's not all that.

It's what's below the surface.

It's the fact that you know, you got a deadline and a job that needs done and everybody's

tired and you want to, you got to push forward and you got to figure out a way to make

it happen.

And we'd run into that on so many times.

And I shoulder most of it because to be honest, I didn't really know a lot about it.

I ran a company but I didn't know what it all took to run a company.

Like I was in the front of the house in the field, lunches and making it happen.

You know what I mean?

I didn't realize all the back of the house stuff.

You know what I mean?

The stuff that the office managers and the stuff that like, countenance and all them did.

All I did was went out there and sold it and made it happen.

And so that adversity, and overcoming all that and figuring it out, like you mean that

you got to pay taxes.

You got to do this.

You got to do that.

You know, you've got to accept the fact that you can't take on every job, you know, as

much as you want to.

You've got to like prioritize space at all, you know what I mean?

And work with everyone.

Right.

Learn and to work with a team, you know what I mean?

Because that's what it's all about.

It's a team effort out there.

It's not only about one person.

It's well as good as our team and putting the right people in the right places to do it.

You know, entrusting them.

That was an idea too.

You know, coming from being in the penitentiary and the background that I have, you know,

we grew up poor, grew up in the trailer park and stuff like that.

I didn't have trust.

Like I didn't trust them.

I just thought someone was out to get, like someone come up to give you a hug.

Like what do you want?

Like you know, or someone's like offering help.

You're like, what do you want?

What do you expect to get out of this?

So I think let and go of all that and put in the right people in the right places and

trust them that they're going to do the job.

Trust them that they're going to have not only mine, but my family's best interests at

heart because you know, I mean, it's all for them and their families and putting all that

together.

I think the hardest thing to come.

How long has it been running?

How long have you had this business?

Five years.

Six years.

Oh, it's six years this year.

Oh wow.

2015.

Bobby the Bill.

That's right.

Imagine another six years now that you know what you're doing.

Yeah.

I'm sure it's going to be, you know, and you're crushing it, man.

Thank you.

And thank you.

It's amazing to watch you grow.

And I certainly too.

Like I didn't just rest on that.

I didn't sit back.

Like I went, we did, um, we did some stuff with cranes, you know, so I went out and got

a crane license.

So I knew exactly how it worked.

Uh, roofing, you know, after I googled all this stuff, I actually like learned about it.

I like read about it.

It was something I fit in whenever somebody's like, it must be nice, you know, 10, 11 o'clock

at night.

I'm reading about shower towel and I'm reading about like, you know, how footers and

found it.

I'm reading about all this stuff at night.

Like just because I want to know, so I didn't want to get caught off guard when someone

was asking and I didn't know what we knew.

I wouldn't do it.

You know, what we're doing there.

You know, so I knew you know, there's a lot of times too that Roger, who's, he's my, you

know, I mean, he's great.

He, uh, reels me in, you know, it's like, Bobby, we can't do that.

Like, but it says we can.

You got to have somebody like that.

We do.

Matt D reels me in, tells me we can't do that all the time.

That she's great.

She's amazing.

You can need that out.

Cause if it was short to me, we would be putting this guy's great parade in the middle of

Houston, PA.

Yeah.

He's like, hey, we got to slow down.

Wait, wait, wait, let's start out with like six stories first.

You know, I mean, can you, can you, you know, when you think back, you know, growing up,

could you imagine a position that you would be in today?

And no, absolutely not.

I mean, I never would have thought that that I would be in the position to where I am,

you know, never thought that I'd have a beautiful loving, caring family.

I never thought that we would have a business that, you know, that I get messages all the

time asking for sweatshirts and D shirts.

Like, hey, it's crazy.

I'll get a picture of one from someone I have no clue who they are.

And they ask, and I'm like, yeah, we'll mail it out.

Send me your address, you know, and just things like that.

Like I never thought for a second that we would be out and people would recognize like who

we are and what we do.

And the fact that we could give back and, and not at all, I thought I was going to live

in a trailer park, you know, and just be just a, you know, nine to five.

But it's, you know, it's crazy that that's how it goes.

I think I wanted more because when I was growing up in a trailer park, I literally,

I'm, I'm mowed grass.

I shoveled snow.

I delivered newspapers, did everything that I could, did like better myself.

And I'll tell you what to do.

County Fair.

And I had thrown these darts and I'd want a poster that had a Rolex on it and a Lamborghini

and stuff like that, you know.

And I put them on my wall and I'd look at them.

I'm a true believer if you manifest it.

Like you kept home myself for years.

Like I'm going to have these things.

I'm going to have these things.

Now the road to get to him was a little rocky, you know, I had them.

They took home.

I came back and got him again, you know,

and feels so much better to do it the right way though.

Amen.

And yeah, so we just really feel like,

come along with it.

He said your middle name was the RJ.

Who was your middle name?

My name is Robert John,

but the J stands for Josephine.

That's my wife's middle name.

Gotcha.

Has like a dual meaning.

Yeah, I mean,

I gotta remember that.

That was my grandmother's,

my great-grandmother's name

who grew up in her house on the East side.

So I but but but I want to see

speaking of middle names.

Oh, oh, could could you take a guess

at what do you think?

It's a perm's middle name is three guesses.

Three, three, three, three guesses.

Three guesses going strong.

Three guesses.

Three guesses.

Oh, man, three guesses.

Come on, body to build there.

Come on, Stanley.

Ah, not Stanley.

Not Stanley.

David.

No, look at him.

David, David.

David, David.

Close?

No, not even close.

Sounded good, I can say.

Look at him.

Oh, man, I want to spot here.

We're close.

I don't know.

One more.

Come on, you got one in you, Bobby?

Robert.

Robert.

You didn't do it.

You didn't do it.

You gotta tell you off here.

Oh, man, we don't tell him out here.

We gotta see if anybody guesses.

We get him all here.

So close.

But Bobby, man, thank you.

Thank you for not only your time, man,

but thank you for your heart for the kids

and everything that you do for inspiring minds, Pittsburgh

and overall.

I thank you for allowing me to be a part of it, you know,

because it's fun to gather.

It is.

It is.

The things that we do is amazing.

I leave out of there with a full heart,

knowing that we've done our best to try

to help out in every way.

And I mean, that all comes, you brought that down here.

We just saw you just let us on the bus with you.

And we got our team and we have fun, man.

Shame on us if we can't, you know, go do stuff

like that after none of us deserving, you know,

any of the stuff that we got, man, but I'm just,

I'm just super grateful.

Thank you.

You've been one of the great people

that God has led into my life over the last few years,

man, you and your wife.

And thank you.

And love having you in the circle.

Absolutely.

And I appreciate you, man, in your heart.

And not only the work that you do to provide jobs

and opportunities and the business

that we've done together, man, but just your heart

as a person, as an individual, man,

and it's just a pleasure and honor to know you

and have you on the ground.

Thank you.

And now, once a week, that hat, now, yeah.

In the shirts, he was talking about people message.

I'm speaking a message to him.

How would somebody get a hold of you

if they wanted to get a hold of you?

And they're, you know, following you, you know,

how would they connect with you on social media

any way to get a hold of you?

Probably the easiest way would be on Facebook

through our RJ Steel construction

or RJ Steel Group accounts.

Another thing would be phone call to 724-356-2271.

And our office is in Hickory, PA.

We're a little down south down in Washington County.

You could go there or internet,

or as a www.rjsteelconstruction.com.

So, you know, either that or...

Or hit me up and I'll hook you up.

Just message me and I'll swing you over to Bobby to build her.

If you see me out, just say hi.

There you go.

I love you, sure.

Well, thanks for joining us on another episode

of the grindcast.

Get ready. It's a new day.

Count money, man.

Money, riches.

I'm trying to told him, I'm a beast, bud.