MV Experts: Harold Ryden

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Harold: And the big mitts. The big mitts. I'm not feeling it. Someone's telling me not to cut it. And they're like, we're telling you. That's the one. Cut it.

Mario: How much do medium voltage splicers make? Can can I ask that? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Are you serious?

Harold: Yeah. There. I'd say that night really put us on the map. Like, well, this team, they got their shit together.

Mario: Now a lot of people don't know this about you, but you're a world champion.

Harold: Actually broke my neck

Mario: Yeah.

Harold: In three places. Two years ago. Three. Going on three. November would be I three call it the the bar exam for electricians. It's very difficult.

Mario: I saw a video of you beating who's the UFC guy, the famous guy?

Harold: Sean Strickland.

Mario: That's pretty wild. I mean Welcome to the Medium Voltage Experts Podcast. I am Mario De Alba, your host. I'm also the CEO and cofounder of Elektrik App Inc or Elektrikapp.com. We consider ourselves at Elektrik App the medium voltage easy button. We think we're experts in medium voltage. And it's not just because of everything we know, but because of the network and the people that we know in the industry. I've decided to interview some of these experts. So join me in getting to know these bright minds and have fun. K. Subscribe. Well, thank you for for being here. It's so fun.

Harold: It's my pleasure. Thank you. I'm honored honored to be here.

Mario: Yeah. Well, you're our first one Okay. Cool. Of our Medium Expert.

Harold: Set a set a precedence.

Mario: Yeah. It's gonna be a good one. So I'm gonna act like I don't know you at all. Right? So Interesting. Harold, who are you? Where are you from?

Harold: I am Harold Riden. I am from San Diego, California, North Side Of San Diego. It's considered North County. Most beautiful city in the world.

Mario: Most beautiful,

Harold: By far. So how many kids? You married? I am married. Going on thirty years.

Mario: Okay. Congrats.

Harold: Yep. Same gorgeous woman.

Mario: There you go. I have

Harold: no idea what she sees in me. But I'm gonna keep running with it. Those big myths. The big myths. I have three children. They're adults now. My oldest is a daughter, 25. She'll always be my little girl. Nice. And I have a 23 year old son. He's been serving in the military for five years now. He's married. What's his name?

Mario: Reese. Reese, thank you, for serving. Toss me.

Harold: I have a daughter-in-law named Ashley. Super proud.

Mario: Congrats. Yeah.

Harold: And I have a 20 year old son named Cole. Cole. My oldest is Tabitha.

Mario: Tabitha and Cole. Yeah. And I've I've gotten to meet them all except Reese. I think Reese is the only FaceTime. Yeah. Great kids. Your wife's awesome. Melanie is awesome. Appreciate that. Now, are you originally from California? I'm not. Kent, where are you from?

Harold: I was born in Anchorage, Alaska. Okay. Not military. My dad was, one of the original homesteaders of Alaska, moved up there in 1960. Homesteaded a 180 acres. My parents married early sixties. I was born in '73 shortly after they split up. And my mom was originally from the San Diego area, moved us all South and ended up in the LA area. That's pretty much where I was raised in Los Angeles.

Mario: Cool. So homesteading 180 acres?

Harold: One eighty acres, yeah, he

Mario: still got What one did they do with 180 acres? Well, part of

Harold: the deal was he would have to build

Mario: on

Harold: it, live on it and keep it up. And over the years he will section off five acre lots. He'll prepare it, he'll bring power, water, septic, and then sell it in five acre lots and people moving up there by these lots and put a trailer home or build a cabin or something on it.

Mario: So he's still there? He's still there.

Harold: Yeah. 83 years old. Still And

Mario: I've met your dad. He's awesome.

Harold: That dude eats nails for breakfast. He is a tough old man. That's awesome.

Mario: Yep. Very cool. What brought you down south from how old were you and when did you come down?

Harold: Yeah, so in high school, met my wife, girlfriend at the time, obviously. Got married and was working at a office supply company. I was actually building office furniture and it was just a dead end job. A guy that had been there for twenty years was making like $18 an hour. And one day we were on a job site building this furniture and one of the electricians was tying in these cubicles and asked me to help him pull in some wire. So I helped him and I said, man, this is that's the easiest thing I ever did. Cool. I think I'm a look into being an electrician.

Mario: Where were you living at the time?

Harold: Los Angeles.

Mario: Okay. So you were already down south in LA?

Harold: I moved to LA when I was five.

Mario: With your mom? Yes. God. Okay. So your parents split. You go down south.

Harold: She was remarried, stepdad, Los Angeles. LA.

Mario: Which part of LA?

Harold: It's a town a city rather called Bellflower.

Mario: Bellflower.

Harold: Right next to Paramount, which is where my wife is from, which is two blocks from Compton.

Mario: I was gonna say that's a pretty

Harold: rough area.

Mario: Doctor Dre and Snoop Dogg.

Harold: Grew up in that area and the ghetto bird flying over the house every night was a regular thing. Gunshots, people in two, three in the morning screaming and Dang. That was normal. It was very normal.

Mario: That's crazy. And then

Harold: all the way up into my adulthood.

Mario: So one random day you pull cable just because you're writing

Harold: Put some wire, like number 12, maybe it was 12, I think. And I was like, this is so easy. So I started looking into the apprenticeship. At that time, my stepdad and mom had actually moved from Los Angeles. I was living there on my own because I wasn't gonna leave this smoking hot chick that I was with. And they had moved to Minnesota And was my stepdad was an electrician back there and got me into the apprenticeship. So we packed up. We had been married for one year and moved to Minnesota. So like Minneapolis? South Minneapolis, small town called Spring Valley. It was like 1,500 people. I was working out of Rochester was where my home local was, Local three forty three. And yeah, I joined the apprenticeship. So it was two years after I was married because it was '97.

Mario: That's kind of where Mayo Clinic is.

Harold: It is. Yeah, did a ton of work in the Mayo Clinic. I was the first apprentice on the new, not new anymore, but the Gonda Building, which is right next to the Mayo Clinic. It's a world famous hospital.

Mario: I was gonna say, I heard about the Mayo Clinic when I lived in Spain. Because you'll hear, right, like research done from Mayo Clinic, blah blah blah blah. A of people don't realize Rochester, Minnesota is Small. It's kind of where

Harold: I think during the day there's like, I don't even know. I'm just gonna throw a crazy number out there. But there's probably 200,000 people there in the daytime. And at night, maybe 50,000 people live there. People just driving and working at the Mayo Clinic.

Mario: That's wild. So you start your apprenticeship. So let's talk about apprenticeship. So union? Union.

Harold: Yep. Okay. Joined the apprenticeship with the IBEW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local three forty three. Shout out. Shout out. Did my apprenticeship there. It's a five year program. Did four years. And my wife and I had two babies out there. And after four years of blistering cold Minnesota weather was just too much, especially growing up in Los Angeles. And it just became too much. And my wife had never even seen it snow until we moved to Minnesota. Poor Melanie. Yeah, poor Mal. After four years, it just became too much and we were ready to move back. But we did not want to raise children in the Los Angeles area. We had really good friends. We actually lost friends to drive by shootings. And people who had great parents, people who were brought up right, people who had good grades, going to good colleges, and just were a victim of their surroundings. And so we decided that even if we were the greatest parents, the surrounding would affect our children. So we decided to move back, but we chose San Diego, California. So we moved back in 2001, I was a fourth year going into my fifth year of apprenticeship. And so I actually reached out to Local five sixty nine IBW in San Diego. The one you're at now? The one I'm currently with, yeah, represents. And I transferred my apprenticeship actually and finished my apprenticeship there because I knew I was gonna be a resident. Knew that was gonna be my home. And what I didn't wanna do was turn out, become a journeyman, and then go to San Diego as a traveler and be on book two. Got it. So I knew it was gonna be my home. I was gonna finish out my apprenticeship there and then live there for the rest of my life. And that was in 02/2023 going on twenty four years now.

Mario: That's awesome. So you moved to San Diego, Where about right in the city or

Harold: I lived in a city called San Marcos. Okay. Actually, it's in North County. Loved it. Loved San Marcos. It grew a lot since 2001. And a lot of the growth I was a part of doing electrical work all over and worked for a couple of contractors, doing things here

Mario: and there. So let's talk about that. So who did you work for?

Harold: So I worked for The longest company I worked for, I did a couple of summer jobs, did a couple of short calls, until I found my home. And my home was with a company called Southland Electric. Great company.

Mario: What were you doing for them?

Harold: So I started out as, just working on what they called it a summer mod. It was a high school remodel over the summer. And, I just went and I actually anticipated working there for three months, four months, get laid off onto the next. And then, I was there for about two weeks and, they saw something and the foreman running the project was running like three other schools and they handed me the key to the school and said, we're gonna have you finish this one. And then after

Mario: And that would be which high school?

Harold: It was Vista High School.

Mario: Vista High.

Harold: And Vista right next to San Marcos. Cool. And, yeah, so then I finished out the school there and, actually helped out a couple other electricians, did a service call with a guy once, and the service manager enjoyed me and said I did a good job and put me in a service truck.

Mario: Okay. So at this at this moment in your career, you're still low voltage. Low voltage. You haven't started medium voltage yet?

Harold: Didn't even know what it was.

Mario: Okay. So I'm So during your apprenticeship, nobody told you anything about medium Okay. That's good to know.

Harold: I mean, knew it there. I saw at the Mayo Clinic. I saw people doing like hand tape. Hand tape terminations and stuff. Didn't really know what it was. I thought it was just something I probably would never touch. Very unique. And then I was in a service truck for quite a few years at Southland. And then Southland brought in a guy from another company, a pretty predominantly medium voltage company out of San Diego, Chula Vista Electric.

Mario: Yeah, I know Chula.

Harold: Yeah. A guy named Steve Frank came over to Southland Electric. And he brought some medium voltage with him. And on one of his projects, said, hey, I'm gonna have you out here and you're gonna be with our I'm getting

Mario: the chills. So this is like kinda like your first your first mentor.

Harold: Steve Frank by far. Shout out Steve Frank. Steve Frank. Great guy. Super smart guy. To date, best PM I ever worked for. Cool. Yeah. Sorry, all the PMs I'm working with now. Solid. So, yeah, it took me under his wing. Had me do a couple simple terminations, brought three ms in, did did a termination.

Mario: So this was early two thousands.

Harold: Yeah. So it was a Raychem. Yeah. We did a a heat shrink termination with a Raychem, early, maybe February.

Mario: Would Joe White house had He was around. He was the guy.

Harold: He was the guy for

Mario: No way. Yeah.

Harold: Joe White house.

Mario: That is so cool. Yep. That is I mean, I remember four years ago when you and I and Joe White house had lunch.

Harold: That's right.

Mario: For the first time. That's First time. First time we met, Joe White house was there.

Harold: He was there.

Mario: And Joe White house was kinda introducing me to a bunch of people in Southern California. You were one of them and he's he's involved with electric and

Harold: Yep.

Mario: How cool. Wow.

Harold: So Yes, you full circle.

Mario: I mean, Joe is one of the experts I would consider.

Harold: Absolutely. Okay,

Mario: so Steve Frank takes you under

Harold: Takes me under his wing. What happens? Couple projects here and there. Got to where any medium voltage Southland would do. I was still on a service truck. And I was just going from job to job, warranty stuff, whatever. And Southland did a lot of high rises downtown San Diego. So if they had warranty calls, was the guy. Troubleshooting, I was the guy. Medium voltage, I was becoming the guy.

Mario: Okay.

Harold: And then unfortunately, the owner of Southland got very ill. And we went from over 300 employees to close to 30. Wow. And yeah, I was still around. Steve Frank was kinda running the business.

Mario: Were you guys doing just mainly service calls at

Harold: that We're still doing they had a niche with some of the local cable companies. They did a lot of fiber and stuff. SDG and E, they did some fiber for them. And I didn't really get involved in that world. I was on the service side regular like

Mario: Is Southland still around?

Harold: Southland still there. Yeah, I'll get to that. That's a great story. Still family, Southland still family. Yeah, the owner got ill and ended up a lot of people were leaving because they weren't sure of the future of Southland. And at that time I was their medium voltage guy, basically.

Mario: Then Where's Steve at now at this point? Steve's retired.

Harold: Okay. Yeah, he's retired.

Mario: And at that point where you were kind of the MV guy, where was

Harold: he? And there was very little MV.

Mario: He was kinda running the show.

Harold: He was running the show. Got it. If there was MV on a project, it was like putting in a transformer for a school remodel. And then I'd come in do three terms and off I'd go. That was it. Hospitals come in do three, six, nine terms off I go. And then, Baker Electric approached me. Okay. Yep. This is when late This is 2013. Approached me about, coming over and joining their medium voltage team they wanted to grow.

Mario: And Baker's big time.

Harold: Mean Big time. Yep. And they made me an offer that was really difficult for me to say no to. And I would have even have loved to talk to the owner of Southland, but he was ill, very ill. And so I went to Steve Frank and I said, the future here is really, we don't know, nobody knows. And come to find out he was on the same page, didn't tell me. Because two weeks after I left, was gone. He went to another company, finished out his career a couple of years and retired. But yeah, so I went to Baker, was with Baker Lecture for three years, helped them build a medium voltage department. Grew pretty good within those three years, we grew it pretty significantly. And that's where I really got heavy into it. That's when I was predominantly

Mario: So what were you guys doing? What were you building?

Harold: Lot of solar farms. Solar. Solar. Anytime there was medium voltage on amusement parks. One of my customers, longtime customers was the Safari Park which is part of the San Diego Zoo. I did pretty much all of their medium voltage. That was Steve Frank's customer. And because I was his MV guy, I was doing all of their work. And so I got to know their loop really good. So when I left Southland, I was still the guy.

Mario: Was Yeah.

Harold: So they they chose Baker. So I brought a lot of work in from from Safari Park. And then it's of grew from there. Baker and I

Mario: So you were doing both. If you're doing Safari, that's probably more of a 15 kV loop. It's 15 kV,

Harold: yeah.

Mario: Yeah. And then on the solar side, were doing 35.

Harold: 35, yeah. So you

Mario: were having a little bit of both?

Harold: Yeah, a little bit of both, some four sixty from time to time. Some of the high rises downtown still on 4160. Some colleges down in San Diego are on 4160 because the original SDG and E was 40 1160 way back in the day. And so when they went to twelve thousand four and seventy, a lot of the colleges just put in transformers and dropped it 4160. So they kept their 4160 loop. And over the years, they'll transition to the 12 KV. But so, it's a little bit of everything pretty much. So, three years with them and the owner of Southland had passed within that time. Rest in peace. Phenomenal guy. And his wife took over the business.

Mario: Oh, wow.

Harold: Which then became a woman owned business. Cool. And she actually started to hire back a lot of people that had left. Cool. And one of the guys that went back reached out to me. And at that time it was getting a little rocky for me. Baker. Sure. If that's the name you wanna use. And it was just kind of perfect timing. It was time to move on. They again wanted to have me come back and do medium voltage.

Mario: So you go back to Southland?

Harold: I went back to Southland. Went back to Southland and was starting a medium voltage division. Two of the guys from Baker decided to join me. So it was me and two experts. Experts. One of them is still with me now. A guy named Shannon McKiernan.

Mario: Okay. So Shannon went with I know Shannon very well.

Harold: Shannon's cool.

Mario: I kinda want him to be the podcast.

Harold: You need to have him

Mario: on the Okay. So Shannon goes with you.

Harold: Shannon comes with me and Ken Crandall. Ken Crandall.

Mario: That name sounds familiar.

Harold: Yeah. Back in the day, Ken was the man.

Mario: Yeah, I know that name. Yep.

Harold: He's super smart. I couldn't have asked for a better person to be teamed up with for four or five years. Learned so much from that guy.

Mario: And Shannon, so it's the three Musketeers, three right Musketeers.

Harold: Went to Southland, we were there for two years. And I was reaching out to everybody, man. I was being super aggressive, reaching out to all the colleges, all the amusement parks, whoever I could to talk about media bulldozers. All the companies, hey, if you have MV, we'll be your sub. I was just calling everybody. That's Call on their mothers if they didn't answer.

Mario: So you didn't just know the product and how to do it, but you're selling.

Harold: I'm selling.

Mario: Yeah. And I don't think a lot of people realize that contractors and subs do that. Yeah.

Harold: The best sales guy are the field guys. Yeah. Because you're face to face with the customer all the time. And if you haven't figured it out already, I talk. Yeah. You're great. And I can just talk.

Mario: You've got that gift of Same way

Harold: in the field. Would just talk to the customers, get to know them. And I don't just get to know them by their work. I get to know them personally.

Mario: You're a deep guy.

Harold: To me it makes it more enjoyable. It makes my job enjoyable getting to know the people. Because then you're working with family. You're not working with just coworkers. And so, yeah, so Southland Electric, started building a small, medium voltage division. Because Southland was on the smaller size of a company, they didn't do quite as much per year as some of the bakers or the other companies. And I had subbed to a company called CSI Electric. Okay. My old roommate from high school that I lived with was one of the superintendents over there.

Mario: So I know. Steve Foster. Yeah. Know Steve. Great. And

Harold: I reached out to him because I knew that he was working for Cal State Long Beach. So I reached out and said, hey, man, I know you went to college and I'm sure you have a 12 kV loop and here's me doing my sales pitch. And he goes, well, I'm actually not with Cal State Long Beach anymore, but we sell about all of our medium voltage at CSI Electric. So, yeah, we'd love to give you a shot. So gave me a couple small jobs, couple splices and some term jobs and stuff. And we did seven jobs for CSI Electric within a very short period of time. Probably less than a year.

Mario: I would say it's a six month incubation process in progress.

Harold: And we brought Ken and Shannon who are solid. And within those seven projects they approached me and were like, hey, we're thinking about starting to do this internal. What would it take for you to guys to come over and start this up? And Southland, nothing against Southland. They just were on the smaller side.

Mario: And my

Harold: dream of a medium voltage division, they couldn't fund. And it was just way too big a scale. And it was too good a timing for CSI to come in

Mario: This is show like you all 2019?

Harold: This is 2018.

Mario: 'eighteen, okay.

Harold: So Baker it was 2013 to 2016. Went back to Southland 2016 to 2018. So 2018, I took the offer CSI again made me an offer I couldn't say no to. Yep. Actually offered me more than what I asked for.

Mario: And at this point, are you still installing? Are you being hired I'm everything. You're everything. You're the everything man.

Harold: I'm Whatever it the estimator. Ken and Shannon are installing and when they get busy, I throw the tools on, I'm out there. And when I'm out there, I'm not selling and I'm not estimating. So it gets a little slow. So it's like this. We jump ship. Again, nothing against Southland, great company, their family. I still talk to them from time to time. And I love them over there.

Mario: Now at CSI obviously, how big is your team?

Harold: So we started with three of us in 2018. And we did a project at Disneyland. And we ended up hiring a guy named Chris Berry, who you've met.

Mario: I know Chris Berry well.

Harold: Yeah. So we hired Chris Berry, so now it was four of us. And we had Disneyland, we did, it was called the E Substation. And one of the things that I think really was a good selling point was Ken has this intuition that is just like I've never seen before. And, there was a 12 kV loop that Disneyland wanted us to tie into. There was two circuits in a vault And we were tying in this substation called the East Substation. We're moving it from one side of a parking lot to the other. And that substation feeds like the hotels, Disney hotels. And so obviously it's very crucial, can't be down for long periods of time. And they said, this is the circuit we're tying into. There's a vault, there's two circuits. This is the one we're cutting into at like two in the morning. Everything's set up, wires pulled in, t bodies are made up, ready to rock and roll. All the big suits and ties are out there with their clipboards. And they said, okay, circuit's off. That's the one you can cut. And Ken Crandall goes, I'm not feeling it. Someone's telling me not to cut it. And they're like, we're telling you, that's the one. Cut it. He goes, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not cutting it because I need to test it a little further. And there's no T bodies, it's just a straight through pole. So there's nothing, there's no capacitive test points, there's nothing to test to. So he cuts a small window, super careful, cuts a small window.

Mario: So what does that mean? Cuts a small window.

Harold: Cuts the outer jacket, peels off the tape shield as safely as possible. Safely as possible, as safe as you can be. And put the tick tracer on it and it rings. It was And they were telling us you need that's the one cut. Yeah.

Mario: How many? It's 12470.

Harold: 12470. And we had the Milwaukee cutters with the remote. We'd be 50 feet away. I mean, everything was We would have been safe. However

Mario: I think it would have blown And

Harold: hotels would have been down for a long period of time. But because he did that, just his intuition alone, Disneyland was like, you've got to be kidding me. And right then and there, I'd say that night really put us on the map. Like, well, this team, they got their shit together.

Mario: That's pretty cool. These guys

Harold: are legit. And I give credit to Ken. Ken was super safe. One thing about Ken, I always knew I was gonna go home safely when I was on a job with Ken and I felt safe. And then if I was on a job, he wasn't there. He would literally call me before I'd go to work and say, Hey, brother, please be careful. I love you. I want you to go home to your family. He'd made me feel He kind of gave me the balls to stand up to the big bad wolf and say, No, not doing it.

Mario: Yeah, it's not safe.

Harold: Not safe, not doing it. And a lot of times, I would think like, what would Ken do? And I go on that and it's never let me down. Thank you, Ken. Thank you, Ken. Yep. Solid dude.

Mario: That's pretty cool.

Harold: Yeah. So that kind of put us on the map. And then, we had a couple of EPCs or not EPC, a couple of substations. Some substations, we had some solar farms.

Mario: Bigger stuff. How'd you get into solar farms?

Harold: Well, at Baker, we did some solar farms. We had all the T bodies terminations.

Mario: Was Baker the EPC or were they Who time? Was the EPC at Was it

Harold: Blattner or? Yeah, maybe Blattner. Being the installer, I didn't really know the big names. I was just there to do tea bodies. 90 something tea bodies, let's get out there and let's hammer it out. We got five weeks, six weeks, whatever, seven guys.

Mario: That's a lot of cable peeling.

Harold: And so CSI was very similar. Solar farms, not too much battery then. And so then again, let's throw the tools on. We had a big solar farm up in Paso Robles called Cal Flats. Ken, Shannon, Chris, and me Okay. With my tools. And, three straight weeks, sixteen hour days, Saturdays, Sundays. I mean, we finished. I drove home, got home Christmas Eve. Wow. And just go, go, go.

Mario: And you guys are doing everything from splices to T bodies?

Harold: Splices, yeah, inline splicing T bodies, modular splices, terminations T bodies at the transformers.

Mario: Would you guys be doing also like putting the arresters in? So on poles, Poles,

Harold: we would have a third party come in. So at the pole? Yeah, at the pole. We would do surge arresters at the end of the lines.

Mario: You guys would at the Pat Mount Transformers.

Harold: Yeah. So we do all that and then terminations at the substations.

Mario: When it feels like fault indicators became a thing, a popular thing two, three years ago. Were you guys doing fault indicators at the time or no?

Harold: That's a hit or miss thing. Even to this day, it just depends on the customer. Some fault indicators, sometimes not. I'd say nine times out of 10 we're not. So, maybe it's more of a data center thing. I do know on the data centers they throw fault indicators. Some solar farms we do fault indicators. Don't see a lot of

Mario: it. Okay. But you guys were doing everything medium voltage underground.

Harold: All underground media voltage.

Mario: Yep. Got

Harold: it. And then it just grew from there. It started to go. We started hiring a couple more guys here, couple more guys there. And got to where I couldn't help in the field anymore. I was just estimating business development, taking customers out, selling and estimating, and then project managing. So it's pretty much beginning to end. And now we are currently up to 17 medium voltage splicers. 17. 17. And we have a project manager now. Good

Mario: for you.

Harold: He's PM ing some of the smaller projects, a lot of the service type jobs. We do anything between $2,000 and millions

Mario: Yeah.

Harold: Of medium voltage. And so the bigger stuff, the EPC stuff that we're doing, I'll do the project management on some of the bigger stuff. So The smaller onesie twosie stuff, we have a project manager that does all of our service Yeah. And then the medium voltage service stuff as well.

Mario: I can go two different ways. We could talk about 133 because you brought four guys from your team. Two of them are instructors down in San Diego and the LA.

Harold: Yeah, so just to back up on that a little bit. Twenty years in the field, I know how guys in the field want to be treated. So I treat them that way. And I give them what they want as much as I can. This

Mario: is our recruiting call right here.

Harold: Tooling. If the guys need tools, we get them the tools. We treat them right.

Mario: Oh, I gotta ask you, Ripley or Speed Systems? Yes. Or I'll Rock. I guess that's the newcomer.

Harold: So here's my thing. For me personally, when I was in the field, was a Speed Systems guy. And I think mostly because I didn't use Ripley. But we have guys that like both. So we get whoever If this guy wants speed systems, he gets speed systems. If this guy wants Ripley, we get him Ripley.

Mario: So is the I was here, are you a Klein guy or a Knipex guy?

Harold: Well, I'd say Knipex now. Yeah. It just seems like a better product. Oh, interesting. Klein is getting loose.

Mario: Yeah. That makes sense.

Harold: Yeah. Yeah. Before it

Mario: was And not on the opening closing side of things.

Harold: No. You get like a Yeah. You get like a pair of alignments and you can tell a good tool when it's tight. Loose but not Waggly. Wonky. Yeah. And I'd say lately it's more wonky. Interesting.

Mario: So NipEX is just solid. Tight, solid. Yeah. So two things. 17 guys, are they all you've told me in the past, you are an NCSCB. We we should talk about what that means.

Harold: Yeah. So backing up a little bit because I was in the field for twenty years. I liked to do things clean. And I'm very particular of how I like things.

Mario: And that's your personality too. Mean, you Yeah.

Harold: So I like to hire, guys that are gonna, with the same mindset. I never tell anybody how they should install. I hire guys that I trust to install it. Guys that I know would do it the way I would do it or better. The guys that wouldn't do it as well as I would do it, they fall under the trainee category. And so we actually have I couldn't even tell you how many certified splicers we have currently. But we either hire or if we do hire a splicer, it's a trainee, and then they're working towards their NCSCB certification, which is a national certification for cable splicing. To me that sets apart a guy that took a mod one class as opposed to a guy that actually went out and did the national certification test. I call it the bar exam for electricians. It's very difficult. I know really, really good electricians that fail it multiple times.

Mario: It wasn't until I met you that my eyes were open when it came to training and having guys certified and stuff like that.

Harold: Good to know, thank you.

Mario: Yeah, because it was early on in the life of Elektrik that I met you. And up until that point, I I came from three ms, right? And I was trained and taught and told to put on these installation training classes. I can tell you how many times I trained guys that had never even seen medium voltage cable. And they were about to go into a vault the next week and go put on a termination. Yeah. So many. Scary. Yeah. Looking back at it, I'm

Harold: like, okay.

Mario: Can't believe that. Was the guy training them.

Harold: Let's take that guy and put him in that vault that Ken was in that night.

Mario: Yeah. Scary.

Harold: Does he cut it? He cuts it.

Mario: Scary. He cuts So when I met you and I was like, yeah. If I'm gonna be the guy training guys, I better have twenty years behind my back. I better have a certification that backs up all the training and especially the safety side of things and whatnot. I mean, craftsmanship probably comes with practice and repetition. Right. And great tools.

Harold: Yeah. A good cable splicer is not how well he puts a termination on. A good cable splicer is a guy that I trust to go into a building that shut off at 02:00 in the morning and they don't know what's wrong. And he can go in and safely identify the problem and fix it. Whether it's, we never send anybody alone. It's always two guys or more or not get them back online because it's not safe. And have the balls to say, sorry, Disneyland, You're not coming back online until this is safe to do so.

Mario: So obviously I think manufacturers, they do a good job. I think training people on their products and whatnot and typically go through the instructions. Outside of NCSCV, is there anybody else or any organizations that train people, journeymen, how to become medium voltage splicers? What's kind of the career path if I wanna be a medium voltage splicer? What do I do?

Harold: So for me, I went through the five year of normal electrical apprenticeship. And then in addition to that, there's about another two years of medium voltage training you can do. And that's typically for us with the IBEW. I'm not sure non union how they go about it. But for a union, we actually have medium voltage training. Cool. Yep. So you can go to your local union. Yep. And most of the time they actually will offer those classes.

Mario: So this is like the one up in San Francisco, like Rich Sieber and those guys that Brian Garcia. Have Local You have a couple of guys.

Harold: Yeah, Local eleven. They have a class there.

Mario: So where's Local eleven?

Harold: Local eleven is Los Angeles. They have a class there. It's taught by a guy named John Monk. I know John. John works for CSI. Very cool. So that's another thing I have a lot of, I shouldn't say pride.

Mario: You should be proud of your team for sure.

Harold: Yeah. Thank you. So the trainer in the Los Angeles area works for us. Trainer in the San Diego area works for us.

Mario: That's pretty cool. Doyle Morrison. What a flex.

Harold: Two of the smartest medium voltage guys. And there's a lot of really smart. And I categorize smartest medium voltage guys pretty loosely because there's a lot of really good medium voltage guys. I've said this before, said it to you, but I'll say it right here. I will put my Medium Voltage team against anybody in the country. I mean, they're solid, super great guys.

Mario: I know them both.

Harold: And it's not just like I said, it's not just by how good they put a termination on. It's the safety reasons. Feel comfortable. I can sleep at night knowing that we're having an outage and I sleep just fine. I didn't in the beginning, but the more we did these and the more the team that I'm surrounded by, has done it. I don't even think about it. And sometimes I forget they're out there because I'm so comfortable with

Mario: my team. Yeah. So seven years Of what?

Harold: Has it been seven?

Mario: Yeah. At CSI and learning to become this medium voltage expert. So I went to school and studied for seven years. I I did engineering as a bachelor's, then I did an MBA. And I had offers to go work as an MBA and make, I think Intel gave me an offer for $80,000 How much do medium voltage splicers make? Can I ask that?

Harold: Yeah. Okay. It varies. Most of our medium voltage guys, typically a good medium voltage guy makes a really good foreman or general foreman somewhere else. They're really hard to get because everyone wants them. Typically. They do fall under the diva category. And I think a lot of that is because of their knowledge and because of their, the the fact that they'll tell you, no, I'm not turning it on or the you know, they're the type they're type a guys. And so, they're the best. They're the best at what they do. And so we typically pay them a general form and scale or a form and scale. And with the union, every local is different. Every local has their own scale. But I would say on some of our bigger projects, I mean, have a guy that on one of our bigger projects, has brought home, I won't say his number, but he brought home close to 300,000 last year.

Mario: Oh my gosh.

Harold: Yeah.

Mario: Are you serious?

Harold: Yeah. They're great. Wow.

Mario: Good for them.

Harold: And you get what you pay for.

Mario: Yeah. Good for them. So you're saying trades can make equal or more money than lawyers and doctors. Oh, yeah.

Harold: Without college debt. With no college.

Mario: That's I mean, let that sink in

Harold: Yeah.

Mario: To everybody listening. Mhmm. Very cool. So and it probably ranges, right? Like

Harold: Now, this guy works really hard. Our entire team works really hard. Some guys choose to go home every night. Obviously, they're not making as much and that's fine.

Mario: Okay. So what's the low range of a medium voltage splice? 150. 150. 150. Yeah. That's pretty wild. I mean, looking back in my career, I mean, that's good for them. That's awesome. They're putting their lives in danger.

Harold: Absolutely.

Mario: Yeah. It's a dangerous position. To say the least.

Harold: Yeah. Dangerous job. I believe the fifth most dangerous job in the world is electricians. Yeah. Yep. Police officers and firefighters are like sixteenth, seventeenth.

Mario: So if I'm a journeyman listening and I'm used to doing four eighty, two twenty. Low voltage. Low voltage. And I'm here listening to you. I can go do some medium voltage terminations.

Harold: Not tomorrow.

Mario: Yeah, it's gonna take a couple of years.

Harold: Yeah, look into some training. Okay. Find a team. Find a team of good guys. I say it every day. I'm as smart as the people I surround myself with. I sound smart because I repeat what smart people say. It's a Joe Rogan

Mario: quote. I kinda feel that way about myself too.

Harold: So find those guys. If you're a journeyman, you're electrician and you're looking to get into medium voltage, find the guy, find the trainers, find the safe guys and surround yourself by that guy, hang out with that guy and work your ass off. Make him want you on his team because then he'll take the time to teach you the right way. And then look into some classes, take some, if you're union, they're called Mod one, Mod two. Mod one is basic hand tape splicing. I strongly suggest learning how to hand tape. Because if you learn that hand tape, you've now learned the structure of the MV cable. You now know what that component that you're installing is doing. Anybody can read instructions and put a termination on. But to understand what it's doing, why I'm doing it this way. Because not always are you gonna get every piece of that termination in a box. And, if you understand what you're building and why you're building it this way and the structure of it, you'll know what's missing. You'll know how to maybe tweak it this way or that way to make it right.

Mario: It's interesting. Has it ever happened where you've caught mistakes in instruction?

Harold: Oh yes, absolutely.

Mario: And you call out the manufacturer like, yo, this cutback's wrong.

Harold: Sometimes Okay. We'll get a termination that's longer than a 12 kV termination that's longer than in this box. Two twelve kV terminations. So there's discrepancies in the manufacturing too from time to time. And an expert in his field will know. And he can make changes in the field because at 02:00 in the morning when Disneyland needs to get back online, you can't call the wholesale house. Good luck getting Mario out of bed. You would. You would. I know

Mario: I would. No. It's true though.

Harold: So hand tape. Hand tape, I think is baseline. Mod

Mario: one. Okay.

Harold: Mod one. Learn how to hand tape.

Mario: And that takes what? A year?

Harold: I mean, it could take, if you're going regularly, you could probably get it done in about six months.

Mario: Okay.

Harold: That's mod one, there's six months.

Mario: And this is after hours taught at night?

Harold: It's all on your own time. Yeah. You're not gonna get paid for it unless you have a company that'll pay you for it. If they got a lot of faith in you and they know you're gonna be a guy that's gonna stick around and do medium voltage for them. A lot of companies will pay you for it. Some companies will teach it in house. That's what we're doing at Baker Electric. We're teaching it in house. Through the union, you got union credit for it.

Mario: So now you guys are sending your guys to John at eleven.

Harold: Yeah, now we actually just take, we'll hire guys that have already taken it.

Mario: Got it.

Harold: Yeah. So the guys that have already taken them are our trainees. Very cool. Yeah. So we've got guys that our trainees are guys that have already got a couple of years under their belt. That's how much we're separate ourselves from a standard splice.

Mario: 17 guys of rock stars. Rock stars. Probably so excited right now listen to you. I'm part of the Navy SEAL team in San Diego, right there.

Harold: Special ops.

Mario: Yeah, very fitting. Let's talk about one hundred thirty three. So when the idea of one hundred thirty three happened, this was early on. I don't know if you remember talking about it with me, but it was like

Harold: I do remember I thought you were crazy. I was like, this ain't gonna happen. Pipe dream.

Mario: Yeah, it was very early, right? Like 2021. That's a while ago, yeah. Yeah. Hey, Harold, what if we got together the best of the best in the country? And we had a party, an MV Fest. And how about you judge it? And you start asking, I remember you started asking me questions like, what kind of judging? What what are we gonna look for? What are And I was like

Harold: and my my gears are already turning. I'm asking questions, but it's mostly my my thoughts just coming out of my mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Like, because I didn't know how to turn it off. And so they were just popping out like questions that I was asking myself basically, you were hearing. Yeah. Yep.

Mario: I remember I was like, well, you're the expert. I'm just the guy wanting to make this happen. I'll put it together. But let's let you run it with your own judging and your own questions. And I think I did push on you a couple of judges. I was like, hey, would you take Joe White house, Scott Hatch, Adam Straub and this is your team, but you're in charge. Right.

Harold: Yeah, that happened. And the judging aspect of it was just going back over my career and actually even the current guys kind of figuring out not just the termination side of it, but the judging was based off of a circumstance we could potentially find ourselves in. Not just a warehouse setting with a termination and some instructions.

Mario: Nice table and ice.

Harold: Nice table and air conditioning. I mean, if we could had rain and wind set up in here, it would have been more realistic. Yeah. And nighttime and ice cold and freezing and But, so I was trying to figure out a way how can we create something like that and make it to where you're gonna be judged off of as real life circumstances we can create. And so those are the thoughts that were going through my mind. How can we make this happen? And, I actually went back to my youngest son is a professional hip hop dancer. And I went to one of his competitions. And the scoring was very unique. And I started to figure out how are they scoring this? What do they And because this scoring system was within a fraction. Like first place to second place was like 6.09 to 6.07. That's how close it is from first to second place. And I'm like, what are they doing? How are they getting so granular? And so I started creating spreadsheets with a scoring system on splicing. And I was trying to figure this out and came up with a scoring system that actually sort of worked. It's gonna evolve. Second annual, the scoring is gonna evolve.

Mario: So is next year gonna be a little bit different?

Harold: It'll be a little bit different and the scoring will be a little better.

Mario: So we'll get into judging next year. But so you had, how many people do you have? We have nine teams, I think, eight or nine teams.

Harold: So if they get started out with just five teams was original and you were gonna take two guys from every company.

Mario: Yeah, and then I had like two or three companies that were like, we want our guys there.

Harold: You start You start

Mario: think Blatner called

Harold: companies asking you to be a part of it.

Mario: Yeah. Blatner called, Summit Line called and these are big companies. Right? So us were like, what should we do?

Harold: Yeah. Yeah. So to go back on the scoring, the scoring was off of, we judged on safety. Okay. Are you wearing your PPE? Glasses, hard hat.

Mario: I remember only one team was wearing like hard hats.

Harold: Yeah, you had a team come in here and they had like a caution taped off and Yeah, they came ready. They made you sign their safety protocol was the h h a, what do call that?

Mario: Yeah. The site walk around.

Harold: Yes, site walk, okay, sign my paperwork here, you're in my work zone. That's pretty cool. Like they went above and beyond on the safety aspect.

Mario: Shout out Andrew and Adrian.

Harold: Yeah, that was really cool. And that to and believe it or not, that was the deciding factor

Mario: That's

Harold: on so cool. How they placed.

Mario: So Steve Frank, going back to the roots. Yeah. I wonder if he had anything to to do with that.

Harold: With the

Mario: because Steve was kinda like your Oh, no. No. No. Steve was your mentor.

Harold: No. Who Steve Frank was my mentor. Ken Crandall.

Mario: Ken. Okay.

Harold: So put it this way.

Mario: So that's the Ken point. Next year,

Harold: Ken Crandall will be one of my judges. Oh, he's coming? So That's cool. Have you ever seen the cartoon Surf's Up? Yes. Of course. You remember the big one? The guy that made the surfboards? Yeah, man. Yeah, man. This is how you make a surfboard. And he's like, shaping the board and then the kid takes the thing and he goes and he's like, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. That's Ken Crandall. Yeah. Ken will teach you how to do a termination and you could do it exactly like him and he'll tell you you're doing it.

Mario: That's funny.

Harold: He's super critical. He's coming. I've already talked to him.

Mario: That's awesome. He's super 133 next year's gonna

Harold: be Oh, it's gonna be amazing. So, yeah, Ken had a lot to do with the what would Ken do? Ken. That's cool. Okay. And so, so the scoring system had a lot to do with, we set up a circumstance. Can I kind of talk about what we did? Yeah. Yeah. So it started out with a termination and then we did a load break. Yep. Or a t body.

Mario: Load break. Large large interface.

Harold: Large yeah. 35 kV interface.

Mario: Which it was kinda cool because some of the guys had never done a load break before because they came from the solar farms. Perfect.

Harold: Yeah. We want, how good of a splicer are you? Yep. How well can you adapt in the field? And, and then we did a splice. And then we had all the teams do the term, and we had them do the load break and then they would pause. And then as they went in to go do their splice, we took all their tools from them. No speed systems, no riplies.

Mario: Which and it's XLPE cable.

Harold: It's XLPE. It's not rubber.

Mario: Yep. And we Hard as hell.

Harold: We made them use their knives. Because what if your tool breaks at 02:00 in the morning? I remember there were some angry guys. There were some angry there were guys that didn't know what to do. And it slowed them down dramatically. And, but hey, that's what separates a good splicer from a

Mario: I thought it was really cool. Who was the teen that bought all that Kevlar rope? It was John's, wasn't it? Didn't John buy the Kevlar? No. Monk? Yeah. I'm not sure. I think it was John's team. Who's John's partner? The team Doyle.

Harold: John and Doyle are two trainers. And I'm not being biased. I'm just stating what I think is the facts. Their product was by far probably the best one in the warehouse. They took second place by a fraction because they weren't wearing their hard hats. Okay. Hey, the rules are the rules.

Mario: I think they learned for next one. Absolutely. If you're listening, you're coming.

Harold: Oh, yeah. Doyle's already said, yeah, I'm putting a hard hat on my safety glasses. I'm caution taping a whole area like it's above and beyond. Cool. But to me that actually that for me, solidified my statement. I'll put my team up against anybody in the country.

Mario: Yeah. And John and Doyle, solid. I think speaks and I think your team knows and they walked away with some pretty sweet prices, but they know that you're a fair guy. Yeah. And I think that showed it. Right? You're an unbiased judge.

Harold: As the judge, there were four of us. We all use the same scoring system and I scored every single team the lowest. Out of all four judges? Every single team, I scored the lowest.

Mario: So Scott and Joe were giving out cupcakes?

Harold: Yes. So some of the so what we did was we took the high score and the low score and we threw them out.

Mario: Okay.

Harold: And then we took Who was

Mario: lowest and highest?

Harold: I was lowest for everybody across the board.

Mario: Okay.

Harold: That was the most critical.

Mario: Yeah.

Harold: Probably because I did twenty years in the field. The other three guys, Adam Adam. Some years in the field, not twenty. Yep. And then,

Mario: Scott and Joe.

Harold: Yeah. So they were

Mario: 40 each. But how much field work? Joe, probably twenty. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Joe has a lot

Harold: of Yeah. So they were they were really nice. Yeah. They were really nice. Everybody's a winner. But, you know, I'm very critical guy. I expect a product that I would install or better.

Mario: And granted, we had the best of the best.

Harold: We had the best of the best.

Mario: Yeah. So these guys are walking around looking at the best of the best. What are they gonna say? Bad? No, you are because

Harold: I'm going to. Ken will. Cool. Great. I'm critical. Wait till Ken comes. Great. So my score was thrown out and the highest score was thrown out. Then we took the second, third place score and we averaged them. Cool. Yep. And so, Andrew, I think his team took first. John and Doyle second. And then we actually had two CSI teams here. And that was kind of a late last minute decision because one of them was a really good shit talker.

Mario: Shannon was talking smack on LinkedIn like crazy. So I was like, we gotta have this guy come.

Harold: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like how I'm He was making memes.

Mario: Oh, he was great. Yeah. He was talking. He was already doing that before he He was coming.

Harold: Yeah. Was Yeah. So he had done a couple of memes, made a couple of jokes, made a couple of memes, put them on LinkedIn. Yeah. Because he was back in John and Doyle. He's like, hey, these are This is my team. I'm gonna back these guys. And so he was trash talking in favor of John and Doyle. And then you saw it and said, I need this guy. Has got to be part of the competition. And so you made the exception and brought two teams from CSI.

Mario: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. And then number three, think Blatner took that.

Harold: Yeah, Blatner then CSI took fourth, Shannon and Chris took fourth.

Mario: And then the rest of teams were all like equal, right? Like very similar. That's a lot of fun. So we're doing that next year. Can't wait. Okay, we're gonna do a little bit of a fire drill.

Harold: Oh boy.

Mario: I'm gonna say something and you're gonna take first thing that comes to your mind. Doesn't matter.

Harold: Hold Yeah,

Mario: take a shot. Whiskey here. Fire drill. Get ready. And this is gonna be kind of fun. We're gonna keep it all to good vibes. All right. Right. So favorites. Sure. Richards. Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say manufacturer. Yeah, favorite manufacturer, Richards.

Harold: For T bodies.

Mario: Okay. Favorite medium voltage accessory. Oh, first thing.

Harold: Well, I'm trying to think what do you mean by accessory?

Mario: So splice, Robert, body load break.

Harold: Just asked me who my favorite kid is. I can't say. Because I love them all so equally in different ways. Does that make sense? No. Spicy is fun because it's like two terminations in one and you have to make it one unit. Because that cable has to be the same cable from your right to your left. And you just created that path. That's fun to me.

Mario: So tape splices?

Harold: I mean, sure. I mean, any splice, as long as you created that path whether

Mario: to So you like splices. Heat shrink.

Harold: Heat. Well, hold on.

Mario: Should we do heat in January?

Harold: Well, now you gotta get all the torches and stuff too.

Mario: That's okay.

Harold: Yeah. Termination is cool because it's, you're landing on a bus at a substation or a pole mount or, and you're making it up. And it could be a cold drink or a heat shrink. It's just so What do you prefer?

Mario: Cold or

Harold: heat? Well, depends on circumstance. If I'm outdoor, I prefer cold on a pole. Okay. And I learned this from you actually because we came across some outdoor terminations that were heat shrink. And what happened was, it was a very hot and cold environment. It was out in the desert and everything would get really hot and the cables, terminations, everything would expand. And then when it got really cold at night, everything contracted. However, the heat, wouldn't contract with it. The termination. So all of the seals broke loose. And then the outer jacket would get cold and shrink.

Mario: You talk to someone that is like a crazy Raychem only

Harold: Heat shrink guy. Heat shrink

Mario: guy. Like, the best seal in the world, blah, blah, blah, I

Harold: disagree and I got proof.

Mario: I've seen those pictures. It depends on the environment.

Harold: Again, you've got a 100 degree If I'm in a cabinet, that has super sharp edges, which you see a lot. Yes. I'm going heat shrink.

Mario: Yep. Those are tougher.

Harold: They're tougher. If you barely Nick a cold shrink. Six months later, you come back, you got cold shrink on the ground.

Mario: Everything has its purpose. I don't think heat's going anywhere. I don't think cold's going anywhere. And I think that's what makes you special because you adapt. Right. And you're not close minded. Like there's a lot of people are very close minded.

Harold: Yeah.

Mario: Okay. So you didn't commit to a favorite accessory.

Harold: Because I can't commit to my favorite.

Mario: But Richard is your favorite manufacturer. Keybody. Okay. What about cable? What's your favorite manufacturer of cable?

Harold: Southwire. Okay, why? Personally. For me personally, it's just easiest to

Mario: And you use all of them, right? Like you're not Yeah,

Harold: Oakenite, Prismeum. I mean, we've trash cable too, unfortunately. Some of those bigger projects when you're talking millions of dollars, we go with trash Yeah. Cable. And people will be watching this and they'll know exactly who I'm talking about. And they will know who exactly I'm talking about. Trash cable. However, there are circumstances we are forced to use it unfortunately. But that's what makes a good splicer too. They use this trash cable and we create the best product we can, which is still unfortunately not that great. But we do what we can. Yeah. So cable, I would say Southwire. I like the way, the semi constructs off the installation. I like the white EPR.

Mario: Interesting. Okay.

Harold: I like it. Not that everybody does. The pink has lead. The Southwire, the white insulation is lead free.

Mario: That's what Interesting.

Harold: Yeah. So, but there are guys on my team who I consider better splicers say Southwire is trash. So everybody's unique in their own way.

Mario: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Favorite, manufacturer rep.

Harold: Patrick Lyons.

Mario: Love that. He's gonna love that.

Harold: I love that dude.

Mario: He's good.

Harold: He's just a cool cat. He's just, he is, Robert Redford. Okay. Just cool dude, good looking guy, just when he walks in the room, just strutting. He came to 133,

Mario: that was really cool That up was right in the middle of him, like going out to colleges and visiting with his kid and he made two days to come out to the West. And So I have a lot of respect

Harold: for Backs up my response. Just a good dude.

Mario: It all comes full circle. So my experience with Patrick, was when we decided to go full distributor at Elektrik, he was one of the first guys that I called, Would you set us up? No hesitation. Yes. Think you guys are awesome. You guys are doing something special. We're like, are you gonna get heat for setting us up? And he's like, Oh yeah, for sure. It's like, but that's okay.

Harold: Yeah. Love him.

Mario: I got your back. And he's always had our back. Patrick's great. Favorite factory tour. You've done a few of these, right? Like where you've gone to manufacturers and and you've gone tours.

Harold: They're they're all so great. Okay. Minus one. One I almost died at. Are you serious? Alright. We gotta hear that.

Mario: We wanted to keep it good vibe. Okay.

Harold: I won't give manufacturer names. But it was

Mario: What was the favorite? You gotta you gotta tell us favorite.

Harold: Know, Okanite's really good. Okay. They're good.

Mario: Was this up in California?

Harold: Yeah, yeah. Santa Clara. They have a nice facility up there. But Southwire, you know, they have a copper mining, or a rod company. They actually make copper rod. Yeah. And I got to, tour the plant. So cool.

Mario: That was cool.

Harold: See how they make that copper. And then they take Southwire sells copper rod to like multiple cable manufacturers.

Mario: That is so You'll walk

Harold: in another cable manufacturer and see Southwire copper rod on the ground, like on the spools.

Mario: That is so cool.

Harold: Yeah. Southwire's there and their facility was clean.

Mario: The Southwires everywhere. They're everywhere.

Harold: Yeah. But it was clean. I felt safe. Yeah. It was just, good presentation, very professional.

Mario: I don't remember the name of the program. I went to visit Southwires two years ago and I walked away just

Harold: Blown away.

Mario: Blown away. Well, they have this program where they'll hire troubled kids that are having a hard time graduating for tough life circumstances. And they'll give them a job that goes towards high school. I wanna say it goes towards high school credit. And these are kids that have been to Juby or tough. And those are the kits that are making all of your guys'

Harold: You just made me like Southwire even more.

Mario: Wire bundles that you buy at Home Depot? Yeah. They're made by kids that are I love them. That are just out of Juby. Perfect. In Carrollton, Georgia. So really cool. I Southwire is awesome. Yep. And good company. Favorite job. Favorite project you've done.

Harold: Because you've done a lot. I've done a lot. I'd say the most to have my name a part of was Disneyland. Because my grandpa helped to build Disneyland in the fifties.

Mario: How cool is that? Yeah.

Harold: So to be a part of something that my grandpa was a part of was very That is so cool. Very

Mario: That's awesome.

Harold: Yeah. Just makes me feel. It could be this talking. But yeah, that was really neat.

Mario: That is so cool. Do you see medium voltage at in ten, twenty years? What's gonna be different?

Harold: Well, what's changed in the last twenty years? Not a ton, tea bodies, not much. People have their ideas. The hammerheads from Richards. That's a new idea. Three ms kinda had something similar and where's that now?

Mario: Yeah. They put it in the trash. They put it in the trash. Was talking with someone about that.

Harold: Not that Hammerhead's gonna go there.

Mario: How sad was that?

Harold: Yeah. And I appreciate people thinking outside the box. Okay. But I think we currently have a pretty good product that's probably gonna stick around for another twenty years. Interesting. Okay.

Mario: Mentors. Who would you say were your three, four mentors that have shaped Harold Raiden?

Harold: Steve Frank. Okay. Ken Crandall. My team. Wow. Okay. Your current team. My current team.

Mario: Where do you see your current team at in the next twenty years? Doubled or more. With me,

Harold: whittling some wood, sitting in my front porch drinking whiskey and smoking a cigar, checking in on them from time to time. Seven years, eight years retired. Nice. Yeah. Hopefully. Nice.

Mario: So and and last last thing. You are and a lot of people don't know this about you, but you're a world champion. Retired. Okay. You wanna tell us about that?

Harold: Well, that is a whole story in itself. Yeah. So when I lived in Minnesota, I I was reading the newspaper or whatever you call them out there. There was an ad for an arm wrestling competition. Small little podunk at the fair. It was right after the cowboy rodeo or bull riding arm wrestling competition. And I told my wife, I'm actually pretty good at arm wrestling.

Mario: Had you done it before?

Harold: Not competitively. But I've in high school, arm wrestled my buddies. I beat all my buddies. I was even beating, like, my high school teachers, like, the wrestling coach. I beat everybody.

Mario: I mean, you've got these gigantic hands. Yeah. So I was Yeah. Put put your

Harold: neck like this Genetically.

Mario: Next to mine. You can you can do so the camera can see that one. Just for context, this

Harold: is So genetically, I I didn't know at the time, but genetically, I was built for arm wrestling. Mhmm. For a certain style. There's so many different styles of arm wrestling. For my particular style, which is called the top roll, I got the hand size, I got the arm length, and for my body weight at the time, it was perfect. I had one of the bigger arms in my weight class. But I went to this little podunk tournament and I lost my very first match to the guy that ended up taking first and I thought maybe I'm not that good. Yeah. But then it was a double elimination. I worked my way back up, took a second. The promoter said, hey, I'm gonna this is your first time ever. I'm gonna take you to a real competition, like a state championship. So he took me to the Iowa State Championship.

Mario: Iowa. Iowa. These are farmers. I mean, these are tough kids.

Harold: Yeah. And so I get there and there's people wearing their state like sports team, like a team Minnesota, team Iowa, team Nebraska Yeah. Team Missouri, you know? And, or or whatever club they're with, they they represent their club. And I was like, this these guys take this pretty serious. So So I signed up and I jumped in there and I was beating guys. I don't know who they were. Took second. It was an Iowa State championship. And I was beating guys that were apparently were professionals. Team Minnesota, Harold from Minnesota, and so from Minnesota come up in arm wrestle. And so team Minnesota was like, who's this guy from Minnesota? We don't know who he is and he's beating all of our guys. Who's this guy? So they approached me and they recruited me and started training me and I was driving. Every Saturday. I would drive two and a half hours with a one year old baby girl With Tabby. In the car seat. Yep. And I would drive two and a half hours to practice. And I would train with these professionals at the time and I didn't know it. But at the time, these guys were some of the best in the country. And, a guy named Jason Reamer, one of the best ever, incredible. He got so good and he beat one of the best arm wrestlers of all time and he was paid a thousand dollars for it. So he quit. He said, I just beat the best ever and got paid $1,000 He goes, I'm finding a new hobby. So he was one of my trainers. And a year and a half later, I won my first world title as an amateur. Wow. Yeah. A year. A year and a half.

Mario: Yeah. Just after you started And you

Harold: know what's funny is I was arm wrestling, I was jumping in as many tournaments as I could. And I was arm wrestling all the amateur classes from the lightest weight because I weighed a hundred and sixty five pounds.

Mario: I'm kinda seeing a trend here like best of the best, perfection. I mean OCD. I was gonna say it but okay. Yeah. OCD. Yep. Yeah. So you've got that mentality.

Harold: Added to it. I perfected my my craft.

Mario: You're not a one thirty three, you're a one seventy four.

Harold: Yeah. So yeah. It because it kept growing and growing and I start teaching guys, I start teaching. I've actually trained a couple world champions. And yeah.

Mario: That's pretty cool. I mean, I saw a video of you beating who's the UFC guy, the famous guy?

Harold: Sean Strickland. Sean Strickland.

Mario: Yeah. Have to

Harold: put Recently, that right? Yeah. It was maybe a year and a half ago.

Mario: Yeah, it was a year ago. And that was right after you had the bad accident.

Harold: Yeah, I was in a really bad car accident. I actually broke my neck in three places. Two years ago. Three, going on '3, November would be And three it pinched my nerve that actually gives your right tricep motion. And so I actually probably lost about 90% of the strength in my right arm, ironically. And I'm not one to just sit back. In fact, part of me was a little excited about recovering. Know. Crazy. And so, I just started working and started working to gain it back. And what better way to strengthen your arm than arm wrestle? So, I started hitting up some of my arm wrestling buddies. I got a really good buddy named Jake Smith who owns a Muay Thai gym actually in Vista, California. Start going to his gym and he's got an arm wrestling table there and so was training and that's how I met Sean Strickland. Sean Strickland came in to go spar at my buddy's Muay Thai gym.

Mario: No way.

Harold: Very cool. And so my buddy called me up. He's like, bro, you gotta come. Sean Strickland's coming. I said, I'm there. I'm there. And, yeah. So he arm wrestled me and he was the coolest guy dude. He's so cool. Such a We're talking trash. He loved my trash talk to him. Yeah. I I basically called him a girl. I said, your girlfriend a lesbian? Yeah. I saw that. So much fun. Yeah, was a good time.

Mario: That's cool. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Harold.

Harold: Hey, man. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed myself.

Mario: This is fun.