Attila Zold - From Romania to Reinvention: Built From Nothing - Multiple Times

It wasn't the easy way, but it was the right way. I used to run from kindergarten with the truck drivers to go to the oil rigs because they used to know me and my father. I always loved that lifestyle. And it's not the most glorious lifestyle but it's the one that makes me happy.

Basically I was more or less a legal slave. And that was probably the... scariest part of all this beside the dumpster fire and the people getting arrested. I reached my address and I was sitting and looking at it, I'd be like, I'm wondering if this is the real deal or this is just a good old Romanian robbery where they sell you fake papers and fake contacts.

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athletefresh.shop/fromthegroundupshow Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show where we encourage and inspire the next generation of free thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have been there, done that, and are still getting it done. Building a life that they love with their hearts, their hands, and their hustle. I'm your host, Erick Loden.

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fromthegroundupshow.com. Today, I'm really excited. I have an old friend on the show.

Attila Zold is joining me. Attila is a native Romanian, an American citizen, and has had a number of careers in the oil and gas field, both in Europe and the US, as well as having built a career in roofing. Attila has worked diligently and successfully to completely start over and build a new life a number of different times. Attila has a drive and a spirit that just keeps going regardless of adversity.

He has worked extremely hard to build the life that he enjoys with his heart, his hands, and his hustle. So Attila, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Erick. Yeah, this is a lot of fun.

You and I spent a lot of time together over a number of years quite some time ago, but we don't get to catch up as often as I would like. So it's fun getting to catch up a little bit this morning. Well, we will dive right in. I think this is going to be a fun and exciting interview, but Attila, can you tell us a little bit about your life growing up?

I know you were born in Romania and grew up in Romania. What was that like? growing up as a kid was different than I see kids growing up in this country or for the matter of fact, the country's grown up in Romania these days, but we didn't know as kids that we're lacking a lot of stuff that other kids have. Basically we didn't miss out on much.

It was more of a self-reliance as a family and was all about maintaining relationships between neighbors, friends and relatives. Simple childhood, very, very fortunate to have great parents and I don't regret any of the things we didn't have as a kid, but we appreciate so much more everything we have now. And their kids... There things that we went through as a kid that my kids will never understand and even if I'm going to tell them one day, I don't think they're going to buy it.

But having no... We never even had the land light in the house to begin with. Like a phone, a land light phone and was normal for the whole country because everything was controlled by the government. So you couldn't really have the freedom of speech, regardless if it was mail or phone or any other way.

My dad used to destroy a radio about every other year because it wouldn't work properly. And I recall when he was smashing down the internal parts of the radio, was already chopped up and gutted. So the radio was released on the market for people to the point that you could not pick no foreign radio stations. So everything very tightly controlled by the government.

So all the information that you could have access to was nothing but the street propaganda. So you do them, it's much up to anything. And I remember having the daily blackouts, which was every afternoon, we have like two, three, four hours of electricity, which was a national saving plan. So all kind of like, kind of like you see in Cuba, rolling blackouts, lack of food, lack of standard things you have in you as they did on have and for them is normal.

They don't know difference. So when you move from that away, then you appreciate what you have here so much more. in a nutshell, happy kids, lots of playing with toys and hide and seek and make believe stories and no really technical job. no video games, no...

We had a soccer ball, we chased that ball every day, we played hide and seek and we just roam around the neighborhood, get in trouble, running into the woods. That was, you know, not my childhood. So to me it was amazing. I wouldn't change it for nothing.

having grown up without some of those modern conveniences and enjoyed it so much, does that affect the way that you raise your kids now? They are spoiled rotten. The one thing I try to keep away is the TV. Junior is two and he gets glued to the TV and you can't take him outside.

He doesn't sleep right. So I try not to let him watch TV almost at all. And I'll force him to go outside and he loves going outside. Like if you don't take the kid outside by eight, nine o'clock he's trained 10 from feet.

So I'm fortunate to have a yard and he's happy to be near 24-7. I will try to raise him. more an outdoor boy and not so much glued to a thing and a tablet. Eventually I'm going to have to introduce him to it because going to the dentist a couple of weeks ago, mom was complaining that she raised her son without tablets and cell phones and TVs and the homework at kindergarten level, it's already a sign on the tablets.

So they're going to force you to embrace the technology, which is not the terrible thing. You just have to have a balance between. video games, tablet TV and outdoor activities. Kids should be kids, they should be burned at the energy and not...

just be a vegetable on couch. I just don't see that being healthy for their development. yeah, absolutely. So speaking of education, what was your education like in Romania?

know you actually had quite an extensive college education there, didn't you? I had a petroleum engineering degree in Romania and that's thanks to my father's push because I was more than happy to be part of the working class with him. He was a mechanic for the longest time for the gas company. He had many positions but when I was a kid and I was looking at, you know, all the kids have that, your father is your hero stage where I was a young kid and I was looking up at him, he always had like greasy hands and I was oh, one day when I'm weak.

grown-up person, I want to be just like him or greased up. And he was not having that. So he forced me basically to go seek higher education and he paid for it too. So I was fortunate from that standpoint.

So I had no student loans, no nothing like it. And I just went in, got my degree and I was fortunate enough to work for a couple of years in Romania as an employee for Rome Gas, which was the Romanian gas company at the time. Unfortunately, money-wise at the time, in 2000 between 2003 and 2005 I was paid $200 a month. So as you can imagine, it doesn't really get you a whole lot.

so even as a relatively well-educated uh person in a highly professional career, the pay scale just wasn't there in Romania. It was never there, yes. And even till this day, like compared to the rest of the workers, I was the top of the middle class, but compared to the rest of the world, you are underpaid. And that discrepancy carries on till this day.

Yeah. So if you were making $200, what would say if you had followed in your father's footsteps and become a mechanic, what would you have been making? hit less, would be less than that. And I'm just trying to random ballpark number.

I'm guessing this day and age, they probably get like $2,000 a month because a couple of neighbors of mine, they became doctors like young, but 10 years younger than me. And they ended up passing a lot of years back that they pay doctors a standard 3000 euros a month, which is, I don't know, 3500, $4,000 a month. So if a doctor is paid $4,000 a month, I don't really Imagine a mechanic being paid more than half of that. So these days they probably get $2,000 a month.

But with this war in Iran, I was keeping track of the fuel prices because I see a lot of memes from Romania coming out about the fuel. And currently the gasoline is about almost $10 a gallon. So if you make $1,500 a month, and a gallon is $10 a month, you can imagine all the rest of the price of tracking that. So you don't really get far in life.

Yeah. And so I imagine that was probably a motivating factor to cause you to come to the U.S. Is that the primary factor?

I wanted to travel. wanted to see what the has to offer. Because at that point we had TV and I was seeing all the national parks in the world. And especially for me, I really wanted to see Yellowstone Park.

That to me was the major factor, the dream factor. Between Yellowstone and New York and other parks in Australia, I wanted to find a way to be able to travel. And the only way for me to travel was to seek a job outside of Romania. And in the process of trying to go to Australia or New Zealand, because at the time they used to have decent jobs, would outsource.

And they would outsource them through middleman companies, third party companies. So I went and I signed up for one of these companies to pass me a job contract in case they have something outside of Romania. And they just so happened, they called me a few years later, which was for me was phenomenal luck. And they told me that they have a job in Buffalo, USA and said, great, I'm going there.

So you want to know more like, nope, that's all I need to know. It's in USA, I'll take it. So with that job contract, had to pay for like 600, $700 at the time. That's how they make their money out of it.

And I took that job contract and I went to the Romanian embassy in Bucharest and I had to go through the whole system and basically had to have a background check. uh runway tickets, had to health insurance for the time period you want to apply for the visa and you had to have a proof of income. You had to have basically this in life in Romania to be allowed to leave the country. Basically they wanted to have some sort of proof that you will return and there is a reason for you to return.

So once again the job does pay $200 a month in their eyes. That was a great job. So now go yeah this guy's gonna be back for sure. Which I did and I did that for like two years in a row before I find out that you don't have to return to your country to extend your work visa.

can do it in US and that's how was able to carry on and be here for longer. But when I came out to US, I just wanted to make some quick bucks. So I was able to travel more and then I kind of developed the bug that man life here it's so much different and you can get so much done in way less time than the lifespan. And that was the driving factor behind my decision to try to stay.

Cause at the beginning, my plan was just to make some quick bucks, make a couple thousand dollars, go see the world and go home and be happy. But it's like I said, being from outside of the country, people here don't realize how many opportunities they have. And it's never easy, but it's easier to grow here than it is in Romania. Like basically there.

If you're not born in a rich family or in some sort of connected family, then you're going to work your whole life just to stay afloat. And in the US, I saw it from the get-go, like nothing served on a plate, but it's attainable. Like if you work for it, you can have things that you can only dream of in other places. And that's where for me, till this day, American Dream is alive and it's well.

Like people who are depressed and unhappy, they should grab a pack and go to different countries and see how they're doing. That's going to work out. I appreciate that perspective. like you said, it's not served up on a silver platter.

It's not just there to have, but if you work hard, it's still attainable. And I think you're living proof of that. So you said it took $600 that you had to put together to pay the third party company to go out and find a work contract. How difficult was it coming up with that?

$600 when you're making $200 a month and have to live off of it. Was that a process? I was quite the process but I was always once again I was fortunate enough to have my brother-in-law to help me out from those money so he loaned me the money for the contract and the plane tickets because otherwise to have basically I need about $2,000 between the plane tickets and all the other fees I need about $2,000 so I would have to have saved basically the whole year salary without spending any and you know On a paper it's doable, but in real life it's not so easy to save every penny off of your paycheck.

Granted at the time I was living with my parents, I was able to save more, but still to save all that money would have taken me 2-3 years for sure. I am back in the studio after a week away on MacArthur Company's latest customer incentive trip. We had five days at Playa Mujeres, Mexico, and man, what a trip it was. If you are in the building industry and you are not using MacArthur for your supplies, make sure that you check them out.

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And so the process of coming to the US, that's kind of when you and I met. I think I met you on your second day on US soil. But I know there's quite a process traveling and a little bit of a story there. I'd love to hear that from your side.

How scary was that just hopping on a plane coming to the US and not really knowing what was in front of you? It was pretty scary though. one reason I embraced the travel with ease. When I went to the travel agency to book my tickets, it was a young girl my age that she's been to yes previously and she said, it's easy, just hop on a plane.

If I was able to do it and I made it safe, you should be able to do it. So was like, yeah, if a girl can do it, I can do it. Kind of. Not all people are equal as far as.

courage and spirit of adventure or the forethought of it's safe or unsafe to do it. But I hopped on the plane and I flew into Salt Lake City. And in my mind, I Googled back home, Buffalo, Wyoming, and I had the printout of Buffalo so I knew where I have to go. However, from Salt Lake City, I assumed that there's a train that goes to Wyoming because in Romania I was very used to trains.

We never had a family car. So I always committed by public transportation means. So when I landed in Salt Lake City and I said, okay, where's the train station? So they sent me to the train station.

So it's a few blocks away. So it a few blocks away, it turned out to like a 45 minutes walk for me. It was some very sketchy neighborhoods where people, let's say they just warm up around barrels. wasn't the nicest streets I ever roamed on.

I made it though nobody had nothing to say. And then I spent the first night at Motel 6 where when I was trying to check in. When I went to Front Desk, they had police vehicles in front of it arresting somebody. So it all the Hollywood movies all in one, all within the first half a day of me being there.

And upon finding out there's no train taking people to Wyoming, then I said, okay, what's another way of getting there? So they say, it's Greyhound. Which was another experience for me, because in order to get from Salt Lake City to Buffalo, I had to go all the way around the state. ended up to change in...

Idaho and in Montana to track down south to Wyoming. So that was like a 22, 23 bus ride. I had to change three different buses and we took breaks here and there. We stopped in gas station so people could go use the restroom and get the beverage.

And I remember having $5 because it was my lowest. bill and I couldn't get no sodas because they all asked for one dollar bill and I wasn't sure if they're gonna give me any change or not. So I just did not want to chase five dollars for a drink. But yeah, I remember getting out in Buffalo at the bus station and I was heading towards the motel across the street from the parking lot and it was a big lightning bolt just struck the park lot in front.

like hmm I wonder if this site for me to turn around and go home or should I just carry on. But that was quite the trip and then I remember getting to Buffalo, I pulled my map out and I saw there wasn't that far to get to the Circle Drive. And then so as I was tracking my way there a police car stopped by me and kind of looked at me. I looked at them and they saw me looking at the map and I didn't run, I didn't do nothing stupid so they just kept on driving.

And that was probably the... scariest part of all this travel, beside the dumpster fire and the people getting arrested. When I reached my address and I was sitting and looking at it, I'd be like, hmm, I'm wondering if this is the real deal or this is just a good old Romanian robbery where they sell you fake papers and fake contacts. So I waited there on my back for a good hour, hour and a half before it was light enough outside for me to go ring the doorbell.

So that was probably the scary part of the whole travel, just sitting on the backpack contemplating, I'm here now, what's next? If this is not the paper that was sold, what's my next step? Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure.

I know that was a surprise for us as well. That was when I met you was when you rang the doorbell. my parents were still running our roofing company at that time and, they had applied for a bunch of H2B visas and had used a third party recruiting, company, apparently the same third party that you had, uh, signed up for to get a work contract. And, we had not heard whether we got our visas or whether we were, uh You know, had people coming when they were coming, where they were coming from until you rang the doorbell pretty early in the morning and said, uh, I am Attila's old here from Romania, ready to go to work.

So, that was a bit of a surprise on both sides. And, that was, I think the first day off I had had in about two and a half weeks, was that day. And I got to take you up to work and, and yeah. kind of show you the ropes on your first day.

So, um, and I remember being extremely impressed then you had, yeah, just gotten off a 22 or 24 hour bus ride and you were ready to go to work. I think we offered you a bed or a motel and you said, no, I came to go to work. I'm going to work. So what did you think when you first got to the US and got settled in those first couple of weeks uh going to work and finally getting to the US would have been kind of the secondary dream.

It wasn't Australia, but what was that like the first couple of weeks in? Did it live up to all the hype or were you disappointed? I was not disappointed. would say living up to the hype, yes.

However, was for me shocking how much of the day by day routine looks just like the Hollywood movies that back home we assume they're all just fake and all just make believe in studio down to like the homes, the vehicles, the roads, the traffic, the fast food, the day by day life of the US citizens. When we watch the movies made in the US, we always assume that everything we see in movies is just a movie scene and it's nothing to do with the reality. it was fun for me to see that 80 % of the movie lifestyle, it's the same with the US average guy's lifestyle.

Big trucks, big buildings, lots of fast foods everywhere, people interaction. To me it was just like a whole new experience, but it was a pleasant one. Yeah, you had the ups and downs, have good days, bad days, but overall I would say it was fun. It was good.

And then as a side funny story, the guy I work with there with Josh, he's my current co-worker. I'm not sure if you know by that, but I work again with Josh 20 years later. Okay, Josh Arden. And no, Josh Smith, the Pennsylvania crew and he's an automation specialist now.

Interesting. So, 20 years later, we reunited. So, once again, you could be a roofing one day, a roofer, 18, 19, 20 year old. That doesn't mean that that's it.

And it could be your life career and be good at and make money out of it and you have a happy life. But I remember several times that people looked down on us and one of them was at the school in Rawlings. That's another funny story. To me was funny at the time and still funny till this day.

I was backing up the truck to the building and I got up on the building. We start taking down waste material from the top of the school to take it to the dump. And some kids approached the building and yelled up at me and say, hey, are you a roofer? I yeah, I'm a roofer.

Like the teacher said, if I don't do my homework, I'm going to up just like you. That's a good point. Go do your homework. So teacher told the kids in school that if you don't do your homework, you're going to become a roofer.

Whatever. I'm not saying it's the best or worst job or it's... Each person has an option in life to do more or less. And therefore, me being a roofer for five, six years, I don't regret none of it.

I just wanted to do something more. So if you want to do something different, take a different path, there are always avenues. And those are not so easy to find in Romania or other countries. And that's where like everything I dreamed of US it's true.

Like you can, you can do whatever you want to do. Sky's the limit. And there's, I will never buy the fact that I couldn't do it or it was too far or there's no border between states and cities. You can just grab a backpack and go somewhere.

Don't, don't get stuck in a place and I couldn't find a job working for a Wall Street Journal in Poudong, Michigan. I don't know. I'm just giving an example. I I don't like when people complain but they do nothing to change the situation.

yeah, that's great. I think statistically, first generation immigrants, the percentage of first generation immigrants that become millionaires is much higher than the general public. And I think just the attitude, the perspective you just articulated is a big reason for that. They see the ample opportunity available to them rather than having more of a victim mentality.

And I know it was really interesting and educational for me watching you do that and come here with nothing. You literally had your backpack that you sat on in front of the house and have built an incredible life and a great career here. So you kind of alluded to it a little bit, but I know in Romania, you were fairly highly educated, had a high paying career, a career of relatively high status, even if it didn't have the highest pay. you know, comparatively to the US or other places.

Did it feel like a little bit of a step back to go from being a petroleum engineer and a professional career to be a laborer on a roofing crew? I grew up doing chores around the house, so work with hands was never an issue for me. The only thing that kind of made me take a step back and reanalyze everything in life was like, how fast can you fast track in life and build a house and have a saving and have a decent life here? So had to reset my...

end game. And then roofing, it's a demanding work. Like when I was buying tools for my roofing job, I remember going to garage sales, which till this day, I love garage. So there's just something about them.

It's just like other people's trash. It's my treasure. But I remember seeing a person having a garage sale and the wife was selling all the tools and I saw that everything are covered concrete. So I knew for sure that that guy had to work with concrete.

And I asked the lady like, hey, is this by chance your husband tools or who's the owner of the tool? Cause everything has concrete on them. So yeah, my husband work his whole life in concrete and he built a house and he gave us everything we have. But now he's broken on the point that he's just immature.

can't really walk, move much, can't do much. And he's like late fifties. So I kind of dawn on me because if I stick to roofing for another 20, 30 years, we'll slowly. put the number on your back and on your knees, on your joints.

And you have to make that call. Like, is this what you want to do for the rest of your life or you want to do something different? It covered my bills. It gave me the opportunity to travel.

It gave me opportunity to make great friends. And I respect your parents for till the last day I have great people. will never, I never wished to, I never dreamed of having better people in my life than they. been to me or better boss.

And the more fair person in my life as a leader was your father. Like it's just, had the rare qualities of a leader and fairness. And it's just hard to find. And that was probably my biggest, hardest decision to make to leave that place because of your parents and the decision, the relationship I had with them.

And that made it difficult to leave. Otherwise, I just wanted to go back to the oil field bad. It was kind of a generation thing, I the third generation, I wanted to carry on that history. As a kid I used to run away from kindergarten, which sounds crazy but it's true fact, I used to run from kindergarten with the truck drivers to go to the oil rigs because they used to know me and my father.

I always loved that lifestyle. And it's not the most glorious lifestyle but it's the one that makes me happy. So that's why I wanted to go back to the oil fields. Okay.

And I want to dive into your oil field career here in a little bit, but I know you mentioned earlier, you put a lot of effort into and really paid attention to doing things legally and walking through the process. You came to the US to work for a seasonal work visa and then returned home to Romania three years and then found a way to get uh alternating seasonal work visas and were able to work for two different companies and stay here year round and then eventually became a citizen.

What does that process of becoming a citizen and immigrating here look like? Was that a difficult process to navigate? So once I was involved in the process, at the time was over 200 different types of visas for US. So it's more than people know about the summer labor and the non-summer labor or whatnot.

There's like 200 different types. And for example, I came to US with a non-immigrant, non-qualified worker visa. Basically I was more or less a legal slave. I couldn't go more than seven days without the paychecks.

Otherwise my visa would be void. So basically you would not be allowed to leave your employer, basically to stay legal. And the only right I had was the right to work. I had no other rights legally.

I'm here to work and as soon as the work dries up, I need to go home. That was it. No ifs buts about it. And my mom raised us with morals.

Like we didn't have money, but we had morals. And my mom never ever allowed us to lie or to do something that was unlawful. So till this day at time I struggle with that because I see people getting ahead in life, they do shady things, but I like to sleep at night knowing that I haven't crossed nobody and nobody's gonna fall calm after me. And even if it takes longer, sleeping good at night makes the next day better.

So therefore I just follow the law. I went home, I came back three different times and then when I find out that I can stay here and extend the visa to different company, basically I had a summer job with you and then my winter job, I wanted to learn to snowboard. And I figured out if I go for a ski resort, I'll be the fortune guy to learn to snowball for free. Well, they mixed up the paperwork and me who signed up for the ski resort end up being working inside the hotel and the guy who signed up to be inside the hotel, they end up working at the ski lift.

And they hated their life. People from Indonesia, they never saw snow in their whole life. But that was still fun. I made some good friends, Indonesian guys, and then I was like a three month job and I came back to roofing.

And then we figured out in a process that if I work three consecutive years for the same company and the owner have to sponsor you, which I'm grateful for parents for going through that line to help me get my paperwork straight, we started that process. In that short stint at the ski resort, I met a girl that became my wife. then in the process, we switched from employer visa to a marriage visa because the office advises that that's easier, better way to switch the paper. So we sought from a company provided visa program to a marriage program.

And that's how I got my citizenship in the end. And I got my work permit first. And the work, once I got my work permit, helped me get my citizenship. Because we started the process with your parents to switch from a non-immigrant visa, unqualified worker to qualified worker.

Because that would allow you to stay the whole year and not just the three, four, six months, whatever that summer visa was allowing you. in the process of getting the paper straight, we switched from a summer job to a permanent work visa and then from the permanent work visa to a citizenship. So it was a seven-year process in the end. And it was tons of paperwork.

Every six months I had to renew my driving license. I know people at the DMV knew me. used to make fun of me. They said, hey, here you are back.

Let's go on the road. Let's get the driving license. So at one point I had a stack of driving licenses because as you can imagine doing it every six months, gets, it gets. a collection done.

And I can see how could be a bother for some people. It's tedious. It's a lot of government work. My file at that point was like two, three inch thick because I used to cap all the old papers and all the papers that I filled out.

And that was before the application era where everything had to be filled by hand, mailed in, you'd get mailed back, good or bad, you have to redo certain paperwork because I remember I screwed up on one time on my visa application and they came back as rejected. But I was still within the time allowed to renew my visa. I looked over all the paperwork, like I don't know, hundred pages and everything looked right to me and everything was stand by a computer. So I realized that the machine looked over the paper, not the human being.

So something the machine picked up wasn't right. So I reorganized the papers, I stacked them as was required chapter by chapter. and I just got the different I sent in a money order and I had split up into two three different bills and ended up sending a check with all the amount in all in one and I signed it sent it back and second time was a charm so I think the the money order threw the machine off because I wasn't precise in amounts down to the cents that's my guess till this day but anyway it takes a long time it's tedious work It was harder back then than it is now.

Seeing now with all the applications, you can do things online, can have, it's much easier now than it used to be. However, doing things the right way usually takes longer. So that's my stance on this paperwork. Like it takes a long time and it's tedious, but like we talked earlier, nothing good in life, it's easy.

And you can take shortcuts because the shortcut I could have taken years ago when I was at bars in Wyoming in the weekends, you would have independent rig owners handing out cards, name cards, like, hey, you want to work for me? Come on start Monday. And I've told one guy, I can't do it because I'm a migrant worker and I need papers. I don't care about papers, just show up and pay your cash.

So you have those avenues in life. We can take a shortcut to make quick bucks now, but... what you're going to do six months down the road or five years or ten years. It's up to everybody to decide what's more important to you.

The quick buck over a weekend or a month or the longevity. And I just decided the right way. Yeah. It wasn't the easy way, but it was the right way.

So do you stand by that decision? Are you glad that you did what you did? Or do you ever regret not taking the shortcut? You know, I don't regret.

only regret is the things I've never tried and not those decisions. nothing I've done in life that was good or bad, I regret. And everything that doesn't work out or pay off is just a lesson you learn and you carry on. I was never a showstopper.

Okay. So I know you worked here in Wyoming with me for, uh, I think six or seven years and then moved back into the oil and gas industry. what was that process like? Were you able to take your credentials from Romania and kind of apply them to the position you had in the U S or did you have to start over?

US don't care much about any degrees outside of the country unless you have that J-1B visa where they require qualified workers. And mainly in the tech companies, medical field. My wife had, my current wife, she's also from Romania and she used to work actually close to West Palm Beach with the J-1 visa. So she was a high skilled worker.

But other than the period of six months, a year or two, however long they give you the visa, like you are not legally allowed to stay longer and you are not guaranteed a job. And a business is a business. Everybody wants to make money. So when they bring highest qualified workers from outside of the state, it's not necessary because they can't find them here, but not at the price they're willing to pay.

So that's the game. And then, I moved to Alaska because I knew that it's going to be harder to shut down that field than Obama managed to do in Wyoming and North Dakota when they got elected and they decided to shut down the field for the sage grass bird nesting season. And then they decided to reroute all the federal money towards windmills and they managed to keep most of the people employed to keep them busy. and ended up moving to Alaska because it's not the field you can just shut down overnight.

then once I moved to Anchorage, I applied for jobs. I had the goal every day, three jobs at minimum and ended up calling every company Yellow Book twice in a row. And I spent every evening looking for a job and then a couple of months in the savings started to dry up and I realized I need to go back and work something before I got my real-time job back. So I ended up working for another year for the roofing company in Anchorage.

And then I remember the first day on a job, got a call from a company, construction company, where you feel like, Hey, we want you to start Monday. And this was a Friday. And I said, I can't do this Monday because I need to put at least my two weeks notice because I just started today. I said, can't do that.

It's their Monday or no job. So I will, I guess no job then. So it took me another year till I got the next phone call. And then a year later, I got a couple of interviews and uh I got the General maintenance technician job on the North Slope.

was my first job on the slope. And that was in 2011. Because I moved up to Alaska in 2010. I moved, yes, I moved out in 2010 to Alaska.

And in 2011, June 23rd is when I started my job on the North Slope. Okay. And I had my first job was a GMT, General Maintenance Tenition, basically a hodgepodge of jobs that needs to be done or rush jobs from anywhere from pipe inspection to scaffold building to bolt up to everything in between. And then from there I moved to a PSV crew, safety valve maintenance basically.

the contract changed hands and I wasn't really fond of the new company I was taking over that. department, so I'm moving to the instrument shop. And then I stick with the instrument shop and then from there I went back to UAA, University of Anchorage and I did a process technology associate degree. And with that associate degree, I was able to be hired by BP because BP was big into hiring local residents that graduate from programs that they sponsored.

that was one of them that they pushed for and they used to pick up top of the class in that. So I basically had to have 4.0 score for them to give me a job, which I was fortunate enough to get the job with them. So I went the avenue of going to a local college.

There wasn't a... I paid cash for all my classes. I used to take two, three classes a semester, but I also paid cash for everything. it took me several years to finish my degree, but at the end of it, I had zero bills.

Everything was paid off. And I could enjoy the benefits of it without having to pay a second mortgage for 20 years. So whoever is listening to this podcast or they try to decide what to in life, go to local college. The companies don't look at the title of the college you went to as much as they look at what you're capable of doing once you're done.

So you don't have to have a $250,000 student loan to get a good job. Local college can do the trick just as easy. So the classes you took at the University of Anchorage, was that stuff you had already studied in Romania or was that new coursework? It was a mix.

was stuff that I already studied and it was quite a few new ones. And I also have to be thankful for the academic advisor from the college that she really pushed for me to get certain classes from Romania brought over to US. I didn't have to take all the physics, all the math, all the biology, all the curriculum classes. So I was able to bring some over, quite a few of them, yes.

I had to redo all the labs, though, in physics and chemistry. and everything else, which labs are cool. Like in Romania, we never had the gadgets we have here in the lab. So taking a lab here was fun.

And furthermore, if you couldn't, with my jobs in some till this day, I work two weeks, I'm on a job set and two weeks I'm off. The college work for the, so the job is on a north slope in Prutho Bay. The Alaskans call it the slope and we're slopers. So.

The college said the slopers are allowed to miss classes, but you have to catch up. So even for the physics lab, they gave me the big old box, mailed home with everything you'd have in a lab, and then you'd have to record yourself replicating all the classes at home, and you have to come up with your own numbers and your conclusion. And that was valid for missing class, but at the end of it, when you have to take the test, you have to go in person at the college and take the test under surveillance.

So it was fun. It was lots of fun. And I'm thankful that they're willing to work with workers basically. If you miss a class or you miss a...

They had my schedule. So the teacher knew exactly what class I'm gonna miss and what class I'm gonna attend. And for all the missing classes, I either had to make up and record my own experiments at the house, or I had to log in after hours at work and watch the recorded class. And I wasn't aware at the time, I found out later in time, that they can actually see if you watch the whole video, if you pause it, if you skip it.

The teacher had all the technology back then to follow you through your classes, even if it was recorded and remote after hours. It's kind of cool. having gone through a college education in Romania and then again here in the U S what is your view of a college education and its value? how will you advise your kids when they're thinking about a going into a career field or going to college and what they're going to go to school for?

What advice would you give them? Well, that's going to be a few years down the road, it's way different now. Like I was thinking, I was talking to my coworkers about like, what would you advise your kids to go to college now? What for?

Because AI is coming, like it or not, it is coming. I see it already in our jobs, how much is changing things day by day. So. What skill is going to be useful 15 years from now, 20 years from now, the computer robot cannot do for you.

So I see more hands-on skills. complicated skills that the computer not going to be able to do. Like web design, computer building, chips building, house building, who knows what's going to be in 20 years from now. But it's very difficult to think of a path, even medicine, like a computer can do an x-ray, can analyze an x-ray scan or can analyze an ultrasound way better than a human eye can.

So it's very hard to predict. what the kids are gonna do. I'm definitely gonna encourage them to study and read, because that was one thing we got told from kids, like the government can take anything from you, but they cannot take your knowledge away. So from that standpoint, even if you don't have a college degree, but let's be educated.

And like Ellen Musk kept saying that this day and age, you can watch YouTube and you can learn as much as you want and as much as you're willing to learn. You don't have to go to college to be educated, but you have to... Spend your time wisely with the information available. Because you can get sucked in computer games and just watch YouTube's all day long and not learning anything.

education is important, at least to have a good boundaries of what's good, what's bad, what's useful, what's not. So you mentioned that you work kind of two weeks on, two weeks off an alternating schedule. Is that a, do you enjoy that schedule? Is that difficult?

Was it something that you had to adjust to? are your thoughts about the lifestyle that goes along with working on the North Slope? I saw that as a kid. my dad's job was never remote.

He was always home every evening, but they had neighbors. They used to work remote. Like all the rig work over and the drilling crews, they always had that two weeks on, two weeks off schedule in Romania. So as a kid, I saw that as weird, but not unheard of.

Once I got the job in Alaska, I wanted to go so bad that they didn't care about scheduling. I was single and who cared about when you're home and when you're not. Now, my wife never saw me with any different job, but that job, so she's used to that schedule. However, for people that think it's weird and you cannot keep a family for being gone for two weeks, I will throw in a curve ball.

So I have two weeks on, two weeks off, and on top of that, I have three weeks pay vacation. So if you take that in account, I work five months and one day, one week a year, and I'm off. for six months. How many people have full paycheck and are off for six months?

And when I say off for six months, you can be anywhere on the planet. You can set your schedule for two years down the road. I know exactly what days in 2027 I'm gonna be off and I can book ahead vacations and I can go on vacation every month because I have two weeks off every month. So the drawback of not being home every evening, it compensated by being home and being able to do things that for other people is difficult.

I'll miss birthdays and I'll miss holidays and this, that, the other, but then at of the day, it's like, I think it's a best-case-level for me. And then I'm not home to help my wife every day, but when I'm home, I'm home, home. I don't have to run to work in the morning or evening or afternoon. I don't have to be on call.

I can just turn my cell phone off and I'm completely... for her and for kids and I'm there for any moment of the day. That's great. Yeah, that sounds like you spend that so that sounds pretty great.

When you are there and are on for two weeks, what is the two weeks on look like? Do you have any days off at all or do you just work 14 days straight? No. 14 days straight, 12 hours minimum.

So we work from six to six every day. But this is another aspect of my job that most people don't know about it. We're on call 24 seven. So anytime one of these machine goes down, we have to respond to it.

And then the nature of the machines, the planes fly 24 seven. So they go to rainstorms at time. And that actually washes the jet, which nobody thinks of that. you can lose 10 % efficiency in a jet engine just by having dust on the blades.

So we have to wash the machines twice a year. So we call it the water wash festival during the water wash. Then we clock easily 100, 120 hours a week. So you put in some hours quick, but again, I enjoy it.

There's nothing over that bothers me. And then we're paid for it. Like we're paid by the hour and we're we're being paid for those call-outs. So in the middle of the night, two in the morning, three in the morning, five in the morning when we're being called out, you're being compensated for it.

We're not celery, so we don't feel like we're just putting a lot of time and effort in that we're not compensated for it. So I think we're compensated fairly. And I was telling my coworkers, I will never, never riot. for a pay raise but I will never be against them either.

So within reason, if they want to offer me a pay raise, if we have to go sit down, have a conversation, I'm for it. But I will never not be grateful for what I have. Yeah. man, that's a good place to be.

So you've lived a very unique life and have been through a lot of interesting things growing up in, communist Romania, being educated there, moving to the U S getting a career as a roofer and then more education and back into the oil and gas field. If you could go back and do it all again, would you do all of those steps again? Is there anything you would change about your, your journey to where you are? said, everything happens for a reason and it's nothing I would do different.

Like I'm happy with my decisions and they paid off. I wish I would have spent more time with my parents when I had the opportunity to do, because at times when I had my summer breaks or when I went back from Romania, I went and spent some time with friends and whatnot. And I wish I would have made a stronger effort to go visit them more. when I had the opportunity.

That's the only thing I've changed, but other than my travel and job decisions, I'm good with that. Like every decision I made, I'm happy with. Awesome. And I know you walked us through a few of your early jobs being a maintenance technician and moving more into the tech side of things.

What job is it that you're doing on the North slope now? What specifically do you handle? Now I'm a part of the crew turbine controls and we're doing maintenance on the basically industrial jet engines. do everything from my crew takes care of program coding to troubleshooting and repairs on the instrumentation side of the jet engines.

And we work hand hand with the crew of mechanics. They're specialized in taking them apart and rebuilding them. So they go through. cycles based on how many hours they've been in service.

They have to be either a minor inspection, visual inspections to complete tear apart and rebuild. So we support that part of the industry. The jet engines in oil field are used for power generation and compression. They're used for driving large equipment, large compression water.

Okay. Those are the three main branches they're used for. Well, I know you had told us a little bit about the turbine specifically and how that fits into the system, but I'm just kind of curious. Um, you know, at least for myself, I hear a lot about the, gas and oil fields and the North slope of Alaska, but what is, what is the process of extracting gas and oil?

What is it that you guys do? What does that look like? could you help the novice that just knows oil comes out of the ground, understand that process a little bit? So there's a couple of different ways to get oil and gas out of the ground.

Like you'll have the Middle East where it's built under pressure in the ground. It has like several layers of different deposits on top of it that applies pressure to it. And once it's really deep enough to reach the petroleum reserves, then it comes out under natural pressure. And basically it's just a water well.

And for them it's very cheap and very easy because all they have to do is drill a well and it's gushing oil out on its own power. In the US, most of it comes out with jack pumps. It's not under a huge amount of pressure, so you have to use a jack pump to extract the oil and it's not high volume, but it's steady for long time and it's going to pay off in time. And the North Slope, we use the pressure, the natural deposit pressure to extract the oil.

And that was the easy oil. known in the industry where you just drill a hole. If you have enough know-how and enough luck to hit the proper spot, then you can have oil for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Now, the deposits start losing momentum, so they have to introduce additional pressure, and they're using the gas that comes with the oil.

It's separated in facilities, and the gas is reinjected to apply pressure on the oil. Mm. And then also they are adding seawater and they're adding some MI to it to dissolve the oil from the rock and push it towards the production wells. you have where I work, we have water injection well, gas injection wells and the the wag wells, water alternating gas.

they for the geologists establish a cycle for wells, the injection wells to inject the Missible injection gas alternating with water. The gas is dissolving the oil from the rock and then the water is just pushing into the production well. So all the wells that work, are... operating under pressure.

So they're not jack pumps. And then from the from the field, the oil, water and gas, because it's a mix, they come to the facilities, they have, imagine like a giant incoming tanks where all that mix goes in, and they have a very rough separation, you have the gas leaving at the top, you have the water at the bottom and oil in the middle. So they'll separate those three and then they'll go to different trains and different systems. And basically you're continuously stripping oil from the water and stripping gas from the oil under different pressure and under different circumstances.

By the end of the day, you'll have the production field. It's piped into a production facility. They'll separate water, gas and oil. Water is reinjected, gas is reinjected, then the oil it's cleaned and shipped into Transaleska system to Valdez where it's shipped to tankers and then it's shipped down to the West Coast for refineries.

And then where the gas turbines come into play, they're generating the power for the whole field and for all devices. if you look on the map, the north slope, it's 700 miles away from Fairbanks, which is the second largest city in Alaska. So it's remote, it's cut away from civilization, it's cut away from everything and everybody. So basically they have to be self-reliant and they're producing their own power.

So you have a power generation and then they're used for taking the vapor from tanks at low pressure gas and pump it up to... uh... meet pressure gas and from the pressure gas to high pressure gas for re-injection so you have turbines taking the gas and steps from low pressure to medium pressure to high pressure and then same way you use turbines for drilling huge water pumps for re-injection and there are other several other uses also for refrigerant and for other cycles but In a nutshell, you're using as a driving force, high power driving force, either for power generation or for mechanical use for driving pumps and compressors.

Yeah, that was going to be my next question. I'm not educated in the oil field. was wondering what in the world you use a jet engine for in the oil field, but there you go. well, if there's somebody listening that's not from the U S that has ambitions to do something similar to what you've done, what advice would you give them?

An advice that nobody likes, because I've gave already to many people. Don't dream of coming over and the next day to fall into a high paid big company job. You go out there, have a slice of humble pie and start wherever you can to put your foot in and be good at and work hard towards whatever that job is from flipping burgers to putting shingles on a roof or a metal roof. and do what it takes to be to stay legal and then use wisely all your opportunities that arrive.

the first six months you'll get nowhere. And then the following months it's gonna puzzle, start to build in front of you. But you have to be patient and you have to focus on a five, six, seven, 10 year plan and not next week I want to be a millionaire. It doesn't happen overnight.

think that's good advice for American citizens as well. think there's a lot of young people that think that they're just going to get a job and be a success overnight and they expect to have what their parents had at the end of a long career when they start out. So yeah, start humble and take advantage of opportunities as they come to build to where you want to be instead of expecting to be there right away. That's great advice.

And you will fail and I failed at many steps and don't give up, on driving, keep on going because otherwise everybody had at least a fail in life and if we all stop at that point then nobody gets nowhere. What has been the most difficult step in your journey from childhood in Romania to the life that you have now? It's hard to put on one single point what was the most difficult, but like I said, there are ups and downs. There are frustration in Wyoming when you try to do roofing and you have snow and wind and rain and trees are going crooked and you have to be in rollings from all the places.

There are ups and downs. I wouldn't say the most difficult. Looking back now, things that at certain points in life seems to be the end of the world. Overall, it's just another day in life.

It's never like starting, like you said, starting, oh second time starting with the backpack. After my first marriage ended, I started with $50 in my bank account and start from scratch again. I went from purchasing a house to renting a room from a coworker. There are times in life when things are crummy and it looks like this is the end of it and it's just another chapter.

just work through it and make smart choices. Don't do nothing stupid and start all over. You've done it once, you can do it twice, three, five times. Just don't give up, keep on going.

That is some, good advice there. And, and maybe a follow-up question is you just mentioned you've kind of started from scratch three times. You, you built a life in Romania, gaining an education and then started over with nothing but a backpack in Wyoming. And then, uh, started over a third time.

Yeah. It over a third time with nothing but a backpack and $50 in your pocket in Alaska. what is it that keeps you moving forward? That keeps you.

pressing forward when things get hard and really hard. Seeing my parents how they handled hard times in life. I said, growing in a communist country, they had really no money. When my parents passed away, we sold everything they had, including the house, and it was less than $10,000.

That just gives you a perspective of what they had after a life of working hard. So it's not what you have, it's how you handle it. And they... been happy through some rough time and they've been fine.

And the one thing is just have a person in your life that you can count on and work, you can work everything out in life. But that's what I was driven by. See how my parents, they handled everything life, good, bad, with or without money, with or without food. And...

As a kid, you always had food on the table. So I want to make that clear. But as a parent, now looking back, they at times, they spit out the food in portions that the kids had food, but they never really went to bed full all the time. But they always smiled and they always tried to keep us in a positive attitude and just have to keep on trying and try harder and one day it's going to pay off.

So at the end of the day, that's where I my strength. And then unfortunately life not to have a very happy family and two wonderful kids. And at the end of the day, that's the most important part too. I guess the best investment in doing life is a good partner.

I could make or break the person. And then now having a wonderful family, beautiful wife, beautiful children, like everything else, just a bonus. Yeah, great, great. Is there an opinion that you once held strongly that you've changed your mind about after your many life experiences?

Yeah, unfortunately I'm an opinionated person. I still kind of speak up what I think and I offend people here and there, which that's fine. I've learned that everybody have their own opinion and they are entitled to their own opinion. So just because I see something right or wrong, the person next to me doesn't have to obey or adjust to it.

But I'm going to tell them how I see things that they can do, whatever they want to do. But I can see how that I've changed in time about strongly suggesting something and wanting people to follow through and like, this is what I'm gonna tell you if you wanna listen and if not, go run off the cliff, I don't care. I'll try to steer in the right direction but if you refuse to take that, I will not stop you, go nuts. That's what I've changed.

Yeah. I appreciate your strong opinionated stance and I we've had a lot of great discussions and it's always fun hearing your opinion about various things. So was there any mistake you've made that you wish you could have avoided? I several mistakes.

I... Wishing, washing is not leading to anything good. Every mistakes I made, learned something from them, good or bad. So you have to, you have to make mistakes to learn.

Cause if you wanna overanalyze things and you try to avoid any mistakes by overanalyzing, you're not gonna do half the things you should be doing. And by not doing half those things, you miss half the opportunities. So everything you do. It's either end up in something bad as a mistake and they're to learn from it and do better.

But the most important part is to do something. Like don't wait for things to happen, to just be active, be proactive. It's... And if you do something really, really stupid and just don't record it and then post it and learn from it, don't do it again.

Because that's the downfall of this generation. They want to record everything. man, yeah, I'm really glad that my teenage years were not documented as things are today. That uh would not have been fun.

What has been your biggest win? What are you most proud of in life? my current job and my current family and my kids, those three combined. That's the trifecta of success.

And I feel a very successful person right now. It might not seem like that to the millionaire neighbors, it might not seem like that to many people I grew up with or people around me, but I gave up pleasing other people. So right now I'm focused on my family's wellbeing and my kids' wellbeing and my happiness. And this job helps me be happy.

provides everything from a family and we're fine and we're happy and that's the most important part. Don't try to impress and please other people. Just live your life for yourself and for family. And if your family has a negative effect on your daily days activities, which I fortunately I see that more often, sometimes it's good to put a bit of distance between your family and pull yourself out of a bad spot.

If that has to happen, then just follow through and... keep a distance from people that pulls you down. Okay. Yeah, there's some great advice there and that hits a little harder knowing it's not the millionaires next door.

You live kind of in a community of billionaires. so to be content with the life you have and enjoy the good things in life that you have, that says a lot where you're at and where you've come from. So yeah, there's a lot of wisdom right there. Was there one point in your journey where you felt like you kind of take a deep breath and let it out and you felt like you made it?

You had a level of security, a level of success. Maybe you had accomplished that goal that was immediately in front of you. Was there a time where you were able to kind of just take a deep breath and appreciate where you've made it to? I have several of those throughout my lifetime.

the biggest and more recent was when I was hired by BP in 2018. That was one of my big goals. And I no longer work for them, not by my choice. They ended up selling all the assets in Alaska and they moved on.

But when I got the US visa, when I got the... gas job in Romania when I got to Buffalo, Wyoming. But there are many many successes in life. There isn't just one that stands out.

But the latest and the one I felt a big, big, big step in life was when I was hired by BP and that came with a generous wage compensation. And that allowed me just to spring forward and put behind me all the daily bill worries and that allowed me to travel more. And at that point in life, I was single. And I remember I was residing in Alaska and I was at work in Alaska for six months.

But in my two weeks off, I maybe stayed once in Alaska and I just zigzagged, I was bouncing from New York to Florida to Hawaii. World was just an oyster. I was everywhere. So since then, I made some choices now that doesn't allow me to do that anymore because now I have a larger house, a larger footprint, young kids, good things in life, nothing bad about them.

But now I have to wait a couple more years this munchy can grow a little bit so it can resume our travels a bit more. yeah, that was one that I could definitely say that changed my life drastically. Okay. Yeah, that's awesome.

And like I said, it's just been a privilege to get to watch from the sidelines as you've built the life that you have and accomplished all that you have. think you are living proof the American dream is live and well. So, well, this is my favorite question I ask of every guest. Are you a person of a particular faith tradition?

And if so, how has that shaped your life? So, fun story, a little of a back story. I was born Sunday at 11 o'clock and that is when they rang the bells in Romania. So my mom took that as a sign that I would be a priest because she was very, very faithful.

So as kids, had to go every Sunday to church and every Saturday they had youth classes for kids. So I attended church quite a bit as a kid. Unfortunately, I had not been at church in years since I'm in U.S.

and it's not the U.S. fault, it's my own choosing. But we are faithful in the family.

I'm not trying to preach for people, you can take valuable lessons from the Bible as like, be humble, be honest, be faithful, be loyal, be straight, don't lie, don't cheat, and life's gonna be good. If anything else, like these are things that are in there, they're not gonna harm nobody, I don't care what faith you are and what beliefs you have, these things cannot hurt nobody, period. So we're actually planning now to take the kids home to Romania in June and they're going to be baptized in the beginning of July.

So they're going to be baptized and we're going to try to raise them with Christian values. Okay. Wonderful. Well, I know maybe more just for you and I than for the listeners, but you know, we spent a lot of time together here in Wyoming, roofing and even traveling the country a few different times and doing different things.

Are there any memories from your time in Wyoming and roofing that really stand out to you that are treasured memories or things that come up frequently? The one thing I use the most is Rollings and that's used as a bad example. Like that is the, to me, that's the armpit of US. I don't offend people from Rollings.

I'm not saying they're bad people. It's just why you choose to live there, that's your own decision, mine. However, fishing in Rollings, when they had the bad rainy days, those fond memories all the times with the crew and overall, picnics and the evenings and the weekends with the guys, I always think of those as best times ever. And the scenic routes we took through north west Wyoming and the time we spent in the mountains, that I will cherish those forever.

And that's why I took my wife to those routes when we moved from Alaska to Florida, because there's a beauty to the mountains and that countryside that Books don't do justice, videos don't do justice. You have to see them with your own eyes to truly appreciate them. So Yellowstone, great eat-ons, driving across the mountains, cabins in the mountains, all that to me is fun memories. And I want to take my kids back there too one day.

And that's what I took away from Wyoming. Time with coworkers, evenings, barbecues, fishing trips and mountain time, camping, fishing. That to me, that it's life. At one point I was dreaming that I will be moved to LA or New York, one of these mad places that they would be so cool to live in.

And the more time I spent in Buffalo, Wyoming and in Tenslip and Matitze and Laramie and all the small places, the more I appreciate them. And till this day and age now, I want to do anything but LA or New York. They can have it. They can have it all.

I do like mountainside of Wyoming and I appreciate the opportunities to be alone in nature and be at peace. That's something that money can buy. Awesome. Well, I will be uh thoroughly looking forward to when your kids are old enough to come out and I hope you'll get in touch and maybe we can go relive some of those experiences and check out some of those places together.

That'd be a lot of fun. I want to bring him out to the cabin to go canoeing. Absolutely, we'll make that happen. We were up there just last weekend checking things out and had a few mice that we had to take care of and clean stuff up, but it's still there and in good shape and that'd be a lot of fun.

Is there somebody that you'd like to see on the show, somebody that has a really unique background, a unique career, works in an industry that you'd love to learn a little bit more about? I was one person I wanted to see. I already on the show and that was your father. And that to me, that was it.

That was my one person that I... I want people to see it because I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of hours around him to know him. You can learn some bits of wisdom that they come for free and they're everlasting. And I'm still struggling to follow one of his recipes and his advice is if you don't have nothing, good to say about the person don't speak up, which is very, very difficult till this day.

Like I'm trying, I'm just failing. we might have to have him on for a second episode and dive a little bit more into his search and rescue career and less into roofing. That might be fun to hear from him again. yeah, awesome.

Well, a question we ask most guests, I know we've missed a couple of them, but. to either settle or fuel the debate. If you have a job to do and have to pick a cordless tool, which brand do you prefer? So a few years back, and I'm saying like 10 years back, I'd be looking on Google, what's the fanciest, most expensive tool so I can show off to my friends that I have the most badass kit.

Like these day and age is pretty much Milwaukee, because you can see a box full of Milwaukee from boxes to stack boxes to chainsaws, blow torches, you name it. They make everything. However, I have a set of craftsmen in the house, and the reason I have a craftsman I went to Lowe's and I went to Home Depot and that was the cheapest with the most tools in it and that's what I purchased. And they will do just fine.

And at the time I didn't have the Harbor Freight next to me. Now if I have to buy one and go to Harbor Freight and buy the cheapest tool they have. Because for the house use, you will never really take advantage of the high brand, high dollar tools unless you want to show off. For a company it's a different thing.

If you're going to use and abuse the tools, then you want to buy the one with the best warranty and the one that has some quality behind it. But for the average home user, you don't need no fancy brands. just buy one that will do the job. It doesn't cost you an arm and a leg because at the end of the day, we're going to collect dust in the garage or in the shed or in the shop.

There are not going to be no museums. And there's a million plus tools now you can do. You can go. Milwaukee, DeWalt, sky is the limit.

But like I said, I picked the Craftsman, that was the cheapest. And once you buy half dozen batteries, it doesn't make sense to buy another brand to collect another half dozen batteries and then just have like million cordless tools on the wall. But I'm Craftsman price-wise, that was the wisest decision. Good stuff.

Yeah, I know that the batteries seem to be the biggest investment there. are especially the big high capacity batteries. Those batteries cost more than almost any tool you can buy. So yeah, I think you're onto something there.

The batteries are kind of once you get a set of batteries, that's where you're headed. for a listener, whether they're a US citizen or not, if they have ambition to pursue a job in the oil and gas field, if that's something that sounds interesting to them, what advice would you have for them to get started in that field or pursue that career? move to a state where they have fields, that's step one, or go online and apply for jobs because North Slope unfortunately require a lot of skilled work and workers that they don't necessarily have a pool to draw from from Alaska.

So they're willing to allow you to commute there and work there and still live in a different state. However, the easy way to get in it start low as a rust about the mechanic, anywhere you want to start and then just go online and apply. It doesn't hurt. And I applied for hundreds of jobs for a whole year.

So just because you apply for two jobs and never got an interview, don't stop there. Just like with everything else, just keep on trying to succeed. Like don't stop. And you can view.

You can find good jobs anywhere, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Midland Texas to North Dakota to Alaska and not so much in California anymore. They still have a bunch of oil wells, but they just hide them in buildings and warehouses so people don't see them on the drive-by. You can see it is not there. That's how California functions.

man. Well, I feel like you just uh summed up a big part of your story there is you just don't quit. keep keep applying, keep applying, keep doing whatever it takes to move to that next step. And you've built a pretty incredible life that you have to be proud of.

So I'm very, very happy where I'm at in life. That's awesome. Well, Attila, thank you so much for joining us, for making the time. You really have an incredible story and have had an incredible journey and you have worked incredibly hard for the life that you've built.

just as somebody that's been privileged to watch that, man, I'm proud of you. I'm impressed with what you've done and I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today. Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me.

I enjoyed just as much as you did having me on this podcast. And like I said, I'm looking forward to come see you again. Same, same. And thank you guys for joining us here on From the Ground Up Show.

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