Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Petty.
Hi Drew, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started learning to weld in high school trade classes and fell in love immediately. I was 15 or 16 years old. I practiced almost daily for years and ended up working my way through college in the offroad industry. Upon graduating college, I began working for our local Caterpillar dealership. I welded on heavy equipment in the zinc and coal mines here regionally in East Tn and eastern Kentucky. I was fortunate to have been given challenging projects that stretched my growth and understanding as a tradesman. In 2010, I left Caterpillar and began Petty’s Welding Company with an intentionally slow growth model. Our client base has grown to include the Knoxville Zoo, Tennessee Department of Transportation, Dollywood, Newell Rubbermaid, and even my old employer, Stowers Machinery. These have all been great clients to work with.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Small business is not smooth when you start at the bottom and work your way up. You make many mistakes and must overcome them quickly while staying on your feet. Early on, I accepted that mistakes were inevitable and sought to improve my position daily in both the skills and the business sides. No matter what product you offer, the business side is its own animal to be addressed, and it took me a while to understand that. It doesn’t matter how tasty your business’s tacos are, how nice your showroom looks, or how good your welds are. The business side better be well put together. Learning the numbers game was a hard lesson. Also, learning how to navigate commercial real estate purchases, machinery acquisition, and employee training was difficult.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We do mostly one-off custom work and solve professional problems for our clients. We repair heavy equipment and fabricate steel, stainless, and aluminum products. And work closely with organizations like the Knoxville Zoo to help build exhibits, feeders, and animal enclosures. This is our most rewarding work, as they have been great to partner with and offer us lots of opportunities to flex our creative muscles to solve problems. I tell people we are industrial artists solving problems with metal as our medium.
What would you say has been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Learning to set realistic expectations is a huge piece of the puzzle. There is only so much time in a day, and analyzing accurate time frames for job completion and personal time management are big adjustments from only ever having an employee mindset. There’s always something to do in a small business, and prioritizing tasks and time is paramount. After 13 years, I’m doing that as well as I ever have. Our customers always count on us to deliver results, so we have always focused on how we execute.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://pettywelding.com/
- Instagram: @petty_welding
