The Bobby Bones Show - A Meaty Decision

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Scott Carey leaves his stable, decade-long career in marketing to make a risky move doing something he loves – being a butcher.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We'll be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves as they find their life's work. In the last couple years, the workforce has been experiencing what we're going to call a great transformation. Basically, COVID has motivated a lot of people to reevaluate reevaluate what they do for work every day, changing the way in which they do their job and inspiring a lot of people to leave their stable careers altogether. Well, today we talked to Scott, who took an enormous risk leaving his work in marketing to do something completely different. Did you ever have a weak stomach? No. Even the first time being around like a dead animal, like, I don't know, it never really like bothered me. This is Scott Carey. Now, how

Having a strong stomach is kind of a requirement for his new line of work. I am a whole animal butcher and I own Slate Belt Butchery. We're located in Salersburg, Pennsylvania. Sailorsburg is just north of Allentown, Pennsylvania. A big city, but surrounded by lots of farmland. Pretty ideal for being a whole animal butcher. It's a little different than like a retail butcher, where we're selling behind a case to customers that walk in.

We are actually a farm processor, so we take animals from the farms when we process. them down from carcass to cut. Scott doesn't do the slaughtering. That happens at a different facility, and then he has the animals delivered to him. He breaks them down into different cuts and packages them for retail

for the farmers to sell however they'd like. So we're basically the middleman between a farmer and the end user. After over a decade in marketing, Scott opened slate belt butchery in August of 2020. They've only been open a little over a year, but they are busy.

A big part of that is there's not a lot of small processors doing what he does anymore. Number one, I think a lot of butchers are retiring and they're not passing on their trade to like someone else. This is true. Big agriculture has had a huge impact on small family farming. Another reason, Scott believes,

today's world values a four-year college degree over learning a trade skill. And so like a lot of butcher's that I talk to that are retiring, like they just can't find the workforce or people that really want to do the work. I mean, it's like it's dirty, it's cold, It's not like the most glamorous job. But for anyone who's willing to do it,

there is not a shortage of work out there. Because it's needed. You know, like there's so many farms out there that need processing. We work really hard, you know, every day. So, a day in the life at Slate Belt Butchery. It starts pretty early. I mean, I wake up at 5 a.m.

And then I'm usually in the shop by 6 a.m. He and his crew have a team meeting. Scott delegates what everyone's doing for the day. day. It's like here's what we're going to do, here's who I want doing what. And then we just get to work, like making sausage, I'll put someone on sausage or slicing bacon or breaking down animals. Scott does a little of everything, but he's more on the logistical end now. He's got two full-time butchers, someone for packing, a driver, and his business partner, Mike. And Mike is less on the business side and more on the production side. So Mike's really good at like just leading the

breakdown of animals. And like, it's like, okay if I like step away to like handle. customers because I'm like keeping the business coming through the doors and Mike is keeping the business going out the door so we can bring more business in. Still, he hops in wherever needed. Some days they're making ground beef. Some days they're curing hams. They've got a smoke house. So some days they're busy smoking bellies and all kinds of other cuts.

Halfway through my day, I usually step away to answer phone calls, handle emails. When we first started, it was just me and Mike just cutting and processing. And I would say I was probably holding a knife a lot more during those. But they've been doing so well and have gotten so much business over this past year that taking in new customers is a job all in itself. Honestly, like, you tell one farmer, hey, there's a new processor in town. Like, three farmers are going to call me. Scott got in at the right time.

Locally sourced food is in more demand than ever. And at the same time, small processors like him are harder and harder to come by. Yeah. If we're not around, it's going to be nothing but these massive big ag facilities. and then you're not going to have any local meat. A lot of butchers go into the trade because that's what their parents did, or that's the industry they grew up around.

Not the case for Scott. He grew up about an hour north of where he is now around Scranton. His dad was in IT. He had a stay-at-home mom. And my whole, like, basically childhood, it was like, go to college, get a four-year degree. Like, there was no real, like, talk about, like, trades, no matter who you would talk to,

whether it was a teacher or, your parents or everyone was going to college. And so that was my path. Scott's high school experience was similar to mine in that we had a trade school attached to our high school building where kids could go learn plumbing and mechanics and electrical work, but they did have a reputation. Trade school was almost like one step away from like juvie. Like it was like the bad kids went there.

For me, looking back, I think that trade school that I grew up around had a bad rap because it was just a very working class environment, which is pretty messed up. And it was just like, I was conditioned to like just think that. I didn't even think about going to a trade. It was just like, oh, you're going to go to college and then all right, you're going to major in like

the sciences, liberal arts or like business or something. You know what I mean? Like I didn't even like think that like going to school to be like a butcher or a chef or like an electrician or plumber. Like it wasn't being like a thought that it didn't occur to me.

that I could do that. After high school, he immediately went to King's College in his hometown and decided he'd get a degree in marketing. Did you know you wanted to get a marketing degree or did you just kind of like throw it at the board and just say that's what I'm doing? The real reason why I did it is because I played drums in a band and I like the opportunity to like booking my band or like making flyers or something. And I was like, well, what is this? It's marketing. I was like, well, I like this. Let me just major in it. Well, how the band work out? Oh, it didn't.

What he did know is that someday, somehow, he wanted to be an entrepreneur. And maybe this was the way to do that. He graduated in 2009, immediately got an internship at a marketing company, and then started working there full time. I knew pretty early on, I was like, man, this is exactly what I didn't want to do. It didn't feel like me personally. Like, I feel really antsy when I, like, sit down and I'm just sitting on a computer. Like, I can't, like, sit still.

I like working with my hands. But he was doing Google. ads and Facebook ads, analytics. He was getting paid well, but he was not enjoying it. The entire time I was going to school, I was thinking, like, I don't want to sit in a cubicle. I don't want to work in, like, a corporation, but that's what I was going to school for.

While I was doing it, I was just like, man, like, the career that is waiting for me at the end of this, like, I don't even know if I want to do it. And I actually went and I did it for 10 years. That first job lasted a few years And then you got another one A two-year contract And I was still doing like

Web Analytics or Internet Marketing And they offered me good money And I was like I was only doing it for two years I was like thinking to myself Well maybe you'll get a promotion A couple years down the road And maybe it'll work out for me or something

But the whole time he knew There's got to be something else out there And I would always try to find like these little side hustle and do little things to try to get myself out of there. He built custom drums for people, going back to his music days. That didn't work out. So we started an e-commerce store selling school supplies. And so, like, once I did it and then it was starting to run,

I was like getting these like customer service calls. I was like, yeah, this is like too much for me. And I was only like 23 at the time, so I didn't really like understand what it takes to run a business. I was kind of more like a wantrepreneur. A wantrepreneur? Yeah, you ever hear that phrase? That's the first time I've ever heard that...

Yeah, like, you want to be like a business owner, but you really don't have, like... You don't know what it takes to do that. Yeah, you don't know what it takes. At some point, he also pitched a custom design card deck on Kickstarter, but he didn't get the funding. The years passed, and he eventually got married to a wonderful woman named Nancy. He bought a house. He had bills to pay. And at a certain point, his career felt like a sunken cost.

He'd built a life around it, and he felt stuck. Eventually, I, you know, while working in the office and stuff, it actually started to, like, affect my mental health, and I became, like, very depressed. I think, like, the Kickstarter thing, like, really, like, took it over the edge for me and really, like, mess with my head a little bit because I felt like, man, if I can't even get, like, a Kickstarter project funded for a couple thousand dollars,

like, I'm not going to be able to do anything. I just, like, I remember, like, coming home from, like, my job and just, like, for a couple months, I was just like laying on my couch and just like just being completely like depressed. And like I think at that point was like when it was like, okay, like you got to make like a change. Like there's something, you have to do something here. I was thinking like, do I go back to school? Like I was kind of at a crossroads.

Like what do I do? Scott was working as a web producer for a hospital at this point, doing their analytics, running their web page. It was monotonous. But at the time, like I was. getting really into like backyard barbecue. And I was just like dabbling back there and just like every weekend I was just like trying different things while I was kind of like depressed and like defeated from like all these failures

in the like my side hustles. And I was like still working this job that I wasn't 100% happy with. But like I was finding like happiness just cooking on the weekends. It was the first time that Scott was doing something on the side that he wasn't trying to grow into a business or make a quick buck off. He just like brisket. What happened was I, my wife knew that, like, I was very, like, unhappy with my career. She was, like, you need to do something because this is, like, affecting, like, everything.

And so, like, before I even, like, quit my job in marketing, I was like, well, let me get, like, a part-time job just, like, on the weekends, like, working for, like, a butcher shop. He figured he likes barbecuing, but there weren't a lot of barbecue restaurants around. And he wanted to learn more about meat, so butchering seemed like a good fit. And he'd get to supply his backyard barbecue habit. But then also, like, it would just get me active, get me out of the house, get me away from my other job. And it would just give me something to do, you know what I mean? And so that's what I ended up doing it. We'll get back to Scott's story right after the break.

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from the production floor to the front office. Express knows jobs. Get to No Express. Find your location at ExpressPros.com or on the Express Jobs app. To pick up on our story, Scott realized he needed to make a change and started reaching out to Butchers in his area, seeing if anyone needed part-time work. One of them said yes and I went in, I told him, I was like, I have no experience like doing this.

I was just like cooking in my backyard and they took a shot on me and they brought me on and I worked basically Saturday and Sunday for like a couple hours every day for about six months. I should say here that the guy who did take a chance on him was Mike, the guy who would become Scott's business partner. Yep. Okay, so Scott starts working in this butcher shop. I like learning about like the different cuts. Like I had no idea. I cooked a brisket and I had no idea where on the cow where it came from. I got cooked a pork butt

and I thought it came from the pork's butt and actually is the pork's shoulder. So I was like learning all these things and I was like, well, what's a tri-tip? And I'm like, well, what's a top round? And like, what are all of these things that I'm like, I'm starting to cook? He inhaled knowledge, loved learning the craft.

He started talking to customers more and answering questions. He started looking forward to weekends when he would get back into the shop. And that's where I realized that like this is what I love to do. like at first it was just like I'm just going to do it just to like get away and what it turned it into is like me like finding like my love and like me finding like

this is what I want to do full time. Scott told his wife Nancy he wanted to do this. They knew their lives would change because he wouldn't have his marketing salary coming in but she still supported him. Like in my opinion like that's love right there. You know what I mean? Like she wanted to see me happy. Like we just like had to go live within like our means.

He put in his notice. at the hospital web producer job he had and started working full-time in the butcher shop. All he wanted to do at first was learn the craft, and he was excited, but he immediately got thrown into the packing room, not cutting meat at all. Thinking to myself, like, man, I quit my job,

and now all I'm doing is packing boxes. And it sucked, but, like, at the same time, I remember, like, stepping back and thinking to myself, well, I'm learning the business here. Like, if I just keep my eyes and ears open, like, I'm learning how this whole, how product enters the building and leaves the building,

It's where we realized that the craft of butchering is really just half of it. You can make great charcutory, but if you don't know anything about the business, you're probably going to fall apart. Eventually, he got to do every part of the business, including how to process an animal and cut meat. He says more than anything, this job taught him the entire business, and it taught him how to work because they were busy. I always thought, like, man, like, there's massive demand for this. Like, when I was there, it was like he was, like, turning people away.

like he was booked out two years. You know what I mean? Wow. He really couldn't get people in. I was like, where are these people going to go? Like, where are they going? You know? Where do they go?

I don't know. Like, they send their animals to auction. And they go like a cross-country or something. You know, like they don't, once an animal goes to auction, they can go anywhere. So after two years in the shop, Scott could finally call himself a butcher. I learned how to make sausage and charcutory, but what I really learned is like there's like a mass. of business opportunity. Right around this time, Nancy broke her leg

and was out of a job. Scott wasn't making much money in the butcher shop, so he left to get another job in marketing to pay the bills for the time being. It was kind of tough, but I was always like, okay, I'm going to come back to this. Back home, he used his skills in the off time to make Kilbasi for family and friends.

And he was making enough where he was doing custom orders, deliveries, huge batches. And then I ended up creating at Knell LLC because I was like, well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to make good money doing it. Scott finally felt that he wasn't a entrepreneur anymore. He still wanted to start a business, but now he knew what it took to do it, and he had the work ethic to make it happen.

I got like a commercial kitchen set up, and I got inspected, and I was going through the process of just like doing like little, little sales here and there, and I signed up for like a farmer's market, and then COVID happened. The commercial kitchen he was in shut down. So he started calling around to other butchers, seeing if they'd help him pack his products. And on one call, one of his connections said, better yet. I know a guy who built a butcher shop and it's sitting empty right now.

He's not using it. And that, like, I envisioned this entire thing in that phone call. The guy who built this kitchen was a farmer. Because there's not a lot of small butchers out there, some farmers try to vertically integrate by doing all the processing themselves. But this is a huge undertaking, which is why this guy wasn't really using it. When I got up there, I was like, man, this is perfect. This is everything I need.

And he wasn't using it. So he started renting it to me. And I started using it. Additionally, Scott offered to do the processing for this farmer, which was a good deal of work, and he needed help. He called up his former boss, Mike, who was working in a kitchen, somewhere at the time. And he was like on board, 100%.

He came up that weekend, we talked it out. I ran the numbers. Like, this is a no-brainer. Like, I didn't have to build the building. I knew that there was other farms that are going to want processing. So in August 2020, Mike and Scott officially started as slate belt butchery. It was crazy because it was just like we had one customer. And then like the next month we got two customers.

Third month, we got three customers and so on. I felt like every month we got the same amount of customers. Like additional. Additional. Yeah. So by three months in, you had six customers already? Yeah, yeah, exactly. From there, it was just like a snowball.

They picked up another big client in Philly. They hired a driver to pick up animals and do deliveries. On average, we were doing five to ten animals a week, which was manageable for us. But pretty soon, they were doing more. He hired his first new butcher, and then another. I think one week we did over 30 animals. animals. We're up to 40 customers right now. And in December, I hired a full-time packer. Within a year, you had 40 customers and six or seven employees?

There's five full-time employees, and we have like one part-time employee. That is rapid gross. Yeah, it is crazy. I don't know. I feel like we're like growing out of the walls that we're currently in. He told me that something was in the works regarding that. It wouldn't tell me what. But Slate Belt Butchery just keeps growing because there is a lot. is so much demand for smaller processors like him. Someone just called me today. They're from Massachusetts and they need meat processing.

They're having trouble up there to get meat processing. I'm like, you're going to drive like five hours to come. He's like, he's like, be honest with you, I would because I can't find anyone that can do it for me up here. Bigger processing facilities dominate the market right now. And generational businesses like butchering have been on the decline. Scott does hope that his story does set an example for other people in his community who want to do something like this.

There are not a lot of people willing to do this type of work because I don't know if they're not really being introduced to it. So if you could go back and introduce young Scott to butchering, would you do it? Would I change that? Probably not. Like, who knows? Like, if someone pushed me to be a butcher when I was 18, would I have turned away from it?

Like, I'm very proud of the fact that I'm a first generation butcher. Like, it wasn't in my family. No one pushed me to be a butcher. Like, I kind of found this on my own. Whereas it's the opposite with, like, marketing. Like, I feel like college was, like, pushed on me from a young age. I'm kind of glad that I was able to, like, go through that really low period. And, like, I found what I was passionate about doing.

And I was able to come out of it. I don't know where I'd be if I never found this. But I don't want to think about that. You took a huge risk when you jumped from your career to do this. How do you feel now? I'm very like just hopeful for the future. I visualize a lot about what is going to happen. Whereas like in the past, like when I was like really low,

I didn't ever do that. Like I never like visualized. I never like I didn't get excited about things because I always felt like it wasn't going to turn out for me. Scott never really believed he could get out of marketing. He did. Once he became a butcher, he didn't really think he could start his own shop.

He did. And even then, he still never. thought that it would be his career and that he'd have employees and be working around the clock doing something he loved. Like, we did all that. I did all that. And, like, I don't, like, sit there, like, and sulk, really. I used to brood a lot.

I think I've done the least amount of that in the last, like, year. The great resignation, so it's called, of the last couple years, has been happening for a lot of reasons. But at its core, it feels like the philosophy of how we work in our daily lives has shifted. A lot of people went into careers before because that was the path laid out for them. It was something clear and certain. But faced with the uncertainty of COVID and the lives realistically lost to it were reevaluating. Before, maybe it always felt like we had time and certainty on our sides.

So why risk big changes? Because it'll work out eventually. But now, without those certainties, when it feels like anything could happen at any time, it just feels like how could you not make a change? change if it has the chance of making you happy. I don't want to sound like cliche or whatever. Like, you just got to have a positive, like, outlook. You got to think, like, man, like, I'm capable of doing anything

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