Just days after Global Vessel & Tank became a 100% employee-owned company, the pandemic hit, oil prices collapsed, and the company lost most of its work almost overnight. Nathan and his leadership team were forced to lay off roughly 70% of their workforce.. then moved quickly enough to bring most of them back within weeks.

In this episode, Nathan shares how his experience as a U.S. Army Infantry Scout shaped the discipline, decisiveness, and calm he now brings to his role as CEO and Chairman of GVT. He talks about starting at the company for $15 an hour cleaning robots, working his way through multiple operational roles, and learning that strong leadership is not about barking orders... it is about keeping people aligned, protecting the culture, and moving forward together.

Nathan also opens up about the weight of layoffs, building a company where employees feel valued, preparing for future downturns, and why leaders must be willing to make difficult decisions without losing sight of the families affected by them. It is an honest conversation about pressure, employee ownership, resilience, and what it takes to lead more than 200 people through uncertainty.

This episode is for anyone trying to grow into leadership, navigate a difficult season, or build a company capable of surviving the next storm.

She said yes.

What followed was a year and a half on the shop floor learning to fit and weld from the men who'd been there since before she was born.. one of whom told her she'd never amount to anything, and another who looked at her painted nails and said he wasn't sure this was for her. She proved both of them wrong. She also cried in her car most of the way home for the better part of a year.

In this episode, Candace talks about walking into plants where engineers assume she's decoration, the outage in Louisiana where a mechanic went over her head about a welding rod and got publicly humiliated by the results, the day she and her dad screamed at each other in front of the whole crew, and the afternoon her quiet 18-year-old son walked into his grandparents' office and told them they weren't going to ruin what his mother had built.

It's a conversation about the legacy you didn't ask for, proving yourself in a room that already decided about you, and how badly a grown woman can still need to hear her father say he's proud.

In this episode of the Steel Nation Podcast, Myke Wilkerson sits down with the publisher behind Modern Metals and FFJournal to discuss more than three decades of change across steel, manufacturing, publishing, and business. They explore the rise of automation and AI, the generational transition happening inside family-owned companies, and why the industry continues to struggle to attract its next generation of skilled workers.

The conversation also examines why companies that continue marketing during difficult economic periods often emerge stronger, why relationships still matter in an increasingly digital world, and what younger leaders must understand as they inherit the future of manufacturing.

From carrying on a family legacy to adapting when “the old way” no longer works, this episode is a reminder that technology may transform the industry... but it can never replace the human element.

From working overtime at McDonald’s, to practicing welds on lunch breaks, to launching Bentley Welding with only $3,000 in the bank and $70,000 due by Friday, Kyle’s story is a raw look at risk, grit, faith, and the cost of building something real.

But this conversation goes beyond business. Kyle opens up about divorce, rebuilding his purpose, serving his community, sitting on the school board, leading nonprofit work, and learning that legacy is less about having your name remembered — and more about leaving people better than you found them.

This is a blue-collar story about pressure, progress, and what happens when “grow or die” becomes more than a business strategy.