What does it take to turn a life of deception and chaos into one of purpose and impact? Mason’s journey from selling gum in junior high to running a $5M metalworks company is a story of resilience, redemption, and faith. From prison Bible studies to co-founding Omega Metalworks, his transformation is nothing short of extraordinary. How did he rebuild his life, align his business with his faith, and find true fulfillment? Dive into this captivating story of second chances and purpose-driven entrepreneurship.

The Bible says, you know, man makes his plans, but God guides his steps. So it's like, I know what the layout is, but I'm not going to be able to control how God gets me there. What I've found is when, as an entrepreneur, and, you know, lots of strategic planning. and We get stuck looking into the 1 year, the 3 year, the 5 year, the 10 year, I think as entrepreneurs, we train ourselves sometimes to have bad habits that are good for business but they're bad for our walk.

He's here to guide you through the complex world of business transactions and growth. Each week we dive deep with actionable insights, expert interviews, and real world strategies to activate and equip you to live exceptionally and build exceptional businesses. Now, let's dive into today's episode.

Here's your host, Chris Segers.

Chris Seegers: Welcome to the Exceptional Companies Podcast, where we discuss how to buy, sell, or optimize your business. I'm your host, Chris Seegers. I'm joined by an amazing guest today. Mason, welcome to the show.

Mason: Hey, thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Chris Seegers: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'll tell just a little bit about Mason, then I want to dig into his story. He is an incredibly authentic human being. That's really what attracted to me when I first met you. I was like, man, this guy's awesome. He runs a very successful company, Omega Metalworks, and he's got a crazy story.

It's a crazy story. It's a wonderful story. It's a story of redemption. So. Dig in where you want to, however you can, you know, however you think it's useful for the audience.

Mason: Sure. From a young age, I was entrepreneurial, which, I learned about legalities early on cause you know, I was one of like the rich dad, poor dad kid. I was trying to make nickels out of like melting zinc and stuff like this. I figured out, and I learned that, that was called counterfeiting.

And I was like, okay, we shouldn't be doing that. That proceeded to be like selling gum in junior high and man, I was after a little entrepreneurial spirit from a young age. Raised in the church, I obviously knew kind of I was learning right from wrong and I was like, man, these are things I shouldn't be doing.

Chris Seegers: You became a drug dealer.

Mason: Yes.

Chris Seegers: So, how does you just decided one day, Hey, I'm an entrepreneur. The quickest way to make money is to sell drugs and not to do the legal thing. And there's no taxes on when you sell drugs.

Mason: Amen, right? That is the only benefit of that thing, that industry, I guess. So, walking that out again, I was like, I went from selling gum in high school and then in being in Vegas, by the time I was a junior senior in high school, I kind of, I was getting great grades, I graduated with like a 4.3 weighted GPA. School was easy to me, so that meant getting in trouble was also easy.

Chris Seegers: Oh, yeah.

So, at 17 years old, I made this random decision to drive my butt up to California to Humboldt County and decided I was just going to find somebody and start somewhere. I didn't tell anybody, I drove up there by myself, I ended up meeting the guy, I found somebody and I developed a connection.

And over the next few months, that connection became very fruitful for me in the cash region to where all of a sudden, by the time I graduated, I think I was making like $40,000 a month in Vegas way more money than anybody my age should have had without a moral compass. or and especially being in Las Vegas that

Mason: Oh, yeah, sure. hmm. Mm hmm. Mm No, I was taken out. So, it was real funny. Again, I learned the art of deception, I was like appearances. So, I used the drug money and I put myself through college. I ended up going through a civil engineering degree. I got a job at a Fortune 500 company doing civil engineering. Still all the time, it was all like a fake front to what I was really doing.

So, I ended up knowing that I'm in Vegas and I don't want to get in trouble for this stuff. So, I started appearances of things. So, I kept my job, and then I had a house here, and then I got another house here, and then I had another house there, and I live in this house but I operate out of this house, and then I keep stuff over in this house.

So, Vegas played music and uh, I found that, man, this is an easy way to grease the wheels to a record deal, and it was. So, I started buying my way onto tours. So, I have this life, this appearance of this life. Everybody wants, I'm making money, hand over fist. Nobody really knows where it was coming from.

Chris Seegers: Yep.

Something happened, God stirred in me, and I was raised in the church, so, that doesn't mean anything, just going to church is just because I like the old metaphor, just because you're in the garage doesn't make you a car. Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian, that just means that you can attend a schedule.

I mean, for sure. It's another appearance thing too. Back to your keeping up appearances.

Again, the appearances thing I learned, and that wasn't a good skill to have learned, but I learned it. Because I saw it in Vegas. That's a lot of people. It's all afront. It's all kind of, you know, appear one way. It's like Instagram these days, you know, or even most social media. It's like I appear this way, but that's not the truth.

I was just, hitting the wall. And I went back to church. I went to the biggest church in Vegas that I'm aware of, Central Christian Church. Jud Wilhite is the pastor there, and he had a big background with recovery. He was an addict. I was never an addict. I never had addictive personality in that sense, but I, I was probably more addicted in the sense of, to the lifestyle.

So, when I found out it was just empty, I went back to church, I had this breakdown moment where my mom had gone with me and I'm crying and losing it in the front room. She's like, what's wrong? And I was like, I'm just pouring it out to her. I was like, I've been doing this. I've lived in this lifestyle and we're in sin city.

That was good and bad. It was good because it looked made my sales in the company look great. Bad because I'm talking to all of the people that are spending that type of money that shouldn't be. There's only a handful of legal operating dispensaries and stuff. I didn't know who was who. I ended up talking to a gentleman, because I got real good at growing just anything, it didn't matter if it was tomatoes, cannabis, flowers. I just got really good at biochemistry for plants.

This gentleman comes in and all of a sudden, he's dropping like, you know, $20,000 or more every other day, and he has these good grows he tells me about, and all these dispensaries and I was like, okay, well, that's cool, I hear that same story multiple times. But he comes in one day and he's like, Hey, how much do you charge for consulting? And I was like, I don't know, I just spitballed the number. I was like, 150 an hour and he goes like, I'm not quite a lawyer, but I'm up there.

He's showing me binders of paperwork. you know To keep this a shorter story, it was all fake, it was all right out in the middle of the open, so big that people all assume that it wasn't fake but he was trafficking all of that stuff out of the state every week and I had no idea.

Chris Seegers: Wow.

Mason: come to

Chris Seegers: So, another appearances like, keeping up appearances is just a, theme in your life. Huh?

Because he had another property out east that had 10 greenhouses on it, and they were all for caregivers and this, that and the other. Again, shows me all this paperwork explaining everything that's here. And he said, Hey, we need help processing it for our clients or patients or what have you.

And I was like, okay. So, I go out to this property, no joke, there's 10 greenhouses. They each have 99 plants in them. These things are all like 10 foot tall trees. I was like, what is going on? Okay, it's legal. Within an hour of setting foot on that property, the entire police force, SWAT, Feds, everybody, helicopters, I mean, we, it was raided.

Chris Seegers: They were ready for you.

Mason: They were ready. From my understanding, they were observing this property, literally waiting for this day. It was an ongoing, They had been watching this gentleman for like, three years.

Chris Seegers: So, you also have really good timing,

Chris Seegers: that's another theme of your life.

Mason: So, I end up on this property. I get arrested. I'm in jail for 24 hours and so are like 15 other people that were there. We get out of jail the next day and this gentleman is like, Hey, don't worry about anything. I already got your lawyer hired, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, Okay, cool. I'm like, you better have this taken care of because I'm not doing anything wrong. I haven't done anything.

So, I get up there, I don't know what I'm in store for, you know, you kind of have all these things running through your mind about what jail is going to be like, and so on. So, I get it and then I walk into this, it's called a pod, once I finally get processed, it took like two days to get me into a pod. A pod at that Arapahoe County, had 16 cells, 3 guys to a cell.

So, there's just short of 48 guys in this pod. Well, Usually, they bring a bunch of guys in together at one time. For whatever reason, I was brought in by myself at like, 8 o'clock at night. So, every eye in the place is on me when I walk through the door. And I'm like, okay. So, some guy approaches me, and I what cell are you in?

So, the next day I wake up, after starting to learn the ropes a little bit, and I see some guys having a Bible study. And I'm like, man, that's the only thing that I recognize here right now. So, I sit down with these three guys on the fourth and we're having a Bible study.

I don't even remember the particulars, but I was chiming in and giving feedback about specific scriptures and specific parts of the Bible. And he's like, Oh, man, that's awesome. man. Yeah. I'm getting out tomorrow, could you take over the Bible study? And I'm like, what? And I'm like, sure. What else am I doing? So, I got a Bible while I was in there because you could ask the chaplain for a Bible. So, I get a Bible and there's no commentary in it. I got no way to look up anything. It all was by the grace of God and the memory I had of, David was in what part of the Bible and where did Solomon do that?

When I started this Bible study or gifted with the opportunity to take it over, there's only 4 of us to start with. By the time I got out of jail, which was about 30 days, over half the pod, 24 plus guys, was attending this. And I mean, My cellmate was the first one out the door that was like, I don't believe in any of that stuff. I don't need any of it, blah, blah, blah. By the end of it, he was right next to me. He was, Oh, praise God, You know, he's, he was just into it. And that was all the grace of God.

Basically, they're like, you stay out of trouble, and it goes away. And I was like, I never was in trouble, but okay. So, I get out. I'm on fire. Forgot at that point, and I'm like, I'm at the bottom again. I mean, They raided my house, they took every dollar I had, all the money I had saved up and stuff was gone.

You know, This nest egg that Mason had built up is gone. I'm back down, I mean, I think I had $10,000 to my name and I mean, I'm lucky that I had that. So, I was also again, appearances, Mason was also a firefighter at that point in time, a wildland firefighter because got to keep up appearances, you know, you got to be, it looked like you're serving the community. When I got out of jail, they obviously kicked me to the curb. You can't be a firefighter with that kind of stuff going on.

Chris Seegers: And was that when Omega came into the scene, or how'd you get into that scene just to fast forward a bit?

Everything was just falling apart. My girlfriend at that time had a friend who, her and her husband had a basement, and they gave us the opportunity to move into this basement. So, we moved into this basement, not an optimal thing, moving into a basement versus our own house. So, I get a job just doing whatever I can. I think I was working for an excavation company.

That was going horrible because they were paying me 18 bucks an hour or something, but I was driving all the way up to like, way north Thornton and stuff like that. I'm spending half my check in gas. So, the husband of my girlfriend's friend says, Hey, why do you keep doing that?

I own a steel company, why don't you come work for me? And I was like, you're a whole lot closer and whatever. So, I started at the bottom. I think it was like 12 bucks an hour or something like that as just a cut guy. Now I had a background in steel because of civil engineering. I knew structural, but I'd never actually physically worked with it.

Within three months of me coming to work for this place, this guy ends up finding out that I have management experience, I know AutoCAD, which AutoCAD is a program that can be used for a bunch of CNC work, which he had just bought a platform table and nobody knew how to use it. So, I immediately figured out how to use it, have all this management.

After the four years, my buddy Joe was working for the same company he left. A bunch of my quality employees all left. They go to this other company, and they're like, Hey, you really need to come over here. I'm like, nah, nah, nah. I'm loyal. Nah, nah, nah. Eventually, finally, this dude doesn't show up to work anymore, really. He's basically like, you've got it, and he just starts spending the money. Well, Then I'm like, I'm struggling over here running your company because you're spending the money.

Chris Seegers: Yep, for sure.

Mason: I get offered a job for another company. I went ahead and go, went and talk to him, and they offered me like, $30,000 more a year to just come over and be a project manager. And I was like, well, this sounds like a slam dunk, less work, more pay, I'm in. So, I go over to this company, I'm there for six months. Within the first two months, they put me on a project, the Pikes Peak Summit Complex.

After A couple of months there, I determined this project is a mess, it was highly underbid, they're getting taken advantage of by the GC. It's just a mess. I see the writing on the wall that this company isn't doing too well either. And so, I started Omega with Joe as on April 1st of like '21. kind of as a joke, It was like, Hey, let's, let's start this, and I'll get us some side work. Just as a, a safety net in case something falls out again.

By May, my current partners came to me and they're like, Hey, that place that you were working, they're going under. And he wants to sell the property and the business and everything. Are you inter We're interested if you're interested in running it. And I was like, yeah. Well, I'm interested in running it. He was off or asking some like, 3 million dollar purchase price or something like that. And I laughed so hard because I was like, well, I ran your books for years, company ain't worth that. Word of advice to any young entrepreneur, paying nothing on your taxes is not advantageous.

Chris Seegers: That's right.

Mason: Want to

If you're running your business that way, you're doing some other things that aren't going to set up a buyer for the right transition.

Mason: Yeah. You know, Multiples of zero, no matter how many times you multiply zero, it's still zero.

So

that was what I ended up coming back to the guy. I was like, well, I'm the wrong person for you to hope to get that out of. I We'll tell you that we settled for a pure asset purchase. I was like, I'm not interested in your name or anything that. That's that purchase, let me see if I can do the math. I think we finished like a 20th of his asking price. So because I

Chris Seegers: Which is probably the fair price.

Mason: Totally.

So, we had a vision at the beginning of that, that it was going to be, you know, we would do say, 5 million a year or something like that, was the opportunity here. But we're, we're already meeting and exceeding that, and it's all by God's glory that the way that this has happened because I had no idea what was going to happen here. We, We have a two, three years of slow growth and that's just not what's happened here.

Chris Seegers: So, let's, pause there and recap. So, you start selling gum. Then you sell drugs. Then you go to prison for not the thing that you should have gone to prison for. Then you get out of prison after really finding a deeper relationship with Christ, and have kind of a bunch of different experiences and then start this company, that's over 5 million revenue and thriving.

And I've been doing a lot of reflecting on just the things, every year I journal a ton, and then I go back through my journals and I try to pull out what is God showing me? What are the things I learned? What are the things I didn't learn that I should have learned? So, let's, talk a little bit about that. What are some of the big things that came out of that?

Mason: What were the main takeaways of the last 5, 10 years? One was transparency. And that's why we kept talking about the appearance of things. Look through the appearance of things, not everything is what it appears and it requires digging. And you know, Me with a messianic mindset, I like to dig. And even with the drug dealer stuff back in the day, there was no mentor that I could go to, to learn how to do that.

Dig and find some truth to it just because somebody tells you something. And I think we have a lot of problem with that worldwide right now. So many people would be like, the sky is purple and they start running around. They're like, Oh, the sky is purple. I don't care that it looks blue, it's purple, I've read something that says it.

And I'm like, let's back that up a little bit. And even with scripture, I like to be like, I don't like to nerf the Bible and say, Oh, I found this one scripture that gives me this aspect. They're like, no, God's word is consistent. So, if it's in one place, we're going to find a few more times where there's evidence of this. And it's the same thing, transparency, dig, find the truth. Don't just believe everything at surface value.

So, if you're here on time, you're here on time. But if you tell me you're here on time and you're not here on time, you could tell me a hundred times and it's still action is the proof. And I think too, like, finding people, and this is what I strive for, integrity means you're the same all the time, right?

Like, you're the same wherever you are, and trying to find people that have integrity. We all struggle with, different facets of that in our life, but trying to find people that are the same, in church, in business, you know, in their marriage, with their kids. But I agree with you like, really digging in.

Cause there's a lot of folks that on first glance, you're like, wow, these people are incredible. And you journey with them, and we're all flawed and fallen, but there's folks that are really striving to, Hey, I want to do this through Christ, or I want to just keep up the appearance, and I want to have the appearance of that. So,

Chris Seegers: what else, man? That's a really good, really good lesson.

Mason: I think this brings me up to a point of where it was like, okay, cool. Now I have Omega, I've started Omega. And when I got out of jail, I ran to church. I went to one of the local churches here in the Springs, and I became a part of it. I was in, I was in my 30s at that time.

And then the Omega. So wearing it. And even on our business cards, Ephesians 2:10, which is Christ created us for these works, we got things to do. And that's what I built the company based on without talking to God about it. So, He had stepped in me.

Chris Seegers: You're like, I'm going to build this. Can you just bless it?

Mason: Yeah, right.

Chris Seegers: I've done that many times.

Chris Seegers: Oh yeah.

Mason: So, the first year of work was just, we did great. I mean, I think our first year was a little over 1.2 million, which, I mean, that's insane. I didn't think I was going to do a million dollars in a year out the gate. I was like, we'll be lucky to break a, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, but God provided. so I'm figuring out all this high stress, and just problems, and I get married, I meet my wife throughout this process, and I get married too, to add that on there. which was, you know,

and So, we set boundaries up that were painful to me initially, because I told her I was like, look, I'm an extremist, so if our skin, our tongues touched, then everything else is going to happen and I don't have a good no, so we can't do that. So, we need to sit probably on opposite ends of the couch for the next two years.

Chris Seegers: So, creating some structure. So, I want to ask a question, cause you brought something up that's really interesting. So. If you think about a young faith driven entrepreneur, how do you balance you know, the action with giving it to God? Cause that's been something that I struggle with on a daily basis, right?

So, what are some things that you've learned in that walk? Because for me, that's a weekly thing that I've been really praying over and saying, Hey, God, I do want to just steward this. And I want to give everything I do as just a beautiful sacrifice to you. But I also don't want to be stressed out about the things that I can't control.

Mason: That's literally like, the current lesson I've been learning all year. I've talked this out with some of my fellow C12ers, you and other business owners. The entrepreneurial spirit can almost be damaging in a sense because you need to make sure of what the target is. So, with the entrepreneurial spirit, if the target is money, that's going to lead you down a treacherous road to where obviously, there isn't enough money to fulfill the desire of money.

He was trying to split the difference with God and be like, God, you take 50, I'll take 50. That's not anywhere in the Bible. God gets all of it. It's all His and it's all by His accountability, His structure, His allowing us to do things. So, what I've learned is, not one single time that I've made a plan has it ever gone to that plan. Not once, not one single time.

The Bible says, man makes his plans, but God guides his steps. So, it's like, I know what the layout is, but I'm not going to be able to control how God gets me there. What I've found is when, as an entrepreneur and lots of strategic planning, and we get stuck looking into the 1 year, the 3 year, the 5 year, the 10 year, I think as entrepreneurs, we train ourselves sometimes to have bad habits that are good for business but they're bad for our walk.

And that Yep.

Chris Seegers: Yep. I think that is really good guidance for young entrepreneurs. We have this tool called the Clarity Tool, and it walks you through your purpose, your identity, your core values as really, you know, the guiding light and the guide rails on how you're going to do life. And then it helps you start establishing some plans, but we start with faith first, and then family second, and then your fitness, actually, your health third, and then the finances or business fourth.

So, it's, Hey, if my connection with God is not great, my family's not going to be great, my business is not going to be great. So, dial in my connection with God, then my wife second, then my kids, and then my fitness, right? If I'm not healthy, if I'm not putting the right things into my body and exercising, I won't show up in my marriage with my kids or in the business.

So, if you're wanting to get into oil and gas development, he's like, all right, Mason, tell me how you give your money and your time. And if you're like, well, you know, I don't really, I don't know. Sometimes I give money to so and so and whatever. He's like, you may not be a fit for us. So, he actually gauges his investors based on their giving.

Cause once again, action is the proof. If you know You know, If they're like, Hey, I'm generous. Then he's like, great, let's go make a bunch of money together and then let's go give it away, right? Let's go steward it. He's actually giving his entire company away, which is our plan as well is to build these and then transition them either through a donor advised fund or ESOP or something.

Then we need our passive income to be a hundred grand. Then we need this. Then we need this. And once again, like, possessions are not bad. They're not a bad thing, but they can become a bad thing, if they are your focus. Um,

Mason: That idol stuff.

You need to check

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent.

Mason: regularly.

Chris Seegers: 100%, man. And even we were talking about this last week, your idols could be your kids, right? It could be, Hey, you actually aren't spending enough time in the business because you're totally focused on your kids and you know, doing crazy sports every night and that sort of thing. And, So, we're constantly looking at like, where are we aligned? Are we aligned with Christ at the center, and everything's kind of around that? Or is something else become the center?

I mean, Once again, that's how we spend our time. What, However you spend your time, that's, where your priorities are.

Mason: What you spend your money and focus your time on, that's where your heart is, whether your words are secondary, your actions speak. so,

Mason: So, I've got a great one because I've been wrestling with it. Joy and happiness is the one that I have for advice for young entrepreneurs. Happiness comes from happenings. Things that happen. Happiness and joy being two different things. So, your happiness tied to things that will happen with your company. Weigh those heavily, make sure that you're not tying them to like, I'll be happy when I make a million dollars, or when this happens, or when that happens.

I found months and months and months of anxiety and depression because I was tying my happiness and my joy to so many things out in the future that I may never end up with. And be like, this toy or property or that vacation. It doesn't matter, that's cool, leave it at Jesus feet and then live for what His will is for you today and be joyful today.

Chris Seegers: I love it.

Mason: Obviously, the one book, I would say, the Bible. Dig into that thing. I'm highly suggestive that everybody, you know I have a messianic mindset. If the listeners don't know what that is, please look it up. And then I highly suggest, if you have the YouVersion app, or if you're a Bible collector like I am, the CJB, the Complete Jewish Bible.

I would look into that. And then Traction, the book Traction. The EOS system was mind blowing for me. There's a statement from it that you're a tradesman with an entrepreneurial seizure, which means that there's a lot of us that want to think that we could go into business and you're really good as a welder or an electrician or a plumber, you're working for this company, you're doing it and you're like, I'm going to break out on my own. I think that's a good idea. Put the brakes on, do some due diligence because there's insurance, payroll, building, overhead lights. I mean, there is so many things that come out of left field that you didn't expect just because you were good at doing a trick. It takes a teamwork to make the dream work.

Chris Seegers: Yep. I love that, man. Yeah, we run EOS in all of our businesses and that book was game changing for us and just gave us a system and we've iterated on it and, and added a bunch of new tools, but the other thing that's really interesting, so we're building a tool called the blueprint for an exceptional life, and it's actually, What we found with EOS and our operating system is the blueprint for building an exceptional business is like 90 percent the same as the blueprint for building an exceptional life.

And so we've said like, Hey, if you can actually tie those together, one of them is the curriculum for your team, for your staff, and also for yourself. The other is a curriculum for your business. And there, once you learn the tools, they cross pollinate really, really well. So I love that man. Well, Yeah, go ahead.

Any, any parting wisdom or other resources?

And then we take that prayer fleet to God and be like, Hey, here's what we've set out, but you're the one that's going to bless this and open these doors. What I found is the more that I bring God into actually letting, setting it at his feet, I've come the closest to hitting my actual plan with God involved in blessing that plan than I ever did in my life, setting the plan myself and not including God.

So

Chris Seegers: it. That's some great parting wisdom, man. Include God early during the entire process. Often every day, pray without ceasing, man. Mason, thanks for coming on the show, brother. We'll have to do this again. Really appreciate you sharing your story and I know it's going to help a lot of folks. I love

Mason: Please,

Chris, I love talking with you. Thanks for having me and I look forward to talking to you again.

Chris Seegers: man. Take care.

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