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Will Ries

Operations Manager and lead foreman at Just Add Water (Iowa Waterscapes), a Des Moines-area pond and water feature design-build company.

Sep 23, 2026

speaker_1HOST
74:38
Oh, yeah.
74:38
Right? So like if you can find a hole or a spot where you think this is cool and run with it, then run full force into it, right? Like, it's...
74:49
Yeah, I left, I got my internship and never left, and within like my second summer I'm on salary and in the basement when we were that small, and learning the, the numbers behind things and like that because that was just where the need was in the company, right? Like, I don't have to go plow snow because I'm gonna go help with the books.
75:13
I wanna learn how to sell.
75:14
I wanna learn how to do maintenance, and I just put myself in that position to go and then I just never looked back, right? So now I'm running all of production for Just Add Water versus I could easily still just be like, "Oh, I get paid well.
75:30
I'm gonna skate by and move rocks and build cool stuff." And you know what? The world absolutely needs those people.
speaker_0HOST
76:03
Foreman or-
76:04
So we start at $18 an hour, which is probably not enough anymore, right? Like, we'll have to go back to the drawing board on that.

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