Zeb Parsons

About Zeb Parsons

Tell us about your education and early career

I grew up in South Carolina and did my undergraduate degree in International Business and German at Clemson University. During that time I got to spend a semester at Leuphana University in Lüneburg in Germany. 

I decided to do my Master’s in Supply Chain Management. I originally wanted to work for the United Nations and supply chain is one of the core fields they list as being essential to the development of countries. That’s why I went down the international trade and then supply chain route.

I knew I was going to go outside the United States for my master’s programme because the nature of supply chain is very international. I’d been to Ireland several times before so that influenced my choice a little bit. But UCD also has a very good international supply chain programme – I think it was ranked 10th in the world at the time. UCD also has a pretty big international student presence so I figured with all those prongs it made a lot of sense. 

I applied twice to the United Nations and I’ve kept my applications out there, but you’ve got to do something in the meantime. After Ireland I moved back to Charleston in South Carolina and had a role in a manufacturing company. Then, I ended up moving down to Australia and I worked there for about two years in supply chain. 

Starting My Company

At a certain point I decided I couldn’t take the corporate world. The easiest place to start my own business was going to be the United States and that’s what brought me back. 

The last paper I ever wrote at Smurfit was on the concept of Bricolage – loosely taking things that don’t relate or have any value and putting them together in a way that creates a new value. People can do it with lyrics. Sculptors do it. Everyone in the class wrote about it in a different way. 

My mind went to recycling in the south east of the United States: taking odds and ends and trying to find ways to reassemble them or reprocess them to restore value. I wrote this paper back in 2015 and as I went through my early career kicked that idea around, workshopped it a little bit more and finally between that and burning out in the corporate world, I really started diving in a bit more and that’s how that came about. The company is named Bricolage Dynamics after the concept. 

I turned down a pretty good job at BMW and just decided I was going to be poor for a while. I wouldn’t say it was easy but it didn’t bother me that much. I had to take on a second job on the weekends to make everything work. Since about 2018 it’s been my full time job.

At our core we’re a glass recycling business. The basic concept is to use glass to create sand for the construction industry. That’s our bread and butter. 

The supply chain element is that it’s using a local town’s materials to create a local town’s resources. The old model here was basically that the town collects its old recyclables and then maybe ships them five or six hours away to get them processed. It was the supply chain waste of having to sort these things out. We’re really trying to reduce the supply chain cost and simplify it as much as possible while increasing the efficacy of the recycling. 

We’re starting to develop more technical applications that we want to license out to municipalities as well as private companies to help boost recycling rates across the US. Ultimately we’re looking at possibly franchising the concept and creating more small circular glass recycling systems in cities and towns that are able to process raw materials. That’s where we’re going. 

In 2020 we were accepted into a business accelerator out in Seattle which led to some initial funding and it helped us to get investors. In 2022 we raised US$300,000 which has been helping us grow our operations. Right now we’re running off some of that money and organic revenue. Down the road we’ll probably do a series A and bring on some more capital to start expanding the operations in different cities and towns. 

We have four employees and a number of contractors we use for all sorts of different things. We’re not massive but we service about 600 households in our city at the moment and we have a commercial wait list. Our current challenge is we’ve got to raise more money. We don’t have the capital to buy new trucks, for example. There’s a lot of international manufacturing in this area so there’s plenty of room to grow. 

What’s your day to day role? 

Everything from talking to the drivers to make sure the routes are all running smoothly to meetings about where we’re going, setting sales targets, going over financial data and trying to streamline operations. It’s a good bit of computer work. We have a 2,500 sq ft facility about 30 minutes away so I’ll pop out there from time to time to lay eyes on it and see how we’re going. It’s more managerial and a little more future oriented.

What motivates you?

What motivates me isn’t something that I feel a lot of people find interesting but a lot of it has to do with the fact that I cannot stand the corporate world. 

I grew up hiking in South Carolina. When I lived in Dublin I used to go to the Dublin Mountains a lot. Environmental degradation does irritate me – absolutely. But, I would say that’s a secondary motivating factor to the fact that I really don’t like the corporate life. The idea of sitting in a cubicle all day long – I literally have nightmares about that sometimes. 

I get very bored very quickly if I don’t have something interesting to work on. That’s one reason I like being in business – it provides a lot of rapid change, which I really enjoy. I think the most beautiful part of life is the randomness of it all so if I can have a job where you never know what’s coming next, that for me is incredibly entertaining. 

What’s your leadership style?
It’s pretty hands off and goal oriented. I’m not a micromanager. I just set certain objectives and expectations and as long as they’re met then we’re doing well. 

I’ve had to adapt. I have employees who really like to be valued so I’ll have them sit in on meetings just to get their opinion. I have employees who really like the networking aspect so I’ll send them out to do more sales stuff from time to time so they’re getting that connection with maybe a local business owner. 

I’m big on people being independent so we hire accordingly. The management part is just that you have to read your employees and figure out what they’re going for and cater the role to that.

Who has influenced you?

Not any one person. I did start hanging out with entrepreneur networks in Australia and talking to some people down there who were where I wanted to be. I think if you want to go and grow you hang out with people you want to be most like. I wouldn’t say one person inspired me but certain people along the way have definitely provided a nice framework in which I could see growth and achieve growth.

What’s your best piece of career advice?

I see so many kids graduate and they’re so gung-ho on jumping into the real world.  Next thing you know they’re living like they’re 45 years old at 24 or 25. This is the decade when you really want to go out and just try different things. That is how I lived my twenties and it worked out kind of well. 

Maybe if you want to start a business it’s better to start as early as possible because you won’t mind sleeping on a couch or driving an old car. But for people in their twenties who are up and coming, I would say, don’t focus so much on where you want to be. If you can get there great, but if you can find out what you don’t like along the way, that’s incredibly valuable for the rest of your life. That comes from just trying different things. 

I don’t like seeing kids get out of school and being stuck at a little desk and next thing you know ten years have passed and they still don’t really know a whole lot about themselves professionally. I think people should be a bit more adventurous when they’re younger. 

What are the plans for the next five years? 

I would like to have a few iterations of the company in the United States up and running and be a little more hands off. I’d ideally like to move back to Australia so I’d probably like to buy a business down there and have a slightly quieter life and maybe be riding a motorcycle or something. 

I still love the idea of working for the UN but I don’t think it’s in the cards in the short term. Maybe if I sell the business or something, possibly. It would still be a dream job but you’ve got to do something in the meantime. 

March 2024