Shed Geek Podcast
The Shed Geek Podcast offers an in depth analysis of the ever growing and robust Shed Industry. Listeners will experience a variety of guests who identify or specialize in particular niche areas of the Shed Industry. You will be engaged as you hear amateur and professional personalities discuss topics such as: Shed hauling, sales, marketing, Rent to Own, shed history, shed faith, and much more. Host Shannon Latham is a self proclaimed "Shed Geek" who attempts to take you through discussions that are as exciting as the industry itself. Listeners of this podcast include those who play a role directly or indirectly with the Shed Industry itself.
Shed Geek Podcast
Faith, Recovery, and Metal Buildings: Eric Olson's Journey
Ever wonder what drives someone to build not just structures, but a life of purpose? This episode pulls back the curtain on Eric Olson's remarkable journey from tornado cleanup to founding Dayton Barns, now a thriving multi-location metal building business.
Eric takes us through the pivotal moment when devastation in his backyard sparked an unexpected business opportunity. What began with fallen trees and woodworking evolved into a shed business, then expanded to metal buildings and pole barns shipped nationwide. With disarming honesty, he reveals how learning happened through challenges—managing people, solving complex problems, and creating solutions when none existed.
But this isn't just about business growth. The heart of Eric's story lies in how success enables purpose. We journey with him through his work with Good Shepherd Ministries, where he now leads Bible studies in the same neighborhood where he once made destructive choices. His powerful testimony continues with the recent Riverfront Revival event in Miamisburg that brought hundreds together for healing and hope.
The technological side shines too as Eric demonstrates the design tools that make Dayton Barns and Five Rivers Pole Barns accessible to customers everywhere. From specialized software that simplifies ordering to financing solutions through J Money that allow customers to own buildings with no money down, he's removed barriers to ownership.
Ready to meet the Steel Kings at an upcoming event? Mark your calendar for the Steel Roll Form show in September, where they'll host a podcast booth and record live episodes.
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This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: J Money LLC
Good, morning for your buildings. And now let's get back to the Steel Kings podcast. Good morning, it is June 12th, 2025, 8.15 am. I've got my podcast studio going this morning. I am coming to you from Germantown, Ohio, today Doing a solo episode today of the Steel Kings podcast Brought to you by J Money.
Eric:Our partners ov er there. Great. Met those guys a couple years ago Giving them a big plug. They're an instrumental part of our business, part of our business and um and uh, they can't finance really any project but in particular for, uh, how it pertains to our uh business at the Steel Kings, uh, shed financing, metal building financing and then moving into pole barns big shout out over there to the J money team um, and so I've, uh, I've been talking to I think we've dropped a couple seeds essentially in the past episode or two about getting me on a solo one which is going to happen today. You can tell if you've been watching since the beginning, which really wasn't that long ago. I've upgraded my area here. I've got a mixer and a fancy microphone now and kind of figure. Maybe I'll go after it that way.
Eric:But anyway, I wanted to kind of take a dive into this morning about who I am. You see, Jared and I most of the time. I know Jared's done a couple solo ones with some guests by himself, but really as the founder of Dayton Barns, you can see, I've got our website plugged up here Kind of just want to give you a kind of I have no game plan, I have zero notes. I've got a McDonald's coffee with a shop espresso sitting in front of me. Shout out Germantown, Ohio, McDonald's. I get the, I go with the sugar-free French vanilla large and then I always get a shot of espresso in there and I start humming around midway. So, I get to the McCafe line and then here comes the music and I start getting a little motivated for the day. What's your motivation? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What's got you fighting so hard in life? Maybe you're not fighting hard and maybe this episode will inspire you to some degree. I wanted to take a deep dive today. If you guys want, tour the website, tour our Facebook pages. Give you a little bit of insight about who I am and maybe where I come from.
Eric:A huge shout out to Shannon and the Shed Geek podcast. We've connected with them over the past year or two, Jared, especially at trade shows in the portable building space and RTO space. Absolute love that connection there. It birthed our Steel Kings podcast, which is somewhat of a branch off of the portable buildings but really moving into larger projects with pole barns, metal buildings, Jared and I started a business a few months ago where we do turnkey pole barns in the state of Ohio. We can ship out pole barn kits basically anywhere you can fit a semi truck, and I mean it kits basically anywhere you can fit a semi truck, and I mean it anywhere you can fit a semi truck. We can drop a pole barn kit off with stamp trusses and instructions and you can put up that bad boy in your backyard all the way up in let's call it Grand Forks, North Dakota, where I was born, or all maybe down there towards Galveston Texas, which I think is the're all maybe down there towards Galveston Texas, which I think is the farthest tip down there in Texas. Heck, we could go to Key West with the pole barn if that's something you wanted. So just keep that in mind. So again, my name is Eric Olson.
Eric:I started Dayton on October 16th, 2019. Leading up to that moment, I found myself outside a lot that summer prior to that October and was working with my hands a lot, my family got hit by one of those tornadoes that was in the Dayton area. That particular spring in 2019, in May, the Dayton area got hit with 19 tornadoes I think a dozen of them were F2 or stronger. One of them took down several hundred trees in our backyard and kind of turned that into a little woodworking area, and when I ran out of wood I realized, man, I need, uh not need, to buy wood to make the table, so my profit margin shrank, shrunk down a little bit, and so I had to pivot and just kind of jumped into sheds. It was a natural move in there. I did not build them, um, it just kind of fell in my lap through a family member and I decided to start watering it and, um, and now it's June 12th, 2025.
Eric:Um, the business is rocking. Uh, we do not have that location I first I started at, which is in Huber Heights. Um, the that location is now closed and we have home bases in Brookville, in Troy, in Urbana two locations in Urbana and then I live in beautiful Germantown Ohio. Germantown Ohio is an absolute gorgeous little sleepy town. I'll call it. We definitely roll our sidewalks up at night, probably around 8.30. Everybody goes outside and rolls up their sidewalks up at night, probably around 8.30. Everybody goes outside and rolls up their sidewalks and so it's safe. It's great. I go to church here at a church called Abundant Life Tabernacle. The head pastor's name is Jim Setzer. He is an absolute dog for the Bible, for healing and different things. It's a great shout out there. That's where my wife and I go. I got married last summer.
Eric:So, through the business, you start a business, and you don't know what's going to happen. You just kind of say yes and then you start hammering topics down. You know you got your media; you want a website. How do customers reach you? How do you stay organized? How do you handle issues and payments and taxes and quick books and all the stuff like that? And what I've realized over the course of the time is it's through the I wouldn't call them problems, but as you work through business, you just address different things as you go further and I think that through that activity I've learned financing. I've learned how to manage people. I've learned how to solve complex problems. One of my favorite attributes of myself, which I don't have a ton, but one thing that I know I'm decent at is creating when there's something that needs to be created. I like solving that type of problem.
Eric:And there's a famous internet. You know, I'm not going to claim it's mine, it's not mine but there's a famous uh interview tactic where if you're interviewing somebody for position, you really don't need to ask him that many questions. You ask him one question, and the question is, tell me about a difficult time in your life, an extremely difficult time in your life. Tell me what it was, how you got over it and then what you learned from it. And I believe, if the person's telling the truth, they're going to tell you what's on their heart, which shows that they can handle hard conversations, and then through that you can kind of see are they mature, are they going to tell the truth when times get tough. And so, I've learned how to interview, I've learned how to love people that are not the same. Everybody's different, obviously.
Eric:We've got about 25 people-ish involved. We've got many partners across the board. I'm into different things. We're into Shed Hub. We're into a company called Barns Direct. We're into Dayton, Barns and Austin Buildings. We've got Five Rivers Pole Barns. We've got a podcast called the Steel Kings Podcast. I'm on the board of two non-profit organizations here in Dayton. One of them is called Good Shepherd Ministries. That is a faith-based recovery mission and I'll kind of go into that. And then I sit on the board of a newer 501 that just put on a revival in Miamisburg. That's what we were talking about last episode. Which is kind of where I want to park this episode is those two topics Kind of give you my heart a little bit, as we're kind of looking at this. But I do want to start with Good Shepherd Ministries, which is a, and we're going to go there. I got involved with these guys. Let me um.
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Eric:I got involved with these guys about a year and a half ago. Two years ago I got a dear friend shout out, Cody Cahoon. I've got a dear friend who, in a trying time in my life, stepped up to the plate, bought me a hot meal. I was going through some things. My dad passed away and I just need somebody to talk to and he said, man, have you ever done any service work? I think it would definitely help with and I wouldn't say I'm in recovery, but I do live a sober life off alcohol and drugs. I fight to even take Motrin but I got plugged in there at Good Shepherd Ministries with Sean Trapp through Cody Cahoon and Sean Trapp's the director over there, met with him, met some of the fellas and really what Good Shepherd's ministry is really a. It's a faith based 24-7 ministry where they've got 31 on average, about 30 to 35 guys at any given time. They all live together in seven different houses. They manage five or six micro-businesses. All of them are at various lengths in their sobriety. Some of them are newly fresh and then some of them are three, four or five years deep and kind of leading, bringing the younger fellas up into what it looks like to kind of walk out that thing and it's been a blessing. I do a Bible study there every other Friday. I'll be doing a Bible study down there tomorrow, on June 13th, and that is just an honor for me to be able to give back in that regard. I think the you know, I'm just going to say it where I used to go to get things I shouldn't do is actually where I'm going now to do the Bible study. So if you're a biblical person or you're just not a biblical person, but what comes around goes around and uh, but there's always redemption, and so if you caused chaos, generally speaking the world and in my personal belief, God will always give you an avenue to make it right and generally it's going to be in the same area, uh, that uh was cursing you at some point. So, I'm able to give back. Uh, and it's a wonderful thing. We've got a trip coming up in August, august 15th to the I think it's two weeks. We're taking a school bus called the sober seed bus. Um, I don't know if we got a picture of that thing. We'll. Maybe it'll scroll through it. Actually it was that. You just saw it. If you're watching, you spin back a few seconds. The Sober Seed bus is really just a renovated bus. We're going to drive it out to the Grand Canyon, do some service work all the way back, like you can see here. Pick up trash, paint, build fences, give hope, park it at Walmart, make hot dogs, that type of different thing, and so that's a huge blessing for me to be able to be a part of. We just donated a project to their main office on Xenia Avenue. If you want to go check that out, if you're in the Dayton area, they've got a 30 by 40 that they're intending to do their landscaping business out of and then welding in the wintertime. So I was able to donate that. Cody Cahoon had a plug on getting concrete done, so we was able to give the full thing out there.
Eric:Jared and I will be on television on Channel 7, which is maybe not a brag, but we are going to hit the news. I think some point in early July they're going to do a live broadcast with a ribbon cutting. The mayor of Dayton should be there, and some leaders from the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce and the Dayton Business Chamber of Commerce should be there. We're going to talk about the ministry. We're going to talk about our companies and it should be a good time. So, look out for that. Going to talk about our companies, and uh should be a good time. So, look out for that um.
Eric:And then the second um, and I'm gonna kind of switch over here. I'm gonna go to Facebook, um, and go to the river. Rah, rah for freshers. Uh, they was at our. So here is um in the second organization, this Riverfront revival. I kind of want to scroll down and see if we've got some posts here. I don't know if I can show you any pictures from it, pictures from it but anyway I want to show you a little bit of pic. Yeah, we'll just go to Brad Higgins. He's the founder of it, but essentially we threw a. What we're looking at here, that's me right here with my wife Heather Shout out Heather and Tyler Haddix.
Eric:So, to unpack this situation, what we're looking at is this was a public revival that we threw that Brad Higgins, a dear friend of mine, started. It was birthed in a vision that he had during a fasting retreat about a year and a half ago. He put all of his thoughts and vision on paper and then it came to life. This past weekend, Miamisburg, Ohio, was the. This was like the town. So, this amphitheater here off to the left is right on the river there. It's a beautiful area of Dayton Ohio. If you ever get a chance to go down there, it's probably one of the most beautiful parks. Honestly, the grass is impressive. My grass in my front yard sucks. It's not very beautiful, but this grass right here it's an epic park.
Eric:We put on this event. We had all sorts of booths there. There was probably a dozen churches. There was four or five non-profit, recovery-based ministries, faith-based. There was, I believe, 13 booths or something. We had bounce houses, food trucks, Chick-Fil-A came, a bunch of different other food trucks came and we're looking at several hundred, maybe up to a thousand people came by at the services that we had on Friday night, on Saturday night. It was just a beautiful time of ministry. It was an unprecedented event. So normally church is within the four walls. If you don't go to church, no worries at all. But what we're talking about here is that a public government you know, Miamisburg Government Center said yes to us doing this here and we made a big dent.
Eric:A lot of people was finding healing. I prayed with many people at this right where this man is standing changed some lives. That's where my heart is, and so, as we're unpacking here, I'm not, um, trying to paint the most accurate version of me to you, to you, um, and so that so. So here I am with Heather, my wife, and then this guy right here. He is an evangelist named Ryan Young. He is a a straight fire preacher, um, and I just want to kind of go through some pictures here just from the event. These are people that I know personally and just wanted to kind of share. Got a unicorn. Yeah, these guys, I all know them, and anyway. So, this was a beautiful.
Eric:Another beautiful event that was my wife, Heather. She literally handed out gosh, probably, I want to say I don't know how many Bibles there were, but I think she gave away 40 or 30 or 40 of them, all sorts of tracks and if you look at it, you understand why she gave out the flower pens. These are flower pens. She just handed them out, and so that's who she is. She's just a beautiful little flower butterfly, and so there's some pictures from it. Let's go down a little bit more. Here's a little video. You can see how fun it was. Bunch of people, just Beautiful. I've never seen this video. Actually Absolutely beautiful, and we had a dunk tank apparently. So, alright, some testimonies. Beautiful, let's cut that down a little bit. Baptisms, of course, can't have a revival without being baptized in Jesus' name, amen, all right, so you can kind of see that. That's kind of my heart to see that.
Eric:That's kind of my heart. Um,
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Eric:So, we've already got the place booked for. Let me see how much time we've got left. We've got 10 minutes, nice, okay. So those are the two organizations that I hold so near and dear to me. I also work in the youth ministry at the church there and, aspiring, I'm going to Belize in a month with my wife to put on a kids conference. In the mornings we're going to rally children and do morning church services there, just on the street, and then at night we're going to do the same thing, but with adults going down there with a small team to minister, and so that I think, if I wanted you to know anything about me, that's what I want you to know about me.
Eric:All of that stuff is funded and paid for by what we're about to talk about, which is our businesses. So the main slice that we've got is Dayton Barns, this metal building right here with all this footage. This is actually a store that is called the Sharpshooters Gun Range. If I've got that correct. That's in Snowflake, Arizona. I went out there for a week, took all this footage with a drone. Snowflake is, if you're wondering, it's in a. It's right next to a town called Show Low, um. It's up in the high plains of Arizona, almost near New Mexico. It's probably like an hour, uh, in between Flagstaff and Gallup, New Mexico, up there, um, but I took all of that footage. That was the first big project we did. I did it over the internet and then I flew up there to take this footage big project we did. I did it over the internet and then I flew out there to take this footage.
Eric:As you can see, we've got all sorts of sizes categorized. We've got all sorts of types of garages, carports, buildings, commercial. We've got a really cool design and price aspect of it. If you're selling woodsheds and you want to start selling metal buildings, I think that's a solid choice. And here, you know, you got to get yourself a builder, and so I have become an expert at this type of deal. I use this thing every single day. Yesterday I sold a building in Colerain, Ohio. The previous day I sold one in Oregon.
Eric:We have a couple different programs that we use for that. Shout out sensei. Sensei is a super unique program to use. They, um, they have an ordering feature in there, so you build the building and then you can actually use this, this structure, right here, and send it for an order. You don't have to fill anything out except the information on the customer. This one is Idea Room. I think Idea Room is also working on something like that. I love the user friendliness of it. This is really easy for a customer to use.
Eric:That's important for us. We get a lot of design tools, which is just a person getting on here making the thing they want to price for submitting it, and then we kind of have a sales team that responds to it and kind of works their process. That way We've got a. Now don't judge us because we're not all the way there yet, we just started this thing. We've got a Five Rivers pole barns and here are the projects that we're doing there. Um, we've got a uh project we're closing tomorrow in xenia. It's a 30 by 50 pole barn overhead doors, now kind of the and we'll get into this Jared and I will start talking more about other things not steel related, even though the siding and the roof are all ribbed steel panels on pole barns. But essentially, we are getting into this space here when that birthed from is.
Eric:We've got a business partner in the Dayton area comes from a great pastor family. His name is Caleb. He's going to be a guest on the Dayton area Comes from a great pastor family. His name is Caleb. He's going to be a guest on the next episode, so get ready for that. He's a concrete contractor, construction guy. He knows everything about concrete. We've been using him for pads and for metal buildings.
Eric:Where the pole barns came from, which we kind of dove into last week, is Caleb would go to somebody's house to price out a concrete pad for a metal building and if the customer balked maybe it was too expensive, or just through basic conversation, Caleb would let the customer know we don't do pole barns because sometimes people would ask and so he kept getting rejected. He would do the pad but wouldn't do the building because we didn't sell pole barns. And so I think, through a bunch of people asking for it, he started pounding us hey, we've got to do this, we got to do this. That was about two years ago and so finally we bit the bullet. We sat down, we had a couple dry erase sessions, we hit the ground running. No-transcript, they ship pretty quickly, a month or less. We've got a pretty decent supplier. If you want us to put it up and you're in the Ohio area, reach out to us and you can kind of see what the work looks like here. Beautiful pole barns. This is like your typical pole barn. There's a hay loft up there, a couple cupolas. Let's go back to one more. Maybe here's like an even more basic one. This one's just your typical garage. Super steep roof for an attic or a loft area. Beautiful structure there Matches the house, which is also a barn dominium, which we do. We'll get into that too at some point as we keep going.
Eric:I believe this is episode 18 or 19. I can't remember what Jared said last time. I've got four minutes left on this route, so I need to land this plane. Four minutes left on this read, so I need to land this plane. I know this was like a bunch of info about me, but we've got the pole barn business, we've got the metal building business in Dayton Barns and then let's go to our Facebook page. Let's go to our Facebook page here and go to Dayton Barns and all steel buildings. If you would give us a like here, that'd mean a lot. We've got quite a bit of followers on here. I wanted to show this building. We did this one. I don't know if you can hear the sound or not Check out this building Beautiful, look at that Right up on it. And so, we are always posting our projects there, all the new things that we're doing, anything that was recently built, always, always doing that and showing off the most recent project we've done.
Eric:Um, I think for now I I will land this plane. Um, you know, I've been in the Dayton area almost my whole life. I've left. I always come back for some reason, um, really praying for some kids. Uh, my wife and I have been married almost a year. We're going out of town in two weeks, so we'll have a couple episodes before then and I'll do an episode from Florida Going down to the Fort Myers area, which got hit by a hurricane a couple years ago as you guys know, that was kind of a devastating one. Hoping to get some footage or some live interviews or something down there. Um and um, but anyway, man, I one more, one more plug to the J money team out there. Um, as I land this plane for the day, uh, Joel.
Eric:Joel entered my life a couple of years ago. Um, he provided two solutions, uh, one of them was an immediate, which was a woodshed provider, and the second one he had to develop, which was the financing for metal buildings. If you have any questions about financing whatsoever woodsheds or metal you need to contact the J Money team. It's easy to use. The dashboard's easy. It's really easy to talk to the customers. The funding aspect of it is very easy as well. It became a seamless part of our business. I've used them. Dayton Barns did over $5 million worth of finance deals with them since we started, which was last January, which is nothing to balk at. It's nothing to brag about either, but it's definitely provided some solutions. Every customer needs to keep cash in their pocket because the concrete's expensive, the different parts of the projects are expensive. Some of the programs that J Money has are no money down options, so you can actually truly not pay one penny and then just end up with a metal building in your backyard, which is always so good.
Eric:I am so thankful for the listeners here. I will definitely do a part two at some point, maybe later in the summer, but I wanted to share my heart, so if you hear my voice, you kind of see my radical energy. I just wanted you to know where it's coming from. From the bottom of my heart, I'm so thankful to be in business with Jared Shannon, all my partners, Caleb. At Five Rivers we have a web developer. That's an amazing guy. Thankful for him and his team and we're hoping that you guys like our content, keep liking watching, tuning in.
Eric:Let us know if we need to do anything better or if you got any suggestions. We're open that you guys like our content. You keep liking watching, tuning in. Let us know if we need to do anything better or if you've got any suggestions for guests. We are open for a lot of different things. One more thing it's June 12th. We are going to the Steel Roll form show, which I believe is in September in Dayton. If you're in the Ohio area and you want to meet us, that is a good place for us to be. We'll have a Steel Kings podcast booth. Probably do a couple episodes there live. Looking forward to hearing from everybody about that. If you guys want to catch up, go to dinner, etc. Etc. But for now, you guys have a blessed day.