We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Greg Stoner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Greg , thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

Absolutely wished i would have started my welding career right out of highschool.

Greg , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got my first look into welding in highschool before they shut the courses down. My dad had some influence in me welding as well. He would always tell me about how he would get stuck welding the steel studs down. I didnt get back into welding until i started doing maintenance for our local fairgrounds. I stepped up, told my boss he didnt need to keep sending out our equipment and panels to be fixed. At first they didn’t listen or maybe didnt want me doing it until i just jumped in a did it. Now its all i want to do! Other than what my shop teacher showed me im completely self taught. I had a lot of help from videos from different trade schools. Also an exponential amount of tips and advice from some of the best welding hands out there. I work on my welding just about every chance i can get. One thing i and probably most proud of is building two fireplace grates. One for my dads fireplace and one for the other side of their duplex! They use their fireplaces almost every day during the winter and we all know how cold it can get here in iowa! That was almost 4 years ago now! Like i said earlier ive worked on some of the heavy equipment at my fairgrounds and they too have all held up and are still in use! I even made my wifes friend, whose no longer with us, a horse out of horse shoes and wire!

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish my teachers in highschool told me more about tade schools instead of pushing colleges on me. I never knew about the dedicated welding schools out there until then last ten years. Theres so many great trade schools out there now.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My wife got me to start an Instagram account after i swore off Facebook. I posted my first few things with no results. Then i started fallowing all the people from the welding channels i watch. That got me a few follows back but not many. I didn’t start getting traction on my page until i posted about some of the new welding caps and jacket i got. I tagged the company in the post and surprisingly i got way more views and like then i thought i would. Then i just started posting the work i was doing. Im not saying the way i did it was right or wrong but its working for me. Also i quickly learned to support those who support you. Engage with people, like their content and more than likely they’ll do the same for you. Post content often, do your best to get good pics/ and videos (quality wise). Another thing i did was make a logo with my Instagram handle in it. Then that turned into stickers. Besides your actual work your doing I think logo stickers are the best way to get your name out there. They’re great conversation starters.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @Stoner._._.Weldz
• Youtube: @Stoner._._.weldz69

Image Credits
Me @Stoner._._.Weldz