For Terry, these decisions reflect a larger responsibility that businesses have to the communities they serve.
"We need to do better as people," he says.
That beyond environmental stewardship and has become the foundation of how he approaches leadership, business development, and long-term growth. belief reaches far FROM CHAOS TO STRUCTURE His path to entrepreneurship was not a conventional one. Raised in poverty, Terry spent much of his adolescence navigating circumstances that exposed him to business principles in ways he readily acknowledges were far from ideal. “My dad retired from the Air Force, came home, divorced my mom,” he recalls. Fourteen to nineteen, Terry calls his entrepreneur years, running products through a market with no rules and no room for error. That education taught him supply chains with zero tolerance for failure, collections built on reading people fast, marketing that lived or died on reputation alone, and supply and demand felt in real time, not on a graph. Those same instincts built and now run IronRidge Services, a veteran-owned material recovery company. The experience taught him how systems functioned, but it also showed him where those choices eventually led.
"At nineteen, I realized I had no longevity there. I would either be dead or in jail."
Seeking a different future, he joined the Army and eventually deployed during Desert Storm. Military service introduced structure into his life, but it was the discipline that followed that left the deepest impression.
"The military showed me structure," Terry says. "But it also instilled discipline."
Years later, he still views those lessons as essential to both leadership and business. They also helped him navigate the challenges that accompanied returning to civilian life. Like many veterans, Terry spent years searching for productive ways to process experiences that followed him home.
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BUILDERS EDITION Legacy
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