Ep. 5 - Building a Manufacturing Business | Consulting, System Integration & Associated Challenges

Transctipt

Welcome, everyone. This is episode number five of the manufacturing hub podcast with Vlad and Dave. So today we wanted to step back from some of the conversations we had with Sean last week and kind of take it back to ourselves and discuss how we landed where we are today. Some of the challenges discuss how we entered. I guess the manufacturing industry which we've covered a little bit in the past episode, but go into a bit more detail as far as our businesses or our ventures are at their core and maybe also get some advice from each other. Understand it a little bit more and kind of see where things are planning out to go in the next couple of years and what plans we both have in that regard. What are your thoughts? Dave? Is that pretty much what we're talking about? No, completely agree.

Completely agree. As I told Vlad, when I pitched this idea, one of the things I always appreciate is people talking about their businesses and when they have a podcast being able to go listen to how those changes, what their projections were and what actually happened in relation to the projection for everyone who isn't aware. Both led and I own our own business. And as we go through this, it certainly can feel lonely out there, right? And it feels like in the industrial automation community. There aren't a lot of people talking about it. It seems like there are a lot of fairly decent sized companies. It seems like there are a lot of VC based startup companies and then you've got a bunch of systems integrators that are kind of in the middle of that and what I haven't found throughout any of my journey is people talking about that and documenting it in a way that other people going through this journey find useful.

And so my concept is I'd like to crack it Open, talk a little bit more about what we're doing. And you know where we see the future going for us. So you guys can want to ask questions and anyone that is crazy enough to listen to these in a few years with the assumption that Vlad and I are still doing this and talking about what we're doing can hopefully be here as we document this journey. Yeah, and I think it's also an important learning growing process because I think at least I'll speak for myself. But I'm definitely not where I would like to be in the future. So I'm always looking to learn to grow to kind of bounce around some different ideas, see how other people are doing it. And ultimately that's why there's like a chat platform where you can give us some advice or maybe give us some insights on how you would do things.

And I think it's important as they've mentioned that there's really nobody talking about this right now. And there's a lot of people asking the same questions. I feel around getting a manufacturing business off the ground, whether it is systems integration, just a lone Wolf Plc programmer, or what have you. So I think it's going to be also good for ourselves to kind of discuss these ideas and learn from each other as well as the community in general. And I'll even admit myself that I've been trying to find myself a mentor that has launched a similar business. And I do have people in different companies in place that have been extremely helpful, but they're not necessarily where I would like to go. So it's been a challenge to kind of figure this out on my own, for sure, obviously, with good advice, but not necessarily fully aligned with what I'm trying to do.

But, Dave, you want to. Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. No, I was actually going to. So one thing that I wanted to I had to bring up during. This is mentorship, right.

So I know a lot of people in the community. Vlad. I know you know a lot of people in the community, one of the things that helped me over the last year and a half almost two years now is having a mentor that in some way, shape or form, is within the community, but doesn't necessarily know me personally. And so there is an organization called score. Their website is score org. And I went through the process. I found a mentor through their online process, had a couple of conversations with them, and Steven has been absolutely fantastic.

We meet it's all a volunteer network and almost exclusively people who have, like, made it to the point in business in which they would like to give back.

And so it's completely free. They give of their time freely. And they go through some training in order to make sure that they can appropriately mentor someone. There are a lot of people on a variety of different verticals. Since the pandemic has hit, the numbers have gone up significantly, I think they are up like, 85%.

I would completely suggest going through finding someone in your local area. We do Zoom calls, and for me, it's nice to have someone that doesn't necessarily know me. Listen to me. Talk about what I'm doing and what I want to do. And then they can just tell me if I'm crazy, you can talk to your friends. You can talk to your spouse. You can talk to other people in the industry.

But most of the time they're not going to look at you'd be like, that's a stupid idea. It's nice to have someone who, as in partial as can possibly be, but still want you to succeed. So I would I have in the past on LinkedIn and other places suggested that and would wholeheartedly suggest you guys go take a look at score org. Even if you don't want to mentor, they've got a bunch of absolutely phenomenal webinars and other pieces of information. If you're going to start a business. I wish I found it earlier than I did. Yeah, I guess I just opened the site in one of these sites and I guess I'll have to explore it a little bit more.

But that does seem like an interesting concept then I guess I have to do a little bit more research on how to find a mentor through it, but I'll definitely check it out. I really appreciate the reference I was going to say. Go ahead, go ahead. No, I was going to say completely. And if you've got more questions I'm happy to chat offline about those. Sounds good. I was going to say I guess to get us maybe started off.

I think maybe we can re summarize what exactly we're doing. I know that we've talked about it a little bit more in a previous lecture, but just to give a kind of a summary of what the ventures are and kind of maybe explain what the next steps or goals would be. So that kind of clues people in that are watching this without context. Sure, completely. Why don't I start with whoever what I'm currently doing and then I have something to talk about that is in the process of being launched after we talk about what you're doing blood anyone is currently listening that wants to hear what we're doing has to has to stick around, but currently and for the last 18 19 20 months I've been running a company called Caplan solutions and then I've been blogging about my journey digital transformation industry for auto everything along those on my website. Davidif com the breaking of those what was very intentionally in the past. I've written hundreds of articles and done hundreds of videos and I I wanted a place that is as I call it like one source of truth for Dave.

So if you guys want to look at anything that I've done manufacturing hub, everything else that is the place to look for me. And as I describe on that site and as I've distilled more even since our first or second episode, my goal is to help manufacturing companies go through transformational processes that pay for themselves. Now, that was not necessarily the goal that I had set out or written down when I started. Kaplan when I started Kaplan, I thought it would be more of a marketing scalable business development solutions, but I've found that I continue to get into it. What I really love is to get further and further into the project. So what I do is I help manifest. As I mentioned, my goal is to help manufacturers go th...