Contact Nancy LurkerLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-lurker-6603316/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today Nancy Lurker. Nancy is President and CEO of EyePoint Pharmaceuticals, a specialty company that develops and manufacturers sustained release drug delivery, innovative ophthalmology products to treat debilitating diseases of the eye, leading to blindness.Ms. Lurker is a healthcare industry veteran and decision-maker who brings more than 30 years of experience with the public, and private startups, including fortune 500 biotech and pharma companies. Nancy, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you here.Nancy Lurker: Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here.Lisa Ryan: Nancy, please share with us your background, particularly in manufacturing, since that's the audience that we have.Nancy Lurker: Well, I've spent several years in the pharmaceutical industry at big pharma and several small pharma companies. In almost all cases, except for actually two companies I was at, which was on the service side. I've been in a manufacturing company, so I've got a lot of experience, just in terms of how you think about manufacturing drugs, which is not easy.Lisa Ryan: I understand that you have some pretty cool technology with what you've developed at your company. Why don't you tell us about what you do?Nancy Lurker: We have some exciting technology. We are an ocular drug delivery company, making products that we will commercialize ourselves. We also do work with partners, though they might, in some cases, come to with drugs they want to put in our drug delivery technology. The reason is that when you're dealing with drugs that go into the eye, it's very complex. If you can think about the eye, it's tiny, and it's a highly complex organ. Our drug delivery technology is minute. We have one's called Duracert, and one is called Verizon. They're very different from each other. I'll focus on Duracert are because that's our main platform.It's an amazing drug delivery technology that we can release drugs into the eye. You inject into what's called the posterior back, part of the eye. I know, for listeners, they might be like, 'oh my God, injecting the back of the eye. How horrible!' It's not as bad as it sounds. Doctors are very used to it. It's an extremely small, about the size of a tiny piece of hair in terms of diameter, and that gets injected into the eye. We can tailor the release of the drug depending on the drug. Depending on how long we want it to go - anywhere from three years down to one month. Right now, we have one drug on the market that releases out over three years. This drug is no more than three millimeters long - about one millimeter in diameter. It's amazing!The patient can't see it. You can't see it. It drops to the bottom of the eye, and it just sits there. It releases a tiny microscopic dose, in this case, asteroid, every single day, 365 days a year, for three years.We also have a very exciting drug in the pipeline that will release a kinase inhibitor over six months. But, again, based on how we pick these timeframes is based on what doctors want and what's best for patients, in some cases to literally what we can do, because, as you can imagine, the pharmacogenetics from a code dynamics of a drug also have to marry up with a drug delivery technology. So there are some limits there in terms of what we can do.Lisa Ryan: I love having people in manufacturing on the show because of their passion for it, and you are extremely passionate about what you do. We talked about one of the things before the show was getting more women into STEM, getting more women into manufacturing, and being excited about the mission that you have. What are some of the things that you've done as an organization to find women and find people in stem and steam that are working for you?Nancy Lurker: it's not easy. I want to encourage women to persevere in this field. We need more women and people of color. Persevere, because look there's no doubt that when you bring in more diversity into an organization, you get different approaches to problems, different ways to think about things. It also changes the culture of the company, which I love.Undoubtedly, bringing women into manufacturing and women into stem changes the dynamic in many different ways, very much for the positive. One of the things I like to do is mentor women, particularly young women - up and coming. It's not easy. It never is. None of these fields are easy. Indeed, getting to the C suite is difficult. It takes a lot of hours and commitment. But also, what I do is we do reach out so, for instance, many times will be doing a job search, and we open it up to all comers, of course, but I want to try to make sure that we do get diversity in the organization. We promote from within, so we make a real effort to mentor our people of color and women so that they can know that they've got a great career track at EyePoint pharmaceuticals.Lisa Ryan: There are the traditional ways of finding employees. When you are looking to increase that level of diversity and the number of women that join you, what are some nontraditional ways you do that? I know that there's no magic cure or easy button when it comes to finding people, but if there are some nontraditional ways that you've discovered?Nancy Lurker: I was just going to say there's no secret sauce. I tap into my network. I will say this, in pharma, it's a unique ecosystem. It is biotech. You go into the Boston area where EyePoint pharmaceuticals are headquartered. There is an incredible biotechnology pharma ecosystem. It doesn't take much to reach out and find women and people of color in that area now. Because of the pandemic, the good news is we figured out you don't have to be living in Boston. We will often go way beyond Boston to find people now. Sometimes we use the traditional executive search firms, but I would also say to go on LinkedIn. We post every job except for very high-level positions. We post every job on LinkedIn. If you see a job there, apply for it because we want to make sure that we get a broader pool of women and diverse candidates. I'm very committed to that. I think that it brings a different perspective to the company.I tap into my network. I reach out to people in the Boston area that I know, but we also go on LinkedIn, and we go way beyond the Boston area.Lisa Ryan: It's good that you're saying that because people have this idea about LinkedIn that the jobs are there, but all of them apply. It would be almost impossible to get a job because of the competition. So obviously, you're not finding that.Nancy Lurker: No, no, in fact, we often use the LinkedIn network to get candidates in for positions. All the time now again, you put your resume in. We do want to make sure the resume is at least somewhat close. We've had excellent success through LinkedIn.Lisa Ryan: Awesome. When you're thinking about bringing women into STEM and people of color, what are some of the myths preventing people from joining STEM that is not necessarily true?Nancy Lurker: Yes, so I'm going to say some things. I was not the smartest person in my class now; there's no doubt that when you take courses in my undergraduate biology and chemistry, it's not easy when you take courses in that field. But you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You don't have to be the one that is a brilliant scientist. I don't have a Ph.D., I have a master's in business, but I don't have a Ph.D. I'm surrounded by very, very talented scientists and iPoint pharmaceuticals with PhDs, and but yet. Don't let that intimidate you. You have something to offer. You can bring insights in, and often you may not be the scientist working at the bench at the lab.You might need that background. On the business side, you might need that background in regulatory. You might need that background, working in the manufacturing area, to understand some of the basic science that goes into making the drug, so don't be intimidated by it. If you like it, hang in there. Being a B student is perfectly fine. Sometimes people have this idea that scientists are nerdy. You got to be brilliant. I'm never going to make it. Don't think that way. It's a big ecosystem of people. That science degree, even if it's just a bachelor's, will come into great use in many different areas in this field.Lisa Ryan What is some of the leadership lessons you've learned through your experiences as a woman in STEM.Nancy Lurker: There are many leadership lessons one, I would say that I have never felt that I wanted to or needed not to be feminine. I love to dress in nice pretty clothes. I like to fix my hair up nice. I like jewelry. You can be who you are in this whole field and still do very, very well. But, again, you have to stick to your guns. Often, I'm not going to deny that you go into meetings at times, and it still exists. Men will tend to at times talk over to you. I'm not trying to any way denigrate men because they bring a tremendous amount to the table as well. Everybody does, but sometimes men can still talk over you. I just push right on through. I don't. I'm not afraid to call it out to say, excuse me, I was talking or excuse me, I just said that, and you're repeating it so. It happens, but you have to have the confidence to do that. That's probably the biggest thing I would say, and the second thing is to advocate for yourself.Women have a hard time with this. There are patterns in terms of what I've seen over the years. Women tend not to advocate for themselves as much. They don't come to me as much and say, hey, I'm ready for a promotion, I want to be promoted. Men typically do that, which I have no problem with that. I will say to women, "you're ready for a promotion. You should be going to your boss," and I was advocating for this.The second thing is that women tend to feel that they have to be 95% ready for that next promotion. Often men will feel 75% good enough. I can do that next job. Don't feel like you have to have every single box checked off before you're ready for that next promotion.Finally, don't get too loyal to your company, because the reality is often you can make big leaps forward by leaving one company and going to another company. I'm not saying that IPoint should do this because I love you all, and I want them to stay here. But it does help at times. I did that in my career, and it helped tremendously.Lisa Ryan: Alright, well, and it's different today than it used to be. I mean, back at way back in the day, when I was an executive recruiter, if I saw somebody with fewer than five years at a company, I'd be like - job hopper. But it's different today. You already said that instead of having employees just in the Boston area, the pandemic had shown us that you could have people from all over the country. So we're expanding our views. We're expanding our candidate base. We're expanding the diversity that we're able to bring in. I like the lessons that you talk about for women because it's true they're not advocating for themselves. They feel this sense of loyalty to a company that may not appreciate them and goes somewhere else.Nancy Lurker: I'm married. I never sacrificed my family for my job, so what did I do. You need to be confident. You don't need to apologize if you need to take an hour off or two hours off to go to the soccer game, the dance recital. I don't care what it is running them to the doctor. I think this applies to men as well. Don't apologize for that. I don't feel like you mind if I do this. Just say, "I've got an important event with my kid, and I'm going to go. I'm going to go take two hours off and be there. If that's a problem, let me know. You deserve to be able to do that. You can have a family. You can have a successful career. I have never been one to ascribe to the theory that you have to be putting in 80 hour work weeks nonstop.Now to be fair, in the C suite, you're putting in 60 hours - there's no doubt about it. I intersperse that there are many times I take time off to be with my family, and I'll rework meetings around. I tell people, I don't try to fudge it, and say oh, you know, and that's not just when I hit the C-level, I did that going all the way up. Be transparent about it. Be proud of it, and make sure that you prioritize what's important in your life.Lisa Ryan: You're also setting the example for your employees and what you expect from your employees. Many times it's all fine and dandy when the leadership says, "Oh, your family's important, and you should spend time with them, and they never see the C suite leaving their office. They're putting in 60 or 80 hours a week. The fact that you are setting that example and being that transparent. You're not saying, "Ooh, I have another doctor's appointment," and then they see you on Facebook enjoying your kid's soccer game.You're setting the example for the behavior that you want. That's so important. This is what I'm doing, and you're not taking advantage of it.Nancy Lurker: The nice thing about the pandemic. I think it's allowed us to get rid of some horrible commutes; that frees up time. It will enable you to be on a conference call, go on mute. The dogs are barking; the kid just walked in the door. Go drop your bags off. I think it's wonderful.Lisa Ryan: It's also changed how we look at the workplace. You have many people, particularly the baby boomers, who we never thought would retire because of their work ethic. Suddenly, they just spent a year working from home, playing with their grandkids and their kids, and realizing life outside. Hence, unless companies are willing to have that transparency from leadership, that flexibility can stay connected to family. There are going to be big losers in the long run.Companies forcing their employees to come back to the office with no choice of doing any remote work ever again. These are the things that we look at. I believe that it's going to open up for women much more because we've all discovered the value of family.Nancy Lurker: I couldn't agree with you more. I think it is going to change the dynamic and allow a lot more flexibility. It's about time; we need it.Lisa Ryan: What are some of the things you have seen working best from a cultural standpoint? It sounds like you have a pretty significant culture over there at iPoint. What are some of the things you're doing that are working to keep that high engagement level?Nancy Lurker: I'm going to say a lot of tech companies do this. But I also think it's how we go about it, so first of all, it starts at the top. I hire for what I call high achievers but low ego. I don't want a bunch of people in the company that are all about them. They can often be poisonous to a culture that's number one number two. I can be a demanding boss, but you also have to be kind. You have to be respectful. Don't throw your weight around. It starts with me. I have to model that, so I like to think of myself and the leadership team as we're just orchestra conductors, but we need everybody, so with that, as the backdrop.This is not a macho culture, right. As I said, this is not where I'm going to come into your work 80 hours a week, and I got my snacks over here. I've never gone for that. You can be highly successful and have a very successful company and not have that culture. So again, with that as a backdrop, we try to do a lot of fun things. We often have International Food Day. Everybody brings in food from their respective countries, and you cannot believe the amazing food we have.We throw a lot of company events. We have your typical snacks that people can get. I try to be around, and just walk around, and get to know people. We're growing pretty rapidly, so it's a little hard for me now to stay on top of who everyone is, but I always try to walk around and say hi to everyone. I also have what I call "coffees with Nancy." Over 12 months, I will have three to five employees meet with me as a group and work through the entire employee base through the year. It's just a chance for a casual conversation. I did it all through the pandemic, with that was all done virtually.You just get to know each other. I try to bring in people from different departments to get to know each other as well. We do have several different locations, so it's it all those things go about building a fun culture. People don't feel like they have to have their political guard up all the time. I don't want energy to play politics. I want energy going to how can I do, how can I solve this problem? How do I make sure I get this project done? Because they want to, not because they're trying to kiss up to their boss.I worked hard to make sure we have a culture that exemplifies it. We're not perfect. We never will be, but we strive to make sure that that's a key part of our company culture.Lisa Ryan: and how many employees do you have?Nancy Lurker: We're up to about 120 now and continuing to add.Lisa Ryan: The reason why that's important to know is that for people listening to the podcast, they're like, I can't be spending that amount of time. When you prioritize over a year, I talked about this in my programs all the time, so it's so nice to hear when people are doing it because you're getting the feedback you're creating a safe environment for people to share things. So I'm sure that from time to time, you get to hear some stuff.Nancy Lurker: Much to the chagrin of my management.Lisa Ryan: The response to that is simple, and I'm sure you do this. Thank you for sharing.Nancy Lurker: Oh, my gosh, yes yeah.Lisa Ryan: When you fight them, when you argue when you do any of the above, well that's not what I meant by that, they will never share with you again. It sounds like you have created a very safe, authentic, transparent environment as a CEO for your employees to do that, which is easy. It's not easy to do. It's something that when you place it as a priority, you can do it.Nancy Lurker: You can do it, and I'm going to say again, it starts at the top. It's not just me. It's also the leadership team. So I'd say actually down to the Vice President level helps to set that tone. But you have to have people who are willing not to let their ego get in the way, and I will say, Lisa, unfortunately, I've seen it too many companies. It's all about them. If you make it all about yourself, you will never get the type of loyalty and trust that you want in a company.They're not stupid. They can tell what's going on.Lisa Ryan: Right, and they're not going to like everything you tell them, but at least if you're coming from a place of authenticity and transparency, they know that you'll always have their back.So Nancy, what are some of the things that are still keeping you up at night?Nancy Lurker: Well, actually, I would say two things one is, and it ties in right into manufacturing. We...

Contact John Wilczynski:www.AmericaMakes.usLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, John Wilczynski. John is the Executive Director of America Makes - the nation's leading Public-Private Partnership for additive manufacturing technology and education. John graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering technology. He's worked in a variety of manufacturing positions with varying levels of responsibility. He continued to gain experience in manufacturing while spending more than eight years at General Motors Pontiac Metal Center division, working through various positions and levels throughout the stamping organization.John, welcome to the show.3500:05:05.490 --> 00:05:07.500John Wilczynski: Thank you for having me, Lisa. It's good to see you.Lisa Ryan: John, for people who aren't familiar with America Makes, please share with us a bit of what that partnership looks like and what do you do over there.John Wilczynski: Absolutely. American Makes is what we call a manufacturing innovation institute. There are now sixteen Manufacturing innovation institutes in the United States - all focused on different advanced manufacturing technologies. We were the first - we were founded back in 2012.Our technology focuses on areas around additive manufacturing or what most referred to as 3D printing. We're looking to bring together the community around the technology - ultimately looking to increase the adoption and use of the technology. We specifically do that by working in a Public-Private Partnership. That means is we're trying to bring together the community from industry - both large and small, nonprofit Community, government Community, and the academic community. We want to understand what the problem space looks like and then organize a coordinated response, so we're focused on applied research at the Institute. That means we're looking to identify the topics that are preventing us from using the technology today. Ultimately, we're trying to do that in a way that helps everybody.It doesn't just solve a problem for eight individual organizations but instead creates intellectual property that can be shared across the community.Lisa Ryan: It also sounds like giving this attention to manufacturing is another goal to bring people into industry. You and I talked before the show about how hard it is to get people to come into manufacturing as a career when you have cool things like 3D printing and additive manufacturing. Please share a bit about what you're doing in partnership to change that conversation and, shall we say, woo people into manufacturing as a career.John Wilczynski: Absolutely. It is more complicated than you think - especially for those of you who live in this world today and understand all of the benefits that come. As you mentioned, I got to see the product being produced and fenders being made on the equipment from the automotive industry. Then taken to the assembly plant, I could realize the product that I was touching every day. This is not common for a lot of folks. I think we have something really interesting in additive manufacturing to help communicate more efficiently to students entering the workforce. More importantly, we try to get the guidance counselors and parents to understand where opportunities exist.We just kicked off a program within the State of Ohio. We're based in Youngstown, Ohio. It is an activity to deploy 3D printers to several high schools and provide them with a curriculum. Most importantly, we provide resources to those guidance counselors and parents to understand where opportunities in manufacturing exist.It is our education and workforce development director who calls additive the gateway drug to manufacturing. It's an easy space for people to get their heads around. From its inception, 3D technology is digital, which in some ways, makes it a little easier for us to introduce it to students because all they've known is operating in that environment since they've been children.Lisa Ryan: Well, reaching out to guidance counselors and parents is excellent because that's where the conversation needs to get started. Making sure that those guidance counselors have the resources like you said, is critical too. Too many times, guidance counselors' sole focus is to help kids pick out college. Giving them that access to, "Hey, this is a terrific way for these kids to make a living." It is a gateway drug. I like that.John Wilczynski: It's also something that translates to the existing workforce. If you think of incumbent workers, and we see technologies changing around us every day, there is a need for the product that we might produce today to look different tomorrow. It's always hard to focus on a product day in and day out with your nose down. You're just working on it, and most of the workforce has to operate in that environment. We're trying to help bring information to them raise awareness - to make sure they're well-positioned. When we think of the future workforce, it is unlikely that many of the positions from today are even defined, for you know 10, and 20 years from now.We have to be able to start creating this more adaptive workforce. That means the introduction of new technologies - again not easy to do. Awareness is a big part of the challenge that we're all faced with.Lisa Ryan: What do you see with the companies and organizations you've worked with? What's working well? What are some of the best practices that you're seeing?John Wilczynski: You need to put tools into the hands of the folks that you have working for you. Just like in many fields, they are the people who understand what they're doing today - better than any engineer - who has dreamt up the process or oversees the value stream map of what's going on. They touch and feel these products every day. They understand what works and what doesn't. We've seen many folks have success with introducing low-dollar pieces of equipment into the hands of, and maybe it's not the operator on the floor necessarily, but it's the skilled trades crew or the folks responsible for the equipment. They expose them and give them some training on what the technology can and where it makes sense to use it.For hundreds of dollars, a low-cost 3D printer on the floor, maybe in the shop where they can start playing with it. These the most accessible entry points for the technology around prototyping. Around you need some particular setup because two items must be aligned every time to do that overnight, before the first shift coming in. This action creates a tremendous opportunity. When you start to see those things click is when you see more adoption. Then they become the champions within the organization. We've seen work as the introduction of tools, getting them some training, and providing them the time to use the tools you're providing. There are several cases where what doesn't work is buy the equipment you think will lead to some specific increase in revenue. You must realize the cost of that as the business owner and, in particular, small business owner. Even a $1,000 investment isn't necessarily insignificant, so you have to weigh it and determine when you can pull the trigger on those kinds of things.But you also can't put it in the corner and let one person use it and collect dust. We've all seen that on the shop floor - tools that got introduced by somebody that never really took off. That is not an effective way to use the technology.Lisa Ryan: Right well, and too many times manufacturing has this stigma of we've been doing it this way for 40 years, and if it's not broken, we're not going to fix it. Realizing that these kids are in school now and graduating from school prepares them for jobs that don't exist yet for products that don't exist yet.So where do you see that that fine line between being flexible enough to kind of turn on a dime and getting out of that mindset that things are always going to be like this because we've been doing it this way for 50 years?John Wilczynski: This was all thrust upon us this past year. I'm sure that's come up more than a few times here recently in your podcast but what we saw dovetails nicely into this training topic. There were opportunities to fill and supply Chain gaps that existed. It might not be the component for an aircraft you are used to making because not too many people were flying or somehow related to hospitality. Often the skilled workforce or the workforce that you have is plenty capable if you're able to expose them to the technology.We saw success stories where organizations could introduce the technology and get their folks back to work quickly - working on unconventional things for them. That's not easy to do. You're not going to turn around a tier-one supplier or an OEM making automotive parts and put 1000 people back to work, making facemasks. They're not equal. I completely understand that. Still, you also have to be in the position somewhere within the Great Lakes region if and when the combustion engine starts to transition towards electrified vehicles that we all understand is happening at some level, and it will continue to happen.Some manufacturers make their living daily making components for those combustion engines. What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything to them today or tomorrow, or next year. How are they positioning themselves so that in five years or, more likely, ten years out - when it becomes a more relevant technology. What does that mean for their workforce if they're not adapting or at least starting to think about these things? They're going to be facing complex challenges moving forward. Some of their competitors are already there. It's the balance of introducing technology. It's not necessarily going to displace your current approach, but you have to continue. One of the points I wanted to make is the importance of investing in the workforce, just keeping your folks trained. It starts with on-the-job training. You get them to the point where they're capable. You must continue to invest in them so that they can you know it takes a desire on their end and an employee.But at some point, we all have to realize the world will change at a pace that it has over decades - when our parents were working in manufacturing. It is a very different world today than it was, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago. We have to start creating a workforce, which will be tough with the existing workforce. But they're competent and well-trained people. You have to figure out how you introduce them to these new concepts, and then we start to get wild and start talking about VR and all those kinds of things. We see the intersection between our technology and those technologies work very nicely.Skilled trades folks worked for the plant that I worked in and me. They were experts. They knew more than I ever would, but they didn't memorize the thousand page manuals. Today, we put something in front of students, and they put a headset on, and they can interface with where the gearbox comes out, check clearances, and do things that our parents never thought could be a reality.So how do we make sure folks are ready for that? You can't just turn the switch and put a headset on someone who's been working for 40 years. That's not going to work very well. It's the gradual introduction to the technology, and making sure they understand how it can help themLisa Ryan: This past year has been a perfect example of what would have happened if we would have said what if a year and a half ago, what if the hospitality industry disappeared overnight? What if people stopped flying? What if combustion engines disappeared from the face of the planet because everything went electric. These are the questions that we can start asking now. Maybe we're not ready to make that change overnight, but at least it's not going to come and surprise you when something like a worldwide pandemic comes.The give of COVID was it did speed up technology to a place that probably would have taken us 15 or 20 years to get to where we are now. But it also allows us to ask that question, what if and start to make those plans like you're seeing some of your partners doing.John Wilczynski: We've done a lot of work around pandemic response and continue to show the progress that would work. It's more important to make sure that we learn from our lessons and figure out how to translate that into creating resilience supply chains - widespread talk right now. This month, a year ago, we were having these conversations with folks around recovery response. In the dream, we were getting to the point where we're focused on resiliency. We're at that point now. We've seen a lot of the efforts back off as conventional supply chains have caught up. What did we learn from any of that? How are we making sure we're implementing that? How do we ensure that if a barge gets stuck in a canal somewhere, we have an alternative path forward?That's easy to use that example and not have to back it up because I'm just talking to you, but as you think about exploring your various failure modes that could exist within your process and your supply chain. You have to study. I know we did a lot of that in my past life, where you considered every option and waited. We need to make sure we're doing that. Hopefully, we won't encounter the same kind of craziness over the past year, but change is inevitable. We're going to see it. We will have disruptions. We will have unrest. We will have all of these things that impact our business. If we continue to do things the way we always had, we're unlikely to survive through those things. We saw that in many cases, and not that it was anyone's fault, what happened over this last year, but others reacted and were able to sustain themselves in the meantime at least.It'll be an interesting next ten years to see how all of these new technologies come together and how dealing with this new reality is a threat across everything that is just the reality of living in a connected world. From a manufacturing point of view, we hear countless stories of where threats come in, and that's something we deal with quite a bit in our world. As a wholly digital technology, there are concerns about where threats come in. When you start to look down into the tiers of the supply chain, there's not a lot of folks who can afford the types of bodies that you need in place to deal with those kinds of threats. There are lots of opportunities; lots of risks out there as well.Lisa Ryan: When it comes to those threats and those failures, what are the main things you're seeing that keep manufacturers up at night?John Wilczynski: We do a lot of work with the Department of Defense. There are increased sensitivities around every component that's manufactured. It's the information that you have access to. A competency model is being utilized right now around manufacturing to make sure people understand what cyber maturity matrix. It's about the various stages of awareness, so people know where there are potential threats. Some of it's pretty basic - knowing where your information is stored, knowing who has access to it. Those all sound relatively simple until you start to think about interacting with my supply chain or my vendors. What are they sharing? What information do they have access to? Then, as you start to move files around, as most of the manufacturing is digital at this point, we're not sending mailing a lot of files anymore. We're getting 2d drawings and having the manufacturers create opportunities. Many cyber threats need to be considered, so awareness is the first thing that needs to be addressed. We need to understand that there are concerns that you should have. It would help if you kept that in front of you. Once you're through that and make sure your people all understand that.Then you start to add on systems, make sure you're monitoring things, do maintenance properly, and update doing updates. As silly as all of that sounds, those patches and that update are done. They've seen potential vulnerabilities, so you have to stay on top of all of those things. Not easy to do as a small business owner. Potentially the person or a small number of persons manages all of those activities, but it has to be done. We've seen countless examples where there were entry points into a bottom tier of a supply chain that ultimately led to a bigger problem up the supply chain. They tagged along with the information as it was shared from place to place, so it is certainly something to pay attention to right now right.Lisa Ryan: Ass we're starting to get to the end of our conversation, what would you say when it comes to your best tip to help manufacturers listening to this podcast? Whether it be in the supply chain or technology – something you've seen that could help our audience today.John Wilczynski: Double down on the people. As you're introducing new technologies, a skilled workforce is what you need. There are a lot of displaced folks out there. We hear from countless manufacturers that are struggling to find capable bodies. You have to make sure you're taking care of your folks. What I mean by that is making sure that they are trained and understand what's coming out. Introduce them. The more engaged they are, ultimately, the more interested they will be in staying on the right track.At that point, it will make your insertion of technology easier because if you have them buying into what you're trying to accomplish and following your vision. It's a lot easier to get them behind you versus forcing it upon them because they're not engaged. It's maybe an over-simplification of a concept, but we've seen a lot of success as we're again doing a lot of work with the Department of Defense. We also work with the large installations, and they have a large workforce that's been around for a while. It's not easy to introduce these new concepts, although we have to make sure that we're meeting these requirements for the types of sophisticated components that they need for the current military. We've seen quite a bit of success. The only way it works is to double down on people.Lisa Ryan: John, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. If people want to get a hold of you and connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?John Wilczynski: So, probably the easiest way is to go to our website. It is simply America Makes.us. You can find me there. I can share my email address on LinkedIn, all of those kinds of things as well. I'm happy to talk to folks, especially if you've got questions want to engage in the additive manufacturing space; we'd be glad to talk to you.Lisa Ryan: All right, well, John, again, thank you so much for joining me today.John Wilczynski: Thank you very much thanks for having me.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. See you next time.

Contact Roger Sustar:www.thinkmfg.com.Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Roger Sustar. Roger is CEO of Fredon Corporation, which offers complete manufacturing solutions for precision machining needs. They've been in business since 1969 and always go one step beyond to provide their customers with the highest level of quality through planning employee involvement, training technology, and a highly effective quality control system.Roger is a firm believer in giving back to the community. He started a group called AWT - the Alliance for Working Together - to serve as a forum for manufacturers in Lake county to discuss common business issues. Welcome to the show, Roger.Roger Sustar: wow, Thank you, Lisa, very much.Lisa Ryan: Roger, please share a bit of your background and what ultimately led you to Fredon.Roger Sustar: I came back from the United States Army back in 1964, got married, and before I got married. My dad had me worked for his little company for about two days or three days, and I quit my father's company called Masco Machine. He had a very nice company in Highland Heights, Ohio.Because it was just too harsh, he had three partners. My wife wanted me to go to school, so I tried to get into Fenn college, which is the pre-Cleveland state. I had failed. I passed the essay test because I wrote the essay, and my wife typed it. That was when papers were around that before the computer, a long time ago. I got an a-minus or something like that. She did an excellent job. I used to pass an English grammar exam, and grammar is, you know, diagramming. Right after the fifth try, I said, screw this. I couldn't take it.I learned a lot about manufacturing, especially fabrication, because his company was called nonferrous metals fabricating. I learned a whole bunch he bought a plastic company called Cleveland plastic fabricators, and at one point, he said to me, said how about if I give you 49% of my business, and you run it for me. I said, wow, that's pretty good, but I have to go home and talk to my wife. He got upset, called my father said, oh boy, what kind of wimpy you have for a son that he can't do things independently. I was a good husband because I had my wife involved with everything. We started our own company a couple of years later. It was crazy, but that's what happened.Lisa Ryan: In all of these years of business, you have a real focus on introducing young people into manufacturing, even starting as little as young as fifth and sixth grade. Tell us a bit of the Alliance for Working Together - why you created it, and some of the results that you're seeing because you're doing it.Roger Sustar: Okay, well, we started it early 2000s when business became tough for a small company to survive. Back then, we were primarily concerned what helping each other with healthcare with insurance costs, where to purchase steel, where to get aluminum - anything like that. It wasn't easy at that time.We finally kept meeting and hearing these things, and then it ended up the most crucial thing that everybody was concerned with was the future workforce. We started this whole thing based on a robot program that I saw in Arizona. We watched it inside a cage, and then we decided that we needed a wow factor, so we would take those robots and build those. We teed it off with NRL - National robotics league. Ours is a little bit different. Ours is called the WT robots. We went to the high schools, and we got high schools involved. The high schools are excited about it because it's free for them. It's getting companies like us and others to participate and help the kids. I'll get into Bowman high school - a parochial girls' Catholic school that I had a friend that I knew. He was going to church on Sundays, and I called him and begged him to help the girls at Bowman.One of those girls used her robot experience with us, and we usually do it at Lakeland Community college in the gym. She obtained the full-ride scholarship to MIT. That was four years ago. She's graduated and going on to great and better things. A couple of the girls went to Ohio State and graduated. One or two of them are now at Steris Corporation.We started the bot program because we're trying to do to get kids involved with manufacturing. Our primary focus is to promote rewarding careers in manufacturing. We need not just the welder on the floor, the packing department or the shipping department, but we also need people in the accounting department and the quality department.We started a junior bot program for seventh and eighth graders because we wanted to get to them. Then we thought we'd have to go down even further, so we went on to fifth and sixth graders. We started a summer camp it's called SMI - Summer manufacturing institute. Senator Brown is the one who promotes this, and we took it, and we made it three separate weeks - two with boys and girls, and one with just all girls. It's been a fabulous experience. We now do it out at auburn career Center.We've now gotten funding to continue to do this, and it's these fifth and sixth graders are loving it. It's the beginning of their heads accumulating all this knowledge and trying to figure out what they want to do. Everybody, we always ask what do you want to be when you're 17 years old. I'm 60 plus years hundred, and 70 years 17 years right, I still don't know what I want to do. I'm still trying to figure out how to succeed in life and how to do things. Anyone who knows what they want to do with at 17, 18, 19, 25, I applaud you because I had no idea what we would do. All I knew was we were going to succeed. I'd tell my wife, and she goes yeah yeah, sure. But we did. We also even work with PSC partners in science excellence. We have the school system and lake county partners in science excellence. They go down to kindergarten.Most stem because stem now well I think they call it steam now.Lisa Ryan: Right, because they added the art application, and they added all that stuff in there, which is fine.Roger Sustar: It's excellent. Some have stream - the Catholic schools use a stream because they put religion in there now too. But really, what it amounts to is just showing somebody what we do, instead of just thinking that you know most youngsters want to be what police officers, firemen, doctors and stuff like that. This gives them a little bit more perspective on what's going on. We're never afraid to bring people into our plant because we like to show them what we do so they can see what it is. Some might not like it. But if we can get one youngster out of 10, that's a success.Lisa Ryan: So let me ask you, it's one thing to get the kids involved and interested in fifth and sixth grade, but what about the parents that are so focused on sending their kids to college. How are you changing in their mind that this is a great career path for their kids?Roger Sustar: That's a great question. We do with the robots, and with the fifth and sixth graders, we invite the parents to come, especially for the robot program because we want them to see the plants for the kids are going to be at today can see what it's like. In addition to that, last year, we started an apprenticeship Program For our AWS team members, and we begged, borrowed, and asked all our guys to please send kids to our Program. Juliana petty, our executive director, and a great young lady. She grew up working out MFG, Molded Fiber Glass. MFG made the first corvette body.This apprenticeship program is something we started our second class in February this year as long as the first class last year, so now all the kids that get out of the robot program. The junior bots program and the fifth and sixth graders now have a path that we try to give them to see what it is. Many of our people are training for our companies, our AWT, my friends, and our business. We do tuition reimbursement. The good part about our AWT apprenticeship program is that the State of Ohio recognizes us, so the couple thousand dollars you pay for your student will get your $2,000 back from the states once he finishes that first year. We will help you fill out the paperwork and get everything performed. If you look down to the TechCrunch program, you'll see AWT right at the top of the list.We're excited about that because that's a great way we're going to continue to keep youngsters into our business so that we can build up our future. Our future is in the kids. We have to replace many people who have learned on hand over the years with the new generation.Lisa Ryan: If somebody is listening to this from another state that they don't have access to that type of programming or they're thinking about getting it started now, who would be the best people for them to connect with. What would be a good way for them to create a program like that?Roger Sustar: They can contact us with no problem. If they're in stamping, the PMA knows about what we do. If you're in machining, the national tooling machine association knows what we're doing. If you're in a school, PMA – the Precision Metalforming association knows all about us. NAM – the National Association of Manufacturing knows what we do. October is manufacturing, and we work hard with the local chambers of commerce in Lake county, the east, west, and mentor. We take a whole afternoon, and we will have about 30-40 manufacturing companies – Lincoln, Swagelok, Parker Hannifin, Eaton, all the big guys, plus all these little fellows. We'll try to show the kids what we do and how we do things and get them excited so they can see what's going on.Lincoln is a great helper because Lincoln will bring in their virtual welding machine, and the kids will have an opportunity to weld. I don't know if you've done that yourself.Lisa Ryan: I've done it. It is the coolest thing ever.Roger Sustar: It is. I wish they had one with chocolate so that you could excite young school kids. We had a 3D printer that made things for the kids so they can make things themselves. They get excited with that kind of stuff. The youngsters get excited with computers, and all that kind of stuff. Then the 3D printing and even one of my friends in our AWT, Rick Pollack from maker gear, makes many little 3D printers. He waited till the patents ran up before he competed against that. Many of his printers are on all local high schools because they're reasonable - they're under a couple of thousand dollars. A lot of people give back to the high school that you went. That's where you're more friends with anybody else or where your children go to school. Help them, and get them involved with stuff like this.This year, I went to all the local Churches for our summer camps, and I begged them to put just a couple of paragraphs about our summer camp. We begged the news-herald to do an article, and they did it. Now we have all our campers filled up, so we're excited about that.The hardest part in everything is taking that first step, keeping trying, and keeping trying because whatever anybody thinks it's impossible, it is almost impossible. But one tiny step at a time, and you'll make it. You'll make waves. We're very fortunate to have a young lady that's excited about helping. I'd hate to lose this young lady because she's doing an excellent job and very excited about the things we're doing. We're pleased with that kind of stuff.Lisa Ryan: I think that that's what plays such a role in bringing people in who are passionate about manufacturing. The more passionate you are - and all of the manufacturers you're getting involved with your manufacturing day and your October activities - that's what lights those kids up and makes them want to get involved.Also, having the parents involved to see that wow, this is a real job, is a solid job. Kids can go to a trade school or do an apprenticeship and come out with very little, if any, debt. They can make a good living with great benefits right off the bat, instead, instead of having to live in the basement with his hundred thousand dollars worth of college loans.Roger Sustar: It's companies like CRT that are involved with things we do. We're trying to build a training center. Lake Erie College is working with us to do an MBA degree in business management for those who want to do this. We haven't even started the apprenticeship thing, and they already want to put that in. There are a lot of opportunities. That's what's good to see for the parents to moms and dads to see what the kids to, and how they can get involved in anything like that. Tell the parents it's most important to think. You have to go to the companies, and see what they are because we're not your father's Oldsmobile. It's different today than what it used to be. Fifty-two years ago, in 1969, there is no way we could be making parts like we are today the equipment that we have today. It is so sophisticated.We spent three, four, or $5,000 on a piece of equipment. Now we're talking 3,4,5 600,000 for a piece of equipment. Then it costs thousands of more in tooling to gear it up and get it going, so there's no way we're going to take a 17, 18, 19-year-old kid and put them on a half a million-dollar machine. Would you let somebody drive your Shelby GT Cobra? That's the progression. It's how we make it up, and we continue to go. Take one step and another step in another phase because it is difficult to fight an uphill battle. I think that because of COVID, there's an opportunity to make a decent living. You can live in a nice suburban community, have your two car payments, have your big 65 and 75-inch color tv, a three-bedroom house with two bathrooms - everything in life is possible. That's up to the individual to tell them what to do.That's the hardest thing. I lost a cousin this past week. He was three months younger than I am. He never did all the crazy things that I do. I feel sorry for him because we've taken many chances in our life - my wife and me. She's allowed me to do these crazy things because she believes in me, and that's got to be the only person that believes in me.Lisa Ryan: Roger, it has been such a pleasure talking to you today. If people wanted to learn more about what you've done with AWT and, and doing this, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you.?Roger Sustar: Oh, that's easy. They can just go to the website it's thinkmfg.com. You're more than happy to contact us. You can ask us, whatever you want, and we will be sure to get back to you. We love to have manufacturing companies have Members will be charged $250. It's no big deal. They have many associate members, we have regular members, and we have those and pay a whole bunch more to help us. That's what the good part is, and having all these people work together on my biggest problem, of course, is getting the Eatons, the Parker Hannifin's, The Lincoln Electric's to understand that we're all in this together. We're not trying to steal people; we're trying to build America and make it the greatest place in the world. Let's keep it that way. We keep moving forward.  Lisa Ryan: Roger, again, thank you so much for being on the show.Roger Sustar: Lisa, this was a privilege to be with such a nice young lady. I appreciate your time. This is very, very friendly. Thank you so much.Lisa Ryan: Oh, you're welcome. I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. We'll see you next time.

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm delighted to introduce you to our guest today, Keith Ledbetter. Keith is President and CEO of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Southeast Michigan. He manages this 250 Member construction trade association in southeast Michigan and helps lead its affiliated skilled trade school, the southeast Michigan construction Academy, with over 500 student apprentices.As the architect of a dramatic construction association turnaround, Keith's unique professional background helped create an uncanny ability to get things done using relationships and personal appeal. His wide-ranging skill set, ability to find when propositions amiss disagreement and strong leadership enable him to build motivated teams, quickly adapt to new challenges, and flourish in diverse corporate roles. Keith, welcome to the show.Keith Ledbetter: Thank you, Lisa thanks for having me today.Lisa Ryan: Well, you and I talked a bit about your resume and your journey. You've been all over the place. Please share with us where you've been and really how you got to where you're at right now.Keith Ledbetter: There was certainly no straight line as part of that path. While I was in college, I enjoyed politics, and I wanted to get involved. I wanted to do something big. I wanted to have a meaningful impact on people on an enormous scale. When you're young, you're probably not going to be the CEO. You're not going to be a leader of a significant organization.I got involved in the political system, and I worked in the Michigan house of representatives for 15 years. It was cool. At a relatively young age, I got involved and made many key decisions on state policy matters. At first, I was just the quiet guy in the room, taking notes and offering private counts to my boss. As time went on, I became in a more significant role. From there, I became a lobbyist for the heavy construction industry. I did that for another six years, and I advocated for people's interests related to infrastructure investment, road and bridge improvement things like that.That area's expertise led me to work at Chrysler, and I was a corporate government relations executive. I represented the company's interest to elected officials in the northeast United States, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Maine. I was the go-to for the company anytime they had issues or concerns related to public policy.Strangely enough, I ended back up in the construction industry after using some of the same skills. I read an article in The Wall Street Journal this morning about making sure that when you're applying for the jobs that even if they're not related entirely to what you're doing, that you want to make the connection for any particular person who's doing the hiring. Some of these job skills that you have in these various areas apply to what you do. I took those same skill sets, and then I began running a nonprofit on my own: Associated builders and contractors of southeast Michigan. I also ran a trade school called the southeast Michigan construction Academy, where we have over 500 apprentices who are learning skilled trades.So, how did this guy who started in politics, and doing that kind of stuff, how did he end up in the skilled trades, and training, all these young people, most of them without college degrees? It's been a strange ride. But it's been pretty cool to see that your skill set can go from one industry area to another fairly easily.Lisa Ryan: When you joined ABC, it sounds like it was a mess when you took it over and putting some work into it. And getting the right leadership team in place and just running it. Taking what you refer to as a ragtag group of individuals and transforming them into a winning team.That's why I wanted to have you on the show today. Even though construction is a little bit different from manufacturing, both industries run into the same problems. How do you take people when there is already a skilled Labor force and find people like you. You don't necessarily have the right to the same background that you're looking for—finding those people with those inherent skills and getting them in the right seats on the bus. Please share the story of where you started and what it took to create that winning culture that you have now.Keith Ledbetter: Right, I think to provide proper context, you have to go back to what I came into. It was pretty dramatic. We had a situation where only a year earlier, the association couldn't make the mortgage payments. They were getting ready to lose their building. They had significant indebtedness. We had a membership in our association that wasn't a group of people who want to be involved as an association.I remember we celebrated my hiring at ABC. I think we had about six people show up. It sent a message, like, hey, we've got some work to do. On the school side, we were floundering. We weren't being successful and weren't bringing in the new students we hoped to bring in. All these things are tearing down the organization, we weren't following proper rules and protocols, and we really needed to tighten up across the board, and so, frankly, at the time, I didn't know what I was coming into, and even worse.My predecessor hadn't been paying proper dues to ABC National, so we found significant indebtedness beyond even what we owed the Bank. That was the starting point that I had, and I quickly recognized that I didn't have the right team in place. There was a culture there that had to be changed in significant ways.When I parachuted in, I had no idea; I just assumed everything was great, and I would go into this opportunity. These are not things that necessarily come out in the job interview. That boy, you've got a tough job on your hands. I found out literally on day one; when there was a board meeting, we had some major problems that had to be dealt with. I realized this very early on. I had to have the right people in place to get it turned around.Lisa Ryan: Isn't that funny that if you had known everything that you were running into, there's a pretty good chance that you may not have taken that.Keith Ledbetter: You know, life is funny. I love the challenge, and I look back five years from now, literally my fifth anniversary coming up here very shortly. The turnaround that we have has been miraculous. I'm still. I'm excited today about what I do than I have been in many years because I had to change teams. I had to get new people in that had a different set of skill sets. It's been a pretty remarkable recovery.I say it's a ragtag team, but these are high-level professionals. In their previous roles, they weren't necessarily appreciated for what they brought to the table. For us, more of our new hires were the foundation of our turnaround were people who had been fired or left under less than ideal circumstances at their most previous job. I had another gentleman who was an uber driver and a substitute teacher who was partially retired, yet I had another guy who was a key employee of mine today, but he hadn't had a real job. For several years, he'd done a little bit of this and a little bit of that but hadn't had a real job. How do you take this ragtag group of people and turn them into what I consider to be an incredibly high-performing, high-achieving team? I've done pretty well not to brag on myself, but I think one of the things I've done well is identifying areas in which people excel: and put them in those areas that they are best. For example, I often think of a football team analogy, where the field goal kickers will not be great quarterbacks. A quarterback isn't going to be a tremendous offensive line. If you get them in their skill set and have them do what they're fantastic at, it pays dividends.I was able to see the value that they brought, find areas in which I needed their skills, and put them in those areas. As a boss, I'm not afraid to admit that my people are better at their jobs than I would be. I've hired specialists. I've heard people who are experts in their craft in their area. I've let them go, and they've done quite remarkable things.Lisa Ryan: So, how did you determine that a conversation you had with them, asking them what they were good at or what they enjoy doing. Was that something that you were observing and just seeing what lights them up? How did you get to that point of pinpointing where to put people.Keith Ledbetter: Well, it's an ongoing joke within our staff, especially when hiring new people. I looked in my network, and I thought, okay, I need someone good at this area. I need someone who can go out there in the community. I don't have to push them out the door, but they prefer to be outside. What I often did is I found people who work full-time employed or were under challenging circumstances. I interviewed them, but they didn't know they were being interviewed.We were able to have some very, very frank conversations, and then at the end of those conversations at a few of them say, are you interviewing me. I found people that I wanted to hire. I said, well, as a matter of fact, I do have a position open that, frankly, I do have a job opening that I think would be an interesting fit. Why don't we continue to have some conversation to determine whether this worked out or not. My looking for people wasn't a one job interview.In some cases, I did some job posting on posting boards. But in many of my key positions, I look within my network. I found people looking for work and then try to have a very candid conversation over weeks to determine whether we'd be a good fit for each other.It's a little bit unique. What my approach was, was an ongoing conversation. It was a relationship. I feel that professional world, you're most successful when you have relationships with people, bringing people in, and understanding their background. Maybe what was lacking in their previous roles, and what you might be able to do for them. Then for them to have a real frank and genuine understanding of what you need from them.That's been the secret sauce to me—my ability to build these great teams. I realize now that many of these people, while they may not have been ideally suited for some of their previous roles, were ideally suited for my organization and me. They had a fantastic skillset, and then I'm finding that they are far better at what they're tasked with doing in my organization.That's when you know you've hit the sweet spot when you're not the smartest people in the room that there are so many other great talents out there. You that can add stuff that you're not very good at. I recognized that and humbled myself to acknowledge that these people were phenomenal in my weak areas, and they're going to be a fantastic addition to the team.Lisa Ryan: Well, I think the big idea that just came out of that was the fact that interviewing is not placing an ad or going online, looking for a specific person or turning out over to HR, and saying hey, this is the person I'm looking for. It's a continuous conversation. It's looking for people who would be a good fit and having those conversations.One of the things I say in my program is that you want to hire more slowly and fire more quickly. It comes to getting rid of those toxic people and for you taking that time to get to know people. You're assessing, "Is this person going to be a good fit. That's how you keep that you find talent. You can control it a lot easier if you found that to be true.Keith Ledbetter: I probably had a little bit of unfair advantage because I've had a great network of people and professionals I've known. Being in the legislative world and being a lobbyist, you're a connector of people. You know people across numerous industries. I used that network of people to have conversations that the average CEO or that maybe the average person looking to hire doesn't have. When I was taking inventory of my strengths, I said that is an area that I'm good at that I have a network of people, so how can I find the right people to be able to work, the organization, and not everyone is a great fit.But it certainly worked out for me. In some cases, you have to do some online advertising or some job postings, and you have to be good at that, too, especially when you don't find that person in your network that can do a job that needs to be done. Again, I think, really delving into the people and understanding them understanding what they're good at having some frank conversations. It isn't a point of discussion. When people are nervous in a job interview, you don't get a lot out of them, so the degree that you can early on break down those walls and have an excellent personal conversation. Please get to know them a little bit more on a personal level.I don't care all that much whether the people I hire are particularly skilled or have a background and precisely the job title and responsibility that need them. I want someone who's pliable. I want someone who learns. I need someone with the basic foundational skills, whether it's a people person who needs to be out there selling or marketing was a person who Is a financial guru. Suppose it's a person who's very organizational in nature. In that case, you know, I have needs across the organization in all those different areas, and some people will be phenomenal in one of those areas and very, very weak. I think the other thing also has done reasonably well.I've taken people, and I've hired them, and I've told them, look, I'm hiring you for this role, but we're going to find out where you best fit within this organization. This is not a stopping point for you; you're not limited to just this role. We're going to figure out what you excel at what's you're very talented at. We're going to put you in that role, and we're going to make you incredibly successful, so I say, look, bear with me for a little bit while we figure this out. In comparison, you figure out what you like doing here. What we figure out makes sense, how you can use those skills, and we're going to put you in that role, and it's been a unique thing. Most new employees liked the idea that hey, they're going to work with me that.If I get stuck in a role that I'm not good at, it doesn't mean that I have to stay here. We can have some ongoing conversations, so then once you've onboarded them. Part of my strategy has been let's have some discussions on an ongoing basis. How are you doing here? How do you like things? Do you have frustrations closing the door, so it's me? That employee has a good, really good conversation to understand each other and send the signal. They know that they can reach out to me, even if they have a direct report different from mine.My role as CEO is the guy who is masterminding all of those relationships, putting them all together have this tapestry that we put together that utilizes the best of all people's skills and abilities. That's been kind of neat, and frankly, it's been fun. I'm learning as I go. I don't have this all figured out immediately, but I also have accumulated this great team and then motivate them to stay with me and not just take off when we hit rough waters.I also have high expectations of what my team is going to do. Sometimes I'm sure this frustration. It's like I'm asking them for the impossible. I want them to stretch. I want them to reach. I want them to struggle to get the best out of themselves. If you do hire a high-performing team, they want to know that they're high-performing. They want to achieve great things. Sometimes you have to be in a level of discomfort to do those things. It's been pretty cool to watch this organization. I talked about how when we started. We were in debt. We weren't following the rules. We had a low-performing organization. We were on the verge of being kicked out of our National Association because we didn't do what we were supposed to do. To go that to where we are today, we've almost tripled enrollment in our school. We paid off a million dollars in debt on our building, and now we owe it free and clear. We have no debt that we have at this point. We've grown our trade association membership four years in a row. We may be the only or one of the only chapters in the entire United States that can say that we've done that. We've turned it around from what would be considered one of the lowest-performing organizations in the country.One of the highest performing organizations with again what I'm referring to is this ragtag group of team members that maybe didn't work at their stride when I hired them. But we brought him in. We motivated them. We gave them off the appropriate onboarding. We gave them a big vision of what kind of accomplishments. We've inspired them. We work with them, we train them, and we talked to them and having ongoing conversations. Those are all been part of what it's taken to transform this into a winning team. Hopefully, I'll be able to continue keeping them. I realized that a certain number of cases,I think it all starts with remarkable authenticity, a desire to help your people become better and do well in this world and the professional career, and I certainly take that on myself. I asked my employees what do they want to do? How can I help you? Let's build some skill sets that you can use throughout the entirety of your career? I think that's very important.I'll give you a story. I have one of my directors of education who is phenomenal. Susie is 26 years old. She is undoubtedly a phenomenal employee of ours and has been an essential part of our team. I know she has aspirations to do other things. I also know she has an extreme interest in being part of the political world. We had an opportunity as an organization to testify before the Michigan house committee last week.I could have done that. I'm a lobbyist by trade and background. I have a former state representative who is my Vice President of workforce development either one of us could have done that testimony. Recognizing how important that was for her and how meaningful it would be in terms of her career progression to get exposed to that and do that, I decided to have her do the testimony. It did, is it put when did her sales that these people care about me that they're giving me opportunities. That would be very hard for me to find anywhere else. They care enough about me that they're going to allow me to shine in the public limelight.That's just an anecdotal example of some of the things that I like to do to put my team in a position to develop themselves. Even when we could find other ways too, or we could have done other things, and in that particular situation, I needed to provide that an opportunity for my employees.Lisa Ryan: You have given us so many great hints and strategies to attract and retain great talent, so from a networking standpoint, if you were to think about something that you would like to learn from industry, other industry, colleagues, as well as what would be your areas of expertise that you'd like to share or you'd be open to sharing what would that be?Keith Ledbetter: As someone who prides me, leading an organization is growing by leaps and bounds and having a lot of success. I always struggle with that next step. Are you willing to put some things on the line? To risk a few things to get to that next level. As an example for

Contact Craig James:Email: CraigJames@Cat-Strat.comWebsite: www.Cat-Strat.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers Network podcast. I'm delighted to introduce you to our guest today, Craig James. Craig is a man who wears many hats. Among them, executive coach, writer, speaker, modern philosopher, information technology industry veteran and co-founder, co-managing partner of Catalyst Strategies, also known as Cat Strat Services, a strategic advisory firm that helps organizations stop and think. He is the host and co-executive producer of the podcast Big Audacious Idea. And he and his partner, Sue James, are launching a new podcast called The Possibility Zone. Both Sue and Craig are active in the disciplines of rethinking, reflection, and strategic planning. They've also been active in nonprofit and community organizations, and currently, they serve as co-presidents of the northeastern Ohio chapter of Conscious Capitalism. Welcome to the show, Craig. Craig James: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. , you should probably go into speaking or something where you energetically and eloquently said you make me sound good.Lisa Ryan: Well, thank you. I think I'll do that—just a crazy idea. Well, Craig, I know that in your intro, it sounds like you have done lots of things. So share a bit of your background and what led you to the journey you found yourself on?Craig James: Well, jeez, thanks for the personal interest. Try to think about making this relevant to your listeners—one of the things that characterize my background in information technology. I grew up in the I.T. industry, and that's relevant to our chat today. But going back a little bit further, I suppose there's an entrepreneurial gene or two in the blood.My folks were a mom-and-pop shop back in the 50s, working virtually before that was even an idea. Sure enough, in the last 20 years, Sue and I started our firm. We're entrepreneurs. We're thinkers and philosophers, but we're business people, too. We bring a blend of other stuff. I'm a loner in a way, but I love to connect with people.I grew up as an only child. Some of the things that resonate with me playing guitar, skiing, individual experiences yet connected with other humans. That's the quick one, too. Lisa Ryan: Well, and I know that this is the Manufacturers Network podcast, and you've spent most of your career in I.T. So when people are thinking, why does she have an I.T. guy on, what is it that you're finding as far as how is manufacturing similar? Because that's why we're having this whole conversation.Craig James: Well, I appreciate you clarifying that, and I appreciate you having me on the show, even though I'm not a manufacturing guy. However, what's constant across manufacturing or I.T. or other services and industries is I'm a businessperson.And, one of the things that I'm not when I look back at my days is I'm not a technologist either. There's a lot of things I'm not. I never did programming. I wasn't a tech guy. I was a sales guy, business guy, growth guy, leader within I.T., So those concepts apply both in manufacturing and information technology. I think what's interesting right now is the convergence and similarities and how this is blurring.If we looked at information technology back, I won't date myself. Long ago, when I sold big computers, it was manufacturing. I mean, a five-million-dollar computer took weeks to produce on the line. We called them assemblies because the computers were assembled on an extensive manufacturing line, and 12 guys and white coats their blue coats came into a clean room and installed the thing over a matter of days.So the physicality of computing, the manual manufacturing, the tangibility, the materiality of where it began is where and how in the early days it in manufacturing, I won't say were one in the same, but very similar.Lisa Ryan: Well, the interesting thing about that is you just talked about the assemblies and these computers that took up an entire room or an entire building, and right now we have that capacity in the palm of our hand, if not even more powerful computers than we're back in the day. But we're seeing so many changes in technology changing in manufacturing because of technology and what's possible. So, where have you seen that convergence?Craig James: So I probably don't have to be the first one to inform your listeners around the concepts of IoT or sensors or 3D printing. Chances are, with Industry 4.0, your listenership is well-tuned in better than I might be in terms of what's happening from a macro trans trend standpoint. But the implications are significant.Today, we think about a manufacturing line, a product designed, developed, manufactured, and distributed; it's indivisible NMR anymore from those things like sensors, networks, technology, and software—embedded algorithms, machine learning, A.I., all that now is baked into what manufacturing is. So the lines are blurring even more. And what's the implication? , when we think about, OK, I'm listening to the show, the theory's interesting, but how do I adapt?What do I do? One of the first things we need to be thinking about is how to become aware of technology and enable our teams and upskill. And that's not to make a judgment of what manufacturing staff might have been years ago. But the fact is it's shifting and changing. So the need for tech-savvy, adaptive, more intangible workers that think and do will become essential as we look to the future.Lisa Ryan: And even in the last year of the pandemic, when it has speeded up technology quite a bit, we're so far ahead from where we were just a year ago. But if you're looking at your older workers who were averse to technology before, it's become a lot easier. Technology, today versus just a year ago, seems to be a lot more user-friendly. It was so encouraging your employees to get that fear out of the way and just try it for goodness sake because it's here to stay.Craig James: Well, I think you hit on a key thing. And sometimes, when we think about what we do, especially as we emerge out of a pandemic, we think about all the tangible things we need to do, maybe retool, rethink. But are emotion around what's happened, what's happening, and about to happen becomes key? Fear is a crucial word for sure. And no matter how bullish and strong we think we are as business leaders, let's face it, the last year has been rather significant.It's been a once in 100 year set of circumstances. So our ability to put our feeling and thinking off to the side for a second. We have to react. We have to be quick. We have to be adaptive and responsive. This might sound contradictory, yet at the same time, we need to be reflective, stop and think. Hold the fort for a second and make sure we reassess the landscape because it's changed.I was just having some flashbacks as far as what this year has meant personally and professionally. That has been one of the gifts, and probably one of the struggles, not only in manufacturing but also about the employees. It's not just about the work. It's how are you doing? Let's take time and reflect on this. Let's take time for self-care and take care of ourselves, but making sure that the leaders connect with their employees on a more personal level than maybe they ever have been before.Lisa Ryan: And sometimes we look at these as soft skills or touchy-feely or airy-fairy stuff, and it is certainly the farthest from the truth, especially now.Craig James: I'm going to remember that because quite often, as consultants and advisers and executive coaches sometimes are accused of airy-fairy and woo woo. And I would say our practice tends to lean on the human side. We have to translate and make tangible some of these conceptual things that often are discarded. But you're hitting at such an important point as a leader now more than ever before, special care for our team and care for ourselves. Check into them and check into ourselves.I had the gift of interviewing a fabulous fellow named Lawrence Ganti. He's the chief business officer of a company that makes the things that go into the stuff that makes the vial that the vaccine goes into before it goes in your arm. So a pretty important deployment tool, the vial. And it can go into how interesting it is from a technology and manufacturing standpoint. It's a nanofilm of glass that goes inside a polymer. So you have both the glass and the plastic benefits of holding back. Anyway, there's a lot to that story. So here's a guy who had a hundred team members a year ago and now has five hundred and fifty, had one facility and now has four, made 10 million vials a year now makes one hundred and twenty all in months.And I said, Lawrence, we've got some other things to do here. How can I provide value? Because you probably have a thousand things that are waiting for you by the time we're done with our chat. He said, Craig, are you kidding? The gift to me right now is to stop for a second and to reflect. So I know it's important for your listeners to know what I can do with the stuff? One is to take the time, dare to stop, and reflect.Because what's happening now is we're all in a hyperdrive to get back right back to normal. Yeah, we need to take a breath. And that's counterintuitive again, because hell heck, sorry. I'm a strategic planner and thought leader. I'm proud to say so. That sounds arrogant. It just comes from experience to lead. I thought you have to learn. And what I've learned. Some of the planning stuff just a year ago we advised it's all undone and so stop. Reflect. Yes, but react at the same time. We have to do both. We have to be adaptive, reactive. But the idea of planning is almost out the window because you can't plan and count on anything.Lisa Ryan: You've got to be not so surprised by surprises because they're going to happen. So it's a really interesting time right now. I know with me, and with lots of people, we have the zoom burnout. We are not only on camera but also attending meetings and now doing virtual conferences. We're not moving much. Taking care of our employees from a personal standpoint and giving the gift of getting away from technology in that point of reflection. Being able to walk away and turn off all technology and be in a room by yourself away from devices and give yourself the gift of just thinking and reflecting.Craig James: Because when you take the time to listen to yourself, it really because we have so many things trying to get our attention all day long that we don't take the time to listen and reflect. So again, we can't take care of others unless we're taking care of ourselves.One of the things that we use in executive coaching, that's a little tool or tip that your listeners might want to try, is simple. I've always got a whiteboard for conveying some thoughts. Here's a visual in your mind's eye. If you're making about technology invasion, and that's what it is, it's people who work hard to figure out a way to get your attention.It's compelling. It's seductive. And here's the thing. Take a hiatus and turn technology off. One of the techniques we use is this picture on a whiteboard. Many arrows go in one direction and a bunch of arrows going in the other. When you look at a day's activity, you then ask yourself to stop and reflect on how many arrows came at you? How many arrows did you issue and fire upon your own volition around something that needed to happen that was important. I can tell you nine times out of nine, the arrows coming in outwait and outnumber the arrows going out. And so a little a slight tweak of that can be helpful. Consciousness and awareness of what's coming in and what am I initiating can go a long way in shifting our behaviors a little bit.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, and being comfortable with connecting with employees, especially in manufacturing. We're used to focusing on whatever that end product is. But now reaching out and saying, so how are you doing? How are you dealing with that? I mean, thankfully, we're finally getting to hopefully the end seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.I mean, I am fully vaccinated now. Thank God we do it for you. But it was a year in the making. I don't want to call it PTSD, but we're looking back on a year. I kept referring to 2020 as the year that wasn't. I got to hug my father for the first time in a year this week. And I am not the only one. Thankfully, I have my own company. But look at your employees because many people are still suffering and still having these repercussions from everything that we've gone through. Craig James: You're hitting on some so important things to remember. It's not anyone thing, Lisa. It's a combination of a notion of care, the human touch, the soft skills. The ante has been up for sure. I read an article not too long ago. I think it was in Forbes suggesting that the key ingredient to the innovation ecosystem right now is emotional intelligence. Interesting you think A.I. or some other technology term in terms of innovation and design? No, it's the human stuff.I think the other thing to Lisa on a human level, but maybe not a softer touch, a realistic look at our behaviors and our skills, again, repeating is the notion of adaptation and agility being unsurprised by the surprising. So that has to do with stopping, thinking and projecting, imagining things that could or may not happen. But just imagine, worst case, the best case most likely and take that time, not so much to think and plan, but to hone adaptation skills and not be surprised by surprise.The other thing that we've found fascinating right now is what we call the counterintuitive effect. What's been fascinating in the last year is that the human touch thing is the need for it, but the business dynamics are shifting. We talked about it in manufacturing and business, in general, a little bit earlier in our chat. There are sensors embedded, let's say, in manufacturing processes, but the fact that the market shift is so different be to be used to be manufacturing.We worked with a client, unnamed in their client, unnamed in apparel. And they used to design the stuff, make it, ship it, outsource production and have retail partners. Their thinking has to be all about deals to see how they make the stuff, design it, have a personal relationship with the consumer, and direct to consumer sell and transact with those consumers. OK, now a manufacturer designer has to be distributor marketer, social media expert, subject matter expert, retail distribution, website, experts and manufacturer to that is significant.Back to counterintuitive, and then I'll do it here. The counterintuitive thing is fascinating. One of my favorites, I almost use it to a fault examples is Purell Gojo Industries. OK, so through the pandemic, good news or bad news for Purell right now when people are trying to keep their hands clean. The answer is a great time for business. Bad time question for you. Question. Good. Bad. I think it's both good because they make hand sanitizers, but it's bad because making beer yesterday is also making hand sanitizers.So not only is there all kinds of stuff changing landscapes, changing competitive land, fields changing, yet at the same time, both are happening. At the same time. Good things are bad things. Bad things are good things. A friend who's in the OEM parts business for aircraft, OK, crap business bad because planes aren't flying business. Good because planes don't fly. The parts go bad. Good. Well, wait, bad because they won't buy them from us because there's an idle plane next door to get the parts from.There are all kinds of things happening when we turn industries and markets upside down back to what do we do, what can we do? We have to be unsurprised by the surprising. Lisa Ryan: We need to be anticipatory and think about the crazy things that won't happen because they just might. Absolutely, when I think back again a year ago, at the end of twenty nineteen, going into 2020, if I would have sat and thought about the surprises and asked myself the question, what would happen if the speaking industry completely disappeared overnight? What would happen if the meeting and travel industry? Because it's something that it's unfathomable. It would have been something that wouldn't have been even crossed my mind—so challenging yourself to think about the unthinkable, not to be surprised by the surprising. I think that's a great activity because if nothing else, we've learned from this past year that literally, anything can happen.  Craig James: Absolutely. And there's some good stuff out there to read. This is a little bit more on the would you call it airy-fairy, but it's tangible called mind site. It's a great book that allows you to put your thinking and set it over there and look at it. And I think not only are we thinking, but we are thinking about our thinking needs to shift, and we need to be able to examine it, not judge it. That's what we do in coaching. You don't judge it. Just pay attention. I read an excellent article, I think in Inc. that was talking about the little subtleties of the language and stories we tell ourselves. One sentence equals this. How am I ever going to fix that problem? The second sentence is, how am I going to fix the problem? Sounds the same. Maybe even similar. Hugely different. How am I ever going to solve this problem? Essentially is saying I blanked - I can't do it. What do I do? Oh, God, whereas how am I going to fix this problem is simply asking a question. See so little subtle things like this can serve us in shifting, adapting, and being proactive as best we can. Lisa Ryan: Wow. That is powerful. And just that one little word ever takes it from almost a despondency to a possibility. Well said. So, Craig, as we're getting to the end of our time together, your firm provides strategic advisory services and business development, growth consulting, executive coaching. I mean, you pretty much do everything so well. I don't know. But how is that? How is the game-changing for you? And how do you work with your clients? Craig James: Well, thanks for the opportunity to speak to it in your kind words. In many ways, executive coaching, strategy, work, business development, sales, coaching is not like brand new technology. There's a lot of folks that do it. And that's great. There's plenty for many where we're a little bit different. Perhaps a little is that we're boardroom but high touch, robotic and flexible and adaptive. The big thing for us right now is executive coaching.  That personally brings a lot of joy. That's a great gratification. You see the material impact. It's a privilege to be part of someone's leadership journey and growth. One of the things that's game-changing right now or shifting for sure is this moment in time in history. We went in the last year from deer in the headlights to hold down the fort to now let's regroup and do something about this and then do...

Contact Kent Gladish:Email:  KGladish@TMAIllinois.orgLinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentgladish/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you today to Kent Gladish. Kent is Vice President of Member development at the Technology Manufacturing Association. TMA helps small to mid-sized manufacturers in Illinois basically with just about everything. Kent has a unique background, with an undergrad in physics and also an MBA in marketing. Kent, welcome to the show.Kent Gladish: Thank you for having me. It's always good to be live here and looking forward to our near future.Lisa Ryan: All right, awesome. Please share a bit of your journey to what led you to TMA on that Friday afternoon?Kent Gladish: I graduated college with a physics degree and said, now what am I going to do? And I landed at a company called Video Jet in the Chicago area. If you open your refrigerator, you'll find little freshness dates on just about everything in your refrigerator. That company's grown from 150 people up to probably up to 3000 by now.But that got me into my master's degree to find my home and marketing and ended up at a small manufacturer in the Chicago area called humbler. They went through another recession lost my position there, but I had met TMA along the way. On a Friday afternoon, I was able to land the position, and whenever anybody tells you the cold call doesn't work anymore, well, it's just not true. It does. I joke about that because I wouldn't be sitting where I'm doing what I do, which I love to pieces.I like to say our Members manufacture something. They're not good at all the other stuff. You have to have the manufactures in northeast Illinois. When you think about all that stuff, health insurance, and 401k, and I need a freight forward or need to redo my floor, I need to redo my ceiling. I need to figure out covid. I need. I need. I need. I need.Big gigantic companies have all those resources. They join the small guys join an association to get access to those resources. That's why we're on this earth.Lisa Ryan: One of the things that I noticed and why I wanted to have you on the show is that you do such a great job talking about your Members on social media and promoting some of the good things they're doing. I understand that many came up because of covid and just really taking it to the next level with explaining what your member manufacturing Members are doing.Kent Gladish: I was making 60 appointments a month with our Members. Because I spend most of my time not in front of a computer, face-to-face with them shaking hands, etc., Covid hit, and my number of appointments dropped significantly. The marketing side of me said, why don't you start taking pictures of their brand or their signage and put that on LinkedIn. It's mainly because it's pretty easy and it's free, so that has become 225 times a year. I want every business day spotlighting one of my Members just so people are aware of small to medium-sized manufacturing.Because everybody's heard of Boeing and Deere and Caterpillar, but very, very few, very few people recognize that in manufacturing, 84% of the companies that manufacture in the United States are under 25 employees. 85% of the manufacturers and this under 25 employees, so really the United States' backbone, let alone northeast Illinois, comprises small companies. We don't hear about the small companies. We hear about the big companies due to the mass media.Lisa Ryan: And what are some of the things the success stories that you've been seeing your Members doing during these times to increase their business to communicate better to connect with their customers all of the above.Kent Gladish: My members have always been doing precision metalworking and plastics, and so when you find the precision, that's where the things that are booming now. We made a list here. These are things that I've been told are doing well binoculars, grills, weights, these are all things that people want in their homes because of covid. They want to buy them locally. I mean weights. I don't even know where weights were manufactured before, but TMA Members are now manufacturing barbells and weights because the lifters of the world, a year ago, went out to Dick's sporting goods and bought up all the weights. Of course, you don't just order a freight load of very heavyweights from China, so my story is getting crazy. That way, our Members manufacturers some precision-related things, and those precision-related things are doing quite well these days.I joke about springs because there are so many springs in all sorts of handheld kitchen devices. We're all cooking more at home, and so all of those spring manufacturers are crazy busy these days because we're buying up those particular goods. Medical Research devices, course medicine, and all things related to health or up and all of the tools they use to do their research are precision manufacturing locally. Those local manufacturers tend to be doing well, so manufacturing is pretty broad. If you go through your day and look at everything, you see it's manufactured by somebody somewhere, so all over the place.Lisa Ryan: You highlight so many of your Members that are doing pretty unique things that you've seen maybe with their culture or how they've reached out to people during these times - little things that they're doing that people are listening today might say hey that's a good idea, I can do that.Kent Gladish: The thing that I've been noticing it's the most progressive again in my world, which is northeast Illinois small to medium-sized manufacturers. Because I'm a numbers guy, 10% of my Members are under ten employees, and 10% of my Members are over 80 employees, so the 80/20 rule says there between you know 10 and 80, so that that's what I mean by small. But they're progressive guys focusing on their culture; they're focusing on their employees, focusing on millennials, and attracting millennials. They're skewing their websites, not necessarily toward a new business; they're skewing them toward new employees, so they're illustrating how cool they are; how they do their group hugs least that was pre-covid. But just doing unique things having flexible hours, focusing on the employees, dressing them in not just a Cintas uniform, but in something branded for the company, and celebrating their members. I respect the focus on their culture. They were the ones that were the smartest when it came to covid. They said let's shut down on Friday so we can clean Friday, Saturday, Sunday so they could be more efficient Monday through Thursday. The employees love that because they got a three-day weekend, even though they were working 10 hour days that could have occurred before, but it didn't, so covid created a benefit in that particular case.Lisa Ryan: And when you look at the difficulty of finding people, with so many jobs going unfilled, those little things like closing down on Fridays help. You're creating that culture that keeps them. The website is so important too. You can't go with stock photos of people who don't look like the people who are interviewing anymore. When that candidate is looking at the website, they're asking, "Do I see myself there?" These little things have just shown the real world.Kent Gladish: Our members' number one issue is largely unchanged for many years. They are trying to find skilled people. They have the work; they have the machines; they don't have the skilled person to run the machine to make the parts. I've collected 16 Members who had their best year ever in 2020. Sixteen of them are ready to go on second shift. A lot of this younger workforce says I'm not working the second shift. So they're trying to get to be creative to pay more to find ways to get them to work on that second shift but finding the skilled people.Kent Gladish: You told me you would ask about the best tip. I'm going to tell it to you now. I had a smart guy named Tim Roth. He works for Zeman manufacturing. What he does is he gets in his car. He drives to the local Starbucks, Burger King, Wendy's, whatever, and asks for the manager. He realizes that the manager at one of those retail outfits has to deal with customers, deal with money, and trust to open and close the place. He would ask, "How about a career in manufacturing? I'm willing to pay X. I'll bet you're making X minus something." He converted a handful of people that way.Trying to find local areas skilled people who can work with their hands have some math skills but don't know that there's a manufacturing career, because we all see Burger King and Wendy's. Still, we don't see all the small to medium-sized manufacturers as we're driving around. I do I get to see, and that's my purpose. There are ways to skin that cat.Lisa Ryan: When even changing the conversation regarding schools and bringing back tech programs and introducing manufacturing at a much younger age. You're right. You can look for people with that enthusiasm with that energy, and you can teach them the skills, but who would think about going up to drive-through restaurants and talking to the managers because of those little things good with numbers trustworthy. Those are, that is a great tip.Kent Gladish: At 100,000 feet, our society looks at you know every kid has to go to college. If you don't go to college, you're a loser. Blue-collar jobs don't pay much, which is all flat wrong. We know who the industrial arts teachers are in the local high schools who get it. It's inspiring because they will invite us in. I'm here in my late 50s have been asked to speak to high school kids at four high schools, and I'm not even the lead person at TMA that networks with that. I see the glass is half-full. Many young people are getting on the STEAM agenda. If you throw the arts into STEM, you get STEAM. Science, technology, engineering, math, arts gives you STEAM. It was just somebody who saw stem and said, hey, wait. You forgot the arts, okay. We've got a great set of high schools here called east and west Leiden that are graduating a whole crop of seniors, many of whom go off to college, but many of whom go off to a manufacturing career immediately because they get their credentials. In high school, they are doing machining and Labor work and whatnot, and then they go right out into our TMA members, making more money than their parents do.Lisa Ryan: Well, the nice thing about it too is they're not coming out of college with 10s of thousands of dollars of student loan debt either, and they're immediately making a nice living. Now, I remember back in my high school days, the kids in shop class or on wood shop or any of those were seen as the troublemakers. There was the kind of that whole stigma around that. We're starving for these people. Getting rid of that old mindset and looking at the new and the opportunities that manufacturing brings.Kent Gladish: I graduated high school in 1980, and if you could shift everything that I graduated high school, I would have been a machinist. I had excellent math skills. My dad had me work on the car on the weekends and in different periods. That's why I'm so passionate about it as I look at some of these young people. Even though I love my college situation - that was very important in my life - but my parents paid for my college. I was very fortunate that way, and it didn't cost that much back in the late 80s.We see this whole transformation of making sure that young people have tools to see what careers are out there to pursue them accordingly. My wife is in the High School System. Those tools do exist. It's starting to take hold. It's the parents and the rest of society that's got the stigma about blue-collar and so forth. But there was just a piece on LinkedIn just this morning. I don't even know who posted it, but they talked about plumbers' hourly wage, truck drivers. They were all doing very well financially. That's a misnomer, and manufacturing is much the same way. You've got to have your skills. You got to be good. You gotta get to work every day. You got to be on time or 15 minutes early.I work with a fair number of young people who get it, and it's fascinating to place them at a TMA Member and watch them go crazy.Lisa Ryan: So when you're at a high school, and you're talking to these kids, what are you telling them about manufacturing? What are you doing to light that spark within them?Kent Gladish: That's a challenge. I usually bring parts that I can hand to them and let them pass around. I like giving them a seat belt buckle because nobody thinks about the seat belt buckle they wore to get to school it's just a simple piece of metal that's been chrome plated. But a 100-pound girl in a 30 mile an hour impact all of a sudden weighs 1000 pounds, and that buckle has to hold the strap that holds her whole upper body without eating the steering wheel saves her life—that little buckle like a chrome-plated buckle. Then nobody thinks about that my member manufactured it. Oh, by the way, it never has any air pockets in it because that wouldn't bode well. I'll try to give them a little bit of shock and awe about automobile accidents to try to get their attention from the old bald guy talking.I often talk about how much money they will be making because I've heard too often that that's what they want to know, so I just come right out and say uh-huh. But I say it's a range, and then I hit hard by saying you got to get out of bed. You got to get to work early. It doesn't matter if there was a train. You should have been early and hit them pretty hard that way. Lisa Ryan: Are you using things like manufacturing day as well as an organization.Kent Gladish: We probably have 20; it could be 40 TMA Members that have their houses open on October 1 or whatever Friday is the manufacturing day in October. We promote that through all of our social media and our conversation, just trying to get our members involved in the Community. High schools tend to be involved. It's the high schools who get it.Not all the high schools get it; many of them admit they want all their kids to go off to college because that makes them look better, which is unfortunate. Manufacturing Day is a lot of fun to try to humanize the manufacturing world because I know we're all those manufacturing areas are in northeast Illinois. Still, nobody else drives there. They're all headed off to the malls.Lisa Ryan: I think we became a lot more aware of manufacturing this last year as the supply chain was so disrupted. Number one was the whole toilet paper scare, but then you also had all the stories of these companies that one day they're making beer, the next day they're making hand sanitizer. One day they're making plastic; the next day they're making shields. That opportunity to not only adjust immediately on the fly but, to be able to contribute in such a significant way to society is also a big thing.Kent Gladish: Thank you for reminding me of that. A year ago, I had a colleague who was connected to northwestern hospital. They said we need a million face shields now. I went out to the TMA membership, and I said, here's what they're looking for. Who's in? I got 20 members. Today, I have five Members who still manufacturer face shields because they pivoted. They were not plastics people that are metal people.Manufacturers know how to tool up, and they know how to make something with precision at the right tolerances, but inexpensively so they can make a buck. They pivoted, and that's what they're continuing to make as we speak. It was neat to be a part of that. Let's get a million face shields in here. I swear it was in five working days. I mean, it was something.Now there wasn't a shortage of soap, a shortage of some of the materials that we have today on those various levels. There's that silly story of weights. I am a weightlifter. I'm looking over the table there at my 55-pound bar made by TMA members. I assembled several of them because we came to realize in late March of last year, none of the sporting goods stores carry weights because nobody could go to the YMCA or their gyms. So, boom. We've got metal workers who know how to laser cut and water jet cut weights and so on, so forth, so several people pivoted that way.Brian Fleck at K-tracks is a TMA Member who is distributing weights because of that whole program. Thank you for reminding me of that.Lisa Ryan: Another great way to highlight why people should go into manufacturing and go into those programs, so that's terrific.Kent Gladish: Absolutely.Lisa Ryan: Well, can it's been a pleasure, having you on the show if people wanted to learn more about team TMA or to connect with you what's the best way to do that.Kent Gladish: The best way to do that is through email or LinkedIn would probably be the easiest, but my email address is KGladish@TMAIllinois.orgLisa Ryan: Alright, thank you again so much for being on the show today.Kent Gladish: you're very welcome, have a great rest of your day Lisa.Lisa Ryan: Thanks! I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network podcast. See you next time.

Connect with Rahul Sarkar:Email: rsarkar@chiketa-phoenix.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarkarrahul/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers Network podcast. I'm excited today to introduce you to Rahul Sakar. Rahul is president of Clarity Manufacturing Consulting and has 30 years of manufacturing experience reinforced by postgraduate education from the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Notre Dame. He has worked with a passion in the trenches, in the nooks and crannies worldwide to help small and medium fabrication and manufacturing companies win more bids, increase revenue and achieve operational improvements leading to greater profitability. Welcome to the show, Rahul. Rahul Sarkar: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here, and I'm looking forward to this.Lisa Ryan: Great. Please, tell us a little bit about your background and journey. What led you into manufacturing and doing what you do?Rahul Sarkar: Well, I initially had wanted to become a teacher, a professor at a university, but I soon very quickly got into manufacturing. And I think the reason I have focused for the past 30 years and worked in small and medium manufacturing companies is that many years ago, my first boss, who became a business partner, later on, told me that if you work in a small, medium manufacturing company, you will learn a lot. You'll wear multiple hats, and boy, he was right.And so I have been, like you mentioned, all over the world, various companies, visiting and understanding what manufacturing is all about. And, you know, the other thing that has driven me is that the small-medium manufacturing companies are in so many ways disadvantaged. If you think of the two hundred fifty-thousand manufacturing companies in the US, 80 percent, 75 to 80 percent of that number have 20 employees or less. I mean, think of that, 75 to 80 percent have 20 or fewer employees. They're the backbone of the manufacturing in this country, which is about 10 percent of GDP. Right.But think of what the parts that have had to experience for the last 50 years, 50 years. And it is not getting any better. Profits have shrunk, their sales have shrunk. And that inequity is really troubling. I've made it my passion to understand what and why this happens to what can be done about it. And I hope to play a part in that.Lisa Ryan: Profit is certainly important for any business. And when you're looking at these small and medium manufacturers (SMMs) compared to OEMs and some of the big players out there, that's a big thing. So what are some of the ways that SMMs can increase their profits in those times?Rahul Sarkar: The answer to that is don't focus on profits. I'll explain what I mean by that. I think that mindset that focusing on the profits mindset has contributed to the sufferings and troubles of SMMs. Here's the thing. If you think of the large OEMs' profit margins, double-digit profit margins, easily 10, 15, 20 to 20 percent for if you're an Apple, you're 35, 40 percent.And the small guys are shrinking from double digits to single digits. And heck, if you are making five percent net, you're celebrating at the end of the day. So that squeeze has been brought about by the large OEMs and enforcing the smaller manufacturers. It's almost like you don't know what will happen because the OEMs make products know what they're where the revenues come from.They know democracy. They have a history and can make forward-looking projections. But for example, you are waiting for the scraps to fall off the table that the big dogs are dining at. It's the large OEMs that are squeezing the smaller guys for profit.And guess what happens if you think of the exodus of US manufacturing in the late nineties and two thousand who drove that? It wasn't the small-medium manufacturing companies. Large corporations had the resources to go over to Asia and set up shop there and look for manufacturers, look for supplies as some of the Tier one suppliers followed suit. But that assumes they don't have the resources to send people there. So they got even further squeezed. They had to drive the prices down even further to match offshore competition.How far do you go this? You run into negative territory. That is why if you think if you look at the statistics, twenty percent of businesses fail within the first five years, 50 percent of businesses fail for manufacturing companies. Suppose you think of what happens in year 10. So if I make it past five years, am I all good? No. Unfortunately, within twenty-five years, 80 percent of manufacturing companies disappear.So that's tragic. And that is where the focus has been on profits. But it has to be on revenue. You have to have a substantial amount of revenue before you start cutting and packing and making the reductions, trying to increase profits. And that's the mindset change that is really important in this case. So if you're not focusing on profits, what are some of the things that they can do to focus on their people? Focus on their culture because we know when they're doing the right things, the profits happen.Lisa Ryan: But what do those right things look like?Rahul Sarkar: If a company can focus on building revenues, for example, small, medium manufacturing companies, fabricators, job shops, they are getting requests for quotations. They may they're lucky if they win five percent, 10 percent would be an awesome number. How many actually look at why they didn't win the remaining ninety-five percent of the bids and analyze that and try to figure out what we do wrong and provide the proper training, provide the proper resources, and bring in all of the good stuff.And secondly, along the same lines of revenue, you have to think of other ways to privatize our manufacturing capabilities and make products.This is where the pandemic really proves the point because of the urgent need for small-medium manufacturing companies to jump in and really step up. They were able to help and help society in general and help people and first responders and all of that and help themselves realize, oh, my gosh, I can make a specific product like guards or whatever face mask that this.And I think that that lesson should be carried on. It shouldn't just be during a pandemic where we realize that, oh, my gosh, we would make a lot of money if you had products. We have to carry that thinking forward and not just wait for the scraps to drop off the table. Yes.But get a little more control of your own destiny by outside-the-box thinking. Unfortunately, that it's not a very tidy answer and you have to try different things.Lisa Ryan: One of the things to do with them being such a part of the pandemic and making masks and making all the things and seeing that they were part of this greater mission, seeing that they helped in the greater good of society. And we can actually take that message forward so that companies are reminded that no matter what it is that they're making, no matter what it is that they're doing, what are their employees doing to contribute to that greater picture, even if they're making a spring, you know. They're just sitting making the same pieces, parts every single day.But letting that employee know this spring goes into this piece of equipment that saves lives. The spring goes into this airline, this plane, or whatever it is to see that contribution that we make. Why is this job important?Rahul Sarkar: And the people aspect is something that gets so neglected. Let me explain. If you think of when a downturn hits, who are the first to go? Which item gets cut first? HR and quality and people get cut because if you think of your revenue as a big pizza. That's your revenue, and slices of that pizza are coming off. Those are your expenses and what is left behind. A little sliver of pizza that you have left behind is what you take home for profits right now. If you think of the mindset of, OK, what do you focus on? You have to focus on the biggest contributor to that expense item. Where is there a piece of good?You consume manufacturing. If you're in manufacturing, 50 percent of the pizza is goods and materials cost. People cost maybe 15, 20 percent if you have more of a slice, bigger slice. And that that is a problem that you need to address. But think to focus on the big, big problems, the big slices like materials. And that's why I recommend one thing, one mindset of thinking I recommend for all segments is the Pareto principle. It's the fundamental way of thinking.You always look at the big hitters; the Pareto Principle says that 80 percent of your effects are caused by twenty percent of the causes. Right. For example, 80 percent of your losses are driven by 20 percent of your products or three. Some of your customers had problems that, you know, take up 80 percent of the time of your people and so forth, if you think along those lines, what are the biggest contributors to my problems today?And you will have a mindset of thinking, oh, what can I do to help that, even from the revenue side of things? OK, why am I not what is driving those 90, 95 percent of bids away from us? Why did we lose that? Did we have proper training? Are our salespeople educated enough to gather information on the market, the market pricing, and accept what is not acceptable to mess up? Did someone bid to load it so that mindset will take a manufacturing company a long way?If you have to think of the way you look at a problem, you cannot. And that's why Benjamin Franklin said, what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting the results to be different. That's insanity, right? For 50 years, we've been struggling. We've been struggling to have small, medium manufacturing companies make a decent profit. Yet nothing's happening. Nothing's changing because we are focused on profit first. Revenue first is what I say is we have to focus on that.Lisa Ryan: So, with some of the clients you've been working with, what are you seeing? What are some of the things that they are doing that are helping them put their people first? You know, specific examples of maybe some of the cool things or ideas that you've seen?Rahul Sarkar:  Companies that I have had success or seen succeed have treated their people as not line items but a part of the balance sheet. I think that is where it's. Again, it's a mindset. If you look at your people as expense items as opposed to assets. I think that's where I have seen. Just recently, I've been working with the company, and the leadership there is just incredible. And they understand the value of people and recognition and bringing having people that people have ideas.So many ideas. Trying to pull ideas from the people. The power of ideas is immense. And I think we see companies where the owner tries to do it all. You cannot do it all. You have to trust your people, hire bright young minds, bring them in. Don't slash your workforce. Many companies get rid of people and all of that knowledge and experience that you just collected over ten, fifteen, twenty, walk out the door. That's your asset which is walking out the door.Lisa Ryan: Now, when you talked about that company that you're working with, and you said they were a great leadership team, what makes them great?Rahul Sarkar: The the CEO, the company president. His attitude sets the tone. I've seen companies with terrible, terrible employee satisfaction situations, the leadership, and the top person in command. I think they set the tone. I have known this for 20 years. The fish rots from its head. I see this in so many places.And this company is such a classic example of how if you have the proper leadership, that is hands-on. He's running around the shop floor. He's cleaning up vehicles and showing the people that no job is above my level. I'm with you. I'm a part of the team. And we all have to succeed as a team. I think that mindset is so valuable. Appreciating the people. Walk around the shop, talk to people. Get to know them as people, not just expense items on your P&L statement.Right. I think that has a huge, huge effect on making people think. Why am I making this spring? If they know the why and they understand that, hey, my spring is going in there, and if I don't make the spring properly, I can end up making the team suffer. Leadership drives that team spirit, and that's, I think, so vital. Lisa Ryan: It really does start at the leadership. There are way too many companies that look at employee engagement and retention and that type of thing as an issue or somebody below them. And it really does start at the top. And when you said walking through the plant, giving your employees access, knowing them by name, knowing a little bit about the employees, because when that leader is walking through the plant and says, hey, Bob, how are you doing? Bob can be like, holy cow.Rahul Sarkar: Oh, my gosh, yes. That is so powerful. And this is another mistake companies make. They think, oh, I give financial incentives, financial incentives not to respect people, just that that high wage means so much. The recognition making the job meaningful. Why am I making this screw, or why I'm making the spring? Giving them all of that really makes a difference.And this is where I think it's encouraging to see more and more of an awakening and a realization. In fact, some of your guests on your earlier shows have been talking about things like that. And it's really encouraging to see that. And I'm hoping that this will spread throughout the whole small-medium manufacturing companies because they really need the help, and they are the ones that can help themselves.That's the thing that they have to understand, not the government, not some dole or something. They have to use their people's resources, their brains, the brains that they have in the companies use that.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, especially since we have such a shortage of skilled workers out there. You think with unemployment being at an all-time high right now are high for a long time, that people would be easy to find, and they're not. So it's those skilled workers that you need. So if you have good people working for you, it's really creating those relationships and saying thank you and recognizing your employees. And all of that is not an excuse to pay them less than market wage is still left, right?Rahul Sarkar:  That's exactly right. And Lisa, that the point you bring up about the skilled workforce gap? We've complained about this for 10, 15, 20 years. We've talked about the gap. Why do any good shop individuals go work at McDonald's instead of at the factory? That site that has to change, that really has to change. You have to attract the brains; you have to increase the wages you pay them.And this is something, in fact, just yesterday there was a poster of a Forbes article and I was like very, very encouraging to read that the someone is saying that someone is saying those words like it will cost you minimal to pay the person two dollars extra per hour if you think of the the the downside off of retraining and attrition. So that's a whole different topic.Lisa Ryan: Right, exactly. I know. And just as we move off that topic, I remember reading some statistics that said that by that time, when the employee walked in the door, you've already spent about sixty-five hundred bucks getting them in there on day one. So when you start to put that pen to paper, you can't afford to have that high turnover and just to look for these little things to make your culture a better place to work to people enjoy working there, then that's going to keep them, and it's going to increase your profits.Rahul Sarkar:  It comes profit comes. If you do all these things right, profit will come. So absolutely.Lisa Ryan: So if you were to think about your best tip from what you've seen or what you've worked when it comes to putting people first, what would that be? Rahul Sarkar: The power of ideas your people have been running, the machines have been making, the parts have been doing. Whatever you are having them do for many, many years. They have ideas that would blow your mind. And if you're about 15, 20 years ago, there was a book, The Power of Ideas or something. It was so profound. And then suddenly people stopped talking about it because everyone ran to the next big thing. In fact, they had the pie of ideas. Your people have so many ideas. Cool. Just make it easy for them to come up to you and talk to you and give those ideas and recognize them for those ideas, you know, and I think that's a tip that you can take to the bank really well.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. And especially when you have new employees come in that are seeing the world differently from you, whether or not they have experience in your industry or not. Listening to them and acting on the things they share makes them even more loyal and more committed to you because they feel heard.Rahul Sarkar:  Absolutely. And those new employees, new people coming in, bring in a whole different world view and different ways of thinking. If you've been in a shop, on a factory floor, you walk by that that that leaky oil pan or whatever leaky machine every day. And you don't think about a new person: Why is it leaking? How much is that costing? That's costing. You get new, fresh ideas. And that's, you know, absolutely like you just said, fresh ideas and respect and freedom to think and speak and be valued as an individual. That's so, so important.Lisa Ryan: When you talk about that leaky can that people walk by every day, it's also thinking about what your break rooms look like versus your customer-facing places. You have people in the office. The office is bright and shiny, and clean. You go into the shop lunchroom, and it's dark and dirty. And so these little things about just helping the environment for your employees to make sure that when that new employee, that prospect comes in, who might be joining your company, they're looking around going, wow, that they must care about us because it's clean. After all, it's bright because it feels good to be in that place.Rahul Sarkar: Absolutely. That is so, so vital because then people, the employees think, oh, they like you said, they care about us. And you feel like instead of just you walk into the lobby, nice, beautiful. And then you walk out of the shop. It's dark, and it's dangerous, oily. Its floors are slippery. It's like, whoa, you know, that's, and it sends a message, and they leave anyone who doesn't desperately need a job believe they don't want to work in there.Lisa Ryan: Well, you and I can obviously talk about this all day long and being on the same page. If people want to get a hold of you to connect with you and learn more, what's the best way for them to do that?Rahul Sarkar:  Email a call me on my website. My number

Contact Carol Cambridge: Telephone: 623-242-8797Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan from the Manufacturers Network podcast. I am excited to introduce you to Carol Cambridge. Carol Cambridge is CEO of the Stay Safe Project, an international conference speaker, and a workplace violence expert highly profiled for her expertise. She has often sought by the media for comments when tragedies occur. Carol has been interviewed by ABC, NBC, USA Today, CBC, and as far away as News Channel Asia in Singapore. Her career began as a communications specialist in emergency services and disaster preparedness with a Canadian law enforcement agency.Twenty-seven years later, Carol has taught over a quarter of a million people how to make intelligent, powerful, and life-saving decisions. When Carol is not speaking in training, she is at home in Glendale, Arizona, with the love of her life and three beautiful dogs. Carol, welcome to the show.Carol Cambridge: Thanks so much for having me.Lisa Ryan: Well, you have such a fascinating background and what you've been doing. So just share a bit of how you got started and how you ended up where you did.Carol Cambridge: Well, I came to the States several years ago. I was either overqualified or underqualified for absolutely everything. Not wanting to start working back into shiftwork, I realized a hole in corporate America, specifically manufacturing, the construction industry, and the electrical industry. I thought I have a wealth of information that can help people.And I think the biggest thing over the years that I've learned is that we don't necessarily have good critical thinking when it comes to emergencies and crises and dealing with people who are angry and disgruntled employees. I was able to translate what I had spent much of my career at that point, learning and translate that into a way that people were interested in. And it was beneficial to people.Lisa Ryan: It's unfortunate that with all the workplace violence and everything that we see that makes the news that this has become such a big part of your career. But when put in those types of environments, those types of situations, it's really good, especially in manufacturing and everywhere that people know exactly what to do.Carol Cambridge: That's right. And what happens and when I see a lot is that people think that they know what they're going to do in a crisis until that crisis happens.When their emotions are involved, they see people they work with or love that are involved in a horrific situation. We go right to that flight, and flight freeze brain. I see many people who think they know; they will swear up and down that they know exactly what to do. But when I do some of the experience training that I do, we find that people are shocked by their own responses, and they just don't react the way they assumed they would have.Lisa Ryan: So take us through the experience. When it comes to proving to people how they actually react instead of how they think they'll react. How do you bring that to life?Carol Cambridge: Well, there are a couple of different ways. In the workplace violence piece, I will throw it to the people when I'm doing training. I will say you are now part of this risk assessment team. I give them a little bit in the scenario. Then I'll say when you asked me the right questions in the right order, so to speak, and there's not exact rightness, but often what happens is they will think about protecting. For instance, the one employee instead of, oh, we have an entire plant full of employees.And you have to think about both of those. And most of us don't have that ability. We go to one specific area, so I'll ask them. They start asking me questions. I'll supply them with a little bit more information. And then we play out the scenario. And many of them are surprised because they'll put steps nine, 10, or 11 in front of maybe the first steps they should have done. For instance, let's say it's a high-risk termination, and this person has been dismissed.But there is fear, or there has been a threat that this person may come back into the plant, and perhaps this person has a history of owning weapons, and they're very familiar with weapons. And through the risk assessment that this person is becoming more and more dangerous. Suddenly, there are twenty-four hours into this, but they haven't shared any information with the people in the plant. And it's hot, and it's in the summertime. So, all of the doors are open because they don't have air conditioning in the plant.And all of a sudden, they realize they put all these other steps into place, and they perhaps spent a lot of money. But this person could walk through any one of those doors and start shooting at any time. So that's how we play it now with the active shooter.Well, it's more highly charged. Let's say we put them into a situation of a mock drill. We give all the proper warnings for people ahead of time, and then we put them in that situation where we dim the lights, and they will hear the sounds of shots fired. I don't use that weaponry. I'm not trying to scare anybody. But just the sounds, the dimming. It's the fact that they're told that there's a shooter and that they need to hide or get out of the room. We can plant people with disabilities, and we just watch what happens and.People typically will do absolutely everything wrong. They don't know where to hide. They all go up the same exits that they entered. They just do things that we're trained to do. And what we're prepared to do is how to respond in a fire drill that's stand up, walk slowly toward the exits, be kind to everybody.But in an active shooter who wants to be the tallest person in the room, not me, not you.And so they go out the doors without looking. I never say where the shooter is. The shooter could be outside. We have someone playing the role of an active shooter, and they'll have a Nerf gun. They can't hurt anybody. Most of the time, somebody who gets hit with it doesn't even realize they're hit with that Nerf bullet. But people come back afterward, and they'll say, oh, my gosh, I never thought to look at what exits we have in this room. I never thought I had an assumption. It challenges their assumptions. It challenges their biases.It challenges them because they thought they would have perhaps fought or gone after the attacker when in fact, they hit their automatic instinct was to hide. And none of those reactions are wrong. It's just what happens to us in a crisis.So through the debrief and the follow-up training, we do a second one, and they will see the difference in the room, and you save their lives. But they could also save their coworkers' lives, especially in a manufacturing setting, because you typically have so many, so many objects that could be used as weapons, where if you were in an office building, there wouldn't be quick access to those kinds of weapons.So people think through and start using those critical thinking skills in a little different way.Lisa Ryan: Now, the thing that comes to mind to me is as much as we both fly of being on an airplane and you hear that that safety announcement over and over and over again, you can pretty much do it by heart. You know exactly where the exits are. You know exactly what you're going to do. But until that plane is going down, you have no idea. And you think in a plant environment; we never or rarely have that conversation.So how in the world can you think about what you're even going remotely to come close to, what you're going to do?Carol Cambridge: So much of this comes in one ear out the other. When you shared that example of being on a plane, I think of my friend Jackie. And it was gosh, it was probably almost 30 years ago she was involved.She was on air Egypt that was hijacked, and she was shot. There were a lot of people killed on that plane. She was shot in the head. Thankfully, Jackie survived. And without going into her whole story, I remember saying to Jackie afterward, besides the fact that you thought this plane is going down or that you may be shot in the head, what was going through your mind initially when those hijackers first said that? She said, My first thought was that I don't pay attention to what the flight attendants say. I just thought because they were going dropping quickly, the oxygen all came down. She's like, what should I do? And so it was a real honest to the core answer.And I think what happens is we train situational awareness. And it's one thing that we don't typically train our supervisors or managers and we certainly don't train our employees. And that's why experiential training is so effective. It gets people thinking now. Is it on its total behavior change or a little bit more so than if I were sharing the story and listening to me?Because we know that they don't remember that, it's an experience that internally causes them some fright or friction. They're aware of that emotional response. They will start paying attention. We also do what we do when we go in and do this training in companies and manufacturers. We supply them with a video series. And this video series is small snip snippets. It's two to five minutes in length. It's something that they can use in their safety meetings to remind them.And there is a section on situational awareness and all these other things. It's keeping that on the top of their mind and so that it's part of their conversation. Now it goes away. But the next time we hear a media story about an active shooter somewhere, it raises that conversation to the top again. And people will think, gee, what do we do? What doors do we get out? Do we have a system for warning other employees, that kind of thing?Lisa Ryan: You stated at the beginning of their time together of that summer in the manufacturing plant with all the doors open, and you just released or fired that problem child of an employee. What do you think are the top things that most leaders do wrong when it comes to a termination? And then how do we evaluate the risk that goes along with that?Carol Cambridge: Great, great question. So the first part of that is that most leaders have a knee-jerk reaction. They have a problem employee, somebody who's made a threat, and they instantly want to terminate immediately.Manufacturers across the country are notorious for having several different locations. They could have five locations. They could have 40 or 50 locations across the U.S. But their human resource professional is perhaps in a different state. And so they want to do this termination. And so it's an operations manager or a plant manager that's handling the termination. They decide they want to do it right away. They do it without that risk assessment. They may know some information about this person, but they didn't even check with human resources. Had they done that, they would have found a history and a very serious history that would lead them to handle the termination differently.Leaders tend to react too fast. When they start doing an initial risk assessment, they forget that the situation is fluid so that the risk can change. My suggestion to people is always to send that person home for the day and suspend them if you need to for two or three days. Then the employee thinks, well, OK, I may have. I don't know if I was suspended with pay or without pay, but they're not in that panic situation. We don't know what's going on at home. We don't know what's happening at home is just as important as what's happening at the workplace.I'll share a story with you, and this company felt that they had done everything right. The manufacturing was a small manufacturer. It was a family business. They shared that this employee had been with us for 17 years. We knew the whole story. He's a good guy, but he'd just become very disgruntled, unhappy, lately, abusive towards other employees. We could handle the behavior anymore. I sent him home while drinking was a part of the problem. And this man had become an alcoholic over the years. And that particular night, he picked up the phone and called several of his friends, and he said, look, do me a favor, whatever you do, do not go to work tomorrow morning. Promise me you won't go.Now, he called several different people, leaving a message. Some of them he spoke to personally, some of them, he left a message. One or two of these employees contacted the person at home because she was part of this family-owned business. They called her about 11 p.m., and they said, this is what he said. She right away contacted the sheriff's department and made arrangements.They were only a plant that worked two shifts, day shift, and afternoon shift. They didn't work overnight. The sheriff came with their canine unit. They went through the entire planet looking for things, looking for bombs, any kinds of things that had been stored there. And they swept it clean around 10:00. And they did open up to let the early morning shift in. They hired some off-duty officers.Around 10:00 that morning, that former employee called and apologized and said, you know, I make these threats. I know what was wrong. I apologize. I shouldn't have done that. And so he backed off. Everyone in the seminar was clapping and giving her kudos, as I did as well because she handled it very well. But then I asked this question: What did you do with the other two or three employees who never called you about the threat?Lisa Ryan: Oh, wow. Bam, bam.Carol Cambridge: She said, it never occurred to me. I never thought about it. Wow. And I said, why do you think they didn't report this?So it woke everybody else up in the room, and they realized everything she did was correct. But here's what happens. We have one or two people making all the decisions around determination, and what I always suggest excuse me.What I always suggest is that we have a team of people I like to call it a react team. One of the suggestions I always put in place when I work with manufacturers is that you have a react team and what I call it, it's an acronym really - it's a rapid emergency action capabilities team.So whether it's a threat, a workplace violence incident that has happened. We have situations where people run over other people with a forklift, or there's an assault on the plant floor, or they've used a tool as a weapon to threaten someone. These aren't unusual. A team of people working together to handle a threat is a much better choice and not a large team.One manufacturer told me that they had a termination team, and I said, OK, that's kind of scary to me. What do you mean by termination team? He said, when we terminate someone, we have seven people on our termination team. Wow. That's such a bad idea because the person you're terminating, and I'm talking high-risk termination, right. Do you think they want to be blindsided by seven of their coworkers or seven of their supervisors terminating them about behavioral problems on the job?That creates a more hostile environment. When I talk about the REACT team, I'm talking about a team that helps evaluate the risk. The actual termination should have no more than two people in the room at the time because anything more than that seems like they're being ganged upon. The second part of the question, and do I have time to answer? At least I should.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. It's getting to the end. But it's still it's so fascinating that I know that I want to learn more.Carol Cambridge: Let me just give a few quick tips about evaluating. What is the reason? Is it narcotics? Is alcohol a part of the problem? Maybe they're not drinking on the job, but their behavior is a result of that alcoholism. Do they have a history of violence? Are they bullying other employees? Are they associated with a hate group that we're seeing much more of across this country right now?Are they not taking accountability for their behavior? So everything that happens to them, they're blaming on the company. They're accusing the supervisor. They're blaming another team member. If they have that preoccupation with blaming others, if they have this all or nothing kind of mentality, it's all this way, or it's all that way. They can't see any middle ground that's concerning to me, somebody who has an unstable personal life. So if we know they've just divorced or are in the middle of a divorce or a separation, we know there's a financial hardship.It could be that their child has been diagnosed with cancer just to keep up with all of their co-pays. They have had to foreclose on their house. They're going home, lose their security. All of these things play into the emotions of that person. And as much as we like to think, we leave those emotions at home, and we don't bring them to work.That's not what happens. So when you're terminating someone like that, we have to make sure that we provide some emotional stability for that person. And we don't want to up the fear because desperate people will do desperate things, and we want to avoid that. So the higher the risk.If they tend to provoke fear in other employees, for instance, all of those kinds of things we evaluate ahead of time and the more check, so to say that we put beside these things, the higher the risk of this person. And then often we need to bring in some outside help of a protection team. We may have to have law enforcement on-site, many different security protocols that we would then put in place depending.Lisa Ryan: It is the idea of sending that person home for the day and probably even with pay. As much as you hate to do it, at least something gives them some opportunity to go home and cool down and think about it. Small investment versus, like you said, a seven-person termination team. Holy cow. Yes. Oh, really? And also getting to know your employees, getting to see a few of your employees.And also, the thing that stuck out in my mind was the people who didn't report it of creating a safe enough culture that the employees feel comfortable enough if they do get one of those dreadful calls like that, that they know the people to get in touch with. They feel safe and comfortable in doing so. And that's certainly not something that's going to happen overnight. But these tips to just start paying attention to now are so critical.It's so true.Carol Cambridge: And I want to give you a shout out for the work you do, Lisa, because when you have a more engaged community within your work environment, a caring, engaged community, we see less workplace violence. We see more minor problems. Now, it doesn't mean that it's a bad hire.You can have a very good hire, or you could have a very engaging employee, a good scenario, and still have a problem because this person begins spiraling. And so you might not see it for seven years, eight years, ten years, 15 years. So as engaging and wonderful as your work environment is, you still need to have these teachers for terminations in place and security protocols that you can go to immediately.Lisa Ryan: So as we start to wrap it up, what would be your best tip for somebody to get started as far as doing that assessment and evaluating those risks?Carol...

Connect with Ray BrownEmail: Ray Brown@Escogroup.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ray-brown-23b65622/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Ray Brown. Ray is the President of Esco Group. Esco Group provides electrical construction, electrical engineering plant automation, Arc flash analysis, and electrical safety services to various commercial and industrial clients, primarily within the food and beverage manufacturing agriculture and municipal markets. Ray likes to say that they provide engineering construction services from seed to table. Ray, welcome to the show.Ray Brown: Hello Lisa, thank you for that warm introduction on Esco.Lisa Ryan: Well, it's so nice to have you here. Tell us a bit of your background and what led you to Esco.Ray Brown: You bet. You know it started in grade school. No, I'm just kidding. I'm probably one of the very few folks out there that this was my first and only job. I'm a graduate from the University of Northern Iowa up in Cedar Falls in 1992, with a CPA BA in accounting. Little did I know this was to become my life's purpose and passion. Esco Group and our family have over 300 employees. We're very proud of saying that this has been my only job, and I'm grounded. I have a great family. My wife was my high school sweetheart. We have over 25 years together and two wonderful kids - Ethan and Natalie. I'm honored to be on your show, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: Well, it's great to have you here. One of the things that we were talking about before we got started was this whole year that we've gone through with COVID and some of the effects that it's had not only on us but on our employees. It's bringing up things like depression and dealing with mental illness. It's a topic that many people are not comfortable talking about - they don't know how to talk about it.What are some of the things you've experienced? How have you worked with your employees this past year to help them get through all this?Ray Brown: Before we get going, I think, with like anything that we tack on Esco, you have to start somewhere, whether the safety or mental illness and, as I share, what we're doing at Esco. We don't draw a line in the Sand. This is where we want to be today. We focus on growth from one day to the next. One of the things I recognized for myself going through this past year, half of our workforce, we have around 300 employees, about half of those hundred 50 or so, give or take, actually are in manufacturing.Manufacturers continue to be super successful every day, navigating not just the Covid challenges but other manufacturing challenges. Half of our workforce is engineering office space, so they're all working from home, so we had a pretty diverse background this last year of folks that when you talk about what their new normal look like, that didn't change construction electrical construction professionals. They showed up on the job from day one lot much like manufacturing professionals out there, and then our engineers working in that hybrid model.There are a lot of different challenges around isolation, and that was me as well. I think there's a stat out there I share with the Esco family - one in four of us went through some depression this last year or continue to maybe suffer from some of that. I felt that one of the things that we started this year at Esco group, we have dynamic teams that help. I strategically partner with our three engagement teams, focusing on building mutual commitment and making it fun and around that flow experience. Then we have an employee ownership team that helps us share the principles of employee ownership, but the three-team that we'd like to call them partnering with them just this month of April and May as health or wellness month, so we're educating ourselves.One of the initiatives that we're just going to be launching is "Make it Okay" and wear a green shirt. We're going to get some things printed up. The shirts say, "Make it okay to talk about mental illness." We all have different challenges that we're going through. Understanding those challenges, whether they're at home or work, allows us to be the best for ourselves - the best teammates, the best employee-owners, and the best partners for our manufacturers that we support 27/7/365 out there. When we look at how we operate at Esco, we're simply an extension of the manufacturing process professionals out there.We were hopeful that every day we make their lives a little bit simpler. Being our best and talking about mental illness is a big part of that mission.Lisa Ryan: But on the other thing that it falls into, and I know you're a big proponent of the safety of your plant. Taking care of your workers and making sure that they are comfortable talking about that uncomfortable topic of mental illness and depression and other programs that you're working on with the Green shirts and making it okay to have awkward moments. But from a mental standpoint, people who are being taken care of have a better chance of keeping themselves and everybody else working there safe.Please share a bit of your safety philosophy and how mental illness and depression play into that.Ray Brown: On July 22, 2006, it was a beautiful early Saturday morning. I was spending some time with my fearless mentor for over 20 years. We were ready to tee off, and we got one of those calls that, as a CEO President, you never want to get. On that call, we learned that we lost a dear team Member to what could have been a very preventable electrical accident at one of our manufacturing facilities.We've always had an excellent safety culture. Probably six months before that 2006 incident, I was at another customer site, and one of our leaders was sharing our story with one of our customers. He said, "you guys at Esco are so serious. Don't take this the wrong way, but you're kind of like the safety Nazis. We're making sure you got all the proper training and ensuring that if you see a safety violation, you give those mornings out. Then we had this event happen. It's the things that you never forget.It is the life, but also the lives of those other family members, that change. He had three kids and a wife that unfortunately passed away of cancer. They'll forever be changed. Those folks at that manufacturing facility told ourselves a may not-so-true story on how we look at safety. We had to look at ourselves and think about things.One of the things I preach around Esco is the growth mindset and what that means. You have to take a look at failure and continue to learn from that and move forward. We want to embrace and look at the silver linings in any event that happened. No matter how tragic it is, we try to make sense of that tragedy and use it as something that can be used to enact change positive change for other folks.Employees will be a legacy for Esco, and hopefully, with that growth mindset in mind, it's forever changed Esco. We've tried to look at our safety program. It is the way we get up every day. Mental illness is a big piece of that. We talked about getting our employees home safely from home to work and back again, just recognizing that mental illness is a big part of that safety journey. Getting awkward is a big part of that. One of the things that we've done is the direct result of this.We had employees write letters to their family members as if a horrific accident happened. The spouses had to write a letter back to their spouses saying why they would be missed. It's called getting awkward. We talk about some super uncomfortable things. It was a pretty robust discussion. I still remember getting many personal notes from spouses. I think that's the first time I've gotten a personal note from our employees' spouses thanking us for taking that activity. Mental illness is a big part of that. Make it okay to talk about those things.This employee came into work super dedicated, coming into work early Saturday morning trying to get to a baseball game so get into a plant get the job done so I can go and coach that baseball game. Unfortunately, he did not make it to that baseball game. That family and Esco changed. The good part of Esco is that it is a family. Those three young kids graduated college. We still try to keep in touch with them. It's been a couple of years since they were at one of our Esco group family baseball games, but it did turn out to be positive for these kids. They are growing up to be three very successful adults.Lisa Ryan: Going back to the letter – that's such a powerful thing to do. Most people, number one, never think about doing it, or they think, well that's morbid. Why would I want to do that? But if you think about, and I talked about this in my programs a lot, we see the times that we say the nicest things about people during their eulogy. To have that conversation, and to be able to say all of those things that you want to say, but may never say, well, that person, still on the planet, what a powerful way to build a relationship, and let people know exactly how we feel about them.From a personal standpoint, I am just creating that it's okay in the workplace to have those difficult conversations. Kudos to you for doing many difficult and uncomfortable awkward things over there to make the plant better.Ray Brown: Thank you, Lisa. We learn a lot from not just our employees but our partners and manufacturing it as well. I think we've got a unique perspective. We can have conversations with the back office. C-suite folks also have great discussions with the plant managers. Engineers who make manufacturing happening, and then also the online folks. We are getting awkward. Knowing that it impacts all of those folks and their families, our families bring it home.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of the things that are going well for you? Even though some of them came due to tragic circumstances, what is still keeping you up at night?Ray Brown: Understanding that the employee experiences are ever-evolving. Like Esco, there's a lot of companies out there trying to figure out what is that new construction environment looks like for employee experience, health, and safety. What does the office environment look like for developing the right culture? When we talk about mental illness and safety, culture is top of mind. What's keeping me up at night is that we take the same approach as safety. Let's try this experience out, and let's learn from how that might look. Whether we're going to hybrid mode, we have to develop some new safety protocols for the plant. We take that growth mindset, and dialing in the things around mental illness and safety are part of that equation. Letting that natural evolution and keeping that conversation and discussion open, I think that's probably the most significant piece that I've seen. A lot of super-successful leaders this past year lead with a lot of grace and compassion. Keeping that conversation open to what that experience might look like because it's going to be different for each employee.The other important piece is that employees need to recognize that showing up creates a great experience for another employee. I don't know if we always put ourselves in that mindset. It's not about my employee experience, but if I know that tomorrow, I'm losing one of my best team members. Suppose they wanted to work in the office full time, and I couldn't offer some of that route or the in collaboration. In that case, I might have to look at that bigger picture on that growth mindset and have my employee experience evolve a little bit to make sure my entire team and my entire company are successful.Lisa Ryan: From a networking standpoint, what would be some of the things that you would like to learn from other manufacturers, and by the same token, what of your insights and knowledge would you be willing to share with your manufacturing colleagues?Ray Brown: We try to hone in on being a great partner. Efficiencies and product count. What are those essential things around collaboration teamwork that are drive success within manufacturing? We've developed a pretty intimate plant services model embedded in many of our long-term successful partners. In talking with some of the plant folks, I think we get focused on some of the financials. But what are some of those soft things that an integrator electrical construction company could be mindful of to continue to get better?Lisa Ryan: If somebody did want to connect and learn more, what is the best way for them to do that?Ray Brown: LinkedIn is a great opportunity to get connected. Or just my email Ray Brown@Escogroup.comLisa Ryan: It has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Thanks so much for sharing your insight.Ray Brown: Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you and share the Esco story today.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network. See you next time

Connect with Theo EtzelEmail: Theo@TheoEtzel.comWebsite: TheoEtzel.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guests today, Theo Etzel. Theo was CEO of conditioned air for 23 years. The company grew from $2.7 million in revenue to $55 million in sales at that time. He stepped down as CEO in June of 2018 and is currently Chairman of Conditioned Air, now a 60 plus million dollar regional organization in the residential and light commercial HVAC markets. Conditioned Air employs over 375 full-time co-workers and has branches in Fort Myers and Sarasota.Theo is the author of the book, Invest your Heartbeats Wisely, released in April of 2016. The book focuses on practical full philosophical, and principled leadership concepts for business and life. Theo, welcome to the show.Theo Etzel: Thank you, Lisa. I really appreciate being here. It's always a joy.Lisa Ryan: Great! Please tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Theo Etzel: Well, my background is that I'm a native Floridian. I grew up in Miami and attended Stetson University with a focus on finance and economics. That got me started on the business side of things by developing hotels for hotels' national chain and traveling around the country.Even into some entrepreneurial things after that. Developing an area franchise model for Ben and Jerry's in the Atlanta area. We were living there and did that for several years. We ended up selling those stores and having the opportunity to come to Naples, Florida, back down on the west coast.I took over a small air conditioning company, Conditioned Air, and applied sort of the entrepreneurial people skills needed at that time. It helped me grow the business. I would say that I didn't have any experience in the HVAC world specifically, but I certainly had business experience. I'm a people person, so I tried my best to bring good practices, good ethics, good people treatment into the company and learn the HVAC business as I went along. I wanted to build a team that could really help that process grow.Lisa Ryan: So you walk into this small HVAC company without any industry experience, and you're about to take it over. What were some of the things you did right off the bat to connect with the people who work there, develop that passion for the business, and build the culture you did?Theo Etzel: I think the first challenge that I realized that the company had organizationally was that the person in my chair previously had not been forthright and straight-up with the staff. My number one goal was to establish trust with the staff, which required a whole level of transparency of telling people what I was going to do and making sure that I did it so that they saw that there was consistency in word deed.Building the trust probably took the better part of a year to be truthful because there was skepticism. He's young. He hasn't been in our business before. What does he know? What's he here for? I mean, you have you know people. People will make up their minds a narrative to support their suspicions. If allowed to, and so that's where I do think in any organization, no matter what size.Terrific communications have to be the key, so you have to tell people what you're going to do constantly. Set expectations and carry through with those. Solicit input for what works and what doesn't work. Ask questions and respect their opinion doesn't mean you have to adopt it. But it means you have to communicate with them if you don't choose to adopt an idea that someone suggests. You do need to explain why we can't do it exactly that way.Lisa Ryan: So what would be an example of something specific that you did to build trust, as they saw that you were young, and they were skeptical. Maybe it was the leftover from the previous administration of what they experienced for them but was there something that comes to mind as an example of something you specifically did to build that trust.Theo Etzel: I think one of the first things we did was when I reviewed sort of some of the programs or things that have been in place, 401Ks, things like that that may have gotten trimmed, as it were. Some of the benefits had been reduced overtime over the last 18 months or so a couple of years from when I got there.I did sit down with people and really look at what matters to them. What did you have? What don't you have now? Why is that important? What are things important to you? We also looked at that we are competitive in recruiting with the current benefits package we have? What did we have? What don't we have now? I think I worked diligently to reestablish things that had been lost that were important to them.Lisa Ryan: Even sitting down and asking them the question that critical of what's important to you. Because you can make up stuff all day long as far as what you think that employees need but having those individual conversations and listening certainly sounds like it had a big role in building that trust.Theo Etzel: Yes. Fast forward just to current just by way of teeing off on that. The conversations are terrific, but I'm involved in a private school on the board of trustees now, and our head of school has an excellent way. When he showed up at our school and was new, he to sat down with the staff and did the individual questions, and several of the questions I thought were really key, and that is what are we doing currently that you like. What could we do better that you would like to see improved? What are the sacred cows that I might trip over?Lisa Ryan: interesting.Theo Etzel: So I don't know what they are. Would you tell me something that is known but it's not talked about, and then, and I thought this was key. What are you scared I'm going to do? That is a scary question, but it's a great question because it's an opening question. What are you scared I'm going to do? It's a vulnerability question. I think you're going to reduce our salaries. Or I think you're going to cut a lot of staff. Or you know I don't think you're going to invest in our development individually, you know education-wise.You know anything can come out, but it creates a tremendous amount of conversation and insight into the organization. While I didn't use those specific questions in my conversations, I always tried to find out what was important what was needed. That really reflects more on my style. One has a coach as a leader. Trying to build other people and servant leadership, which is if you're working with me. I don't want to come in and have to tell you what to do daily. If I'm micromanaging, I don't find any joy in that, nor do I find that productive at all.But what I will ask is, what do you need from me that helps you do your job better easier, more efficiently, and creates a better atmosphere and in the organization? If we can do that, it will set out to do that, and so, if you continually ask what that is, that leads to a lot of innovation, I think so.Lisa Ryan: Fast forward. You're going from the beginning of initially building that trust. You and I cannot have a conversation, of course, without talking about your open book leadership because that is so mind-blowing for people who would never consider showing their employees the actual books. I'd really love for you to walk through that process, maybe, starting with the philosophy that made you look at that process of implementation looked and what happened afterward with the employees.Theo Etzel: But that goes back to my premise that, especially for leaders, people in the organization are actually on the front lines doing the company's work. In our case, the technicians in people's homes or on a construction site or their installations are going into equipment in people's homes or our offices and businesses. They're coming in contact with the customer. They have to do manual labor. They have to do the heavy lifting on the front line.It can be a straightforward jump for someone if they wish it to be to go from here. I am putting in this complicated system to feel that he must be up in his office pushing dollar bills in his pockets and figuring out how to get them out of the Office every night. Because it's a natural thing to play with, it's an unknown. How much does the company make? They pay me, but how much does the company make? Is the company in good shape? Are we doing the best we can? Are we going to be around the right people who want to know some certainties so, interestingly, from the manufacturing world, The book The great game of business by jack stack focused on manufacturing? The plant was designed to be an open book plant. In other words, they put teams together. They asked for input. How do you do your job more efficiently? Here's the impact of manufacturing on what one more widget per hour means. They started sharing a lot of numbers. They got a lot of input on improving the system can do it better. People became invested mentally in the organization, so we took that model, and we modified it to fit our company.We started sharing with people. We started it as an education process. If you haven't done it, and people aren't used to looking at a profit and loss statement, you do have to invest time, and energy, and an education. We started with the expenses, and we made it kind of a game. Guess how much we spent on gas last month. Getting our vans to everybody's home. People's eyes bugged out when they heard how much the gas bill was or the insurance bill or training or tools that we buy or all those things that go into making up a business.We started with the income side. We would then do it every quarter, and we would project on the screen a profit and loss. Our CFO would go through the line items. Now the line items are grouped. Let's not kid ourselves; we're not showing everybody's individual salaries up there. We're doing things properly, but we're going to show how much is spent on health insurance. How much you spent on vacation time. You know each part of the benefits that we contribute to, and then all the things that make up our expense side. It's a very educational, very eye-opening thing, and then, if our feeling was if you share this information and you're asking for people to think about how to do things in a wiser, better, more efficient way to create more value for the company. You really need to share part of the profit growth that results from people pitching in and having a quote owners mentality, so we do that. They're part of a share program at the end of the year, and we divide up a portion of the profits. They get to see that their quote share values every month, and it's not. It's just a way to involve people, thank people, and always have people thinking about the greater picture.Lisa Ryan: When the other interesting thing that came out of this was it really helped with your retention versus people jumping and starting their own HVAC companies. Talk a little bit about that.Theo Etzel: If employees think in their mind, oh wow, he's up there stuffing dollar bills in his pocket. How hard can that be? I'll go down to the used car place, get a van, and through my sign on on the side of it? I can be their competitor once people started getting an education on what it takes to really make the phone ring what you spend on advertising. Some of these other components really add up in being a consistent business. It became clear to a lot of folks. I like what I do, and there they are providing career paths here, and that's something that goes hand in hand. If you don't if want retention, then you do need to. You need to have a way for people to accelerate move up or move around in the organization and tear down sort of silos that you plug somebody in. They say I quit. That's not healthy either, but it helped mentally prepare people to say I really like what I'm doing. I'm not taking my work home with me. I don't have to worry about payroll. I don't have to worry about some of the other things. It puts in perspective what the business climate is out there as well.Yes, it does help with retention, in my opinion, does, and I, but I also think it makes for a more satisfied workforce because one of the key things that happened after we started doing this. Very first meetings, several people walked up and said, thank you for trusting us with.So it was a huge step of trust to show them we have nothing to hide here. We're going to show you how we're doing.Lisa Ryan: It also helps them when we look at our employees from a holistic standpoint, and we're taking care of the whole person, not the person. That shows up at the plant or shows up at the job site.Lisa Ryan: But by giving people that financial education, there's probably a good chance that they could better with their own personal finances. They could take that same mentality into their home because they have a different level of understanding.Theo Etzel: Correct, I think you're probably right on that. I do think it's important along with that concept to look at the employee holistically, so we are always concerned about the family, what's going on in their life and offer programs to assist people that have situations that come up, as we all do and need some guidance on some things. It's an essential thing to stand behind folks that. Are you really on the team? We want to be supportive of that.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of the things right now, amidst the covid, and everything else that we're going through, but what's keeping you up at night.Theo Etzel: Oh, my, you know early on, people have asked me this question, and I said, I have to answer it this way, so well early on, when I wasn't too many months after I got to wondering, are we really going to make payroll on Friday. People owed us some money, so I knew Thursday, I'd grab the checks and make sure they paid us. We had a few weeks like that. I know the feeling of being stressed. Unfortunately, we don't have that to contend with now. But I would say it concerns in covid, but beyond covid, we travel so many miles on the road, and we put our people at risk, and obviously other drivers that are on the road, are at risk. I would say just the sheer number of miles that we drive. We emphasize the safety aspect of everything that we do. I never complain about anybody that says. I don't think this job is safe. I need help. We want to support the driving and making sure they're accident-free. That is first and foremost because that's huge exposure for us right from that standpoint. We want everybody to return home safe and healthy and be able to come back to work.On the covid side of things, we took extraordinary steps immediately to give personal protective equipment to people to be protected when they went in someone's home or to a construction site. We made sure that we could contract trace. We had to do the same thing. We had to have people work from home. We had to have people. Not only did we not have group meetings again for a long time, but those kinds of things also did it virtually and did it by video and video messages. Communication is the key, so you have to continually keep that going by whatever means available at the time.Lisa Ryan: When it comes to creating this network of industry colleagues, what would be something that you would like to learn from other manufacturing, HVAC industry professionals, and what would be your areas of expertise that you'd be willing to share with people who wants to connect?Theo Etzel: Oh well, thank you. I'm always happy to talk about leadership styles and company culture because I really think company culture is key to success. I think that having a solid team and that team atmosphere is just so key. Recognizing people. I always say catch them doing the right thing. Catch someone doing the right thing, tell them they're doing the right thing, pat them on the back and make sure you do that publicly so that other people see you congratulating someone or thanking somebody. I'm happy to talk to people about my experiences in those things in the efforts that we took to do that.As far as learning things, I am open to so many things to learn and love to do that. I enjoy listening to people talk and picking up on subtle things that they've had experienced, especially when it comes to employees, and gaining more efficiencies out of a process. Or how they got people to buy into a process when they had a large process to implement.Implementation of a change in an organization of something that you're used to a computer system, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden, they got a whole new system. Now I've gotta go this direction as many tears and gnashing of teeth come with things like that.I'm always a student of how to help get that done efficiently and timely, so I love stuff like that too.Lisa Ryan: If you could boil it down to your favorite leadership principle since you wrote a whole book on it, what would be your words of wisdom to leave our listeners with today?Theo Etzel: The most important thing that a leader can do is invest in their people. It's all about the team and the people. If I don't think if you are willing to serve people, if you're not willing to be transparent, if you're not willing to be honest with them, and expect honesty from them, then I don't think you're going to have a great culture in the company. If you show them respect and show admiration for the people doing the work with you, and your real team makes them and not afraid to lead the charge, and be right by their side when times are tough and admit when times are tough. For when you've made a mistake, and apologize, and say let's you know recover, and let's keep going. I think your culture will suffer from that. It has served me well in all my experiences, and anytime I didn't trust my gut on doing it that way, I'm just always regretted it, so it's just the best policy definitely.Lisa Ryan: Theo, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show. If people want to get in touch and connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?Theo Etzel: The easiest way is to email me at Theo@TheoEtzel.com. You can always go to the website TheoEtzel.com and fill out the contact sheet there.Lisa Ryan: All right, well, once again, thank you so much for being my guest on the show today, Theo.Theo Etzel: Absolutely, Lisa, I always enjoy talking to you, and thank you for what you do.Lisa Ryan: You're very welcome. I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network podcast. See you next time.