Connect with Alan DavisEmail: alan.davis@i5services.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alandavissolutiondevelopment/Website: https://i5services.com/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Alan Davis. Alan is the founding member and CEO of I5 Services. He started i5 services to change industries through creative technical solutions to complex business problems. His background is in technology and years of experience, leadership, and the transformation process. For the last eight years, he has been working tirelessly to connect the U.S. manufacturing supply chain. Alan, welcome to the show.Alan Davis: Thanks for having me today, Lisa. Great to be with you.Lisa Ryan: Alan, please share with us some of your background. What led you to focus on manufacturing and then the founding of i5 services?Alan Davis: Great question. In 2001, I was involved in another industry. We came up with an innovative solution for the airline industry when 9/11 happened, and the airline industry was somewhat devastated at that point and having a hard time recovering. Our solution had a huge impact on the client that we were working for - about 40 million dollars a year. That solution opened our eyes. That technology is still being used today; almost all the world's major airlines use it. But it helped the airline industry at a time when it needed it. That opened my eyes to the fact that there was this great need for some very innovative technical solutions that would solve very complex business problems. These solutions would have a direct impact on the bottom line for our clients. They would also have a dramatic impact positively on the entire industry or ecosystem that they serve.Fast forward a few years. The downturn of the economy happened. I got a nice severance package from my former employer, and we started i5 Services. Here at i5 services, we focus on manufacturing. A couple of years after we had started the company, an economic development study was done in the state of Utah to determine how to improve the various economic sectors. Part of that study was that in manufacturing, they decided that they needed a virtual industrial park.It was this ability to connect manufacturers with each other. The idea was that if a prominent manufacturer could buy local first, it would keep more jobs, more dollars in the state, and therefore boost the economy overall in manufacturing. We were selected to build the solution for that, along with Utah Manufacturers Association. We brought together manufacturers from around the state. We probably had 30 or 40 manufacturers participate, and over four months, we held workshops every other Friday for four hours.We got in the conference room, and we dug deep into why the solution was needed? Why weren't the existing solutions out there solving the problem? What were the benefits of doing this? It was a very informative and enlightening process because we truly understood that our manufacturing ecosystem is not connected well as we went through this. In fact, not well at all to the point where we have a hard time finding manufacturing capabilities. Anyone who had their eyes open during the pandemic will certainly understand challenges and problems in the supply chain. As we were looking at the problem, the manufacturers said this to me - and I thought this was eye-opening - they said, go to any solution that's out there today, any search engine, and try to search and find all the women-owned plastic injection molding companies in the state of Utah and tell me what you see. You cannot get a comprehensive set of results in any solution out there other than the one that we built at that time for the state of Utah.We put a prototype together while we were going through the workshops. One of the large manufacturers came to us at the end of those workshops and said, look, we have a $70 million contract. We're going to award it outside of the state because our buyers have scoured the state, and they cannot find anyone here that can deliver this. So we said this is perfect. We have the prototype ready, and we searched.Sure enough, two miles from their facility was the exact company they were looking for. They didn't know they were there, and that was when we decided as a company that number one, we needed to solve this for our country because it was a massive need. But number two, that it had huge value to the industry. If we could solve this, not for the state, but our country, imagine the economic impact that it would have. At that time, we decided this is our journey, this is our path. This is where we're going, and we've been all-in every sense, trying to make sure that we built the right solution for our country. We built the first U.S. manufacturing supply chain connection solution that connects us to the manufacturing capabilities of the United States.Lisa Ryan: That's what it's all about. You look at what I'm trying to create here with the Manufacturers' Network Podcast – it's connecting manufacturers. Sometimes you get so focused on your business, what you're doing, and your products. Either you don't think about other manufacturers in the area, or unfortunately, you look at them as the competition. I don't want anything to do with them versus building this connection - this group of people – and knowing who you can give the business if, for whatever reason. You're not the right company for it, or you don't have what you need to fulfill that order, and partnering with other manufacturers, it's it seems so easy that it's something that we should have been doing all along.But putting that focus on keeping it local to have the jobs and everything else, and building those relationships.Alan Davis: It's amazing if you start looking local first. Then, you can expand your search beyond your local community to your state, and into your country, and then international. That helps - no matter which ecosystem you're in. That helps your ecosystem because starting local first is always going to be the most economical solution. Well, not always, but almost always will be the most economical solution if you can find the right kind of provider.Now, if you can't find the right kind of provider, you have to expand that search, and sometimes that does take you internationally. But there are definite advantages to everyone. If you start with that local search, first one, especially when you look at things like the contribution to the local community, of standing out there, of letting people in your community, in your area know what you're about, know what your mission is, how you're contributing, because then also in a market where it's so difficult to find the correct skilled labor force that you need, that makes your plant somewhere where people want to work. They want to be a part of that because they see what you're doing locally.That was right after the Supply-Chain workforce was the next area the manufacturing asked us to start working on, so we have a workforce module. The solution is the Connex marketplace. You can find at Connexmarketplace.com. But that was the next piece that they came forward with and said, look, it's great if we solve the supply chain problem, but that introduces the next problem right behind it: do we have the workforce to sustain that business?That’s been an ongoing problem for several years. It seems to be exacerbated in the current climate, so there's a lot that we need to do in that area as well, and R&D or innovation is right there with it. We are working on all three of those problems and trying to help solve the challenges associated with them in manufacturing.Lisa Ryan: We think about the workplace. I mean, back in the day, you went into manufacturing because you could make great money with great benefits, and all this, and now you're not only competing with other manufacturers, but you're competing with Amazon. You're competing with these other tech companies that have money to play with. We're getting away from having that conversation. Looking at the things that differentiate a career in manufacturing and knowing that we need to have that conversation to attract people into the labor force that we're so desperately looking for.I know that there is no easy button to have potential workers show up at your door. But what are some of the things that you have found that are working to attract the workforce that we need?Alan Davis: That's a big question because many things contribute to it. One of the first things is manufacturing struggles to compete for the workforce, particularly in the U.S., mainly because of some perception problems we have a perception that manufacturing is this old, dirty industry that no one wants to work in, and it's hard work and low pay.And it couldn't that perception could not be further from the truth. Today's manufacturing is very much high-tech and has tremendous jobs. In fact, on average, they pay about a quarter percent more than any other industry. It is a fantastic industry to be involved in. But getting past that perception problem is part of what we're trying to help within the application and better connecting industry and education institutions. There's a better exchange of knowledge, understanding, and information between them.If kids are attending grade school through university, they don't always have an understanding of what some of those pathways are. They don’t know the opportunities of these high-paying jobs, and incredible careers that are available in manufacturing. When they begin learning about the workplace, and learning about jobs, and starting to think about what those jobs might be for their future, and then obtaining the right skills to be able to enter into those jobs. We haven't solved the problem because it has to come through that process for the next generation of the workforce to understand what the opportunities are, and to take advantage of them.There's the issue of helping the existing workforce transition to manufacturing jobs and be able to find a pathway that takes them from their current place of employment or direction of career to be able to make an amendment, a change, or a pivot to come back over into manufacturing and take advantage of some of those amazing jobs. So those are a couple of the things. There are also some challenges associated with training the existing workforce.There's a concern occasionally about automation, robotics, and things like that taking over all the jobs. That's not the case. When you implement automation and robotics, the reality has been that it almost always creates more jobs and increases production. An interesting statistic that I think helps here is that with one-tenth of the labor force, we produce almost the same output as China in manufacturing. So China has about 20 percent of the world's goods. We produce about 18 percent. They do it with about two hundred million whereas opposed to our 20 million, so it is a stark contrast. But what it means is we've been very innovative in our ability to manufacture goods in the United States. That level of innovation has to continue. Part of being in manufacturing is the opportunity to innovate and find ways to take those leaps and bounds forward in producing new goods, producing all goods in new ways, and so many things. It is such an exciting place to be, and right now, with so much focus on the problems that we have with our supply chain, and being able to fix those problems, and making sure that we're resilient in our supply chain in the future, all of that tends to hopefully help people understand that this is a long term, wonderful industry, and it's not going anywhere. The jobs there are going to grow and get better. I think if we can begin to combat some of those perceptions or misperceptions, then I believe we have a much better shot at addressing some of the workforces challenges that exist today.Lisa Ryan: Right, and even thinking about automation for years, it was expensive and scary, and, oh, this is going to take away everybody's job where instead, as you said, it's creating jobs. But now what it's doing is getting rid of that drab, that manual labor, that repetitive motion, basically the grunt work. So why not have automation take care of that so that you can leave the innovation, and you need people to program those robots? When I was in the welding industry, it was all dark, dirty, and dangerous.And now, as you said, it's opening up those channels to introduce kids coming through schools to see what it's like to see that it's bright, and high tech, and a fantastic place to work where you have that immediate gratification of something that you helped to build, you helped to create. So lots and lots tied up in there. You are using things like Manufacturing Day to open up to the local schools, to come in to see what you're doing. You're not going to get all of those kids. But if you get one or you get a couple, that puts you ahead of everybody else.Alan Davis: One of the things we've been working on is this opportunity within the solution for teachers, academic advisors, and others booking plant tours and downloading materials, videos, about the manufacturing processes from the industry to connect better. We're a part of a group in defense manufacturing community partnerships in the United States where we're holding these workshops to try to understand better what some of those needs are in the workforce, and R&D, and in additive manufacturing, and advanced manufacturing, and all these areas so that we're able to step in, and better help solve those problems. Lisa Ryan: Where are those resources available? Because I think that if a teacher or a guidance counselor or people are working in the schools that knew that that was available, that maybe that would open some channels that they didn't know. What would be some good resources for people listening to check out and find some of those videos and resources?Alan Davis: We are in the process of compiling that. It'll be coming out and available to the academic organizations sometime in the fall. But in the meantime, to reach out to any of their manufacturing organizations in their state. So who is a great resource, by the way, the MEP system that we have in the United States is beneficial to manufacturing and certainly acts as a liaison to help in some of those communications between academia, and industry, manufacturing associations, the Chambers of Commerce.There are so many wonderful organizations that are there to help support manufacturing in the state. Right now, they're the ones who do their very best to try to make some of those resources available and to make those connections, and so the solution that we're putting forward is to help support that communication and all that interchange back, and forth.Lisa Ryan: I talk to my clients about partnering with your local tech schools, and getting involved in those because then you're basically getting students right off the line that are coming into your plants. You’re building those relationships. When students see that you're involved with that trade or technical school, you're a known entity, and they feel comfortable working for you. So, and when it comes to additional resources, if somebody is not familiar with what an MEP is, can you tell us a little bit more about that?Alan Davis: Yeah, absolutely, and I will make one more comment on what you said because working with those tech colleges, one of the things that we learned early from them was they want to help more students get trained and be ready to come into the workforce. But they were limited or constrained by the access that they had to equipment into materials that they needed to train the students better. So that was one of the problems or challenges brought forward to us some years ago.We put an exchange center together for the exchange of surplus material where our large manufacturers were so gracious and stepped forward, and said, look, we have the equipment, we have materials, and we're happy to donate that or provide it at a very low cost to schools so that they can have better access to those things to help with the workforce problems. So that exchange has been amazing, and so those organizations come back to us frequently and say, this has been one of the best values we've ever gotten out of the application is this ability to exchange.So in our country, MEP goes back about 30 years. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIS) was asked to create the MEP program, which is a manufacturing extension partnership, and what that is, is an organization. There is one MEP who is a partner to NIST in every single state. They have federal funding to help manufacturers, particularly with challenges and issues that they face, such as being certified or finding some training that they might need to help the manufacturers with their operations better. Their mission has continued to expand grow, and I know they are very much involved in helping with issues like cybersecurity and making sure that your plant is safe and secure. There are loads of resources that are available through the MEP network and your state.Lisa Ryan: OK, so they can do a Google search on their state and MEP, and that should be able to come up easily findable. Absolutely, and then finally, let's get to the issues with the supply chain. Some of the things that you're seeing are the issues and what is working right now. What are some of the good things that manufacturers are doing in an area that the supply chain is struggling with, and they can turn it around?Alan Davis: I think almost everyone now sees the problems, and the struggles, and supply chain, and everything from ships being stuck, and not being able to goods into the port, to not being able to get goods manufactured, and shipped soon enough, to not having enough ships, and all kinds of things. That is impacting various aspects of the supply chain but in a very positive way. When these challenges arise, it opens a door and an opportunity for innovation and positive change.I tend to gravitate toward what I see is happening to address the issues. In addition to trying to work through the problems to get the supply chain flowing again, there's also a lot of innovation. There is a lot of focus and effort around trying to change the supply chain, maybe a little bit, see if you can't find a closer supplier to your facility or provide something to you in the United States that maybe you were getting overseas.Now, that's not always possible. It's not always feasible, and it's not always the best course of action. But we're seeing it often right now, and then we're seeing companies starting to innovate. So I'll show you quickly. I am holding a pen here. This is the first promotional pen produced in the United States in many, many years. This is a 3D printed pen and one of the first pens made in the United States, which is because there have been these problems in the supply chain. So manufacturers are stepping forward, and I know I'm using a straightforward example of a pen. But, still, I use that to illustrate that this is happening all over the United States. When manufacturers see the problem, they're stepping up, and

Connect with Damon PistulkaEmail: damon@exityourway.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonpistulka/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers Network podcast. I'm here today with Damon Pistulka. Damon is co-founder of Exit Your Way, where he focuses on identifying and executing opportunities for business owners to increase their business value. Damon worked his way through college and earned a mechanical engineering degree. He started working in an injection molding company where he worked in technical and managerial roles, including designing, building, and operating facilities. Damon managed businesses to design and produce retail store fixtures, custom fabricated metal products, advanced aerospace components, and high-tech devices.Damon, welcome to the show.Damon Pistulka:  Thank you, Lisa. And that is quite a mouthful. And it makes me realize I have to rewrite that because it's too much, too much to come on. It shows I'm old. That's all it does.Lisa Ryan: But it shows that you've been in and around the manufacturing business. So you've been working in that area, and that's who listens to the podcast.Damon Pistulka: When I was in college, I worked my way through college, sweeping the floor in a tool room until they finally started letting me draft and do other things. I was closer to getting out of school. So, I've been in manufacturing for a long time. Lisa Ryan: Yeah. So please share with us a bit about your journey. As a young man, what initially brought you into manufacturing, and then what kept you there?Damon Pistulka: I grew up on a big farm. It was in the Dakotas, out in the middle of nowhere, where it was miles and miles from the nearest Wal-Mart - which was about 70 miles away. We had thousands of acres. We're farming. You have to understand how to fix things. It's assumed that you're going to do that. You're going to work with your hands. So I get to college, and I didn't know what to do. I ended up having a roommate that was in engineering.And I thought that's pretty cool. I started doing engineering. And the next thing, I was in a mechanical engineering program. Then I worked for a manufacturer. And here I am many years later now. And it's been it was fun. I enjoyed the technical part of it and learning how things are done.And I still to this day am enthralled by when I can walk through a manufacturing facility and see products being made and touch them when they're done and feel them because it's so much fun to do that. And it doesn't matter. I've been able to do injection molding. We made all kinds of medical products and business products and things that go on doors and all this stuff that you get involved in so many different places.And then being able to help those companies do that. I was able to go into plants where television plants and automotive plants and tools like Black and Decker type tools were made. Plants where they're making air compressors and hand tools and all this stuff that you go, wow, that's how it drills made. I see all that stuff. And it was so much fun to do that. I was running companies for people. I was taking the knowledge of how things get done and then applying that in the business setting. It's always been fun for me because when you can get a company working together, everyone who is designing or the people in the office and the people working on the product or handling the product all know what they're supposed to do.And they're all working together. And it's not we and them and all that kind of B.S. that goes on. You can achieve so much with not a lot of money. And because of the ingenuity that you get when people work together. Diversity brings people together to solve problems. It's so much fun. Lisa Ryan: That's one of the things I loved about manufacturing in the welding industry. Same thing. You get to see how everything's made because when you look around you, man, everything's been manufactured. And when we think about manufacturing and these younger generations coming into the workplace because they haven't had that same level of exposure, they don't necessarily know how cool and passionate people can get about it. I mean, my manufacturing audiences are some of the most passionate people on the planet about what they do.But when it comes to changing that conversation, many manufacturers have been doing it the same way for 40 years, the same equipment that they've had in the plant. And this is not how we attract the new generation. So you and I will talk about ways that you've seen your clients and how you've helped people as far as little things that we can do to modernize manufacturing for today and the future.So, start there, kind of what are you seeing and how are you helping your clients progress and change things?Damon Pistulka: When I talk about modernizing manufacturing, I don't even pretend to know how to do it on the manufacturing floor anymore. I think that is something that manufacturers are very good at. If you're in business today, you're not a sloppy manufacturer anymore. You've been in business for a long time. Even if you're an OEM manufacturer, you've got to get good at least producing that product efficiently enough to support yourself.So when it comes to the manufacturing floor, I think there are two things we're selling ourselves short on. So let's back up to the beginning of the question. Modernizing manufacturing to me is about digital transformation. It's not because I think everyone should be doing digital marketing. I think you should be to some extent. But it's not only that. It's the fact that is understanding the generational transformation that we were going through. So we're getting into this quite a ways down the road and understanding that.What does it mean for our workforce? What does it mean for our customer base? And that's where I talk with more of the clients I'm working with: understanding your customer base and how it's changed over the last ten years because manufacturing and some of the other industries we work with are closely related. It traditionally was Damon's going a salesperson for a manufacturer; he's out meeting with customers. That's what we do.That's how we sell. Yeah, we got a website. You can contact our phone number that might have been all it was, or it's an equipment list or something like that. We got some pictures of the product, whatever it is. And that's the length of the breadth of the way the digital format was. And that's the sales process. Right, to have x many salespeople or manufacturer's reps or distributors or whoever the heck I'm selling my product the way I did it.Well, fast forward to today. We've been going through the last how many years we've been talking about baby boomers retiring. I mean, heck, it started ten years ago already. And we're rolling through that. And now it's hitting. When you look at manufacturing, we've got the double whammy in 2021. We got the big jobs to shift that people are talking about; people leaving because it's such an employer's market. They can go wherever they want.And you've got people retiring at a faster rate than ever before because they sat through the 2008-9 crash when the real estate went to hell. And then they stayed through that. And then we had it covid in 2020, and some people hung on. And now, when people are getting past this, we're going to have even more. But the underlying change that people don't focus on a lot in manufacturing is that the average age of the buying population is not going up anymore.It's going down significantly. The buying population and the employees all grew up with Google. Most of them grew up with a cell phone in their hand. How are they going to know if they want to come and work for your company? They're going to look up your website, and they're going to be concerned about things that people in my generation never cared about. We didn't focus on your community involvement; what's your larger purpose?How do you treat your employees? What kind of things are you going to do for me that help me as a person? Think about how you were working in manufacturing. How much time you spent on your cell phone. It's like not only are we looking at ways to add apps because the guys are out in the field or they're on the shop floor, and they can look up a short video, but even they're checking you out on YouTube.Lisa Ryan: So who do you have that you took your phone and said, hey, what do you like about working here? I love LinkedIn and YouTube, where you have these little short videos on how things are made. Because if I'm a prospective candidate thinking about going into manufacturing, I'm like, wow, I can do that because you're making it look exciting. You're showing them what they can be a part of versus the old website with the phone number and equipment list.Damon Pistulka: I think the real change happening now in manufacturing that we all need to be aware of and be changing to accommodate people coming to work for us now is cell phone generation. So they want to know what the company's going to do for them. And they also want to know what you expect from them as a company. So they know I don't think that millennials or the next generation, Gen Z know what they want, but they want a sense of involvement and enjoy things. And I don't necessarily think that they don't want to work. I think they want to need to know that, hey, I'm going to get this if I do that. And that's not different. I mean, it's no different than when we grew up. We needed to know.We weren't as concerned about the environment or the community. So that's a bit more now. But we have to be clear on that. And you have to know that you're competitive because now people can go check out different companies much easier again because of information at their fingertips. In the 80s, when looking to find a job or the 90s, you're looking to find a job.How the heck did what the benefits were at a company before? We didn't have a place like Glassdoor where people can get on Glassdoor, and most manufacturers are listening, probably only know what it is. But, still, I'll tell you, look at your company, look at Glassdoor, because if you had bad employee experiences, it's probably on there, and you don't even know about it. And your Gen Z and Millennials, they're looking at that before they come to work with you.Lisa Ryan: I mean, like you say, like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I know you may be driving listening to this or something. So write that down glassdoor.com.Damon Pistulka: Yeah, it is. It is the place because I've gone to clients that I've started to work with them. I look at their glass stories. What's the last story? It doesn't matter. And it's that. And they said, well, you got a couple of bad reviews on Glassdoor, some negative comments here. Well, years ago, it wouldn't matter.It wouldn't matter because that wasn't we don't understand those things. But like when you're trying to sell something today, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of that person and make ourselves attractive to that person. That person is different from we are.Lisa Ryan: Well, and those negative reviews, they can be offset if that company comments and says, we understand what we're seeing and you're showing that you're paying attention to those bad reviews, not going to kill you because we all know that grumpy people leave companies. It's not that big of a deal, but it's in conveying that. Are you a company that people want to work for? Because I agree with you, millennials and Gen Z want to work.What we need to do is give them opportunities so that they want to work for you.Damon Pistulka: One hundred percent. You said it much better than I could, and that's the point when you look at modernizing your manufacturing, and again, we're not talking about all in the shop or whatever you're making and that kind of stuff. This is about modernizing for you to be attractive to employees. Modernizing so you can be appealing to customers. So when we look at the customer side of it, to look at these customers that we're selling to, I don't care if you're selling, you're a tier-one supplier, and you're trying to win contracts with a big company.The average age of the person you're selling to is probably thirty-five to forty-five, right? Those people grew up with a cell phone in their hand. They're using Amazon way more than the 50 plus-year-old person is. And they expect to do business kind of that way. They hope that your business is doing a lot more than the old OK. The system's going to send you the POs. It'll show up when it's supposed to. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.They want to be able to look you up online. They want to be able to see what's going on with you. They want to feel a part of your business and understand how you are a part of their business and how you are a part of helping them. And that takes a different approach. It's not a salesman talking to them once every quarter or whatever it is to check-in or them having a good account rep at the other end that's taken that order.You're sending them some valuable information on the products you use or ways to improve in some other area of their business or how you can make their life better with your solutions or keep them informed on industry news. And like you said, the same kind of approach for people buying from you now or going to buy from you in the future, you have to be producing stuff on YouTube.You have to be putting some sort of content out in a blog or once in a while. Maybe periodically sending an email of good information out to your customer base or potential customer base. It's not an option anymore.Lisa Ryan: Right. And when you're doing things for the community, you mentioned earlier how you are showing up, giving back to the community? What is your mission? How are you making a difference that's important to today's buyers, too? So if you're doing something, some people are like, well, I don't want to toot my own horn. I want to be anonymous. I want to do good. But it's in sharing what you're doing in a genuine, authentic way that this is how we're making a difference. You're going to make that buyer proud that they're doing business with you.Damon Pistulka: Yeah. And you make it the point you make about not wanting to toot your own horn. There are ways to do this and be very subdued about sponsoring a charity event, or you can your workforce can go out and work for a week on some great project. But, again, it's about helping the community focus on what you're helping, not on you.And it won't look like you're tooting your own horn. It looks like you are so grateful that your customers allow you because we do good work and have great customers. It will enable us to do this for our community. And then you're not too in your own horn. You're showing people how you want to use the benefits of the business relationship to help more people. And like you said, the buyers want to see that because they feel a part of it.Right. If your customer can feel a part of you helping the community, that's even better.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, because what differentiates you? You're competing with somebody down the street who's making the same thing. You are. OK, well, maybe I know it's a different quality, blah, blah, blah. However, it's still what differentiates you and having those roles being seen in the community, taking into account who's buying from you instead of that product that you've purchased. What? We've always sold it this way.Damon Pistulka: Yeah. Look at the difference in retail, right? You have the behemoths like Wal-Mart or Kroger or the big store chains. Right. It could be that the Albertsons or whatever the grocery stores. Why is Trader Joe's or Whole Foods popular? It's a much different market that we're working in. That's a younger market that shops in those. And they're very loyal to those brands because they have maybe a little more community feel to them. You can see it all over, in what you're doing and what you're buying.People want to know that they're buying from somebody that is not in it for the buck. They're in it to help more than helping the community of the world at large as well.Lisa Ryan: Right. And I think that's such a good point. So often on this podcast, we talk about the employees and the younger generations and attract and retain the employees. You have a different mindset with younger people who grew up with the cell phone. They think differently. So this adds such a different perspective. So we're taking it even further into the whole atmosphere of our business. So we're not only considering those same technology challenges and apps and videos, but we're also looking to attract and retain employees but also looking at that world of people who are buying from you.So, such a great way of looking at it.Damon Pistulka: Yeah, it's you have to put your customers and your employees in your story with you, because if they're not in it with you, then you're competing for air time. But when you can show your customers how they're helping you to do good in the world, and, yes, you're going to make that quality on-time delivery pricing, all that stuff is old news. If you're sitting there on your website and you say, hey, we produce the highest quality at the lowest prices possible, blah, blah, blah, there are 14 million other sites to do the same damn thing.So, listen, it's, it's not worth your time to put that on there. Put why you're different. We treat people this way. We do this in our community. I was talking to Matt Goosy from Memoir's Machining on a business podcast. Matt does something where he shares 40 percent of his profits back with his employees every year. How many places do that, and how much of a community impact is that?If I was trying to recruit employees, that shows that he cares about the employees? It's things like this that are amazing. Of course, you still have to make great parts on time and all that. But those differentiators you have are probably not inside the manufacturing floor anymore as they are about how you do business.Lisa Ryan: If it came down to your best tip for modernizing the whole feel of manufacturing and the buyers and the employees, what would you say would be a step for somebody to get started?Damon Pistulka: I think it's putting themselves in place in the place of an employee. And looking at your company from that perspective, have a 20 something-year-old person look at your company and that you and you say, what do you think when you look at our website if you are coming to work here? Or have them look at or have someone that's a bit old or look at the same thing from buying from you look at your website, look at all of your social media, look at all your marketing materials, whatever you've got put together, and say what does and how does it make you feel?Because that is the real, those are the real people that matter. It doesn't matter if you're branding people or your salespeople think this is the coolest flier ever or I'm the best salesperson ever. It's what you're...

Contact Andrea DallanEmail: Andrea.Dallan@dallan.comWebsite: www.dallan.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreadallan/Get "The Revolution of Efficiency" book hereLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today Andrea Dallan. Andrea is an engineer entrepreneur and CEO of Dallan Spa, an Italian family business producing systems for the processing sheet metal since 1978.With 160 employees, including engineers, technicians, and operations, he is the author of the books "The Revolution of Efficiency," which came out in 2020, and "Think Thin," which is coming this summer. With a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering at the University of Padua. During more than 20 years spent in sales, Andrea Dallan has visited hundreds of companies analyzing production processes and helping entrepreneurs and managers to make their operations more efficient. He's also the father of Mateo Vittorio and Beatrice. Andrea, welcome to the show.Andrea Dallan: Thank you, Lisa, for inviting me. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for the introduction.Lisa Ryan: You're very welcome! Andrea, please share with us a bit about your background. What led you to what you're doing now?Andrea Dallan: I started to work in our family company back in 2000. My father established the company in 1978. He was an engineer, which led me to choose my studies at the University. I was starting to work during high school here in the company. I went through many jobs in the company and eventually found out that working around sales and speaking foreign languages was my favorite. It was in line with my attitude, which gave me the possibility to meet many engineers. That's the beauty of my job - meeting people and getting to know their problems. I also enjoy helping them find solutions to their challenges, challenges in production.Lisa Ryan: Now, we talked about a lot of different topics. We landed on the fact that digitalization changes the conversation in manufacturing from that dark, dirty, and dangerous to something cool as we move into industry 4.0.So when it comes to recruiting people into manufacturing, what are some of the things you've done? What are some of the companies you've worked doing?Andrea Dallan: This is a hot topic right now. We are based in Italy, but 90% of our customers are in Europe and the US. We see the challenges in recruiting. It is a real challenge for many of our customers. Companies used to support their lines for their manufacturing in the high schools. Without professional schools, there are a lot fewer students to choose this professional career. It's a problem for companies in Italy, but this is a general trend in Europe. I see that it's becoming a problem in the United States as well. So the problem is that working in a factory in manufacturing in sheet metal fabrication. It seems not to be sexy anymore. Students tend to look for other types of jobs that are more into office jobs. They are looking into marketing and all this kind of stuff. The significant point about digitalization is that it is an effort that we are also making as a company with the high school in our hometown.There are opportunities in manufacturing and choosing a professional school because the environment inside companies has changed completely. Going into manufacturing means we look for people who assemble our automatic systems. Then we deliver to our customers for doing their manufacturing. They can go to one company and become responsible for a whole line with a high level of automation. The kind of skill that will require from these guys is a lot more towards digital. The knowledge they need is to know how to operate the line and connect with HMI with a human-machine interface. The environment and the level of safety have increased dramatically in the past 20 years or so. Getting to explain this to students is helping to build that. How can we say to let them know that there is a career and the possibility of growing professionally in the manufacturing and the operation area? It's not about being in the office. These manufacturing jobs are going to pay more office jobs. That's what we need to explain to young people right now.Lisa Ryan: Well, you also mentioned that you look for these kids, these 16 and 17-year-olds and younger, who have the right attitude for working in the company. What does that right attitude look like? And when you find somebody with that attitude, how do you continue the conversation and get them excited about working for you?Andrea Dallan: Our human resources has an excellent connection with the professors in the technical high schools here in our town. We offer students the possibility to spend time in our production during the summer and the school year. They can spend one week here in the company and then three weeks at school. So we start to observe these kids when they are 17, 18, 19-years old - right before they finish high school. We try to find people who have the right attitude are curious. They are brilliant in what they do. They want to learn more. Once we spot this, it is very encouraging for us. We tend to call them again for the following summer for another period until they graduate. We end up adding two or three of them every year to our workforce. The students train on the assembly or the automatic lines. First, they will make one installation for one of our customers. Then, they will arrive to do service to our lines at the customers' facility. This is the kind of path which starts from the high school and then, once we have found that people persons with the right attitude we train them to give good value to our customers.Lisa Ryan: Introducing them to your company while they're still in high school and getting them to come in for those couple of weeks over the summer, and meeting the people and seeing the processes and starting to build those relationships, particularly if you have them back through their high school career where maybe they're spending two or three summers with you. By the time they graduate high school, it seems like a no-brainer that they would go to work for you because they've already seen the culture. They know it so that investing in time and building those relationships with these kids coming out of high school seems to set you apart.Many people are looking to hire the same people. From what you're doing, it sounds like for a lot of your competitors and maybe a little bit too late, because you already have them.Andrea Dallan: You have to find the people that will do very well in our company as an environment, that will be good team members. We have 12 students that are doing this stage inside our company, but we will not hire all of them. We also have to be because they may choose something different, but we have to choose one another, so we want to start a long-lasting relationship when it goes on.They start to work, or we need to train them for two or three years before they are ready to do one installation alone. So there is a lot of investment of time for us. We try to retain them as much as possible. It means investing in teaching them a lot and then doing our best to retain them. So they can be productive and entirely onboard with our company.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like making that extra effort to establish those relationships with the professors and working with the schools and talking to the parents and getting all of those other people involved in the process to change that conversation that manufacturing is a great career. You're working with automation and cool technologies, and you're getting involved in making things that have never been made before. You're conveying that excitement and passion that you have.Andrea Dallan: We hear a lot of the IoT industrial Internet of Things and the advanced sensors. There are many changes in our industry, from the electrical point of view on the automation and on the mechanical side. All of these elements interact with one another in our machines, and so if someone has the right attitude, if they are curious, if they are willing to learn. They keep that humble attitude of learning from the older and more skilled technicians. Over time, we understand that we can also learn a lot from them because younger people were born in the digital age. They can give us a lot of added value, and they can keep our minds fresh and open for for for novelties.Lisa Ryan: Whenever I talk to my manufacturing clients, the people problem is always number one. How do you find workers? Then, how do you retain those workers? Coming in at number two or number three are the supply chain issues we're all experiencing today. After the pandemic, we've seen prices of raw materials go through the roof.I know you've just written a book on being more efficient. In what ways do you see that manufacturing companies can stay healthy and profitable amid all these raw material costs and supply chain issues?Andrea Dallan: The rise in raw materials prices puts the spotlight on every company's number one problem. We have to figure out how to keep the cost of their production under control. Today, the influence of the cost of raw material on the price of the final product has grown exponentially. So a lot more people are contacting us to understand how they can make the same amount of production using, for example, less raw material or thinner gauge material. This is one of the reasons why I started to collect my articles in this new book in the first book I wrote. The central theme was efficiency because, in one company, efficiency means producing using fewer resources. For example, one of those sources of raw material, so if we can do the same amount of production using less raw material to reduce the scrap or use a thinner gauge, that is huge savings. That turns out to be a considerable saving at the end of the year. We have customers who are through the redesign of one product or the redesign of the one process, they have gone from saving hundreds of thousands of US dollars to millions of US dollars, so that's what changes from market to market. What was a big advantage before the rising prices of raw materials, and right now, it's an even more enormous advantage? Companies that have started this process are rethinking their production lines. Their operation in the direction of efficiency has the benefit right now in this condition of price increases.Lisa Ryan: The people factor and the production factors still go hand in hand because you're looking at efficiency and the opportunity to use fewer raw materials or thinner gauge materials. But still keeping connected with the employees, ensuring that they're engaged, that they like what they do, you're investing in them. So it's going to be the employees and seeing things differently. If they feel valued, if they feel appreciated, they're more likely to come up to you and say, hey, I think that we can save a little bit over here we can save a little bit of time we can save a little bit of money. If the employees don't feel that they're a part of the team, it will not happen, so it sounds like those to go hand in hand together.Andrea Dallan: We have this mindset throughout the team. Look for inefficiencies because inefficiencies can be a problem. It starts from the raw material or the lack of flexibility or one process or the lack of automation in one process. So if the whole team comes together and analyzes this one process, maybe even together with external experts, sometimes it's essential to have external eyes to help us find the solution to become one. That creates a considerable value for our support for each company. I see in our customers' companies all the time.Lisa Ryan: When I think about what happened in the future, employees were afraid of automation because they believed that that was a way for companies to eliminate their jobs. Employees are such a massive part of automation because somebody's got to know how to run it. Somebody's got to know how to program it. So now you're allowing those employees, instead of doing, I don't want to call them menial tasks, but basic labor - they can use their skills, knowledge, expertise, and machines, do they, don't have to do the "grunt work." What do you think will be the role of automation in the production process in the future?Andrea Dallan: We are taking out through automation many manual tasks, but these are also the tasks that are so uncomfortable for the operators to work on. Whenever we have introduced automation to our customers' facilities, we have seen that the operators were a little bit suspicious. When they understand that the equipment is designed to relieve them from that part of the manual labor is repetitive and tiring, they rise to a different role. The supervisor can dedicate time to quality control. The whole structure of our customers benefits from their change of mindset. We have seen so that some customers, for example, move some of the operators to the logistics because it became so productive that it was more important to keep the machine fed with the raw materials and to take out the ready production, or rather than just doing the manual packaging. So we had worked to get automation. We also a more significant result of the added productivity and the wellness of the whole workforce. When you don't have labor to do production, everything is taken care of by automation. So you can expect much better productivity over the eight hours over the shift. We are sure that we obtain a lot more effectiveness from the equipment. There is also another important point that has come out during this pandemic. We hope are these crazy times are over, but we have heard a lot about social distancing over this time. We have also understood that the more automated the systems or, the more so, social distancing is also guaranteed. We have seen our customers with higher degrees of automation in their processes, producing more continuity and without any stop. People aren't working too much together. Someone has called this pandemic proof processes, but let's keep let's get the pandemic board out much safer procedures. They are more automated than we are making even the production a lot safer, even for these cases.Lisa Ryan: Your company has opened a branch in the United States. What are some of the perspectives that you've seen - comparing your European operations to the US market for these automated systems.Andrea Dallan: Yes, so there are some differences between European facilities and US facilities. We opened our facility in 2018. We are working in the US since the 90s. My father always pushed the company to work more outside of Italy rather than in Italy. This is the reason why he pushed me to study foreign languages. For him, that was the future. He turned out to be perfectly correct.The one thing that we have seen is they said that the need for automation is very similar. There is a lot of room for expansion for us in the United States. Many companies have equipment in the field that is sometimes 30-40 years old. The older style of equipment lacks automation, which is the highlight. The strong point for our equipment is that they also understood that services in the United States are critical for most companies.This is the main reason for opening a branch and opening one facility that will be specialized. But he specialized in the service of spare parts. We have many of our customers in a driving range of five to eight hours from Dayton, where we have our facility. That is one difference. The level of service requested in the States and the requests from the companies are very similar. The demand for productivity, automation, flexibility, and increasing the efficiency in the use of raw material.I can also add that we have seen that in the states, so the market dimension for our customers is much larger than it is in Europe. So, therefore, our machines are oriented to very high productivity. It is very much in line with what our customers in the US expect, so it was in the right place at the right time, I think.Lisa Ryan: It all comes down to efficiency, which you have written the book on. Tell us about your book, the revolution of efficiency, that came out last year. Then, Think Thin, which is coming out. Talk about the books and if somebody would like to get that how they would do it? Andrea Dallan: Okay, thank you very much. I always liked writing articles. I started very early in the first years were when I was working. These were articles that analyzed how to calculate the cost per hour of one production line or calculate the price of one sheet metal product outside the one line. Over time, I had a lot of articles, and I thought it was time to to to bring them together and to give them the shape of a book, but I didn't know where to start.At the same time, it was also the age when my children started to ask me about how I began to work in the company. So I brought the two things together and started writing this story for them. Given the problems that our customers are facing, I put all of these elements together. I think the nice thing is that I have asked many of my customers to give me some case studies to make the reading more fun and more practical. We are bringing actual case histories or stories. So I was writing these four elements of efficiency. So that was the reason for the title of the book. So and efficiency, so the problems that our customers face and typically are efficient in sustainability are producing with the last raw materials or optimizing the raw materials.They are increasing the flexibility of their processes to produce smaller batches according to the lean production methodology. Automation is not about reducing the workforce but of improving the quality of the people's work and the quality of the production. The productivity has to be more competitive, so each time we work on that efficiency, we generated the same result. We used fewer resources which tuned into higher profits for the company. The first book was a collection of case studies and focused on the processes I have listed. It will be available in kindle unlimited for another two months, so it's just a subscription, and you can get it for free. So if you put the link down, there will be a lot of essential information.The second book is on a different topic. It is on product design. It means that we can build a lot of efficiencies, looking at the process. If we start earlier on and we designed the product to be manufactured more efficiently, using less raw material. There are some chapters on that. The characteristics of raw materials, how to form the water, what we need to take care of bringing us even more efficiency,...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today Fran Brunelle. Fran is the President and founder of Accelerated Manufacturing Brokers. She specializes in the sale of small and mid-sized manufacturing firms. To ensure the continuity of US manufacturing, Fran and her team help transition ownership to the next generation of entrepreneurs.Recently Fran was named to the 2020 most influential women in mid-market mergers and acquisitions. Fran is also the host of WAM - Women and Manufacturing podcast. She writes on topics that helped manufacturing business owners prepare their companies for sale and navigate the sales process to ensure positive financial results supporting their retirement. So, Fran, welcome to the show.Fran Brunelle: Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be with you today.Lisa Ryan: Fran, please share a bit about your background and what path led you to work with manufacturers and get into the selling of manufacturing businesses.Fran Brunelle: Sure, So, we just passed in April, our 27th anniversary. So, we started my career serving the manufacturing community as an industrial auctioneer selling the manufacturing equipment that the businesses use that I currently sell. Often, a manufacturer who needed an auction had some need for speed, usually because they were in financial trouble. But the companies that were buying equipment from us were growing thriving, constantly rotating out their equipment for newer pieces or better brands. Eventually, at their behest, we started our journey as M&A professionals. Those buyers said to us, "Hey, I need to retire. I was hoping you could sell my business or help me find a company to acquire to facilitate my growth. For a while, we ran both divisions, and we started to hit our stride in manufacturing M&A, and, at the point where we grew over 400% three years running, we said goodbye to auctions. Like the M&A practice, you're helping to transition ownership of manufacturing to a different generation of entrepreneurs, ensuring that the company goes on and the jobs go on.So, it's a much different gig than auctioning. I remember very early in my career. I used to say, God, this cannot be my purpose in life; I'm the grim reaper. Over time, the skills that I learned in the auction industry and learning about manufacturers and machine tools. It was a process. I would never be able to do what I do today to help manufacturers retire in wealth if I had did not have that basis to understand manufacturing.Lisa Ryan: From the standpoint of succession planning, there's a lot of my clients that don't have their children, or their children may have no interest in the business. There isn't a succession plan. In this podcast, we talk about employee retention, engagement, finding employees, and all these steps. As we were talking before the show, when you set your business up for sale in the future, now or in the future, you're going to have all those processes in place where you're going to have happy staff, and you've done workforce development. So, what you can do now to sell your company in the future, perhaps, or what you need right now, is attracting and retaining good employees. Would you please share a bit about the good things these companies do for their workforce development and create that culture?Fran Brunelle: One of the things I enjoy talking about, and just an observation from traveling the entire country selling manufacturing companies, is that everybody talks about a skills gap. A lot of people complain about it, but not a lot of people do something about it. Manufacturing companies that are proactive in their communities, engaging with the high schools, and engaging with the trade schools are not having the same types of problems as others.You have to be involved if you're waiting as a manufacturer for somebody else to do it, for the government to do it, it ain't gonna happen, sweetie. So we have to take action. We've just seen some wonderful things company that we sold down in Carolina. The owner was very involved with the local high school. They had a work-study program where the students could go and try out a career they thought they might be interested in. He would hire them, and the owner would start them doing some menial tasks. If they showed work ethic, he would move them to shadow a machinist, a setup guy, someone doing solid works depending on where the students' interests lie, and if they determined that this was a career path that they wanted, he would take them down to the local trade school. He would help them. The trade school would assist the student and applying for any grants that might exist. If there were no grants available for the student, my client would pay for their education to promise that they would stay with him for a short time.I remember saying to him, "So, you're paying for these students' education. Aren't you afraid that they're going to leave and go to a competitor?" His response to me was, "Well, shame on me if they do because I've not created a culture that they want to stay in." He had a delightful program staff. It was such a wonderful mix of middle-aged guys, but some very young firecrackers came up through the process.Things like this workforce engagement, not just doing things to address the skills gap and pulling them in but then creating an environment where they want to stay in those companies. I've been doing this for 27 years. As a result, those companies sell faster and at better prices. Suppose a buyer walks into a manufacturing company and sees everyone has gray hair, and half are walking around with a cane because they're about to croak. In that case, your buyers and acquisition lenders see danger in that.You cannot wait as a manufacturer until you are right up at that point to start to address it. It takes years to handle these things.Lisa Ryan: It's interesting. Many manufacturers don't know that you can work with the workforce development sections of your local community college or tech schools and design the exact employees you want to put together the programs to customize those employees. Building those relationships, you're going to have a one-up on the competition because they're already there. But the fact that he's paying for the education, he's creating that culture. He's taking any of the competitors out of the market right there because this employee has shadowed. They have followed the management. He's already invested in them. He's showing them that he sees something in them that maybe nobody else has ever seen before.There's that fear of, "Well, I'm going to spend all this money to train these people, and then they're going to leave." Good for him for realizing the fact that it's still up to you. You still create the type of culture that keeps them there, but this is not something that happens overnight for the people listening. This is something he's invested in that time. He's invested in those relationships. I'm sure that whenever he is ready or was rated to sell, that company probably went rather quickly and at a reasonable price.Fran Brunelle: We had four different offers - all over list price. That man got to choose who he wanted to sell to. The company that bought them is fabulous. It was to individual buyers leaving corporate America. One had been CEO of a publicly-traded company. These staff members are now exposed to educational opportunities that they would never have otherwise been exposed to. Fabulous company.Lisa Ryan: When you look through when you talk about what these buyers and lenders are seeing as they're walking through an organization. Do you have a wide range of people? Do you have a diverse staff? Do you have a diverse team of all different ages? Those young kids are coming up and bringing that energy to it. You can feel culture. You can walk into a plant, and you can feel if people want to be there or not versus the people that are just about to retire. Who would want to buy that? You have people in that retirement mode who might be thinking, well, why should I make friends with these young kids? They're just going to be gone in six weeks anyway.What have you made friends with them, and built those relationships, and like that owner connected with them, and made them feel valued that's what keeps them there.Fran Brunelle: One other thing I would say about involvement with schools in your community. Everyone thinks it's difficult to do this. Schools are struggling. I've had clients that have donated machine tools to the trade school. As a result of that, one particular client got to have his banner placed upon the wall of the machine tool school. Who do you think students are going to call? He gets the cream of the crop because he shows the Community school that they care about this student's development. I'm sure he gets the best employees before his competitors.Now you do strategic planning in every other area manufacturers. So I'd like you to have.Lisa Ryan: Exactly. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see companies making?Fran Brunelle: It is an interesting subject, because what makes a manufacturer successful also makes them incredibly easy to sell, and they sell it at a higher price. There's any number of things. We talked about workforce development.Another topic would be modernizing your equipment. Manufacturing had a bad reputation for several decades for a reason. Hopefully, we can get the message out that it's not a dirty old machine shop. Some of the places we visit are like cleanroom hospitals. They have modern work environments, and I just took a deal under contract in the Midwest. They have done fabulous things with continually modernizing their equipment and bringing robotics in. Everybody is afraid that robotics is going to take away jobs. In this particular instance, a job was the least favorite job in this machine shop. It had to do with the weight of the metal piece that had to be put into the CNC machine. My clients said, "Okay, let's see what technology we can apply to this." So we don't have this issue of anybody wanting to do this job when you walk into their facility.It's funny you talk about atmosphere, how you can sniff a good atmosphere instantly. Well, that was this place. They instituted robotic cells, and that's the first thing you see when you come in. My client said that it was the best recruiting tool they have. Young people come in, and they're like, wow, this is amazing. I didn't expect this. It's a wonderful clean environment. They have documented procedures. Everyone knows what to expect. There are bonuses relative to performance, and they treat their people right. Those are all things that make a difference.Beyond that, we have blog articles. A recent blog article I did had 15 different points that help a manufacturing company to sell well. There are things like customer concentration and sector concentration. In some industries, that's very hard to avoid. For instance, if you're in the aerospace sector, you will have a customer concentration if you're doing anything of relevance because there are only so many big players in the industry.In other areas, buyers and lenders will look for less customer concentration. There's a whole host of things that matter, but the workforce development and the skills gap are among the largest.Lisa Ryan: When you're seeing these companies investing in that workforce development, what are some of the best ideas or the best tips that you would give to somebody listening today as far as focusing on that area?Fran Brunelle: I think one of the things that I would say is exposing someone coming in a student say do it on a Work Program. Expose them to any number of things. I had two different clients in the past, would start workers out in high school, as I described earlier, but they would rotate them around the entire shop. Then, once they were trained on everything, the person could gravitate to what they most were interested in and where they had a fit. The manufacturer ends up with a whole team of people who are cross-trained. If people are going out sick, you're not afraid of that because you have a fully trained team that skill did in every type of machining. That's probably the most important thing, I would say.Lisa Ryan: Not only from a cross-training standpoint, but there you're also giving your employees opportunities to find the job that light them up. They may have applied for one particular job that they thought would be okay, and that job might have kept them there for a little while, but by having the opportunity to go around the shop, and having a say in what they do, because that is not a common practice. So when you can differentiate yourself over what everybody else is doing - when you're all competing for these same employees in a lot of cases - all of these little things that you can do, and cross-training is such a win, win.Fran Brunelle: it's funny you just said you reminded me of an interview that I did for the women and manufacturing podcast with a woman from Koch industries. She told me a story about what of their workers whose job was loading tractor-trailers every day with paper products toilet paper shipped all over the country. This gentleman had an interest in technology, and today, he designed the computer programs that the entire process in that plant is now automated. That man wrote the program to accomplish all of that. They gave him the autonomy to work towards what he was most interested in. I just found that touching in a great story and a good example for other companies. Sometimes you have talent, and you hire a person for one thing, and they end up being fabulous in something else. You've got to give them the room to discover that.Lisa Ryan: Exactly! Well, that is such a great tip. As we're coming to the end of our time together, tell us a bit about how you work with your clients and what's the best way to get in touch with you.Fran Brunelle: Sure. In the M&A sale process, we represent the seller. We don't represent buyers. We get that request a lot, but our goal is to help with the manufacturer. Often the buyers are private equities, much larger corporations. Sometimes they have teams of attorneys. My interest is in assisting the manufacturer in protecting them through the process and ensuring that the jobs stay in the community. So that's how we work.We will run a potential client through an evaluation process. So before we ask them for a listing, they will know we will have provided them with an opinion of the value of their company, and we will do that without charge. Now some people come into the process, and they are perhaps smaller than I have an audience for, and I'll tell them that up front. But again, my industry is interesting in that many work where you're paying 10s of thousands of dollars upfront to find out what is my manufacturing company worth, and how long is it going to take you to sell it, and what are you going to do to sell it, and what is the whole process like.We will work with you to understand these things upfront and walk you through an educational process. So you are completely prepared for anything that's going to happen in the M&A process.Lisa Ryan: Wonderful, and what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?Fran Brunelle: best way you can visit our website acceleratedmfgbrokers.com, or you can call us 908-387-1000.Lisa Ryan: Well, Fran, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show with me today thanks for being here.Fran Brunelle: thanks for having me. It was a joy.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. We'll see you next time.

Contact Jake Hall:  Email: Jake@themanufacturingmillennial.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobrhall/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Jake Hall. Jake is the manufacturing millennial. He talks about the latest technology in the automation and manufacturing industry while being a business development manager at Feyen Zylstra, an electrical contractor system integrated company.I found Jake because he also posts cool manufacturing videos on LinkedIn, so make sure to check him out. Jake, welcome to the show.Jake Hall: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.Lisa Ryan: Well, you are the manufacturing millennial, and I know that that's one of the things that the listeners to this podcast have issues with: how do you find the younger generations? How do you create that type of passion that you bring every day to manufacturing? So please share a bit about your background and what got you to where you're doing now.Jake Hall: The Labor force and manufacturing is absolutely the hot topic, so for me, as a millennial and a younger person, manufacturing goes back to after graduating from college. I had the opportunity to go into automation distribution. So entering that field brought many options quickly where I'm not working at one specific company. I'm traveling around visiting machine builders, manufacturers and end-users, and all different industries. I had a unique experience seeing the diversity that manufacturing offers. It's exciting as my career developed, I started attending more professional conferences. I attend these conferences, and I'm walking around and say, man, people my age are underrepresented in the manufacturing industry. I never really looked at the statistics until one day after a conference. I said, man, I'm one of like two millennials in this room. What are the odds of that? I looked it up and said, holy cow, millennials and Gen Z are entirely underrepresented in manufacturing.I said, what can I do to create more conversation and awareness around what can manufacturers working companies and automation and distribution and the warehouse in the street do better to attract the future workforce, which in this case is the millennials and then the generation behind me, the Gen Z's. So I think that goes back to the fact that I need to share the diversity that manufacturing offers and dispel the myths around manufacturing that it's this dark, dirty, dangerous environment with no opportunity for growth. So that's kind of how the thing kicked off.Lisa Ryan: I speak at a lot of conferences, and you are right. People aren't sure. Do millennials not enjoy conferences? Do they don't get it? They don't like to be in person. What are some of the things that you're hearing? Going back to what made you go to those conferences and get involved in your industry, trade associations because, again, that's the conversation that we need to start having.Jake Hall: I think, for a long time it was when you go to these conferences, it was always this idea of right in the upper management, kind of the old boys club, in a sense, right you go there, everyone knows each other, you go there your network. The handshakes are there, but I think what he's starting to realize is to say, hey, we need to inspire the next generation to get involved directly. They need to begin networking. They need to be getting tied into the Industry more in-depth. I think that's what a lot of companies have failed to do in the past was see that there's so much value in payback when you can not only attract the young workforce but retain the existing young workforce that's there. And when you can show the potential that the industry has to offer at a much larger scale when you visit these conferences or trade shows or events. That's where you can say, hey, we're investing in you, and we want you to see the value that this Industry can offer us, professional growth.Lisa Ryan: And when it comes to these associations, are there things that they do better than others, as far as to be attractive to a millennial? Is it shorter programs? Is it more interesting speakers? Is it Industry related? Is it soft skills? Is it networking topics? What were some of the things that light you up that you think that an association professional can use to change their conferences up?Jake Hall: I think a few things, and there's no one fix all of us. I believe there are multiple things. I think a couple of them is that when you look at millennials, we're not necessarily working just for a paycheck. A lot of the younger generation also looks for purpose within their position. Purpose within their job and if they can impact or contribute to something higher than just what their task is. Doing from an eight to five job, they see more value in it. When you're looking at conferences organizations, what can you do to show that this is impactful to your current job or the industry as a whole?When you're looking at the event, if it's just something that's where you need to go, they're going to talk about stuff, but you're not going to walk away with anything you can use to either impact your business or business Industry. What value is that bringing that younger generation, and I think the other big thing is how your event is being planned out. Younger generations like to have fun. They like to socialize. We're on up. We're in a social media frenzy within the communication. Are you leveraging what people enjoy doing as part of the event? It's not so much that it's this newer generation has a shorter attention span. It's just that we process and look at information differently because we have so much information at our fingertips. Where before, you go to a conference and you were listening to an industry expert. That's where you learned.Nowadays, I can go on YouTube and listen to that same expert on YouTube at my convenience or hop on a podcast and listen to that speaker whenever I want. What value are you contributing? Past just what education can learn, I think a lot of that has to do with networking, so how much networking is leveraged out events. It is more important than they come and listen to this 90-minute speech on topic X, Y Z to learn from a systems expert. That is not necessarily the same and more because of the power of Information available at our fingertips. That's how we get information these days. We get information from Wikipedia and other sources that didn't exist 15-20 years ago.Lisa Ryan: Right, which also from a speaking standpoint, you can be fact-checked like right there.Jake Hall: Oh, I'll have that I've done speakers either they throw out a statistic I'm like no way, and I'll Google right there, and I'm like okay so he's either making that one up, or he's wrong, or other sources are wrong. It's just one of those things where information is now literally in the palm of our hand that we would typically be consuming at a conference.Lisa Ryan: Well, the other thing that I like about speaking at manufacturing conferences is that it feels like a family. These people have known each other forever. They know each other's families and compete against each other, but they still provide resources and sometimes a new person coming in, where you're not quite part of that family yet. So you might feel like an outsider. Unless that association planning committee does something to bring people like you, bringing the newer members into the fold, you get that same level of connectedness.Jake Hall: Absolutely. That's that power that networking can leverage. I think some of my favorite conferences I've been to are the ones where you can bring your spouse in as well. So your spouse can be a part of the spouses' group, and they can go off and do their things, then everyone gets together that night because it is about relationships, it is about feeling connected.And having those connections at the end of the day, it's not what, it's who. It's the Industry that contributes to growth and opportunity. So I think organizations that can leverage that - not only the business side but also the personal and relationship aspect, tend to have the most success.Lisa Ryan: You think about the association member's content, but those spouses are getting together, and they're building relationships. It makes it extra hard for you not to go to that association if your spouse is like, "Oh no, I need to see my friends this year. We're going."Jake Hall: That's when the successes happen - when they do events at these nice resorts or conferences. I know my wife's excited when I say, "Hey, let's go to Florida for four days." I think we can go there for four days, and especially in the middle of December or January when it's snowing here in Michigan. I think companies and conferences that can leverage beyond just having all these keynote speakers. They need to go beyond that because I like the conference, but my favorite part is simply the networking. To see people face to face, have those handshakes, and have those introductions right because you're conversing with a person. Everyone's having a beer. You're sitting around a table, and someone walks up to say, "Oh hey Jake, I want to introduce you to such and such. They do this. You never have that opportunity anywhere else. That's where I think the biggest value comes from in conferences.Going back to the whole millennial thing, if you were to go out there and say, "Hey, this is my new person working within the company, or you introduce them and say, "Hey, go talk to this person and listen to their story. As younger people, they see the value. They feel like they're being invested outside of, "Hey, we just want you to do this job the whole time."Lisa Ryan: Let's take it away from the association conferences and go into the manufacturing plants. We don't have enough skilled Labor force. So parents have not been having that conversation about going into manufacturing or going into the trades as a viable career.What do you see from the companies that you've worked with? What are they doing to engage, attract, and, most importantly, keep the people they have?Jake Hall: I love your comment, Lisa. Let's backtrack a bit. For so long, the educational system, the parents, the guidance counselors, the teachers, and organizations said, "Hey, your next step in your career after you graduate high school is to get a four-year degree from somewhere. Then, that was necessary. It was then. There was value in getting a four-year education degree. It did advance your career to a point. I think we're past that now. I believe we are to the point where that was saturated. The educational system has focused too much on the need for a four-year degree to be successful. This isn't the case anymore. I think companies as a whole have begun to recognize it. Going back to this comment of investing in your current employees is just as valuable as finding new ones. To fit what your demand is, I think that goes back to the idea of having more conversations around employee retention rather than new employee attraction.If I can take my existing worker, who's been working here for a long time, and enjoy working there, or they see some value in it, invest in them. Nowadays, there are so many programs where I can send my workers to get robot training, or vision training, or automation training. They can take a CNC program and create their common manually assembled tasks and invest in them. Companies are automating to fit that demand they need, and companies are automating to be more profit-centric. Companies are automating because either they can't get enough reliable workers consistently. Maybe they have machines and experience.I'm working with companies that can't run all the machines they have on the floor because they don't have the operators to run them. So you have all these companies that have just ginormous backflow and orders that are going out 6-12 months - this is in aerospace. These are basic consumer products that normally should have a couple of week lead times out months. That's just because they can't get Labor in there.When you talk about companies, I think, "How is your company leveraging retention within the company? How are you creating purpose and drive within that company with your younger workers? If that young worker doesn't feel connected to your company as soon as another company offers him $1 more, he's going to leave. He feels that in the company's eyes, that's all he's viewed as from a company perspective. He's an eight to five task Labor person.But as soon as you go and say, "Hey, we're going to put you through an educational program. We're going to invest in you. We want to give you extra tasks so you can gain experience, not to overwork them, but to say, "This is going to add value to your career. The other person is saying, "Well, I'm getting invested in, and they're more likely to stay. Companies are taking multiple approaches. You hear stories about manufacturing places that when you work 40 hours a week, you can put your name in a drawing and win a yeti cooler from the bass pro shop.There are other companies out there who are sending in semi-trailers of medical staff. At the end of each month, if you work 40 hours each week for that month, they offer free medical. Manufacturers are doing crazy things right now to compete against the other industries.There's a significant Labor demand right now between manufacturers and distributors. Just this week, which will be the first week of June, if people are listening to this podcast, later on, Amazon announced that they are no longer doing marijuana and drug testing as part of their hiring process. So that's an extensive conversation right now, especially within the manufacturing industry where there's a risk if a person is operating heavy industrial equipment or running a high-lo. So there's a risk within the manufacturers. How do you attract people when a person can go over to Amazon now and not have to worry about getting screening or getting testing for stuff? Whereas with the manufacturer, you have that insurance risk. Manufacturers are not just battling the idea of overseas competition or the other manufacturing facility down the street or across the state. It's now all of these new industries that are popping and attracting that common Labor force. That's not moving to the distribution warehouse, and that's not going to go anyway time soon. By 2030, there will be 22,000 new warehouses built in the US - strictly for warehouse and distribution. Those facilities are going to have to be run by someone. It's a difficult task. When you look at attracting and retaining the workforce, we can do a couple of things.The whole idea of my role as a business development manager for Feyen Zylstra is working with companies to help modernize their existing manufacturing processes. I help them make their processes more robust, more efficient, add more ROI, and integrate Industry 4.0 solutions. The idea of data and traceability with other machines is perceived as the industry leader and an innovative company. If a person walks into that facility and sees these manufacturing processes that are 20-30 years old and extremely manual intensive, she's going to move somewhere else. You need to come into manufacturing companies with automation.To be more efficient have to take processes and make your manufacturing company more attractive to the future workforce because we are tech-savvy people. We love the idea of digital data. We love the idea of interacting on our phones. If I can go on my phone or an iPad and get my work instructions. Or if I can do a machine setup or changeover through digital tools or through virtual reality goggles or something like that versus just on a piece of paper or on an attack board where my job's down, rather than through an earpiece system or something like that. It's just what other companies are doing. We're in the world of the app and the dot without necessarily.com. The app industry and all these new technologies mean that the manufacturing industry needs to adapt quickly to new technologies or simply be left behind.We're going to continue to battle the Labor demand seriously. We already are - even pre-pandemic - but current and post-pandemic. That's the biggest thing manufacturers are facing right now.Lisa Ryan: There are so many topics that you just brought up. First of all with training. It's one thing to introduce people to the cool things out there - all of the robotics and 3D printing – and looking at employees holistically. Why not send them for financial training? Is there a way to send them to presentation skills training? Looking at the employees holistically is critical because, as I say in my programs, "Nobody ever quit because of too much training."It's the money that you're investing in those people that keeps them there.But then, when we talked about the whole marijuana thing going on, of course, you don't want your workers to come to work stoned. If a company like Amazon, who's paying a great hourly wage and not drug testing, that just takes a whole bunch of other people. How many people have you and I both talked to and found that they can't find workers because nobody can pass a drug test?We look at these policies that we've had been in business for 40 years, and we have to start looking at our businesses differently. So every single area of that and marijuana falls right in there, which continues to be an interesting conversation.The automation. What you said about not having the workers to do the job. Instead of a couple of week delay, now you have several month delays. What can we do to look at our business differently? I think you made some stellar points of giving people ideas to do that.Jake Hall: Absolutely. You mentioned the holistic view. The one thing that stood out to me is that you can schedule an appointment with a financial advisor to give financial advice. I would have never thought about that, and I've been in the Industry for maybe ten years now. You scheduled an appointment for your employee to sit with a financial advisor go through the whole plan. Talk about value add. When you feel invested, and it makes sense.As soon as the person stops worrying about financial stuff, they can worry about their job. They can focus more on their job, creating less stress within a person's life. They feel a lot less struggle when they're at work. It's amazing to see how companies invest in value-added propositions beyond just the eight to five paycheck. That did work for a long time, but times are changing. You look at the Industry; look at the Googles and the Amazons of the world - where I can go to Google and get my sushi. I'm not saying that's going to be the key success - for manufacturers is to open up a sushi bar at your work - it's that approach you're looking at.You've got to realize that the Industry is you're competing against now. It's how millennials will be, and Gen Z's are high demand Labor force for future manufacturing. You need to realize that the Labor force is never

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...