a BROADcast for Manufacturers

Sue is the President of Obsidian Manufacturing Industries, Inc., a position she has held since 2018. She previously worked part-time for the family business while raising her three children. She has a long history within the manufacturing industry, with some of her earliest memories being of her father talking about working in manufacturing. She finds the marketing aspects of her job the most enjoyable and is zeroed in on establishing her company as a leader within the industry.

Sue: Well, in general, it applies to our team because we sell machine tools and machinery. So there are lots of different kinds of manufacturing, but the metal, you know, metal forming and working, cutting and all that is a pretty big sector, part of the manufacturing sector. And traditionally, when my dad was in manufacturing, in like the 70s, I mean, he was going way back to the 50s. But I can specifically remember like in the 70s sales, there was the salesman and they traveled all over and it was very intense. And the sale almost began with them. They were out searching for leads, doing cold calls, that type of thing. And now that's kind of on the back burner. I mean, it's more marketing is up there in front, which way back then, it was advertising that really marketing and there's a lot of print ads and things like that. So, you know, I have a husband that's been a machinist since 1984. And then, of course, my dad's no longer with us, but he has been a big influence on my husband and me. So we have that mindset that that's the way sales should be still for our products in our industry. And it's changed a lot. I mean, you can do a lot by just sitting at your computer. Yeah, digital marketing is taken over. And even in the last five years, I can remember talking to my husband and saying, you know, we need to get on social media, we need to have digital marketing, presence, and everything and he's like, Oh, no, you can try that. But we're gonna keep doing what we're, you've always done. Yeah. Now fast forward five years. I think with the pandemic happening, it, you know, surged it forward for a lot of business total, not just manufacturing, but all over. But I think that manufacturing is on the cusp of something new. I think that they're going to start leaning more toward marketing. Not that sales aren't important. It's a team event, in my opinion. So yeah, yeah, I think it's changed a lot

Sue: Well, it's all about that sustainability that everybody's trying to achieve. We a lot of have our brands, our oldest brand is over 100 years old. Cool. Our other three are somewhere around 70/75 years old. And so obviously we are, we are still repairing orders that are good, 75 years old, maybe 80 years old, some of them come in here, their parts for that. So, you see old machines like that. And there's a lot of we've had some customers call and say, I don't need my order, but I can't get rid of it. Because I just don't want to scrap it. So do you guys want to buy it, and that type of thing? People just don't want to see that part of manufacturing go away, I think there's some stability still to it,, they're a good standby. Just, for example, our grinders are all cast. So they are just cast iron, they're just, they're not fabricated at all. They're a very heavy duty machine that can take a lot of parts if they're still working after 80 years, they're still grinding, they just need to be, you know, rebuilt a little and have some parts replaced their ways need to be scraped that type of thing. There are still got plenty of decades of grinding left enough. So with a circular economy, you know, you're making taking and, you know, preventing the waste. So it's just, it's a recycling type mindset, as far as, instead of just getting rid of the machine, let's see if we can reuse it breaking down that type of thing. Yeah. And I think it could do wonders for a lot of manufacturers. To have that mindset. And that type of you know, I don't know when, but somewhere our culture moved into where you buy an appliance, and then if it breaks, you throw it away, And I think this circular economy is, you know, the opposite of that, let's fix it, let's get that type of thing. I guess I probably have a little bit too much for my parents and me,

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Jennifer genuinely enjoys helping b2b clients solve their lingering problems with analytical yet creative and innovative solutions. She is passionate about helping teams transform their organizations with quality service and delivery standards to achieve higher profits by creating efficient processes. while increasing visibility and performance optimization through data. Jennifer has found a unique ability to connect people while also linking data and technology to achieve results over the last decade-plus, she has supported and led various projects in the manufacturing operations and supply chain functions. Jennifer is the CEO of the M. J. W group headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Jennifer: Oh, boy. Let's see I got into the manufacturing world when I was in college. So I remember I went to school for industrial engineering at the University of Central Florida UCF. I remember my first manufacturing class when we were on CNC machines, we have to make this little pin holder, and my parents still have it at home, and we measured on us the measurements of our barrels if we were within tolerance, the lathe machine, the mill machine, so that was like my first hand on experience with manufacturing. And I went on to do a couple of internships, one with a defense contractor in the Orlando area, and the second with one of the largest amusement parks in the Orlando area. Oh, yes. And so that amusement park had a whole industrial engineering department. And so it was cool to be in the park operations to look at the flow of people and where to place certain things. So people are attracted to it. But in regards to manufacturing, that was my first go-round with looking at how things are produced how goods are produced, how they're transported from, you know, the manufacturing facility, and to the Enhance of the customer. And I would say, I think we've gone through a couple of periods here where we've tried to lean out as much as we could. And I think with the pandemic, we now know that just in time is not working for us, we cannot allow our goods to become that lean to inventory to be that to where it cripples the whole supply chain ripples, getting products into the hands of those and customers. And so I think now, manufacturing is starting to move back onshore, less offshore, or finding other ways we can be collaborative if we are going to remain offshore to where it's not crippling our overall infrastructure here in the US.

Jennifer: Yeah, I think with the wake-up call now, organizations need to put in some plans around contingency. So they need to create, and call out these gaps that you are immediately seen, and start to put some things in place to address those gaps. Now, are you going to hit it 100% out of the park? No, no one's ever, you know, bulletproof, in anything that's going on in the world. But I think having some contingency around the risk, measuring the risk that organizations are now taking as I mentioned, we're bringing production back on shore. So what does that mean? I mean, it's gonna cause the cost of goods in the US to increase wages have increased, we've already been seeing the ramifications of that. So just being as much as prepared as you can around contingency, and not just like, the technology that we use in manufacturing, or our machines, but also your resources, like, what are we going to do, I'm hearing from other business owners, in our space that the trades have just diminished. Like, we don't have anyone, as I mentioned, the CNC machines, we don't have that many people that know those machines anymore or have those skills. So we need to figure out what we're gonna do with the generations, you know, to come and making sure if manufacturing is gonna be, you know, one of the major heartbeats in the US, how do we keep attracting people to that? keep them engaged, or find different ways to produce our goods?

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Jamie Irvine is the founder and host of the heavy-duty parts report. He is also a sales and marketing consultant that specializes in working with heavy-duty parts manufacturers and distributors. He's like the Joe Rogan of truck parts.

Jamie: Well, there are a couple of things. But one thing is I've been a podcast host really since 2017. But the heavy-duty parts report didn't start until 2019. So I had a whole other podcasting journey. Before that, I did 150 episodes. And it was just a very broad-based subject around the business. And I pivoted into the heavy-duty parts report. And so when I made that choice to pivot, it really was a case where nobody had not many people listen to the first show I had. And, and that's okay because I learned how to podcast and nobody was listening. So that was good. They didn't hear all my foibles. But then when I was able to start the heavy-duty parts report, because of all that experience, I was able to really hit the ground running. And I learned a lot from that. And that was great because the show took off and we've done really, really well. But I always hoped that it would lead to something more. And so just recently, I was invited to be a co-host on a nationally syndicated radio show on TNC radio called Mind your trucking business. And it is a brand new show. We've just published I think we've done 11 weeks now. And it goes live on TNC Radio dot live at 6 pm Central on Thursday evenings and then it's read and rebroadcasted as a podcast. So to actually be on the radio from those original days when I launched a podcast and I live literally had to Google. What is a podcast? I've come a long way.

Jamie: I think, you know, you probably wouldn't be surprised if I said supply chain issues. But I actually don't think that's the biggest problem. I think that's an acute problem that we're having right now. But I actually think the larger more overarching problem is something called a demographic inversion. And I did some research on this recently, in 2019, there was a global census. And at that time, there were just over 700 million people globally over the age of 65. And there were only 680 million children under the age of five. Okay. Okay, so that doesn't sound like say, hey, it's pretty balanced, right the at the beginning of life and the end of life, those numbers are balanced. But what's going to happen between now and 2050, that's the part that got my attention, the gap is going to double meaning in by 2050, that gap is going to get twice as big. And there are going to be way more people over the age of 65 than there are children under the age of five. And I don't know if you know this, but even if we all got to work on the problem tonight, with our spouses, let's face it, we're not going to be able to solve the demographic issue for about 20 years, because it takes real roughly 20 years to get a child to adulthood and in the workforce. So this is a problem that we might have been able to solve in, you know, like 2000 to 2005. But it's too late now the dye has been cast and the trend has been set, the birth rates are not going to change. So this demographic inversion is creating a condition where it's not that there won't be young people. But the battleground for retaining and or sorry for recruiting a rather young talent is going to intensify year over year as we move forward. And then there's this other trend whereby 2030, all of the baby boomers will pretty much be wrapping up their careers. So one of the largest groups of people on the planet will be completely exiting the workforce. And there are just not enough Gen Xers to cover the spread between all of the baby boomers leaving so. So even once the millennials are now getting into senior positions of leadership within their companies, even once they're in full swing in their career, we still have this downward trend on labor. And so it's rather surprising, but the truth of the matter is, in the second half of this century, the biggest problem facing humans will be a lack of people, not overpopulation like we once thought back in the 70s and 80s. And that is something that is going to cause most manufacturers, a lot of problems, and the competition for young talent is going to be so fearful. So if you're in vocational trade, like trucking, or if you're manufacturing in an industrial sector, you're not just competing with other manufacturers in that sector. You're competing with tech, pharma, and other sectors that are much more appealing to young people than often the industries we work in like the trucking industry. So we've got a real uphill battle in the next 10, 20, 30 years. 

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Other Resources:

https://horizoncatalyst.com/top-culture-tech-trends-2022-volume-2?utm_campaign=mkb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew

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After teaching middle school for almost a decade, Trish found the translation and localization industry over a summer hiatus. Thinking it would be just a temporary job, now 22 years later, she is the US director for Terralingua Translations. Who translates content into over 100 different languages for manufacturers and exporters worldwide. 

Trish: Well, whenever you're interviewing there are many different ways to do it. So if you decide that you want to enter into a partnership with a translation provider, there are all these great acronyms out there. So you decide to go into a partnership with someone, the most important thing for you to know, and it's sort of like a dating question, right? I would liken it to if you'd be interviewing a photographer, you would say, Do I have ownership of the digital images, right? At that part of the asset, this is what is similar to something called translation memory. So whenever you enter into a partnership, or you invest in translation, my qualifying question would be for anyone would be, do I have ownership of the translation memory? Because if you don't have ownership of the translation memory, whenever you invest in professional translation, you won't be able to repurpose or is going back to digital photography, right? What do we do? So professional translation providers use a tool, it's a CAT tool or a computer-aided translation tool. Now, it is not machine translation. And that's something else important to know, whenever you're comparing apples to apples, you want to make sure, are these humans? Or is it machine translation cleaned up by a human? That's another question you can ask. But what it is, is it's a tool. And I liken it to like a little suitcase. So you say, Okay, I want to take this suitcase to Mexico, right? So they're going to take all of your English content, and one suitcase will open up another suitcase that's packed from Mexico. And they're going to make segments that match all of those. You know, they're called segments, but all of the content, they're going to say, Okay, we have this term here, we're going to match it with this term here. And then they unpack it and put it into a layout. If it's if it's needed. It may not be it may just be text. But what happens then is that these two little suitcases are there, and they're aligned. And you can take that Spanish suitcase, and you could repurpose it later on. 

Trish: If you left because of the quality, it's best to leave it behind and start new. So you can gain any of it from a previous provider, we can reuse and repurpose it, we can even check it for you anyone can check it and say, Well, you know, the quality doesn't seem to be so great. Or we can merge. So let's say you didn't know, we've already started one for you. And you say, oh, shoot, I didn't know that we have this already existing one, you can merge your translation memories. And your LSP or language service provider can resolve any conflicts for you and ask. And they can pull out the key terminology. And they can say, here's what we have. We have this in English, and this in French, what terms do you want us to keep? And which ones do you want us to throw out? So it's helpful no matter what stage you're at; if you're able to get it, it's useful information. If it was from a quality provider, you don't just want to leave it in the dustbin. But we can recreate a translation memory, in a sense, where we can align, let's say you have a translated manual, and you know, the matching English, we can create. But oftentimes the cost to do to align all the segments, may not be worth it. But you can always get the quote to see how much it would be if you think that I have many manuals like this one. So maybe if you could align things for me, I'd like to build a translation memory based on this. And sometimes people do that.

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Over the last 20 years, Darren grew a very successful manufacturing business. He developed a worldwide marketing system with partners on six continents. Patented intellectual property, a global supply chain, and had profits 10 times the industry average. That's pretty, pretty impressive. Most impressive. He did it from a small remote island in Canada, not adjacent to the customers or supply chain. He used social media innovation and resourcefulness to create a new model for business. Awesome. Today, Darren's team at Mitchell Industries has developed several digital learning platforms or organizations looking for industry best practices. Their first platform manufacturing masters has over 2500 global users and they just kicked it off this year. 

Darrin: So we started the process to patent our products. And only after I stumbled through it and hundreds of 1000s of dollars later, the government came to me and said, Could you teach us how to do this? To run a business and do you know how many mistakes I made along the way? So I'm very passionate about small to medium-sized manufacturers. So anywhere under the 200 million mark, usually the owners still have some sort of relationship with the company that hasn't become a corporate entity yet. And looking to find ways to give them access to the world's best information in bite-size form, so they can access it, where, when, and how they need it, meeting them where they're at. And I'm very, very passionate about that. And one thing I also realized when we started this process, is there are lots of people out there who have those answers, I shouldn't be one of them. So what we did is, much like yourself, Kris, who we've recruited to talk about aftermarket parts sales, we've also recruited so far 106 other manufacturing experts in everything from women in manufacturing, to employee engagement, to operations, how to get the best out of your engineering team, you know, 20, some years, somebody, you know, the guy we have who does this, who used to work for Boeing, who lives in Seattle, you know, he talks about how to get the last 10% out of your engineering team, and I was watching the videos going, never knew how to get the first 90% We want to make sure that, you know, right now we're over 500 videos, we want to make sure that we have a tool that is available to the leadership team of those small to medium businesses, that again, they have the right information, like we're usually talking five to 10-minute videos. And whenever they have that particular thing come up or they're about to experience something, maybe you're planning on implementing an ERP or maybe you haven't done that yet. Or maybe you're you have to fire your CFO, you know, there's a great video on that we have about what to look for in a CFO. So again, right now we have over 500, video libraries and growing, and the other one that we've added. So just pick your categories, all the way from sales and marketing to how to do trade shows to technical things, we don't get into things like programming, how to program a PLC, because there are other assets out there that do that. I'm obsessed with what manufacturing businesses today spend 85% of their time doing, and that's leading the business, not the technical person. And it's the thing that most of us who came up, I'm showing my hands right now because they're beaten up. Most of us who came through the ranks ended up in leadership positions. We did it because we had technical skills. Unfortunately, or fortunately, you foot now find yourself in a leadership position and you're going, we should go back and bend more steel. Now there's someone in your office crying, but I know how to.

Darrin: I have two things that I would want your listeners to listen to carefully today. One you need to begin an employee health program, looking out for the health and wellness of your employees. So The reason that I say this is manyfold is you've been busy, you've been extremely stressed for the last three, or four years, maybe some of you have been stressed for 30 years, you've been extremely stressed, which you've got through it. Congratulations, if you miss something, you have a team of people who haven't recovered yet. And they're still under stress, they do not have hope, and they do not feel appreciated. And it's there's a flip side to this. So this is why you need to do this, you just have to do it. If you care about your people just start doing it, you don't if I have to explain why I'm just never gonna get the point across. I just want manufacturers to recognize that there are a ton of resources that are out there, you just have to recognize that just being busy and getting through things has taken a human toll. Now, here's the flip side, you have never had a greater gift in the current state of the economy, to poach the leaders, you need to grow your business. Because the same people you need those people who are loyal and committed and have great insights and who are part of those other teams are also feeling beaten up and unappreciated. So there were times in my career when I was, honestly, actively headhunting. Certain people and other companies realize that I want this person and will never get them. Just they're you know, they that you would, if you were to cut them, they would believe their company colors. And now is the time to go after those people. Because those people are very much feeling unappreciated, and distressed. 

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Founder of the reshoring initiative after being president of GF machining solutions for 22 years. Awards include industry week's manufacturing Hall of Fame. He's participated actively in President Obama's January 11 2012 insourcing forum. He's a member of the Department of Commerce Investment Advisory Council. He's frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times New Yorker, and USA Today, and he's seen on Fox Business Market Watch and other programs.

Harry: Basically, to eliminate the $1.1 trillion goods trade deficit, we import over a trillion dollars more than we export. And that has cost the US about 5 million manufacturing jobs. So when we achieve that when we achieve our mission, US manufacturing will increase by 40%. So if to all those who are listening, imagine you all of your businesses were up by 40%. How wonderful that would be for you for the country for your employees for all the kids who would now have would look and say, Wow, manufacturing career, let's go become manufacturers! This would be great for the country.

Harry: Oh, as I said those, just having the jobs is good. If you think of the country's social ills, many people talk about income inequality. And part of that income inequality is that there's a couple of billionaires making a million a year you don't have one end of the distribution. But the biggest cause of it is that in the middle of the income distribution, we've lost those five or 6 million manufacturing jobs that that pay, you know, 50,000 or $100,000 a year, and 10s of 1000s of owners of small machine shops and foundries and things like that, that have gone under so company owners that made 100, 200, whatever, $1,000 for years. So you've had this hollowing out of the middle class significantly due to offshoring, due to the loss of jobs offshore. Another thing you see from that is the opioid epidemic. It's generally agreed that much of that which has occurred in rural America, was due to the company, town, the company, which was the main employer in the town going under for the work going off offshore. Now, these people couldn't find a comparable job, opioids, etc. So just all kinds of reasons why we'll be better off when those jobs come back.

Harry: Oh. Yeah, I'm happy and chipper here, I wouldn't be otherwise. So when we founded the reshoring initiative in 2010, to track reshoring by US companies, and FDI, foreign direct investment by foreign companies think General Motors and Toyota, for example. So in 2010, when we found it, 6000 jobs were announced coming back, last year, 260,000 were announced. And this year, if things continue as they have in the first half, it could be 350,000. So we're up 5060 times over what it was 12 years ago. So it's been, it's been amazingly pleasing, rewarding, you know, good for the country, etc, etc. But it's still not enough. If you the despite those jobs coming back, the American consumer is so voraciously, consuming things coming in from China and offshore, that the trade deficit is continuing to rise. So we need to bring back 500,000 or so a year to counter that trend. And so it's, there's still, I've still got a lot of work to do.

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Lori:  All right, our awesome listeners today, we do not have a guest. And we're actually missing our lovely co-host Erin, but have no fear. We've got some juicy content for you. Kris brought this to my attention. She's been sharing this article with her peers and network. It's from McKinsey and Company called the new b2b growth equation. I looked at it and was kind of fascinated and blown away by it. But Kris, why don't you share what the article is about first and foremost?

Kris: Yeah, I'm so glad you liked it and are calling it juicy. Because, you know, McKinsey and Company published this article back in February. And recently, I got an email from them. And it, it had the five top articles so far this year, and this article is one of its one of them. So obviously, people are paying attention to it. And I think for our listeners, and of course, we're gonna put a link to it in the show notes. So if you if you're interested, after hearing this conversation, and you want to read the article yourself, please go to the show notes and get the link. But you know, what they're saying is that b2b decision makers are using more channels than ever before to make their decisions. And they talk about these 10 different channels. And I thought, that's what's so interesting is the traditional way in which we're doing business, which we all know has been shifting, we all have been talking about it. But if you look from 2016 to 2021, things have shifted. And basically what McKinsey did is they have this pulse research team, and they surveyed 3500 decision-makers in 12 different markets. And the results are really what's found in the article. I'll summarize three that they put in the article because I think it will help listeners as we talk about this article, but there are the traditional channels. So when we talk about the traditional channels, they are in person, direct mail, fax, etc.

Lori:  Yeah, I love this. So I know we've chatted before that I used to teach at the local university b2b sales and marketing. And this was always a hot conversation. from a sales perspective, we've all heard this before you, you need a minimum of seven touches. But you don't always have to be the one facilitating and leading in initiating those touches, the touch could be someone landing on your website, or reading a review about you. But the more diversified, the touch meaning it's not you calling them seven times in a row. But it's you know, them having those different experiences with you in email, or video calls or a Google search or whatever it is, the better that chance are, the higher the chances of conversion taking place. So I'm going to channel which is that diversification and having multiple channel approaches or different ways for people to engage you, and you engaging them is ultimately going to increase the overall opportunity that you have. So I think that what I love about this article is that it's reinforcing what has always been, but it's just really leaning in deeper to leveraging technology, you know, eCommerce self, the self serve and the remote stuff with the video conferencing. And I think that's, that's just the way of the world now. It's less and less of that traditional, you know, in-person, fax machine, phone call approach. And everyone is leaning into the diversification and digital transformation, which we've covered several times on this show.

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The new B2B growth equation link: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-new-b2b-growth-equation

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Meet Daniel:

Daniel Rogge is the CEO of Tormach and has a diverse background that includes experience as a professional metal fabricator, educator, Motion Control Engineer, and software developer. He holds a BA from Grinnell College, and an MS in industrial engineering, with the focus on manufacturing from University of Iowa. He continues to focus professionally on what he spent his time doing as a teaching assistant at Iowa, helping people make things!

Erin: Can you explain what is done over at Tormach?

Daniel: We design, sell, and support tools that help people make stuff, largely smaller computer controlled tools. So, milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, CNC routers, more recently, automation products, like industrial robots, but the general idea is, these are all tools that especially when the business started 20 years ago, were incredibly hard to get your hands on. So we make that stuff available to everybody. We have a very wide range of customers. 

Kris: Do you know what your customers are going to do with a machine before they purchase it? Is that something they're often sharing with your sales team or to discover which machine they need? 

Daniel: We don't have a sales team. More and more people do their research online and buy stuff without even talking to people. We have like tech support staff that are machinists and engineers and we do have two people that do like kind of up resale advising a lot of folks, they know that a milling machine could be used to make their part, but they don't quite know how and they want to ask questions. We don't call people or, you know, take names that trade shows and then call to follow up or anything like that. It's very much customers come to the website. And if they call us up, we ended up talking to them. I don't, um, it kind of varies by industry. Okay, whether we know what they're making, some folks are really vocal about it, and some folks not so much. And it also kind of varies by product, like the robot is a pretty new product. And so we definitely ask a lot of questions before somebody buys a robot because some people think you can do just about anything with a robot, which turns out is not true.

Lori: What do you think is going to be critical and vital for the next 10, 20, 30 years for American manufacturing to really excel and flourish here?

Daniel: We could come up with a national health plan or socialized medicine. I talked about that person that didn't have to quit his day job in order to become basically a cottage industry. He was he's manufacturing products in his garage and he didn't have to quit his day job. And the reason that was important to him is he has healthcare through his day job, as I'm sure perhaps the other people on this call have either healthcare through their jobs or their spouse's job. That's a huge burden to people starting small businesses, to people starting small manufacturing businesses. There's a lot of there's a lot of demand for manufacturing here, more demand than there is capacity. And there are plenty of small folks that would be happy to go out on their own. I mean, the big market that we sell to, but it's it's tough doing without decent health care, A and then B, over the next 10 to 15 years of health care costs continue to go at the pace that they have, I mean, they're outpacing even today's crazy inflation and health care costs are up with so clearly the country has to do something about that. But I actually think that would be helpful for manufacturing the United States.

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Connect with Kris on LinkedIn and visit www.genalpha.com for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions!

Meet Brad:

Brad is the founder of vision forward business solutions and co host of the blue collar BS podcast. He has the mission to positively impact 1000 blue collar families. He does this by focusing on building businesses that grow, can attract Gen Z talent, and be able to be sold or transferred to the next generation. He is passionate about ensuring blue collar is not looked at as less than creating a revival of pride to work with your hands. 

Kris: Why are you so passionate about manufacturing and getting Gen Z involved?

Brad:  So growing up myself, I've been in manufacturing or working on cars, or whatever, since I've been really, really young. And I've been blessed to be able to mentor in the first robotics programs for about a decade. And working at Bucyrus and CAT and doing the outsource manufacturing or subcontract work and getting to see all of those mom and pop shops and you know, the people that are employed and the skills that exist, and then watching that just deteriorate, from basically 2001 Until today still, because we said no to two generations of people to get into into that work. And in order for this to survive in order for us to make really cool things. Yeah. Like we did it. CAT and some of the manufacturers, all the really cool shit that's made here in Wisconsin and around this country. We're not gonna be able to do it if we don't figure out how to get these kids into place.  It is so awesome to just look at the cool things made in Wisconsin list that comes out every year. And to have that pride to have people say, hey, we made those things or be able to put that out there and being able to say, for me, right, I delivered seven draglines around the world. I'm the only person that's ever done that on this planet. From that perspective, it's really cool to say I know those pieces of equipment around the world that are unearthing coal to keep our energy sources alive, right? It's awesome to have that feeling that is eroding, and we need to bring it back

Erin: So hows it going? There are people are catching your your message, and other folks are in the choir along with you. Have you seen that needle move? And what is that looking like?

Brad:  Yes, there's still high schools get paid on performance. So the education system, has done a much better marketing job of capturing people's attention and allure for the experience than to go to work in a factory. The universities and education system got ahead of that. And industry did not do anything. You had a group of individuals. So for myself as a Gen X, early gen X. College was that next thing, you know, it wasn't necessarily I didn't necessary need a college education to do my job or to move forward. But the guys, the folks that are in there, you know, 50 and younger. It was expected that everybody had a college education. 

Erin: Do you see any communication going out to parents? Do you see parents starting to recognize that this is a good direction to encourage their kids to go into? What's the job of mom and dad here?

Brad: Yeah, one of the one of the school districts here in our area, they've got a really good program, they started this program 10 years ago, I think, one or two kids into this program to be able to work summers get internships get exposure, they now have 80 kids. It's about getting that exposure, and then the kids are excited about it. And we parent differently today. Right? There's a lot of make your own decision earlier. Instead of being parents more being friends.

And so much more… 

Connect with Brad

http://www.vfbsolutions.com/

Connect on LinkedIn!

Connect with the broads!

Connect with Erin on LinkedIn and visit http://www.earthlinginteractive.com for web-based solutions to your complex business problems!

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and visit www.keystoneclick.com for your strategic digital marketing needs!  

Connect with Kris on LinkedIn and visit www.genalpha.com for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions!

Meet Sarah:

Sarah Scudder is the chief marketing officer over at SourceDay and is the host of a monthly voice of supply chain show that features people in supply chains who are doing extraordinary things. Along with this, she hosts several other shows, is a regular on marketing and supply chain podcasts, and hosts a couple monthly LinkedIn live shows. 

Kris: Can you just tell us briefly before we get started on other things is, you know, what is source day? What do you guys do over there?

Sarah: Yeah, so I joined source day about seven months ago, and I run marketing. We are a supply chain technology company that automates purchase order changes. So both of our founders, Tom and Clint worked in manufacturing at separate companies. And they both realize that their buyers were spending a lot of time managing emails and spreadsheets that were coming in from their suppliers with changes to the purchase orders. So they decided there was enough of a need in the market, that they were going to go build a platform to automate the back and forth between buyers and suppliers, and send those changes directly back into the ERP. So very, very niche, very specialized. We are 100% Direct spend focused, so we don't play in the indirect space at all. And our big verticals are manufacturing, which Chris and I have in common, distribution, retail and E commerce. 

Kris: So tell me, you know, what do you mean when you talk about the first mile in the supply chain?

Sarah: Yeah, so this is something that I'm pretty vocal about and very passionate about. And it's the fact that I have noticed in the last couple years, buyers ignoring the first mile of their supply chain completely, and focusing all their time and energy on the last mile. So what the first mile is in your supply chain, it's buying the parts, materials or items that you need to get your end product ready to go to ship and distribute to your end customer. So if I'm a manufacturer, I'm probably buying lots of parts and materials. So I need to be able to go find those suppliers. I need to be able to negotiate my pricing and terms, I need to be able to place the orders. And then I need to get those materials into my warehouse so I can then produce our products so they're ready to sell. If I'm a distributor or an E commerce brand or a retailer, it's buying the items from the third parties that you need that you're going to package and then resell to your end customer.

Lori: I'm curious, when it comes to building these relationships with your suppliers, what are some of the different terms that companies can have? 

Sarah: So what are some of the terms that are really important? The most important is figure out how to collaborate with your suppliers and become a customer of choice. So that means that when your supplier doesn't have enough product to ship to fulfill their orders, you want to get a partial, or you want to be that customer that they prioritize, and they're going to send the products to other companies. So whatever you need to do internally to figure out with your team, how to collaborate and partner with your suppliers. And I would argue a lot of that means freeing up your buyers time, so they can focus on being more strategic, and establishing relationships, versus spending their time doing automated manual work, like working in spreadsheets, like working in emails. So really think about how you can leverage technology to automate manual tasks to free up your buyers time. 

And so much more… 

Connect with Sarah

sourceday.com

Connect on LinkedIn!

Connect with the broads!

Connect with Erin on LinkedIn and visit http://www.earthlinginteractive.com for web-based solutions to your complex business problems!

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and visit www.keystoneclick.com for your strategic digital marketing needs!  

Connect with Kris on LinkedIn and visit www.genalpha.com for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions!