IndustrialSage

Well, hey, what’s up, IndustrialSage nation. We’re live.

We’re live.

We are live

This is exciting.

This is very exciting. Very exciting, what are we doing?

Well, right now we’re making sure that the audio levels are coming through okay.

Yeah.

So if something sounds goofy or funny, put a comment there whether on YouTube or you’re on Facebook. That’s what we’re testing out here at the beginning.

Awesome, make sure everyone can hear us. All right, so part of what we’re wanting to do is– Well, we’ve actually been wanting to go live and that was kind of in the roadmap for a little bit. And I guess it’s a little bit more expedited now because of the different circumstances. So part of what we want to do here today is discuss and have a live format on this is really addressing what is going on right now. There is obviously… it’s crazy, everybody knows that. And a lot of the questions that we’re getting flooded with questions. We have some of the same questions as well as just understanding, what do we do right now?

So we wanted to kind of try to facilitate a little bit to have a live discussion about what is going on, what is an appropriate answer? And we’re looking at that question, is sales and marketing as we know it, is it dead because of this stupid virus thing that’s going on? I mean, it’s crazy, it’s absolutely crazy. So that’s kind of what we want to talk about today. Feel free to join us. We are live streaming on Facebook and not LinkedIn, YouTube YouTube, and I think the link– I don’t know if you’ve got the link in on YouTube So that’s put in LinkedIn or whatever, okay.

Yeah, it’s on LinkedIn and shared everywhere

All right. Well, let’s jump into it a little bit. Obviously, things have dramatically shifted over the last– I mean, every day it’s changing. But certainly, over the last week it’s been nuts. We were at Mode X, this time last week I guess, the show was wrapping?

It’s wrapping, yeah.

And it was a very clear signal that things are changing dramatically. The attendance at this trade show– If you’re not familiar with MODEX. MODEX it’s a large show material handling and it’s supply chains with a lot of industrial automation and robotics, a lot of software companies for warehouse management systems and the like. Normally, it’s a massive show, it’s put on by the Material Handling Institute, MHI. They do this show MODEX every year. Well, it’s every other year and then alternates with their sister show called, ProMat which happens in Chicago. And typically, I want to say when they do this in 2018, Don’t quote me on that, somebody maybe is watching from MHI. Can give me the right– the real numbers, but I want to say was around 3,0000 attendees.

Something like that I’ve seen.

And a lot of exhibitors– This year the amount of exhibitors grew thin, it was over 930 exhibitors, there was a pretty big show. Attendance was dead. I think–

I wouldn’t go so far as dead.

Not completely dead, but comparatively speaking.

Well, I wasn’t there two years ago.

Okay.

But from just overall, hearing what the exhibitors say they could tell it was significantly lower. Even Monday when we’re there. Really, okay, people are here not you know, towards the outskirts definitely fewer people but down the main aisles were definitely.

Monday was rough. Everybody was like, you could just see on everyone’s face a little bit like, what is going on? Luckily Tuesday, Tuesday was definitely I mean– which typically historically is going to be–

Better day.

Busiest day.

Yeah.

So is a lot better. Actually, to be honest with you… Based on Monday, I was really worried about Tuesday. Tuesday it was definitely a lot better but then Wednesday was significantly lower and then Thursday which– I mean, goes down. which is kind of normal, kind of typical for that show–

But also, if you think about it, the night before President Trump just closed the border to Europe what.

That was on. Well, it wasn’t closed, it was closing.

It was going to close on Friday but he made that announcement on Wednesday night.

Right, Wednesday.

If they were planning on leaving, they were definitely leaving. I’m actually still getting emails from a handful of exhibitors that aren’t back to Europe yet.

Really?

Yeah, they’re working their way back.

They’re stuck here?

They’re stuck here.

Oh, Jeez! That’s pretty–

Well, it’s a challenge. Okay, and I think when we’re looking at it like, all right, sales and marketing, what are we going to do now?

Right.

We have this virus, It’s going to be with us for the foreseeable future here not forever, maybe some remnants of it, but the next couple of months we’ve talked about it being a delay. Is it going to be a massive and complete shutdown versus just delaying the revenue or delaying the sales a couple months?

That’s I think, that’s the big it’s anybody’s guess, nobody’s got a crystal ball. Who knows what the heck is going to happen? I mean, is it? It feels like we’re just hitting the pause button a little bit. All right, you know what? At least, certainly for this week, is everyone’s just doing a lot of conversations. We’ve talked to a lot of different companies and some are like, let’s move forward on stuff, we need to do this. But the vast majority are like, whoa! Shut the front door, put the brakes on, let’s figure this out because there’s a question– I mean, this is unprecedented. really it’s unprecedented. It kind of reminds me of an expedited 2008 but I feel like it’s a lot more hopeful than–

Well, I think with 2008, there was a lot of after the fact, “Oh, now that this has happened, what are we going to do to fix it?” Whereas, at least, for kind of seeing some activity out of the administration, where they’re trying to catch it before the complete collapse.

Yeah.

So, which is interesting. You know, I don’t want to get into politics but it’s very interesting what’s being done. But I think, if we’re going to poll everyone, if you’re in sales, has your boss told you, “Oh, yeah, your quota? Yeah, Don’t worry about it anymore.” Probably not.

Yeah, I know, right?

Okay, probably not happening. So with businesses, they still need to make money, we’re seeing a shift to gig economy is massive now. Amazon just said, “Hey, we put the kibosh on anything it’s nonessential. Governors and mayors, and everything, are saying restaurants close.” But what is that doing? Well, that need from that– You know, we use example, Amazon as an example.

That’s a good example.

From the efficiency of the demand has skyrocketed.

Yeah, that’s really interesting. We saw it, yeah.

No, no, it’s okay. Like Amazon demand is skyrocketing, they’re saying, we can’t process incoming inventory because of the outgoing sales that we have for non-essentials related to the virus. Well, what does that say? Well, it says, we need more systems in place that allow us to be more efficient and faster.

Yeah, which I think that’s actually a fascinating story specifically, we’re just coming out of MODEX Home Material Handling and Supply Chain Show. The story has been, for the last several years, better, faster, cheaper, we have to get– We have to move things. You look at the whole Amazon effect? We are all now. You know, we talk about it a lot from a sales and marketing standpoint. Certainly, from a consumer behavior standpoint is that we are now preconditioned to, I press a button and something shows up at my door tomorrow.

So already in the space, has been under this intense pressure cooker to say, we need to innovate, we need to create solutions that we can make that better. I remember, was it last year, this year? I mean, we’re talking– One of the companies that was there, Siemens logistics, they were, they had this really cool, it was like a conveyor belt that was able to unload trucks particularly in like mail and packages and stuff. And they said they could basically unload a truck that was full in like an hour, I remember it was–

It was less than, it was 10 minutes

It was 10 minutes, okay, yeah. 10 minutes and it normally would take a couple hours to go to unload–

It’s like four hours. By hand.

Ridiculous, and that is crazy. You’re seeing all kinds of innovation like that. That’s I think like the MODEX show, ProMat all that was showing all that and you know, companies are trying to figure out the impact. Obviously, we can look at to see the impact of that is, Okay, well, that means if I can reduce my unloading time of inbound bringing in goods or whatever it is that now, as a result, I can on the flip side, go to my customers and say, “Look we can now reduce or increase the time– the drop off time for like overnight or what have you. because now we can scale things faster

We can expand things.

More bandwidth. So you’re obviously seeing a lot of solutions like that and I think that like now, it’s even more heightened. I think it’s super interesting. Didn’t Amazon– are they hiring like 100000 people right now?

I’m not sure the exact numbers, but that’s exactly. I’ve seen the ads. Losing your job or may lose your job, you know, industry, we’re hiring, we need more people. You know, for as much as it’s a little scary, it’s also, there’s going to be some winners and there’s going to be some losers.

Absolutely, yeah.

So there’s going to be some companies that are going to have to close their doors because of just the situation. But there’s going to be some that are going to pull through it. And the way I like to think of this and I want to get to, is Wayne Gretzky don’t skate to where the puck is, skate to where the puck is going.

The puck is going to be.

So let’s think through, we’re in sales, we’re in marketing, when we’re faced with a challenge, what do we do? Well, it forces us to get creative, think outside the box. You know, everyone thought Zoom was amazing before the coronavirus. Now, Wall Street thinks it’s amazing. Okay, “Oh wow! We have this technology that can do what?” So where is the puck going? Excuse me!

No, it’s all good. Yeah, exactly. I think it’s just the idea, like you mentioned is just, Okay, well, where are things? Where are they going to be? How can we pivot? How can we adjust? You don’t have the virus, do you?

No virus.

Are we six feet apart? I don’t know. Sorry, we’re all good.

Keep your distance!

It’s all good. Okay, I mean, it’s a good question. If you guess that was something that at the show a lot of people were asking, they were trying to figure out. I think honestly, a big thing is and you’re seeing it across the board is digital, right? Okay, what is it for us? Let’s look at it. We’re live right now. Are we planning on doing this for a while? I don’t know why we haven’t done this before, but whatever. But we’re doing it now, it’s forcing us to be able to say, we need to be out to get a message out there. And I think a lot of other companies, you’re seeing the exact same thing. You’re seeing a lot of virtual events.

Yeah, they’re spending their time, where? Online.

Right, because everyone’s at home locked up, looking at Facebook and–

They’re either wearing sweatpants.

Yeah, it’s true.

I’m sure– Excuse me, handful of them. Are, you know, adjusting their typical schedule for the day. Because if you have that “Convenience,” to be able to, “Well, I need to get X projects done or things done, I can do this at midnight or can I go…?” You know this, but– Are we seeing that? Get that, it’s tickle.

Yeah, right there.

Yeah, I’ll be okay,

Well, part of what we’ve got going on is, I don’t– I mean, today is beautiful outside. It’s like we’re in Atlanta and it’s 80 degrees outside the pollen count is super high. I mean, it’s like we’re dealing with all kinds of things here. But I definitely had a lot of that. I was walking around on the phone earlier. I think, to your point it’s really like looking at those different areas and see, how can we do things differently? How do we get that message out there? The biggest thing is what you’re looking at a lot of these digital solutions and that, I had more than one company. Well, we talked to over 150 companies, I didn’t personally talk, we had the teams and stuff out there. The big, a lot of conversations that I was having with companies they were saying, “We are now need to be forced to think a little bit differently and really embrace digital technologies and we might actually not really know what that means or how that has been. Gosh, we needed to do it before, but now, okay.” If anyone is listening on any of stuff on IndustrialSage over the last two years–

It’s forcing a lot of organizations’ hands.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think a lot of the senior executives are being forced to innovate.

Right.

Okay, so if you’re a sales leader, you’re boss, who do you report to, you know, V.P, Biz Dev, report straight to the CEO, whoever you report to, if they haven’t said, “Hey, we need to use these digital tools.” You know, I’m watching people on LinkedIn share some really funny videos about that experience of working remote. And the pain and frustration that the executive or the manager has of like, what is my team doing? What are they doing all day? Like Salesforce is a ghost town. You see like the… whatever?

Tumbleweeds.

Tumbleweeds going by! Before, they could walk around the office and see the team on the phone, they’re executing, this is getting done, collaboration is happening. You’re not seeing that in the background or from the remote, work from home situation.

Yeah, certainly.

You’re going to see things that people weren’t using before. You know, the video that I watched, it was about SalesLoft. And it was listing out all these different challenges that this manager was having and then he’s like, “Oh, yep, yep.” And then he hangs up and then it shows like, “Oh yeah. Well, SalesLoft can do that.” So you’re like, “Okay, so here are tools that have existed for quite a while.” But people didn’t know they needed it. Now, they need it.

Yeah.

And so, what is everybody using to be able to do that? We have a handful of tools that we leverage like– our other organizations, what do they know? If they’ve never had to do anything like this before.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I think so. I mean, I think a couple of things that they kind of jump out to me. Look, the thing is every situa– every company and every situation obviously, seem to be very different. Obviously, there’s different companies here to be impacted this way more. For example, you know, there’s a story coming out of, if you’re an automobile manufacturer or versus a distributor versus you know, you’re in services or what have you, it’s all a completely, completely different experience. A set of challenges for a lot of people. But I think one of the things that I noticed right away is people– All right, we’ve got to, let’s email. Email marketing is a big thing. Obviously, everyone’s running to what their Covid responses, which you know. I mean, I’m hearing from companies that I– I think– I might have had like– I bought a sandwich from them or something once and now it’s like, “Here’s our response.” I’m like, “Oh, okay, all right.” That’s great. But I don’t know that–

Well, here’s the thing, that’s a great response to at least be able to put a statement out there, “Okay, you’re doing something good.” If I was concerned about it, I now have something to reference.

Right.

That is not a sales strategy.

Well, no.

That is not a marketing strategy.

Yeah I think, yeah, I know, I guess I’m just– You know, there’s so many– I guess there’s so many different ways of different things you can do it. I guess that maybe at the short list, some of the things that I think you’re going to start seeing is definitely an uptake in email marketing. But I think that’s going to be quickly flooded. I mean, we’re seeing it now. It was already flooded before, right?

Yeah.

So I think that’s one piece. I think a really big thing is paid ads. I think you’re going to start seeing a lot of activity on social, so LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram depending on where your audience is. I think that is an area that I would be exploring. And you know, I think there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to– You know, there’s good and bad ways of being able to do it. I think a lot of times you see people there are a lot of pushback with paid media. I hear back, I hear this all the time, “Oh, well, we did a PPC campaign, we did a LinkedIn an ad campaign, we did whatever and it didn’t work.”

Didn’t work, yeah.

Okay, well, why didn’t it work? Well, because you’re not– you’re not really doing it right. You’re going to take that or you good?

No, we’re good.

Okay.

It’s cool, we won’t take the call live. It’ll be a very one sided conversation.

Okay, all right. So it’s just, you know, the realities of life.

I think you’re going to see a lot more text messaging.

That’s interesting. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Because here’s here’s the deal. You still need to communicate.

Yeah.

And for the people that traditionally, their primary mode of communication was, “Well, I’m going to go visit them. I want to go visit Press the Flesh. You know, have that type of interaction in person and we’re not seeing that.

Yeah.

Like organizations. I mean, you’re seeing the statements, “Employees only.” “On site visits, off limit.” It’s not happening. Okay, Well, you have the video calls, you a video chat, you have email marketing, paid media. I think this, you’re connecting with somebody because they have this with them.

It’s true.

Everywhere they are.

Yeah.

And it’s also, it’s convenient. It’s very convenient.

Yeah, it makes sense.

So, if you’re trying to connect with someone, you can communicate with them and they can ignore it. And be like, “Hey, let’s talk later.” And then you can set up the phone call.

Yeah.

I think that’s great.

I think that’s intuit–

A lot of leverage.

Yeah, I think so. You know there’s something else I think you’re going to see and I’ve noticed an uptake too is actually using LinkedIn, just LinkedIn as a whole. While they’re just connect– reaching out and connecting with people obviously, through messenger. I’ve definitely seen an uptake on that. You know, I think the biggest differentiator is, I think there is a tendency right now to have a couple of different reactions. Okay, forget the medium and how you’re connecting with people, whether it’s using text messaging, or email, or LinkedIn message, or what have you. Let’s talk specifically from a sales, anything from a marketing standpoint. I think that there is a huge tendency to be super transactional and like, let’s try to make a buck or let’s try to sell or whatever.

And I think really that right now from maybe just certainly from a messaging standpoint is like, “You know what? maybe the appropriate response is just reach out, connect with our customers and maybe in the prospects and just reach out say, Hey how are you doing? What’s going on?” Maybe instead of trying to sell your thing, or even figure out like, if what I have to sell is going to be something that’s going to help to solve their critical problem right now. I think there’s a lot of empathy we need to have instead of saying, “I’ve got a quota to fill.” “Yeah, you do but does your product or service you’re trying to sell actually going to provide real value?” like, the value that you brought a week ago to whatever company, probably isn’t the same value anymore and that is now dropped eight levels, you know?

Yeah, especially in there, in terms of their priority list of what they’re trying to do or vice versa, where it’s the exact opposite.

Flip, right, exactly.

They’re like, “I need this now!”

Right. Well, I’m thinking from an empathy standpoint you know, if you’ve got a product or service you’re selling and that it was valuable before but now because of everything that it’s probably lesser on the food chain, maybe you know, back off a little bit. Maybe they’ll be able to see how to help and maybe there’s a way you’ll be able to help that’s not even directly related to your product. You know, just be helpful. But on the flip side, obviously, for those that have said, “Hey oh my gosh! We got something.” I can legitimately– we can legitimately help you solve this problem. And I think there’s typically that– you know, you get that greasy, slick oil salesman like you know what? No, we don’t have time for that.

Yeah.

But I’ve got something of value, asking you to help solve your challenge of X, “Hey, have you thought about filling the blank?”

Helping people partner.

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Just brokering a relationship knowing, hey, you have a problem, these guys over here they can solve it for you, or they can at least help. You guys need to talk. Can you broker that relationship?

Well, that’s really the value of LinkedIn. I mean, that’s really the power of networking. So if we can actually do that and say, “Hey, listen, I saw that you made a post about how you’re struggling with short term labor. Gosh, and this is because I have people that keep calling out. Well, I’ve got a great relationship with this company over here, that’s what they do, maybe they can help you guys out. I’m just going to make that intro, if you guys work, if you do something great if not, no. But that’s the kind of stuff I think people– That’s the selling, I think that we should be doing is looking at how can I help you?

Yeah, exactly.

I think that’s really a core tenet of that anyways. But I think especially like sales in general, it should be but I think especially right now, it’s even more heightened.

Yeah, and you know, it’s also something where if your organization might just straight up the sales team is really on hold. What you’re, the sales process, what you guys are offering really is not appropriate to be going through that selling right now. This is a great time for your organization to create resources. You know, if the sales team is either pounding the pavement and making the phone calls or they’re at home setting up their phone you know, stack and their phone on a hand full of books.

Yeah.

Okay, on the dresser, get some good lighting and recording those sales videos.

Yeah, Absolutely.

The question, the top 10 questions your sales team gets asked and you know it’s like, “Well, I just don’t have time for it!”

Well, you have some time now.

You’ve got time now. I feel that this is the best time for organizations that can’t, okay, not everyone. But if you’re in an organization and in a position to be able to think strategically now is the time. Build that content library, build those resources, people are online, they’re on social, they’re spending time there, they’re way more accessible than they ever have been I would say.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think we’re definitely indebted, we’re definitely seeing that for sure. A lot of people have connected with me over LinkedIn that I didn’t– and actually messaged me and we’ve had some conversations and I was actually a little surprised by that, I thought, Okay, I didn’t think that you know, but I guess, we are.

I mean, we have some it’s into a couple organizations that are headquartered in Europe and they’re telling their people, “Look, it’s a vacation right now guys, it’s time for you to go on vacation, do that.”

Yeah, well, you’re seeing that sort of I think a lot of that across the board as well. It’s just super interesting time, I don’t, you know,

We’re not going on vacation. I think this, for us, we’re like, now is the time to double down and really figure out how can we help organizations get their message out?

Yeah, and I think what I predicted over the next obviously, the next several weeks. I think now I think, give it this week, everyone’s, “Ahhh!” You know, I think next week it’s going to be probably that maybe a little bit more as– I’m sure that the situation’s fluid, things are going to continue to change and to evolve. I’ve been on a lot of calls with a lot of manufacturers. You’ve got a large workforce. You look at GM and Ford, and Fiat, Chrysler they announced we’re shutting down. I think they said they were laying off, doing… 150,000 people they’re laying off. I suspect this so they could go through like unemployment and do that. That’s pretty significant. And you’re seeing a lot of other, let’s say like a Procter & Gamble, or Georgia Pacific, for example, I hope with a great runs on toilet paper they’re great toilet paper in 2020. They’re really manufacturing a lot of critical products and supplies that quite frankly, those lines need to stay up, they can’t go down.

Obviously, the whole medical devices space all these manufacturers are– So, anyways, they’re trying to– But then you’ve got other manufacturers that are maybe– you know, was on a couple of calls earlier this week we have 2 or 3000 employees and we are evaluating. You know, we’re not necessarily manufacturing critical infrastructure for… it’s a product, good, or a medical device, or medical supply. Everyone’s sitting there kind of waiting, well, is everyone going to like– are we going to shut down? Is the factory getting a shutdown? Do we need to be making that call? Is the government going to come in and do that? So my point being that over the next two weeks, I suspect that it’s going to be very much like everyone kind of sit and wait, we’re going to move forward where we can. There’s going to be a lot of trepidation. And then I think after that, that it’s going to be a lot of, Okay, I don’t know.

What is the new normal?

Like, what’s the new normal? So either we’re going to be sitting at home, working from home or trying to work from home or you’ll be back at the office. I’m betting you’re going to be likely working from home and the dust is going to kind of settle a little bit and say, to your point, here’s the new normal. Okay, all right, people are hopefully calming down a little bit, now what? Okay, well, gosh, to your point, we still haven’t quota, we still need to get out there. And I think a big thing is you know, this obviously has already had a huge ripple effect. And this is probably the number one thing that came up at MODEX was, all the shit, we do a lot of trade shows and they’re all canceling or postponing. I was looking today at a list from a company that do a lot of trade show booth stuff. I mean, the list was huge and it was canceled or postponed. And a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton. And mostly the manufacturer, I’ve talked to a lot of people, I’ve talked to MODEX in particular they were like, “Hey, this is where we do not just MODEX.” I said, “What’s going on? “We just do MODEX fillers and that’s it, that’s what we generate our leads and we go from there or we have a significant presence at trade shows in the future.” and now they’re gone.

What are we going to do to generate leads?

What are we going to do to generate leads? What do we do? Yep, there you’ve got the golden–

You don’t have the–? I’ve got the list.

I’ve got the playbook right here.

You’ve got the list?

I have a list here. Honest, I really think that you’re going– Well, first of all, we’re going to do a webinar on this. So we’re going to do a little bit more of a deeper dive, we’re going to have some more commissary are going to be joining on, you’re asking some questions that we can go over some specific procedures and some ideas, and things that you can apply towards your organization.

This is the skate to where the puck is going.

Exactly.

Okay. The trends have been industry-wide for trade shows, they’re significantly dropping.

It’s been dropping.

It’s been the writing on the wall. What has happened is instead of it taking five more years for it to drop off, we’re seeing it happen, what? This year.

What’s happening this year. It’s going to come back for sure, but–

Yeah it could or people are going to realize like, “Wow, this whole digital marketing thing is interesting.”

Oh, totally, yeah.

It’s like we’re generating the same amount or more than we did at these shows. Oh, and by the way, the millions that we had to spend to spin up our booth.

That’s a good point, yeah.

And how all these different things, like we don’t have to do that anymore. So which you may still have the trade show but instead of having 30,000 or 50,000 people in attendance, you’re going to have 10,000.

Yeah.

And it’s going to be instead of it being, Well, I sure hope these organizations show up and visit my stuff, It’s going to be, we have these 50 appointments scheduled for people to be able to come and see the demo set up like that.

Right, yeah.

It’s going to be much more of a meet and greet, and demo, and see the actual stuff in action in that kind of setting where that prospect is going to go meet with a dozen different organizations.

Well, I think to that point, you know, one of the things that came out of MODEX was that even though the attendance was a lot lower than it normally is, almost everybody that we talked to said the quality, actually of leads and the people of the conversation, you know what we had? It was very high. So part of it is, a lot of people didn’t come because they were worried about, you know, “Oh, we might get, we don’t want to travel.” And whatever, totally valid 100%.

Company’s policy is what I just said.

Company policy, yeah.

We’re not traveling right now.

Exactly. But the people that I think, the people that did show up are like, “I have a real need and I need to be out to see this.” And I think, particularly in this space, sometimes you know, it can be very challenging to see some of these, like we say, an industrial automation solution where you’ve got conveyors and robotics and all this stuff. Like seeing it actually function in a live environment. You can’t bring in all of your prospective clients to a customer facility. Maybe you’ve got an innovation center–

Right, because maybe they’re competitors where you have your trade secrets.

Exactly.

They don’t or the aspect of it is just a very small segment like, “We do this we have the printers.”

But I think to that point, the idea is, okay, this is where you need– everyone you start thinking, how do you replicate that experience? That experience that we have on a trade show for? Okay, well, what are the challenges? We’re like, “Well, we would love to show a prospective customer our solution in full, in inaction, how do we do that?” “Okay, well, if we can’t bring them to a customer site, all right, well, we need to show them we have a demonstration area at our trade show.” Or maybe we have an innovation center, there’s a lot of companies that have innovation centers but the challenge there and that– Well, certainly, now, but the challenge–

Yup, still have to travel there.

The challenge was there before, is to get your customer like that engaged. They say, “Once you fly down over here, come check it out.” That’s a huge commitment on their part. Whereas, maybe now with, okay, what if we were able to take that experience and replicate it digitally? What if we were able to go into a virtual tour of, you know, maybe you go to your customer facility and do a virtual tour there or from your innovation center, or an embryo to create this experience with some–?

I guess some maybe even augmented reality?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, where they can hold up their iPad in their warehouse floor and see what the conveyor belt system might look like–

Might look like inside there, yeah.

But the A.G.V’s like, “Where are the docking stations? How would this all work and they go from one place to the other? Think about that?” “Sure” Heavy investment up front from the A.R Technology or Augmented Reality Technology. But even those tools are much more cost effective than they were five years ago.

Oh, yeah.

So you have that. Is that where you’re going to transition your investment? But even I think of like, a lot of organizations spend a significant amount of money being a sponsor for the shows.

Yeah.

Their organization might do it for a variety of reasons, one, sure lead generation, getting some attention. But even from just what, you know, maybe a little bit of ego.

Yeah, certainly a lot of that.

You know, just brand positioning, like Bose were great enough of an organization to be able to be a top tier sponsor for that trade show. So are they? What are they going to do to be able to have that same type of recognition?

Yeah.

But I think these are challenges because before you’d be like, “Yeah, we’re the Premier sponsor at X, Y, Z trade show.” “Oh wow! Okay, you guys know what you’re doing.” Like, “You guys have been around the block a few times.” Now, they can’t flaunt that. Now, what is the next premier sponsorship position?

Yeah.

I don’t know, I don’t know what it is.

I might, I have a few ideas.

Yeah.

No, I think, and which is interesting. I mean, just the whole, our vision and what we’re doing here the IndustrialSage is– You know, I felt like it was really addressing a need that we had before. Now, I feel like that need is huge. And I think probably you’re starting to see a lot of companies starting to kind of wake up a little bit, look and say, “Okay, there’s different ways and we thought, we didn’t understand this over before but now, we kind of get it because we’re forced to.”

Right.

And so, I think, yeah. You’re going to start seeing a lot of that.

Well, I think you know, we think through like, how do we help marketers?

Yeah.

Well, a lot of it’s discovery. Where are people going to discover the product or service I’m trying to market? And that’s where IndustrialSage is a platform for discovery, it’s that ecosystem.

Yeah.

I mean, that’s really what IndustrialSage is all about. We have, we are an open contributor platform, so sales and marketers are able to publish content.

Exactly, yeah.

We help with the distribution.

Right.

So right now, people can when they write an article and submit it to our site, we distribute it to our entire audience and that’s at no cost.

Right.

Imagine that. Okay, so organizations that are trying to get their feet wet and try and do something, what do they need? Well, we help with the content creation, you guys publish it and then we help distribute it. It’s having that ecosystem available to really help the– you know, what is it? All boats right, you know, little rising tides.

Tides, right. Rising tides–

Rising tide lifts all boats.

Something like that.

Yeah.

Totally probably butchered that.

Something like that.

You get the concept?

That is the concept. It’s like we’re trying to do our part to help sales and marketers. These are challenges we’re seeing. You know, there’s a lot of tools that are out there, there’s a lot of question marks right now and– It’s like, what is next week going to look like? Well, I don’t know, but to me I’m pretty excited about it because this is uncharted territory. So, I remember the Internet going on with the Spanish Flu or whatever else. Okay, so like we’re in unchartered territory, the world is your oyster, now is the time to experiment and test things out because nobody, there is, the status quo just got thrown out the window.

Well, actually, you know, something to that point. I was on a podcast, I was on the Supply Chain Now– Supply Chain Now Radio, or Supply Chain Now Podcast with Scott Luton and Greg White, this was a couple months ago. And so they started reposting, they retweeted something yesterday, about something that I apparently said, and I don’t remember what it was. But it’s basically about the– He was asking like, what’s the worst thing somebody could do from a sales and marketing standpoint, particularly from a marketing standpoint? I said, “Well, back then the worst thing to do is nothing.”

Yeah.

Whether it’s the wrong thing or the right thing or whatever actually you know, really, the worst thing you could do is nothing. And I think that’s more important now than it was when I said that. However, how many months ago.

Two to three months ago.

And I think you know, this reminds me of the whole horrible 2008 time. Anyone who had a business or went through that or any– I mean, most, everybody except maybe the much younger generation doesn’t remember that from a business standpoint. I certainly remember it. You know, the companies, there’s a lot of fear and you’re seeing that right now with the market and where it’s going. Again, no crystal ball on what’s going to happen there. There is a big tendency. and rightfully so to say, we have to pull back on everything that’s what we’re seeing right now. We’re pulling the reins from–

From the stock market perspective.

From stock market economics. Well, I’m telling you, just even from a business standpoint because it creates a lot of confusion and a lot of, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow so it’s easier just to say no, no to everything let’s look at that. Okay, and that’s a fine answer for a little bit. Because you’ve got to do due diligence, you’ve got to figure out the damage, right?

Assess the situation and moving forward–

Somebody had a thing, a little Tweet or something, it was from like Star Trek, like next generation or whatever, it was like Picard, it was like, “Damage report.” you know, coming out it’s like, that’s what it’s like every morning, I feel like, all right, well, what the heck happened now? Where are we? We’re going through that. We’re going to get through that. Okay, but the next thing is, if things are you know– The economy is going to come back, it’s going to take some time and that could be really fast, it could be really long. I don’t know.

But what I do know is I remember very distinctly in 2008, the companies that sat and didn’t do anything there’s a big opportunity for a land grab. Typically, companies will come here and say, “We’re going to go into a maintenance phase versus a growth phase.” And right now, obviously, the answer is we’re going to, we need to maintain, we need to make sure everything’s good, figure out all this stuff. But the real ones who really want to innovate and be able to get a jump, what is happening and what will happen is that there’s going to be a land grab. There’s going to be an opportunity to be able to say, Okay, a lot of companies are going to not respond and they’re going to wait. So you have a first mover advantage to be able to say, let’s move into these new areas.

It’s leveled the playing field in a lot of ways.

Exactly, we hit the reset button. We hit the reset button and everyone’s kind of starting back– Everyone’s going to be starting back from the starting line at the same point. And now, okay, those who are going to innovate and those are going to say, you know what? It’s time to do something we really do need to do something different and we need to– you know, we probably need to have an accelerated path towards that. Those are the companies that are going to win.

Yup.

And you need to experiment, you need to start doing stuff. And you know what? You’re probably going to fail. Fine, fail, fail, fast, do it again, keep going and don’t say, “Oh we did paid media and that doesn’t work.” Okay, well maybe you didn’t do it right because that’s honestly, what’s– And you know that’s a lot of– there’s a lot of fear and a lot of trepidation of people said, “Well, yeah, we did this and it just didn’t work.” Okay, well, if it failed, how come when you look at the stats on ad on dollars on where it’s going and digital ads it’s a huge growing area. I predicted, it’s going to be even bigger. You’re going to see it. You’re going to see that.

And the more people use it, the more expensive it’s going to be.

More expensive it’s going to get. Right now, it’s very cheap right now.

The opportunity even in terms of the organic availability on– not just search but from all our different social channels. So LinkedIn, Facebook, even discovered on Instagram, YouTube. The massive amount of content that’s created on each one of these social platforms. you know, what is going to happen? Well, more people are going to try and do it.

What’s going to happen? It’s going to flood it, which means it’s going to keep–

Charges go up, so take advantage of it now.

Exactly, so you go back like five years ago or longer. When we talk about SEO, for example, Search Engine Optimization. It’s the magical thing when you go to Google, you do a search and boom your website pops up, that’s not an ad. That’s SEO, right. You know, it used to be a big driver. I mean, it’s changed over the last several years, over the last 10 years, it’s dramatically changed. All the black hat, keyword-stuffing all that fun stuff.

Good times!

Good times, right? It would have largely been over the last several years and it has actually, it was still very true back then, content, blogs. Content, having on your website. Well, what has happened now is that in the last several years, instead of saying, it used to be like, “Hey, look if we write an article once a week like we’re awesome and we’re going to rank up there and people are going to find us and it’s going to be amazing.” Well, that’s not the case anymore. Now, you’ve got to– you’re going to, like– Even if you did a darn article every single day, I mean, you need to probably start there if you want to have a real big impact quickly. If you try to go and release one blog article a week, it’s going to take you forever to actually gain–

Sure, and not a scary anybody, but that’s from the organic perspective. But how you leverage that article that you’re writing once a week, is very different.

Absolutely.

So that’s where you know, marketers take note, Yes, you’ve got to get started somewhere, write that article, maybe you can only get 500 words out of it. Okay, We’ll start with 500, get into the hands of your sales team. How many of them are spending time answering the same question?

Over and over again.

Over and over again or copy and pasting their other, you know, no incentive so and so. You know, it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of effort that’s wasted, it’s not scalable. Now’s the time, implement these scalable systems like yesterday.

Right.

You get started.

So it’s not just like, “Oh we’re just going to take an article and throw it out there and it’s whatever. Hey, let’s talk to your sales team and that’s where that core of that content should come up.

Yeah, If you want it once a week, it’s 52 articles. 52 articles. Let’s think through it. All right, maybe you can only think of 10 of them today. That’s fine, write those ten.

That’s better than nothing, yeah.

You have two months and change of weekly content. Well, six weeks from now, sit down with your sales team, I need three questions from you, three from you, three from you, or five from depending on how big your organization is, draw on them. Get those questions, have them feed you that information then get it from the, you know, sales engineer Okay, and the ones that come in and know the science behind the technology you guys are doing. Get– sit them down, so you have even more in-depth content. Like now is the time because there’s one thing that’s for certain is that digital is not going away. the content that you create is going to exist, Britannica, Encyclopedia, Britannica, maybe the sales position of door to door sales to sell the Encyclopedias vanished but where is that content, it’s online.

Yeah.

It’s in the form of Wikipedia and it’s in the form of valuable blog articles. And you know, we’ve talked to a lot of different organizations, a lot of marketing agencies. We have the agency success podcast, where we talk with agencies, I talk with them about what they’re doing with their industrial clients that’s successful. And they’re showing the content that they are writing because nobody else is writing it, the content they’re writing and publishing, and distributing out there, is generating results. First to market now, get out there, leverage these digital tools. Like you said before, don’t do nothing. Doing nothing is worse than going backwards and pulling back. You’ve got to have some forward momentum, you’ve got to have some forward motion even if that forward motion is you setting up your strategy.

Yeah, you’ve got to do something, got to do something. All right, so it is– Oh, gosh, we’ve been on here for probably 40 minutes or so.

Yeah.

The stream has been on for an hour.

47.

We started, we’ve been 47, Donavan?

Yeah!

Okay.

So we’ve been rocking it out, everybody.

We’ve been chatting for a little bit. All right, I think we’re to go ahead and kind of like wrap it up for today. So the next thing that we’re going to start, we’re going to be doing a little bit more of this over the next several days. Well, you know, we’ll be hopefully doing this from the studio as much as we can.

Yeah.

And we can all go to my basement or something.

Well, yeah maybe your basement, we remote some people in. But really I think, it’d be great to be able to hear from our audience. Okay, If you want to be on the show essentially being an expert in your industry and share your resources, share what you guys are doing, from all perspectives, whether it’s finance, human resources.

Yup, yup.

I guess taxes is with that. You know, anything that’s involved within the industry, we want to hear from you. We want to understand really what’s going on from a thought leadership perspective and there’s a lot. You know, the White House, CDC, IRS, Federal reserve, all these different administration elements are doing a lot of different things that are impacting the industrial and manufacturing space.

Oh, yeah.

And we want to hear from you. You guys know what’s going on, you hear this update. What was it? The manufacturing Defense Act. What’s the?

Oh yeah. Yeah, the production Defense Act that was enacted yesterday I think by Trump which basically gives him the powers to be able to mandate to a manufacturer, Hey, we need you to take this contract, we need you to produce toilet paper or whatever.

Yeah.

And now you know, we’re nationalized.

Yeah. We’d love for someone to come on the show and explain that, what that means. So and maybe you know a topic that we haven’t thought about yet, we want that one too.

Anything to be able to help really just kind of get just responses and even just understanding what you’re doing as an organization and companies I think you’re sharing those best practices and those thoughts. I think a lot of companies legitimately don’t know and it’s okay that everyone doesn’t have all the answers but I think maybe sharing that information and saying, here’s some thoughts and here’s some ideas and different things, that’s really really what’s going to help and that’s ultimately why we said, Hey let’s go out and start pushing some content out and some things live you know, share some insights that we have in this space about to help kind of weather, the situation.

Yeah, exactly.

All right. So next week, we’re going to have a– We’re going to have a webinar, I believe that’s set on Thursday. I’m not sure, we’ll send out some emails and there’ll be some information about we’re not going to do that, it’s going to be a little bit more. nuts and bolts, as far as responding from a sales and marketing standpoint. Trade shows, gone for it now, what do we do? How do we generate leads? How do we get prospective customers? How do we navigate all this? We’re going to have a conversation, where I’m hopefully, we’ll wrap this up with ADP, all the way to come in and kind of share some best practices and just learning some things from an H.R standpoint from insights. I mean, they were sharing with me some real case studies, some real things that are going on right now: questions that companies are asking, if they’re getting asked over and over and over again. Looking at different things like the Family Medical Leave Act which was just updated earlier this year, earlier this week. And I think there wasn’t even an addition, an addendum to that got passed earlier today that I think it amended, so Monday already?

There’s a lot of stuff moving.

Full situation, a lot of things going on we want to be out to help provide that and bring that information as best we can’t. So that’s it, it’s all we’ve got for you.

This is great!

We’re good, right now, we’re signing off, thanks so much.

Thanks everybody!

Thanks.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get every new episode, blog article, and content offer sent directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!

Hey, thank you for joining me today on today’s IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I have the CEO of Nanotronics, Matthew Putman. Thank you so much for joining me today from New York.

It’s great to be here, thank you.

So, for those who aren’t familiar with Nanotronics, can you tell me a little bit about your organization and what you guys do?

Sure, Nanotronics is a science and technology company. We blend artificial intelligence. We actually make robotics, we make microscopes. We bring these together in order to scale technologies that are either a challenge to scale otherwise, or need to get to the next level. So whether they’re large businesses who need to innovate, which we all need to continue to do.

Yeah.

Or they’re upcoming businesses, such as quantum computing, nanotechnology, genomics, a number of really interesting businesses. And what I’m interested in, maybe we can talk about some, I’m interested in technology as foundational technology that has to do with process control. How things are made has not really changed since the 1950s. And I think that would surprise people. But now with some of these new technologies that I mentioned it’s possible to make change.

Absolutely, well it’s a very exciting time in the industry, and across multiple industries and verticals as we go through a lot of this digital transformation, there’s a huge emergence of technology that is happening. You’re seeing it really just revolutionize many, many, many businesses, and you’re going to continue to see that as that technology growth curve continues to just kind of grow, exponentially. But before we get into all of that really fun and exciting stuff, I want to know your backstory of how, tell me, how did you start your career? How did you get into manufacturing?

Look, my career goes back farther than most people. When I was a child, my father had started a business, and actually both of my parents. And before that, my grandparents worked in a sort of startup. So I come in from this sort of serial entrepreneurial background, but in making factory equipment. So, back when I was eight years old, my father started a business that put computers, personal computers, at the beginning of the personal computer age, in 1982, onto factory floors for doing process control. And you’ll hear a lot of why, how that has directed my life.

So I grew up in that type of environment, in a factory itself, seeing businesses grow. And, I went through other times of my life then. I’m a musician, I play free-jazz piano, and I produced plays and movies, and tried, really explored, where arts and this background that I’d had in industry, how was this different? How are we all part of the same world? I ended up getting a PhD in applied physics, working for my family business, and continuing to play music. I was working at a university. I had a really wonderful lab at this university. And we would see these great inventions coming out of the lab. The problem is they weren’t actually coming out of the lab. They were staying within the lab.

So we were working with things like nanoantenna in order to be able to make photovoltaics that worked at night. We were working with regenerative medicine scaffolds that would extend life. But we couldn’t celebrate too much because it was hard to get these things off the ground. I grew up in this business where I was dealing with scale of industries that were lower-profit type of businesses, then I was dealing with no scale at all. So, on some of the most exciting science and technology in the world. So Nanotronics was an effort to take the most interesting things and scale them for a wider audience. So I went through this strange path to get where I am.

That takes, okay, so let me back up a little bit. So a lot going on here. You mentioned, I think I heard you said that you even, obviously, you’re a musician doing your jazz piano, I think that’s awesome, but also you were, you produced some plays and some movies? Did I hear that right?

Yeah, and I am still really involved in the arts. I mean, I think it makes a fuller experience of what’s going on in the world and what’s going on internally. So I’m on a board of two nonprofits. One that’s in the arts and science, nonprofit. The other is a dance and theater nonprofit. And still involved with producing movies and plays from time to time. Certainly it’s not a job anymore. It’s something that I care deeply about though still, yeah.

That’s really exciting. So, all right, so, obviously you’ve got, this was something, that entrepreneurial spirit, that gene, if you will. I mean, you grew up in that, obviously. You mention, generationally, I mean, it was a thing. Was there a moment when, you mentioned you were eight years old, and you were seeing how, putting PCs into a plant, and utilizing that. Was there a moment that stands out, where you said, “This is awesome! “I love this and I want to do this for the rest of my life.”

So, there were a lot of wonderful moments as a kid and as a teenager, but I think that it was as an adult, while working in the arts. I had two really great mentors, in addition to, my life has been this sort of journey of creating new mentors, and I hope that I find more as we go on. But outside of my family, I had this music teacher in high school, Elinder Mynica, and she became a dear friend of mine, introduced me to the opera and to art in ways that I hadn’t experienced before. And her husband was a material scientist and applied physicist that worked in a university. So I used to spend all of these dinners, going to operas then, and talking, and I realized that these two people were what my life was going to be, with the things that would bring me both fulfillment, and where I could have some influence in the world.

So, it’s hard to remember exactly one moment, but the time that I remember the most was that, I had never considered myself a scientist and capable. And this mentor, Eberhard Mynica, Elinder’s husband, I did this presentation for, and I was so nervous, I wanted his help. And he said, “This is really good work. You should take it forward.” And I remember this gave me an enormous amount of confidence that I could participate. I mean, I’m nothing special, but I could participate in creating something.

That’s awesome, so, I love this theme that we’re kind of talking about here a little bit about the blend of really art and industry. Or the, I think you mentioned earlier on, that some of the challenges when you were going through your PhD was there was a lot of R and D development, a lot of innovation that was happening inside the labs, but yet, from a, it wasn’t going to market, if I understand that. It was, or implementing scale to it. And sounds like you found a way to bring both of those worlds together now. To be able to do that, to have a playground, if you will, to come up with these innovations, these solutions, to these real-world challenges, but then actually to be able to go to market and scale them.

Oh yeah, and we’re incredibly lucky because we make something physical, but more than that, our customers do. And so, we do have not only a sandbox for our incredible R and D engineers, and the people who build the things, and do the engineering, and the drawings, but we get to see, we get to sort of step back and see what’s going on in the world, and where it could be in the next two, five, and 10 years. And I consider these technologies that we get to see and what we participate in as foundational technology. They’re just different than where we’ve lived in maybe the last 15 or 20 years, which are, we call application. You have apps on the iPhone, but what is going on inside an iPhone? What are the huge amount of chipsets that are inside there? How are they improving? Is there something that is stagnant about the way things are made, even while the world of applications was getting better and better? And, I’m feeling if those foundational things are not improved at the rate of the applications, you won’t have the next generation of applications either. That’s making factories artificially intelligent, not just apps and advertising tech that are all using artificial intelligence, as an example.

That’s, no, you’re 100% right. You’re talking about, changing and innovating the platform, that foundational piece. Something that you’re able to build upon there. So, I’ve got a couple questions, and I want to figure out which one I’m going to ask first, but, I think I know the answer to this, but what’s the thing that you get up every morning and you say, “This is what I want to go tag. “This is my motivation, this is my purpose.” What is that?

If you know the answer, tell me, that would be… Yeah, if every day were the same thing that I wanted to tackle, to get into, I get bored too easily to get in a kind of routine like that. I’m lucky to see new challenges all the time. But those things are, they fall broadly in the category of bringing a level of abundance that doesn’t exist now. And that could be getting rid of waste. So that’s waste of humans wasting their time, it can be a waste of capital, it could be actually creating a sustainable environment. And so, the way we look at it is that if you build things more efficiently, and you have the speed to iterate and create new things faster, you also eliminate waste. So, we do this in a number of ways, and our customers do. We want to, our customers work on things like making next-generation semiconductors, so that we do have better smartphones. Or they work on making full genome sequencing much faster and less expensive. And from that, you get a certain abundance because it will eventually lead to personalized medicine. So, we get to see a lot of these incredibly exciting things happen, and that’s what gets me up in the morning to come to work. And what an incredible thing to get to work with our team to help enable those things to occur.

That’s awesome, no, hey, it sounds like you have a really fun job, you’ve got a fun company, a fun job there. And I have a very unique admiration for you because I do not have sort of that engineering bone or that, I can’t do that. So, kudos to you, that’s awesome.

I don’t know that I have any bone for engineering. I think, first of all, I think that there is something that people have lost track of, is that they think that we are at an age where things have become so complex that we can no longer invent. But there was a time 150 years ago, 120 years ago, where most patents were done by an individual. Now it’s very large corporations that hold most of the patent portfolio of our country. And this can lead to the feeling that you’re not an engineer. And I bet you have ideas every day and can build. So a big part of it is just inspiring people, not that I’m particularly good at that, but there is something that needs to be done, through, usually through showing people that it is possible, that they can be building the way that a different generation did, but now with these tools, of things like artificial intelligence, to be able to build this way.

Well, you’ve got me sold. You’re inspiring me on that. And I think that one of the, maybe, when we talk about some of the challenges in the industry, one of them is workforce. Actually attracting new workforce into the industry. And I think what you mentioned right there was talking about inspiring people and showing people what can be done. We were just, we were at MODEX couple weeks ago, big material handling and supply chain trade show, and it was, it’s amazing to see all the robotics, and the innovation, and the AI, and the virtual reality, and the, just all the things, all the innovation going on, and I think there’s a lot of times that people, particularly the younger generation is like, “Oh that space is just kind of like manufacturing, “and logistics, ehh.” But you said something really key I think. And that, maybe it’s a lot closer than we think.

I mean, it’s everything that exists inside of what we’re doing, but it’s actually something that is accessible. I mean there’s something I used to say back when a lot of people were talking about Facebook being invented in a dorm room, I used to say, I don’t want the next social network to be made in a dorm room, I want the next factory.

Yeah.

And we see where people can get inspired to do such a thing. You can see where 3D printing is going, for instance. What if, a 3D printer you can think of as a small robot and a small factory.

Yeah.

What if the human is enabled to dream up the thing that they want to invent, and this piece of, this tool that’s automated can then take that human potential and that human creativity and build it for them? One thing Nanotronics is doing is taking then a 3D printer, and other things that are, that can help people build, and freeing the human to do the creative work, and using an AI to make this as good as possible. To make something more than just toys. To make something that is foundational and interesting, and is going to bring about a new type of industrial revolution. And suddenly, if you think in this world of, “What can I print because I dreamed it,” then suddenly, you are empowered to dream it and to create it.

Absolutely, so, and well, okay, so on that note, one of the things that I would love to ask, and this might be a little off script, but we hear about this all the time. We hear about virtual reality, AI, machine learning, all these great applications in the manufacturing space. What are some concrete ways, I think you kind of started to get into that a little bit, what are some concrete ways that manufacturers are rolling out with AI-enabled robotics, or, what are some specific uses?

So, I want to not be negative with what I’m going to say, but often when you think, what you think is happening in the world may not be. So, a robot itself in a factory is not the most exciting thing about a factory.

Right, yeah.

The way that it’s working right now. So, it’s almost what is about to happen that we should be getting excited about more than what currently is happening. And what is about to happen is the things that we have seen in artificial intelligence that have excited us in other fields are going to make their way into how we build things. So, are you familiar with a division of Alphabet called DeepMind was able to beat the greatest Go player in the world, one they called AlphaGo?

Mm-hmm, yeah.

And this was a huge moment for, really for the world, to see that the most complex game where there’s more potential ways of moves than all the atoms in the universe, and a AI, using something called deep-reinforcement learning, could be optimized in order to take moves that were not intuitive to humans at all, and be better than any human. This was, this wasn’t just a brute-force approach. This was having to think, and correct, and follow new strategies, and new tactics along the way.

Now, factories don’t currently work this way, but we’re making factories work that way now for the first time. Where it’s not just robots that are building, let’s say semiconductors, or you go into the Tesla factory, and they’re making cars with single robots that are incredible factories, but what if you’re making something, and as you make it, there is a problem with it, or as you make it, you could make it better? And a machine, not too dissimilarly from winning in Alpha Go, makes a change in the process in real time, to make the best product. Then it’s only our imaginations that are limited to what can be built.

So that factory becomes less of an assembly line, the way that you consider a, sort of Henry Ford-style assembly line, which is still the way most factories are, by the way, whether there’s robots or not, and it becomes different variations of additive manufacturing, like you would think with a 3D printer. And this happens, we’re seeing this happen in the field of genomics, we’re seeing it in LiDAR for autonomous vehicles that we’re very involved with, we’re seeing it for the very first quantum computers that are being built, really big deal, and we’re going to see it, and we have to see it, in things that involve super-complex supply chains, like a computer, like a smartphone, or smart device in general, that can be built in a more distributed fashion. Once we can do that, we know that we have an intelligent factory.

That’s, so we’re really, to put it in a, I’m going to put it in my terms here a little bit. I’m going to bring it down a few notches now, because, as I understand, it’s really the ability to be able to adapt sort of on the fly. So to be able to input and take in all kinds of data, and be able to process it at a ridiculous speed, to be able to say, I detected changes that would make this more efficient, and then now we are able to actually go implement those changes in more of a real-time fashion, is that?

By making choices, by an AI making choices to fix things that humans would not be able to make. And you can also, we do this also with manual, where we’re doing a kind of augmented reality, where we track people’s hands when they’re making things, and show them how to make corrections. Now I say we, it is the AI that’s making the corrections, or showing the human how, but it’s the human that did the design, or the human that has defined what they want to make, that thing that matters to them.

So with the advent of quantum computing, I mean, just the amount of data crunching that they’re able to do is just, it will exponentially increase. So you’re going to be able to see more of that. I mean, didn’t Google, wasn’t this one of the things that they supposedly cracked over the summer last year?

Well, cracking is a funny thing. They did something that was deemed, this thing called quantum supremacy. So, in a way, the way I see that is it’s kind of a way of showing that quantum mechanics can work for creating something other than a classical computer. You still can’t do an enormous amount with a quantum computer, but it showed that we’ve hit an inflection point that soon you will be able to do things that are currently impossible to do with a classical computer. So we’re just at the very, very beginning of that, and it’s extremely exciting.

That sounds, I can’t wait. Imagine all the change, and the innovation, and the increase in the efficiencies, and the processes that you’re seeing, and you mentioned with supply chain, I imagine that it’s really a new, it’s a new era. It’ll be a new, as we talked about before, a new journey, as we are going through all this. I think that’s going to be very, very, very exciting to see what unfolds, and all the different solutions, and increases in efficiency.

Yeah, it’s certainly more than increases in efficiency. It’s actually completely foundational, in a way that we haven’t seen in several generations.

Well, so, kind of moving along here, what are some of the challenges that you’re seeing, obviously we’ve kind of touched on it a little bit, what are some of the biggest challenges that you’re seeing in the industry right now, from your viewpoint?

So, right now we’re on a path where we think that there is commodification of everything. We’ve had, for your life and mine, you’ve had something called Moore’s law, which you’re familiar with. Are you familiar with Moore’s law that… the basic idea is that you have computational power that increases at the same price, and at the same time, price and cost for us comes down as things get faster and better. But there is also something that’s happening that is a bit dangerous, and a challenge. It’s that to make those electronic devices, the factories to build them are exponentially getting more expensive. There are fabs, which are fabrication factories to build semiconductors, that cost over $20 billion to make now. To build the factory. Unthinkable for any other generation or any other time. Any other time meaning even 10 years ago, this was unthinkable.

So a huge challenge is to bring about some of the changes that I was mentioning earlier, in order to make factories much, much less expensive. If you don’t do that, the barrier to entry is going to be huge. I mean, you can imagine, the barrier entry for you to create a podcast, or for us to write an app that might be interesting for our phones, or for the computer, the barrier to entry is only our imagination, and what we want to do with it. Barrier to making a factory right now can be billions of dollars. That’s a challenge that we have to face, or we’re going to have real stagnation. And that’s what we’re looking to face. I think that’s by far the biggest one.

Interesting, how are you, so how are you guys solving that?

I think creating these close-looped AI systems that have corrective action, this is a really big thing. You don’t have waste of materials, you don’t have incredible amounts of expensive equipment. So, generally factories are built with I’d say a hardware solution to building things. So if you think about that Henry Ford factory line, it is a line, but in this case, it’s a line of very expensive, physical things to build something like, let’s say, semiconductors in those $20 billion-plus fabs. If you could do this at single stations, at one small station the size of my desk, which is something that Nanotronics works at that we can do all types of testing and AI analysis, the reason we can do that is that we don’t use a big hardware solution, we use computation. And that computation is partially AI, it’s partially the ability to have controls that could never exist before over the machines. So it’s really switching the mentality to having computers and software solve for things that used to only be done with very complex, expensive hardware.

Excellent, yeah, well I, it sounds like, again, what you guys are doing is very cool. I think that a lot of people, and myself included, I’m excited to learn more about it, as I don’t know a whole lot about this, and I think that it’s exciting to see new companies such as yourself coming in and doing this, and to really solve a lot of these challenges that we’re seeing in the industry. And, to pivot a little bit, and I apologize, these questions are very redundant, or maybe a little obtuse.

I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true at all. I think you totally get it, and I think that, I mean I, no, and I do think you could be inventing, by the way.

No, I think, I, this is great, and I feel like you hear of these terms and this stuff being slung around all the time, but my gut is that a lot of people, and even myself included, we’re like, “Yeah, oh absolutely, yes this.” But really, at the end of the day, it’s actually having some sort of deep understanding or knowledge of it is very little. We did a big thing on blockchain a couple weeks ago, and I said, “Listen, we’re just going to, let’s just, “I’m going to ask the really stupid questions,” and, I mean, that was one of our most-viewed videos. People were really interested in how, blockchain in manufacturing, and we just went very simply, what is this? Is blockchain bitcoin? Well, no, you know? These are the questions that people, they ask us. And so it’s–

Well I think when this… it’s so important to know that these things are more graspable than society would say they are. One of the biggest challenges is just to let people know that they’re capable, more capable than the system says they are.

Yeah.

So we all grew up with this system that says that if you’re not good at mathematics at a young age, you won’t be able to succeed in technology and science. And that’s just not true now. It’s absolutely right that you’re asking questions about blockchain and having an episode about it. And it makes sense that many people are listening to it, because many people may be able to get in and utilize blockchain in their lives, and they get to understand the way that the world is working around them. That should be inspirational that we can all create something.

Awesome, no, I love it, that’s awesome. So, kind of wrapping up our segment, so for those who would like to learn a little bit more about Nanotronics, or yourself, what’s the best way? I mean obviously, go to your website, Nanotronics.co, C-O, is that right?

Yeah, that’s right. And on our website we have a section called think space. And these are podcasts that I have done, there’s some that, and then there’s some other places on our site that have some media that we’ve done, those are more about these philosophical ideas, but they’re also interviews that I’ve done with other people to hear what other people’s mentors are. And then somehow it does tie into what Nanotronics does as well. So absolutely, go to the website, and just float around to these different areas of it, and hopefully you find something.

Awesome, well, Matthew thank you so much for spending some time with us on the Executive Series here.

I loved it, thank you!

I loved it as well. So, we’ll be releasing this soon. So, thank you so much.

Great.

All right, so that wraps today’s IndustrialSage Executive Series interview with the CEO, Matthew Putman, of Nanotronics here. So, really great episode. I really enjoyed learning about a lot of this stuff. A lot of really cool stuff coming down the track. So, be sure to like and subscribe, join in the conversation that we’re going to have on social media. If you’re not on our email list, I encourage you to subscribe. And I’ll be back next week with another episode of IndustrialSage. Thanks for watching, or listening.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get every new episode, blog article, and content offer sent directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!

Hey, I’m Danny Gonzales with IndustrialSage today. I have the CEO of Nanotronics Matthew Putman. Thank you Matthew so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage.

It’s great to be here. Thanks.

So today we’re going to be talking about a lot of things that a lot of manufacturers are very concerned about. Obviously in the industry and in the world we’re going through Covid-19. It’s disrupting a lot of supply chains, it’s disrupting a lot of lives. There’s a lot of issues and challenges going on, and so what we wanted to do is just spend some time here with Matthew who is again the CEO of Nanotronics just to get an understanding kind of what you guys are doing, how you guys are responding and maybe share some ideas around there and just some insights around the supply chain, and what you guys are seeing.

Sure, we’re very lucky even though clearly Covid-19 affects us all in kind of devastating ways. The thing that we’re sort of unique and is interesting is that, we’re a science and technology company that works in a lot of segments of technology. So we work with companies in genomics, companies in semiconductors, companies in autonomous vehicles and quantum computing. So we get to see action of a broad view of the challenges that people are facing and there are a lot of similarities between these right now. and it’s really making people consider how we build things in a different way.

Absolutely. So before we get too far down the road on there, for those who aren’t familiar with Nanotronics, you tell me a little bit about who you are, your company. I know you guys do some manufacturing where you’re manufacturing, all that good stuff.

So Nanotronics makes a combination of artificial intelligence software and that software is used for controlling factories. Now, we actually have our own factories where we make robotics, we make a super resolution microscope. So we have a way of doing analytics and analysis, but not in a lab somewhere, but on factory floors themselves. So we are a factory in Brooklyn, New York, in Hollister, California, in Akron, Ohio. We have these facilities where we build things, but most of all our customers build things. So we’re part of a supply chain, we tend to be very distributed though. So we do everything from machining our parts to assembling them, to adding the software to it. So we’ve seen the value of trying to shrink the supply chain in order to make us less vulnerable and working with our customers that have fairly close proximity to us to make them less vulnerable as well to things like Covid-19.

Absolutely, so obviously you said Ohio, California, New York, those are the three States right now where there’s pretty much a shelter in place, it’s locked down for better. How are you guys handling that?

Because we have cared about this idea of going start to finish. I like everybody else supply chains mean things to us too. We have customers all over the world and we do have some suppliers, but we can continue to build things. We don’t stop because we’re not having to get things from all over the world in order to build our robotics. Now, that’s nice for us in a way. We can keep going on strange things like staggered ships. Trying to keep our staffing healthy through all of this and of course to ship things that are contamination free for our customers as well, but we can at least make things and we can make them for some crucial areas right now. Things like companies that make masks, companies that do gene sequencing, that’s what they call PCR that is important for tests for Covid. We’re lucky that we can actually still be involved with that, but we see the suffering certainly through our customers and it’s of course hard for us too, to try to figure out how you balance these things of safety and long term planning with short term urgency.

So to be clear too, you guys are considered an essential business, so operations are still able to be open in all of those States, as you mentioned you guys are supplying or helping with supplying a lot of those critical supplies. How much of that were you doing before this versus after? Has any of that changed?

Strangely enough, we were working on this stuff for years and years. So our customers were working on something called UVC, which are UV-LEDs that worked for purification. They’ve been extremely expensive in the past. So you don’t see them in every hospital, clinic, office. We’re looking to make those less expensive. This is a project we’ve already been involved with for many years. We work with the largest company of hard drive manufacturers that power of the cloud. Without the cloud, we don’t have this conversation in here. These are things that we have been involved with for a long time and are lucky to have those connections. Of course we push it harder and faster than ever right now, and so our team is I think working harder, sleeping less, feeling the urgency right now in ways that we didn’t before, but it’s something we’ve cared about for a long time.

How are you addressing, let’s say your workforce without obviously, essential, very essential. We need to keep these pieces moving so that not only you guys can help supply chains down the line and so on and so forth, but in regards to maybe illnesses that might happen, how are you guys kind of safeguarding your labor force in your facilities and what does that look like?

Well, you had mentioned when we started this, that while we’re talking, things are changing.

Yes.

And it’s for sure that we have to adapt to all of these changes and pivot with it, but by the time anybody is hearing this, my answer may be completely different.

Very true.

Right now I’m trying to make sure that social distancing is something that can happen, not just outside of our offices and factories, but within them as well. So we have people spread out. We don’t have more than two people working in a room, in a single room together. Even though we have a couple of hundred people, we try to space them out in this type of way, we have them in different buildings where possible. We have them on different shifts than they would be before we have some working from home that can, that aren’t touching our machines themselves and have the chance to work from home. It’s constantly being addressed while making sure that we can keep moving along as a business.

Absolutely. What about the morale? How has everybody, Is it a call to arms saying? What does that look like?

I’ve absolutely been amazed by the dedication of the people here. We’re accomplishing and I say we, I mean it’s the team really is accomplishing an enormous amount. I worked on a project last week, where we had two of our roles solutions architects that work on new problems that were sending me updates on a new type of masks that we’re doing: a face mask for a customer that will allow that to be scaled faster and their shift was far over. They could have gone home, they stayed late. I don’t expect that of anybody. I mean people need to be with their families right now. People need to be safe, but it certainly does seem to be a call to action for a lot of them. And some of that is also, they’ve been doing projects for years that they could maybe see happening in six months from now. Now, we are pushed to get them done in a week and then two weeks.

Life seems shorter now. I don’t mean that in as desperate a way as it sounds. I don’t think that we’re, I do think we will survive this, but we are thinking in shorter time spans now and I think there’s a certain amount of excitement that their work will get out faster than before, and that doesn’t apply to everybody. If they are sick, if they’re scared, if their family isn’t well, you deal with it in entirely different ways, and I have to really work on being sensitive to that.

Absolutely. I mean, that’s a, I imagine a difficult balance. what has it been like for you? I imagine things are going nuts, phone calls, if things are constantly changing, I guess Trump passed the, and I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it was the Production Defense Act. Based under the fact that they can nationalize and mobilize manufacturing to build and you’re hearing of contracts being rolled out. Their stories of I think with GM, GM and Ford talking about how they’re going to go and possibly shift the line and start producing, manufacturing ventilators and whatnot, is that what some of that would affect you guys?

I mean that’s old school war mobilization. That is incredibly positive to see rather than shattered factories. We’re actually starting to work with a couple of companies that their production was lower and they had done or they had done something else in the past and now they can work on things like UVC that I mentioned earlier. We think the government should support that, other private investors should support that. We certainly will, and it has to happen faster than before. We’ve seen this in war times before, but this is not a single country now. This is the way the world is working and the way that we have to come together, even if we can’t come together physically the way we used to, our businesses can come together in order to try to figure out both how to deal with the health issue right now, how to deal with supply chain issues, but also to deal with invention. There’s incredible opportunities in synthetic biology right now, for creating new types of vaccines and treatments. This wasn’t something that captivated the public’s attention in the way that it is now. It’s a mobilization in this regard as well. So there is a chance for things to happen even as we suffer through it right now.

What are you going through, looking forward I guess in the next who knows, 30, 60, 90 days, name a timeframe. What do you think? What are some of the learnings, you just mentioned there that you’re starting to see some more innovation that you otherwise wouldn’t in this space. What are some of those other things you think that the industry is going to learn and be able to take away from this.

I do want to say that I do think the innovation was happening. The innovation wasn’t scaling as fast as it should. That there were barriers in the way, sometimes just barriers caused by society in general. By realizing some of it’s bureaucracy, some of it’s institutions, and sometimes it’s just our will to do it. So let’s just stasis in how we think. So those are things in the areas of synthetic biology and the areas of material science, advanced materials and in the things like additive manufacturing, and I think when it comes to supply chains to reduce the way we think about supply in general, I think it was Matt Ridley, the geneticists writer, who was in the House of Lords who I admire greatly, who said, not in a negative way at all because trade has brought enormous amount of wealth to nations but he said that, “There’s not in a computer mouse, not a single human on the planet would be able to make this.” There are so many components, that this requires an enormously large supply chain. But what does it mean to create a factory? What does it mean to be localized in order to be able to make something, not have something that is out of our control that we won’t be able to make if we can’t, if we have to socially distance. I think we’ll learn that lesson here and start to try to think in those ways.

I think it’s interesting. I mean the whole fact that it’s a global economy, the whole globalization aspect piece all the way from your customers to the supply chain piece. Do you think that’s going to shrink over the next several years?

So what I think and what I hope let’s say .

I hear you there.

I tend to be one of the last Utopians around. I want replicators to exist as in the “Star Trek style Replicator.” So the very nature of looking at utopian Sci Fi is not about isolationism or nationalism. It’s about a Federation. It’s about everybody working in peacetime; at the same time, by doing that, having this self-sufficiency. So I think that we will notice, and I hope we will notice that Korea, Italy, and China have all suffered the way that the United States has suffered, but also recognize that it has disrupted the way that we can do business, across those different countries. Though we should be united in mission but at the same time be able to build on our own.

Mineral resources right now are heavily owned by one country. Rare earth materials are heavily Chinese owned, even outside of China. It’s important that the United States realizes that we don’t have these rare earth materials and tries to build with what we do have or tries to collaborate with China on this. So there are a lot of things that should come to mind as necessary in order to have this kind of distribution of manufacturing. That maybe we didn’t all realize in a hyper globalized world. It’s still going to be a globalized world, but it is one where we need to start being able to take care and build things and know what we are building right here in the United States.

Exactly. It reminds me actually, I had a question that an international business professor asked me, way back when I was in college, I think it was senior year, and they asked it was the question, “Globalization, is it good or is it bad?” What is it, it’s like, “Well, I don’t know, “I don’t think you can say one way or the other, “whether it’s good or bad.” But it certainly we’re seeing right now a big challenge obviously.

It’s probably a trick question in a sense. I think that people that fall on an extreme of these two things are missing the subtle points.

Exactly.

At the same time realizing that the globe is a small place is necessary. So globalization, meaning working with our human neighbors and the rest of the planet, still remains important. So Nanotronics tries to do this as well. We’re located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York and the Brooklyn Navy Yard used to be the largest manufacturing center in the New York Tri-state area until the 1960s. This is where war ships were built for both World Wars. And it went without much manufacturing at all. And in a global economy, the way that we’re talking about there were some towns all over the place that did different parts of the supply chain.

I’m from Akron, Ohio, where they made tires. There were cars made in Detroit. This is the way that the war, even within the United States worked. We’re doing something about taking distributed manufacturing and putting it back in the city. Putting it in Brooklyn, where they used to be. We’re looking at Manhattan from our offices. Used to be exactly where the hub of manufacturing was and we’re in one of the older buildings, that used to be for the first iron plating was done and we’ve made a very modern structure. It’s being put together right now where you have production. So this distributed production that does everything from making the parts to testing, adding computation and shipping them, to above that having the best R&D engineers, that are working on AI and they need to look down over the factory floor, watch the things that are being made, which by the way those jobs are as high tech as the R&D engineers.

Everybody has their hands on the product and on a certain high tech way of doing things. But they can try their artificial intelligence, which will eventually go to companies that are making autonomous vehicles and quantum computers and all of these exciting things. They can see it on us making our products, our microscopes, our automation and robotics. So it’s a way to completely close that loop. If people come into our factory, they will see hopefully a blueprint, not only of what more Nanotronics factories should be at some point, but the way that you should be able to make almost anything. So it’s a path towards this ultimate small distributed system like the replicator that we talked about, but at least a small factory that a startup company can grow into in the way that we did.

Excellent. Well, certainly interesting times right now, very strange times. I think what I’m hearing has a lot of hope. There’s a lot of hope that we’re going to come out. We’re going to learn from this. I want to thank you and for what you and your company is doing, your employees are doing to be able to help, to be an answer to the challenge that’s going on. Not just like immediately, but in the future. I think that what you’re talking about how people are taking that call to arms so to speak and saying, “We’ve got to help, “do this innovation, “this piece that we were working on before “and we can put it in the market “and help get masks out, “help get all these critical supplies out.” That’s super important right now.

Well, thank you too. I mean you’re here interviewing me about this today when people are hunkering down and I appreciate you doing that.

Well, thank you. Hopefully, helped to be a little part of the solution but I think that what you guys are doing is fantastic. Thank you. We want to get this out to other manufacturers, other companies so they can, share some hope, and also just share some ideas and thoughts like, “Hey this is where things are going, “this is where we need to be thinking.” And go from there.

Great.

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

Look forward to getting to know you better.

It’s going to be awesome. All right, well, that was, I really enjoyed that episode as we cover some topics and talk to Nanotronics about their response to Covid-19, what they’re doing, they are an essential business and they’re helping with critical supply chains and a lot of critical supplies for the medical space, for just really all across different supply chains. So, you’re seeing this a lot. We’re going to be interviewing some additional companies as well throughout the week to hear about their responses and what they’re doing to help, to really share some best practices, really share that hope. And I think there’s a lot of learnings that we’re going to come out from this that’s really going to be able to apply to tomorrow and beyond. So thank you for watching. We’ll be back soon with another episode of IndustrialSage. Thanks for watching or listening.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get every new episode, blog article, and content offer sent directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!

Okay. So, today we have another IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I have ManufacturingPower. I have the founder and CEO, Mr. Mike Franz here joining us. Thank you, Mike, so much for joining me today.

Great to be here, Danny. Thanks for having me.

All right. So, before we completely jump into this, let’s just kind of set things a little bit… If you could give me just a quick little synopsis on ManufacturingPower, who you guys are and what you do.

Absolutely. So, ManufacturingPower, we’re a SAAS software developed specifically for small to midsize manufacturing companies to help them with their challenges around MRO and industrial supply purchasing. We know it can be a pain to really tackle these objectives, for the most part. And what we’ve developed is a very easy to use online tool that helps organize and really gives our customers the benefit of being able to see market pricing. So, we collect data, we show transparency in the market, and give them the best opportunities to make the best buying decision.

Interesting. Okay, great. I like it. So, we’ll get into that here in a little bit more, but before we do that, I want to get to know Mike. I want to get to know you a little bit more and for our audience to get to know you a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your journey, your career journey before ManufacturingPower.

Yeah. Unbeknownst to me, after school, after college, I had no intentions of getting involved in industrial supply. I have a sales background and came out of school with a marketing degree and thought, “What the heck am I going to do?” as most do, and fell into industrial supply and have been in multiple roles over the years, pretty much 20 years of experience being in the manufacturer’s side, being on the purchasing side, being in the sales side. So, I always say it’s kind of the triple threat position. I’ve seen the industry from all different sides and kind of understand that. But yeah, my experience is really in manufacturing and trying to understand the needs of manufacturers, and that’s what’s brought me here today. I saw a definite need and a problem that needed to be solved that continuously gets overlooked, and that’s industrial supply managing and maintaining those accounts and partnerships with distributors and how to buy better, how to organize better. Those types of issues were something I consistently saw over the years.

Yeah. All right. So, throughout your journey, is there somebody or either milestone moments or somebody that really helped influence, whether that was a coworker, a mentor, whether it was a leader, do you have one or two of those that really made a big impact on you?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, 20 years, there’s a lot that has contributed to that, a lot of people can relate to that. But specifically thinking off the top of my head here, as far as people specifically, there’s been a lot, but I’ll give you a couple of scenarios that really impacted my career. And one of the last ones I worked for a manufacturing company, we made components for, I’ll just say the power sports industry, and what happened was I had really an experience that changed the way I thought about all kinds of business. It was more or less the fact that I learned what not to do. There was some customer interaction that really, really got under my skin, and that I wanted really never to do ever again. And how not to handle customer interactions and situations and being very respectful and putting the customer first in whatever I do. I mean, it’s not specific to this industry or what we’re trying to accomplish other than the fact that we really put the customer first in what we’re trying to do, and that’s pretty evident in how we approach building our product, what we really want to listen to our customer, and how that impacts our product and how the customer experience really is with ManufacturingPower.

All right. So, walk me through, then, how did you make that decision and that choice to say, “Hey, we’re going to do this ManufacturingPower thing”? What’s the story behind that?

So, I guess the story, going back to the very beginning, I mean this is about four years ago, when kind of the idea hatched. I was working for another large manufacturing company, a Fortune 100 company that I was making sales calls with distributor folks on manufacturing companies. And we would go into a business park and go from Joe’s Machine Shop to Paul’s Machine Shop to Peggy’s Machine Shop, and they would buy the same items, relatively similar volumes, and each customer would pay a different price. And it was consistent. Every day, same thing. Okay? No matter what distributor partner I was working with, it was always the same thing. Everybody charged a different price for the exact same product. And I thought, “Okay. As collecting data, understanding data, and using that data to really expose that, there’s got to be a way to do that so everybody has a fair playing field.”

And that was when kind of the light bulb moment went off, and it had a lot to do with acknowledging capability. At the time there was, the cloud was really starting to become something that people were utilizing for data, and it was cheap. So, having that cloud space and that data aggregation capability really became something that was possible without having to buy multiple servers at super huge expense. So, with that said, just kind of started working with some people that I knew in tech that had some software writing capability and some database knowledge, and we just kind of started this thing. And here we are today.

Yeah. That’s a pretty good story. So, obviously, the big challenge is, is really that pricing transparency piece. I mean, obviously, and the data and understanding that, and that’s what you guys are setting out to challenge. So, when, again, did you start the company? What year?

We officially started in 2016.

Okay.

Yeah, coming up actually four years, four years ago, and at the end of the month. I’m not a big guy that says the word journey a whole lot, but it’s been a journey. (laughs) And I’ve got a lot of support here. We’re based in Minnesota, and we’ve got a lot of support here. We’re growing our business. And the people that, as the back story goes, there’s been a ton of people that have been very generous and have helped out.

That’s awesome. So, I’m curious, just from like an entrepreneurial standpoint, what was that moment like when it was crystallized in your head that it went from, “I think we should do this,” to, “I’m doing this,” and, “Okay, let’s do it”? And then, making that mind and then making that jump.

Well, it was super exciting until I kind of realized what I was doing and that was very scary. It was, “Oh, this is going to be great.” And then, realize that there’s how much work and effort and how much support you need to really start actually doing this. For anybody who’s started something, I know you’re an entrepreneur as well, so starting at anything and getting it to go and all that, they always talk about flywheel, having that catch. The highs and lows of actually being an entrepreneur and fighting through that and believing in it, it’s a challenge, but man, I wouldn’t trade it. It’s something that I’m super passionate about. I’m super passionate about the product and the people that are involved, and it’s something that I couldn’t imagine going back to what I was doing before.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s awesome. Very similar story you hear from people just across the board. It’s exciting, but it’s also like, “Oh my gosh.” But that’s cool. Hey, four years in, that’s awesome. So, kind of transitioning here a little bit, let’s talk about some of the challenges in the industry. Obviously, pricing transparencies is a very big one, it’s the core of what you are solving right now. What other challenges inside the industry are you seeing?

Are you talking specifically in industrial supply or more manufacturing?

Both.

Okay. So, I guess to relate both of those, one of the challenges that I saw for years was that, and rightly so, the manufacturing companies, small to midsize manufacturing, their biggest concern is, obviously, making a good quality product and serving their customers and getting product out the door. Okay? Back of the house was definitely the priority, and from my perspective, looking at some of the technology that is out there and wasn’t fully being taken advantage of to help these small businesses succeed in kind of a new way.

A lot of this technology has been out there for large manufacturing companies, and they totally utilize it because they have the resources and the capabilities to handle those types of projects, where the tools available for the smaller folks were just not there. And now, just bringing that to life and educating people around the tools that are out there and available for them to be more organized and more successful, but money really towards their bottom line, is… I would say manufacturing is pretty old-school when it comes to certain processes and being able to educate a little bit more, it’s only going to help that kind of mindset change a little bit to help them succeed a little bit more. And a lot of the challenges associated with manufacturing specifically are, I think, two things. In relation to our product, it’s kind of the changing of the guard, where you have small to midsize manufacturing companies, maybe family owned or have folks that are getting to retirement age, those types of situations, where new blood’s coming in and maybe a little bit more open to some of these new ideas and technologies that are out there. So, that’s good.

A huge concern, and keep track of national news as far as what the challenges are, but specifically locally here to Minnesota there’s a huge challenge with finding skilled labor. Anything that you can do to help attract skilled and new folks that are coming out of school, even building it from that educational level to build, I guess, awareness around manufacturing to show that it’s cool and to show that there’s a lot of technology that’s in it. It’s only something that’s going to help improve the industry overall in our little tiny chunk of that. Kids coming up through school now really are used to using products at home on a consumer level, where we’re trying to make that experience translate into the immediate experience as well. So, just a little portion of what we can do to help maybe entice somebody to come and work for a company. Maybe that’s a little bit of grandeur, but those types of things are only going to attract more skilled labor into the industry and to help kind of that problem.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s a big sticking point with a lot of companies right now, especially with a lot of growth and… Yeah, it definitely is, how do we attract that skilled laborers back; and even more, as well, as that younger generation? So, certainly a lot of different things to sort of associate and to tackle there. So, one other question that I’ve got related to that is kind of switching back to the sort of this price transparency kind of challenge with ManufacturingPower. How are you guys… You kind of explain it there a little bit at the beginning, but what does that look like? How do you guys really do address this challenge? If I were to come on to use your product, what does that look like?

Yeah. So, great question. Thank you for asking that. So, the process is very easy. So, if a customer signs up, and we do offer what we call our Power Potential Report, and what that is basically is a customer can download some of the pricing information and part numbers. Okay? So, for example, if you have a distributor partner that you’re maybe shopping around, for example. So, if you have your industrial supply, you have three or four different distributors that you want to shop around for next year to see what that overall pricing package looks like in the contract, they do it for you. You upload your part numbers and pricing information, and the advantage is that nobody pays a book price. So, if you go online and search some of the larger distributors, nobody’s going to pay exactly what’s on there, for the most part. Okay? So, we collect anonymous invoice information. You get 100 part numbers, we’ll take a look at that or it’ll go into our pool of part numbers, and we’ll show you exactly what the true market price should be for those part numbers.

So, in a negotiation situation, if you’ve got four or five distributors that you send out to bid, or send out an RFQ for them to put together, our data can definitely help in that negotiation process for that big spend quantity. So, if you’ve got $100,000 in spend, we try to expose exactly where you can save the most money so that you can go back and negotiate the best pricing possible. Not only does it help in those larger scenarios, but on a day-to-day basis, we point you in the right direction to potentially get the best price. So, for example, if somebody comes in off the shop floor and says, “Hey, here’s 10 part numbers that I need in two days.” For example, a purchasing person would be able to use our software to quickly and easily check to see where and what those market prices should be so they can, again, make the best buying decision possible. We also have an RFQ builder, which is basically a one, two, three step process where they can plug in the information, and it sends that out to all the distributors that they choose to send it out to. Makes it very easy and organized.

Another thing is, as far as our product, one of the biggest benefits that we’ve found and our customers have found is the simple organization of the part numbers. We put it into one single source where if you have an ERP system, there might be 10 different part numbers for that one part number. You have capital X, Y, Z , and then there might be an X space, Y space, Z space. I mean, it can be all over the place you have it in a spreadsheet format. Where, we really look at the manufacturer part number, the distributor part number and description, and that’s how we collect all the data. And then, we show it to you in one single source so that you can see that by invoice and by just your catalog.

So, one quick question is, obviously, how are distributors reacting to this?

Well, we hope that they’re going to actually like us. At this point, we’re growing for sure. And I see some synergies that could potentially happen, and right now, we don’t get a ton of feedback from them. But yeah, hopefully, down the road, we’ll be able to work something out.

Yeah. It’s interesting because I think it’s one of those things that as a… We’re really talking about the B2B buying experience, and when you look at from a B2C perspective, how you and I purchase something, I mean that pricing transparency is… I mean, that’s been sort of the gold standard. I mean, if you think about it, there’s very few things that you can go and buy now that you don’t have transparency into. Probably the biggest thing that I’m thinking about, from a consumer standpoint right now that probably has the biggest clouded mystery is probably in healthcare. And you’re hearing a lot of talk about that on how they want to rip that open and look at… so, just as a whole, I feel like we are moving into this whole transparency piece, and you’re seeing the exact same thing happening in B2B. So, if I’m buying something from a consumer standpoint, but then also I put on my business hat, why am I not having that same experience? And I think that is that struggle that we’re going through right now.

I’m really happy that you said that, and I appreciate that because that’s really the goal that we want to bring to the industry. There are so many examples, the ones that we often use are TrueCar, using the bell shaped curve that they have, and you see the guy with the beard and he says on the commercials, “You see what other people pay for the exact same car.” The idea that we want to bring to people as well, so in the B2B space, why can’t you have the same experience? Now, Hotels, Trivago, they all expose what the best price paid for that is.

There’s a very specific one, and it’s very similar and I’ve got to know this team very well, but there’s a company called Farmer’s Business Network that started out very similar to us, where they looked at grain prices in certain counties in Iowa and counted grain prices and you use that data… or seed prices, excuse me. Seed prices. And they went around, collected that data, and used that to negotiate better pricing for their specific area. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Now, they have over 8,000 farmers as customers, and their business is doing very well .and they provide a lot of value to their customers, and that’s the model that we’re trying to go after too, it’s to really expose that, get the best prices for the manufacturers, the small to midsize manufacturers, and help them.

Yeah. No, it sounds like win to me. And it’s interesting because this obviously comes back, I mean distributors are taking hits right now. Obviously, with the whole e-comm piece and manufacturers saying, “Hey, there’s an opportunity to be able to go direct.” Obviously, pricing transparency piece right now. So, as me as a distributor, if I’m looking at it, there’s one word that I think that could help solve this. This is where you need to start thinking about it from a distribution standpoint, and that’s the piece around value: really be thinking about how to be able to provide more value. How do you have added value? Because it can’t be price. Price is a losing game. If that’s the only thing that you’re able to…

So, anyways, I think what you’re doing is pretty cool, and I think it’s exciting. We’re seeing more of this, we’re seeing a lot more… Even looking at things like Xometry, who we had on probably a couple months ago, and they’re coming in and it’s the ability… It’s like the Airbnb, if you will, or the Uber of custom manufacturers, where you can upload a CAD file and you can basically get pricing and estimates across all these different custom manufacturers inside their database. And so, it’s happening. Whether you like it or not, it’s happening, and that is where things are going. And there’s a lot more coming down the pipe.

You mentioned something in there that was pretty interesting. Now, I want to make clear, I don’t partner with any distributors, but I think the value that we can bring to them that they can tell their customer is that the end customer’s going to be exposed to the best pricing possible. Right? We don’t tell them, “Hey, distributor X, Y, Z, we don’t partner with them.” So, the advantage there is that we’re showing the distributors, through our RFQ process, we’re giving them opportunities to quote on things that they might not have had the opportunity to quote on, and pushing business their way. It might be small and incremental in kind of the day-to-day scenarios, but in the cases where they have to improve their value and show their value and prove that they want to be partners with these small-to-midsized sized manufacturers on a kind of a larger scale contract level, I think it’s a really good opportunity to show them that they’re embracing this new technology, but also looking to partner with the small to midsize manufacturers and show them their real, true value.

Absolutely. And be able to show, yeah, show the true value, and like you mentioned in there… I’m glad you clarified that, that you’re just looking kind of as a whole, the snapshot as a whole. But yeah, to be able to work with that data, I would certainly want to know that, like where is everything going and where… Okay, well… Hey, you may find out, “Hey, we’re actually undercharging. Maybe we need to, as a whole… How can we provide more value so that a customer feels, ‘Hey, we’re paying X percent more, but gosh, man, these guys are doing this and this and this. Okay, we don’t mind.'”

Data’s more valuable than gold right now, I’d say. And working with and developing synergies, not only with the end user customer, but also with distributors, and different avenues for us is really… We want it to work for everybody. Maybe that’s a little naive, I’m not sure. But the data will prove that, and as we collect and gather more data, we’ll be able to kind of make those decisions moving forward. So, for us, it’s really all about the data, collecting it to find the best pricing possible, helping the small to midsize manufacturers really grow and succeed is our main goal.

Awesome. Well, Mike sounds like you guys are onto something, and I’m excited to see where you guys go over the next several years. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today on IndustrialSage. So, for those, I’m sure want to come check you guys out, manufacturingpower.com. That’s the URL?

Absolutely. Yeah.

All right.

We got the .com, so that’s really important.

That is very important. So, thank you again. And again, if anyone wants to come check you guys out, manufacturingpower.com

Yeah, manufacturingpower.com. There’s several ways to connect with us. Sign up for the newsletter, sign up for a demo, sign up for a multitude of things. We really want to be in touch with you, and if you have questions, please let us know. We’re also in some magazine articles right now, which you’ll see on the website. And Danny, I can’t thank you enough. This is fantastic. I really appreciate it, and thank you for your time as well.

Well, I really enjoyed it, getting to know you a little bit more and about ManufacturingPower, and I’m excited about all things in the future to come.

Thanks. Right back at you.

All right. Thanks. Okay, and that wraps up this episode, this Executive Series with IndustrialSage with ManufacturingPower. I really like what Mike and his team are doing over there, just tackling this whole transparency, pricing issue, relative to small and medium sized manufacturers, when they’re buying their industrial supplies and MRO, and just to get a sense of what they’re paying as a whole. This shift we’re seeing, this ripple effect of how as consumers, from B2C purchases that we’re making, we have access to all this information. B2B, maybe not so much, but it’s coming down to the tracks. So, be thinking about that.

So, that’s all I’ve got for you. If you’d like to learn more about them, you can go to manufacturingpower.com. We have a link to their website in the show notes, if you’re listening on any of the podcast news stations. That’s all I’ve got for today. Thank you for watching or listening, and I’ll be back next week with another episode of IndustrialSage.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get every new episode, blog article, and content offer sent directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!

Today, we’re going to talk about how your website is very similar to a trade show. Digital marketing: similar to a trade show.

Here’s the thing, I think a lot of people have a disconnect, and they feel that this whole digital marketing thing is, new ways of marketing versus the traditional sense. And we go to trade shows and we know that the vast majority of manufacturers are doing that, and they’re still doing that– not to knock trade shows. You do need to do those, they are great, but there’s a lot left. There’s a lot of opportunity on the digital side that could be learned from it. Our insights report that… If you haven’t downloaded it, go do it. In our insights, we talked to 150 manufacturers. You guys told us, the vast majority of manufacturers are doing trade shows. And here’s the thing. a lot of people are a little afraid of jumping in the digital marketing piece because of the unknowns. And so what I wanted to do in today’s episode was just sort of break down some of those barriers, and to realize that it’s kind of the same thing.

You know, it’s interesting when you kind of break it down. This actually came out and we did an episode actually on this I think a couple months ago. But this is going to be a little bit more detailed. We were at MODEX… No I’m sorry, we were not at MODEX, we were at AHR Expo. So this is… I can’t remember the name of the acronym. Basically this was like heating and air… HVAC type contractors, and it was huge in Atlanta. Was probably in January or February of 2019. And so I was there with Joseph, who maybe you’ve met or seen on previous episodes. He does some of the on-camera interviews. And we were talking to a couple people, and he told me after, he said, “You know, I had a really interesting thought. As we’re at a booth,” he said, “Man, the whole trade show experience is exactly like a website.”

So, why? Let’s break it down. The first thing is when you go to a trade show, well, why do you go? You’ve got customers that are existing customers, you have prospective customers there, you have people that could buy your product and service all under one roof for you know, whatever: a day or two or three, whatever that is. And so you set up a booth, right? And the whole point of that booth is you want to get people to your booth so you can talk to them. So your booth, you set it up, it’s a platform so people can come check you out. That’s your website. So think about that: your website equals the booth. The next thing that you want to do, well you want to get people to your website. Well, we might call that booth traffic in trade show land. In digital marketing we’re going to call that web traffic. Same thing: we want to get people to the website. So you’re starting to see some of the similarities here.

So all right, let’s break it down a little bit further. What are some ways that people use to attract people to your trade show booth? Well, all kinds of things. Let’s start off with design and size. You look at a trade show booth with a really nice design, they’ve got slick lights and a really nice setup. They’ve got the couches with the upstairs lounge, and just visually, you walk by and you’re like, “Wow. That looks impressive.” What does that tell you? That creates like a subconscious message in your mind that these guys have got it going on. Why? Because they’ve spent a lot of money and it looks really nice. They just look the part. Now, you and I know that may be true, that may not be. They may not be the part at all, but they darn look good. But that’s a starting piece. That’s the starting thing. Same thing with a website. You go to a website and it looks like crap, what do you think? Or it looks really nice and shiny and clean, you’re like, “Oh.” What do you think– that’s going to make you think, “Okay these guys might have got it going on.” They might not have it going on. It may be a complete ruse! But at least that first step of, “Hmm, these guys look legit…” We start that conversation. You know, start developing that relationship that way. So, think of the similarities.

Okay, what are some other ways people attract people in? All right well… Graphics, digital signage. You know when we were at ProMat this last year, lots of digital signage. lots of video content. And what I thought was interesting as a little bit of a side note is that you were seeing a lot of exploration of digital signage and video use in different ways. So in other words, instead of having just like a TV screen, your traditional like rectangular-shape video, you might have like a whole wall. Toyota had entire sections of their trade show booth that were like video walls, and there’d be a static image. So I remember looking at it and at first I saw it and it was just an image of a warehouse. Until I realized I started seeing a forklift going up and it was like pulling a product off a shelf. And I was like, “That whole thing’s a video!? That’s awesome!” And it literally was wrapped around the whole thing, this whole cube, this box. And then it would change and there would be different content and stuff. And I just thought, “That’s really an interesting and intriguing way of being able to drive you in.” And they’re able to rotate it out. So you’re seeing a lot of that. Maybe video that fits a doorway or different things. So, thinking of a different way of using video. They’re doing that as well. Well, hey. What’s happened on websites? Video is a very strong and attractive way of being able to bring people to your website. To keep them there. The same sort of thing on a trade show. The goal is to be able to communicate your value proposition to somebody across the room. You know, maybe it’s way up, then you’re like, “Oh that caught my eye, that’s interesting. Who is that, what’s going on? Oh, wow. Huh. I think I want to go check that out.” Same thing on your website. You can use that video content to quickly give a synopsis of who you are and to invite them to learn more about who you are. Maybe you can solve their challenge for them. So that’s a really good thing.

So, be thinking. There’s a lot of other things, but design, video content, offers, it’s got to look nice. It has to look inviting. The key word that works in both trade shows and in the digital website world, is “attracting”. We talk about the inbound methodology a lot. We’ve got a great workflow about how to use inbound for manufacturers. And essentially what that is, it’s the idea of instead of us reaching out cold to people who might have a need for us, but they may or may not – again, this is not saying that cold reach is bad, not at all– but attracting people to our website because we’re providing answers to their solutions, using blogs and SEO and other content where people are actively searching. They’ve got a pain, “Oh how do I do… I need a custom pressure sensor for this,” or “What’s the spec,” and boom, it pulls up and then it draws me in. We are attracting people to our website and you do that by providing relevant and valuable information that helps solve challenges for them. So, it’s sort of the same thing. We want to attract people to our websites, so maybe into our trade show booth.

There’s a lot of other things you see obviously in the trade show booth. You have the magician, you’ve got the cappuccinos, you’ve got the food, you’ve got the entertainers, you’ve got all this other stuff. So you’ve got similar things on the website. And maybe you might use things like social media, using ads as ways to kind of grab people’s attention, and drive them to the website. So, same thing. Grab people’s attention, maybe you have that professional actor who’s grabbing people to bring ’em into your website, bring ’em into your trade show booth, so you can learn a little bit more.

Now, once you get to the trade show, this is the next thing. How do we convert leads? Converting leads digitally is, we hop onto your website, we don’t know who you are, how do we get them to identify themselves? And you do that by things like content offers. So what that is, maybe it’s an ebook. Or maybe it’s something that’s going to really help me solve a challenge that I have. I’m willing to put my email address and do that. Okay, what does that look like on the website… Or sorry not the website, the trade show. A lot of people like at ProMat for example, we saw a lot of education going on. So you think of the guys or the gals you know on the booths with the earpiece in, talking about their product, their case studies, or different educational-type seminars that’s happening. Bring ’em in, let’s sit here, I’m interested, I kind of want to look at this. And maybe you’re like… “Oh, I don’t… I’m… Not ready to talk to a salesperson yet,” even though they’re going to come talk to you. You know, it’s going to draw you in and we’re going to start providing education. Same thing digitally, right? We talked about the content offers.

Blogging, this is where it’s really valuable. A lot of people think that blogging is… “Oh it’s the mommy bloggers. We’re industrial, we don’t need to be doing that.” Yeah, you do. Here’s why. Because that is how you get your message out about the pains that you solved, the solutions that you have. But don’t talk about yourself, like, “Oh we’re amazing,” or whatever. Talk about the solutions, the pains that your customers have and how to solve them. That’s going to attract them in. Same thing with the educational-type content. Webinars are another great thing that you use in a website to kind of convert those leads. Attract them, convert ’em, and say, “We’ve got some really valuable content. A case study on how implementing our solution reduced operating expenses by 15% last year for XYZ company. And that 15% was you know, a lot of zeros at the end of that number.” Okay, you’ve got my attention. I’d like to hear how they did that. I will put my information in and I will do that. So, you know back to trade show land. Education piece, website, education, webinars, blog articles, that kind of thing; and we’re converting people.

You know, the other thing that you’re going to see is, obviously you’re going to have some sort of interaction with a salesperson at a… inside of a trade show booth. Same thing online. And that is going to be sort of the quasi-mix of downloading those content offers and engaging there. And we’re seeing things like chatbots. Think about this, think of like a chatbot as sort of a roving salesperson on the trade show booth floor. If you’re not familiar with this, this is when you go to a website and a little button pops up or a little thing pops up, you know, bottom left corner or bottom right corner of the screen; and it’s like, “Hey I’m the Dannybot,” or whatever or, “The company bot.” Or maybe it’s an actual person: “Hey, what are you here for? What can I help you with?” And you start giving them information. Maybe they’re like, “I’m here to learn about XYZ product.” “Oh great, let me move you to this over here.” It’s the same sort of thing we’re seeing at the trade show floor booth. Did I say that right? Trade show floor in your booth, yes. So there you go, we’re converting leads. Those salespeople are talking to people, we’re getting to know them, qualifying them, figuring out where they fit, start getting some education, start on that sales process.

And then, you know what is going to happen both at the end of that trade show and in these interactions we’re having on the website is, we’ve got to nurture those leads. Now you and I both know that you go to a website and the vast majority of people that you meet are not ready to buy. You know, it’s whatever: they don’t have the budget, authority, the need, timing, one of those four things doesn’t fit. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not a good customer for down the road. We’ve got long sales cycles. This could take two years or more to sell in. Maybe shorter, hopefully shorter. But it could take longer. So we have to nurture those leads digitally. And this is sort of the piece that you’re going to see that you should really have across the board with your trade shows and digital, is having email marketing and different ways of being able to continue facilitating that conversation. Particularly with those leads who are not ready to buy, because they’re not necessarily qualified. Maybe they’re marketing qualified, but they’re not sales qualified.

So there you go. This is kind of a little bit of a quick breakdown of sort of that analogy of that you know, really trade shows when you think about it, are very similar to that digital experience we’re having on a website; and when you start thinking about that, the ability to be able to implement digital marketing into your organization really means that you could have a trade show all the time. Imagine that.

You know, one of the challenges with a trade show– it’s great, and I’ve seen this before you go there, and all of a sudden you’re overwhelmed. It’s inevitable. You know, you go to lunch, somebody inevitably somebody goes to lunch, they’re gone, and then all of a sudden there’s like an influx of people that come in; and you’re like “Aaah, I can’t get to everybody!” And there’s nothing worse than talking to somebody and then like, you’re eyeing somebody over to the left. You’re like, “Don’t go away, I’m going to finish with you, this is good, don’t go away. Let me just finish. Okay!… Darn it, they’re gone! Agh!” That happens all the time. The beautiful thing about digital marketing is that you can have those conversations at scale. And not just that at a finite three-day window, you can have that conversation all day everyday, 24/7. That’s the beauty.

Now, am I telling you to not do trade shows? No. I’m not telling you not to do trade shows. In fact, you should be doing them. They’re important. Use digital means as a way to really facilitate meetings and conversations before you actually get there. Have email campaigns prepped and ready to go before you actually get there. Make sure you’ve got sales calls and meetings and all that stuff lined up before you hit the floor, not like, “Hey we get here, day one, let’s go.” That stuff’s got to be lined up way ahead of time. Have email campaigns ready to go the second you meet. Let’s say you scan their badge and there’s a whole workflow, whole chain of emails and stuff that go out there to be able to continue to facilitate that conversation. And then on the back end, we want to do the same thing there. Continue on that conversation. Obviously if those who are more sales qualified and ready to go right then and there, boom. Let’s hit it. But you need to be doing this.

So just think about it. Think about it for a second. What would it mean to you? If you do a lot of trade shows, what would it mean to you if you were able to have that trade show experience 24/7 on your website? It doesn’t matter, it could be in all the countries all over the world, wherever your target market is, at whatever time they want to buy that you have that experience ready to go for them. That’s the power of digital marketing. That’s where we’re going. So anyways, it’s exciting. We like it. I bet you can tell I geek out on this stuff. Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for you. Hopefully you found this valuable. Take one or two of these things and implement them. Please do it. Just do it, right? Don’t bite off the whole thing. Maybe you know, crawl, walk, run. Take that approach.

So anyways, if you have any questions about this topic, like hey, how should we roll out on this, or what should this look like, just reach out to us. Reach out to us your questions and we’ll answer ’em on the show. So IndustrialSage.com/questions. If you need help developing a strategy or trying to figure this out, let us know. Because we’re rolling out with all these different services around video marketing, digital marketing, road mapping strategy, execution of all these things; And we can help you, and we’ve love to help you, and we’ve got a lot of clients that we’re doing this for to help them kind of like navigate the waters and all that good stuff. So anyways, that’s all I got for today. Thanks for watching. If you are checking this out on social media, share the love, that’d be awesome. If you’re listening on any of the podcasting stations, a review would be awesome. And yeah, keep coming to our website, if you’re not on it, get our email list. We’ve got a lot of great content. That’s all I’ve got for you today, thanks for watching, and I will check in next week with another great episode of IndustrialSage. Thanks.

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