Only a tiny fraction of your total addressable market is ready to buy right today.

Does that mean you ignore everyone else?

Of course not. You need to get their attention, gain their trust and when it’s time to buy, they’ll turn to you…

But only if you make it easy.

There’s no guest today, just me, Joe Sullivan, your dutiful host and Thinker & Founder at Gorilla 76, and in this episode, I’ll be going over the 8 ways you can make it easier for your buyers to buy.

Subscribe to The Manufacturing Executive on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.

There is no reason manufacturing needs to be dominated by men — even if it, historically, always was.

Yet today, as other sectors become more representative, one look around most manufacturing sites and you’ll notice the lack of women immediately. 

Why are we lagging behind? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

My guest today, Lesley Ledwell Dukelow , Company President at Ledwell, is a 4th-generation female leader of a family-owned manufacturing business and she has some ideas about how we can tackle the gender gap in manufacturing.


In this episode, we discuss:
-Supply chain issues in the wake of COVID
-Why the labor shortage demands we hire from more underrepresented groups, including women
-Why women are less represented in manufacturing and what we can do about it

To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

If you’ve ever been curious how well management takes care of its employees at any given organization, there is one really simple way to find out: 

Check out the employee bathroom. 

That may seem funny, but… think about it — if management can’t take care of the bathrooms, how well can they really be taking care of its employees?

That simple test is wisdom today’s guest, Mark Whitten , President & CEO at Spartanburg Steel Products , has learned over years of successful leadership in which he has lived by a maxim that seems to have fallen by the wayside: Lead by example. 

In this episode, we discuss:
-Why leaders should work alongside their employees (and keep the bathrooms clean)
-How to achieve 2.0 transformation as a leader
-How leaders in manufacturing should respond to Gen Z’s entrance into the workforce

To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

You hear people talk a lot about a labor shortage in manufacturing and automation and robotics are a great way to tackle it. 

Not just to replace jobs — but to find more workers. 

If only we could get over manufacturing’s technology hesitancy problem. 

Today’s guest, Erik Nieves, Founder at PlusOne Robotics, can help you do just that. That’s because, in his years of experience in robotics, he’s seen a solution to every excuse for why automation won’t work.

In this episode, we discuss:

-The problem of technology hesitancy (and how it hurts smaller manufacturers more)
-How to build a strategy around automation
-Whether there really is a labor shortage and why, if there is, robots can help


To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Without our dealers and distributors, who would sell our products? Without us, what would they sell? 
We need each other. 
Why then is the relationship so often strained? 
Today’s guest, Tom Paul, Founder & CEO at BAM!, says it doesn’t have to be. All it takes is a little work from both parties… and maybe reading at least one 25-year-old article. 
In this episode, we discuss:
-Why the manufacturer-dealer relationship is so often fractured (and 3 steps to fixing it)
-The solution BAM! has created that helps address these very issues
-Why you shouldn’t pick your SaaS solutions based on Lord of the Rings
To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify..
Tom Paul can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-paul/ 
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Manufacturing Executive in your favorite podcast player.

If your content strategy starts with whether there’s keyword search volume around your SEO terms, you’re starting at step five.
Here’s step one: conduct customer interviews to learn what they value and prioritize.
In this episode, I interview Gorilla 76’s own Grace Wright and Aaron Weekes, both Thinker and Strategist, about creating winning content that starts with customers, not keywords.
In this episode we discuss:
-Making your customer’s success the object of your content
-Getting the right messages to the right people
-Providing one of these three qualities: best, first, or different
-Starting your content strategy with the right questions (lots and lots of them)
-Forecasting the future of SEO tactics
Grace Wright can be reached at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-wright-76940312a/ 
Aaron Weekes can be reached at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronmichaelweekes/
To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Manufacturing Show in your favorite podcast player.

Data collection, automation, robotics — these are things reserved for the budgets of the biggest companies out there, right?
Wrong. Anyone can do it with one simple trick:
Just get started.
That’s the simple advice shared by our latest guest, Aaron Prather, R&D Evangelist for FedEx Express, who is deeply passionate about both topics — and if you don’t believe me, just check out his LinkedIn.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The benefits of data collection, automation and robotics for your business
- Why you don’t need to fear robots stealing your jobs
- Why success in either involves getting started and employee input
To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here.

You’ve probably heard about the infamous skills gap in manufacturing — a problem only made worse by the pandemic.
It has the potential to affect our lives in profound ways; even our national security is at stake.
And if we expect to solve it, we need to get creative — like, say, starting a nationally-televised Skills Draft?
That’s one of the creative solutions today’s guest, Dr. Jason Scales, Business Manager, Education at Lincoln Electric, proposes to avoid the coming skills depression.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why COVID widened the skills gap
- What a Skills Draft is and why it could change the national culture around high-skilled employment
- What manufacturers should be doing to help today’s youth get excited for —and see a viable future in — the industry
To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here.

At first, his entry into the manufacturing industry was out of a need for survival.
But it quickly grew into a passion to encourage those who want to become a better version of themselves to embrace the hope, pride, and success to be found in manufacturing.
In this episode, I interview Tony Gunn, General Manager at MTDCNC Global and Founder and CEO at Your Tea of Life, about his amazing career trajectory from being kicked out of three colleges to entrepreneurship.
In this episode we discuss:

How manufacturing equips us to create our own futures
Tony’s discovery of his passion for learning and creating
Why manufacturing is such a welcoming and uplifting career
3 stories about struggle, success, and advocacy

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

Tony’s podcast is The Gunn Show

To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Manufacturing Executive in your favorite podcast player.

The manufacturing sector is desperate for more diversity in gender, generation, race, ability, and other underrepresented populations.
Quite frankly, the situation is dire. Your business won’t survive unless you create a more diverse and inclusive culture, both organization- and industry-wide.
In this episode, I interview Andrew Crowe, Founder of the Elevate Institute of Advanced Manufacturing and Justin Sherman, Founder at Equity Machine Works SPC, about attracting young, diverse talent in manufacturing.
Here’s what Drew, Justin, and I talked about:

The extreme numbers that show the need for diversity in manufacturing
The strong connection between culture and diversity
Strategies to attract young folks to a manufacturing career
What leaders of diverse teams should and shouldn’t do
First steps in how to grow a more diverse team

To ensure that you never miss an episode of The Manufacturing Executive, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or here.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Manufacturing Executive in your favorite podcast player.