The Skills Gap Is Your Fault with Matt Kirchner

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Automation Ladies, the only podcast we know of where girls talk about industrial automation. Welcome to another episode of Automation Ladies. This is just Nikki today. This is actually a really fun kind of uh exchange. I was on a podcast earlier this year called the Tech Ed Podcast. If you didn't catch it, please go find it. Wonderful podcast in the area of manufacturing technology education. And the host, Matt Kirkner, is now here with us as a guest on Automation Ladies. So, Matt, thank you so much for joining us. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Nikki, I'm awesome. It's so great to be with you. I appreciate the opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Yeah, very much. I appreciate you being on. I know you're very busy. It took us a while to get the scheduled. So even though I'm having a uh very crazy day, I was like, nope, there's no way I'm rescheduling this one. So I'm really glad you're here.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, likewise. It's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Okay, so my first question, let's just jump right into it. Um I like to ask this question with the lens of both getting letting our audience get to know you. And then also kind of like, what the heck brought you into this path that you're on? Um, because I find that most people in automation, controls, manufacturing, not very many of them kind of had a really straight path coming here. Um and it's always refreshing, I guess, when I hear somebody that really did, but for the most part, it's usually kind of surprising twists and turns. So I'd love to hear, um, with as much specificity as you'd like to give us, uh, what do you do now and

A Surprise Leap Into Manufacturing Leadership

SPEAKER_03 1:20

how did you get here?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Absolutely. So uh, you know, first of all, life is full of twists and turns, but that's the beauty of life, right? So uh whether you're having a crazy day, whether you're having an easy day, whether you think you know uh what the plan is for your life, there's you know, there's certainly something bigger than all of us that has a different plan. And so a part of a big part of what we have to do is just understand that and and and follow along. Doesn't mean we don't work hard, it doesn't mean we're not creative. It means that we are open to the fact that life is never going to run exactly the way that we expect that it will. And that is that is the beauty of it. My life is an example of that, uh, as is yours, by the way. I should start out by talking about the fact that I love what you guys are doing on Automation Ladies, love the fact that you're telling the story of manufacturers, of what's happening in the space of manufacturing as technologies like AI and machine learning and certainly automation are totally, totally changing manufacturing. And so, so kudos to you for the incredible work that you're doing, and I'm really, really honored to be joining you to talk about this, Nikki. As far as my path, um, I you know I found my way into manufacturing somewhat somewhat serendipitously. I I was actually started in the the financial end of the world, and this is going back a long time, 30 years ago, believe it or not, and um had my first uh my first um job in manufacturing was with a radio frequency ID company. Now we're talking about the mid-1990s, and I'm not gonna tell you my whole life story, that's boring, but this is a great story about how life takes us in directions that we don't always expect. Uh, I was working for a, like I said, an RFID company. I was on the finance side of that business. Uh, the company was not performing well, and I got a phone call one morning, and I heard that the president and the vice president had both been fired by the board of directors. And uh, about an hour after that, my phone rang. It was the chairman of the board, and he said, uh, I need to see you in my office later this morning. And I knew the writing was on the wall, right? I mean, they're firing the whole management team. I'm done. I literally packed up my office, kind of spent a couple minutes walking through the plant before I got in my car, drove downtown Milwaukee about 30 minutes away, walked into his big posh, beautiful investment banker office, sat down, ready to take my medicine, and he said, you know, we're really disappointed in how this business is performing. And I said, I know. And he said, Um, you know, we needed to make some some important changes. And I said, I understand. He said, we fired the president and vice president. I said, yes, I heard that. He said, and then he paused, and I'm like, all right, here it comes. And he said, we need someone to run the company. Do you think you're up for it? And that was literally like I was 20, 25, maybe just 26. I think I was still 25 years old. Uh ended up being the chief operating officer of that company. Um, you know, we we turned it around, we made it a successful business. That was my foray into manufacturing leadership. And so I kind of walked, I shouldn't say walked away, but kind of morphed from the finance side of the business into operations and into uh executive leadership. Um, you know, following that, I ran a uh the largest contract metal finishing company in the world for uh for 10 years. That was a spinoff of Rockwell Automation. Uh after that, I did a private equity backed company in the in the um paint powder coat and e-coat space. Uh and then so this leads to what we're doing now. I saw lives totally transformed by careers in manufacturing. You see these every day. You see the people who start out sweeping the floor and end up running the company, pause anywhere along the way, have an amazing career, a rewarding career in advanced manufacturing. After we sold our private equity back manufacturing company, and that ended the way that you dream those things do, we certainly had options about what we wanted to do next. And I decided I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to securing the American dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. And we've stayed true to that mission now for 11 years. It takes a lot of forms. We own three companies in the ed tech space, uh Lab Midwest, ATS Midwest, and Mission Learning Systems collectively. They're not, they're one of, if not the largest distributor of technical education learning systems in the country. We also, as you suggested earlier, have a media company. It's the Tech Ed Media Group, owns the tech ed podcast. You're, you know, you're an amazing podcast on the automation side. We focus more on STEM and technical education exclusively. We're routinely ranked in the top 1% of 1% of technology podcasts on the globe. But everything that we do is all around that mission of securing the American dream for the next generation. It's super rewarding work, and I just love talking about it.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

Yeah. Uh wow, that's a

RFID And The Real Security Stakes

SPEAKER_03 5:35

lot. I first of all, RFID. It's funny. You know, some of these things come and go, some things are staples to stay, and some technologies just keep kind of finding their way into new places. One of the things that we're actually showing at Automate this year with WinTech is we have a new RFID enabled HMI. And the technology's not new, right? Of course, it's been around for a really long time, but having it just completely integrated into an HMI for uh, you know, an operator to be able to walk up and scan their badge. And, you know, with all the concerns around cybersecurity and physical security and and all these other things, right? And more automation, more recipe driven things. You you need this logging, audit logging, right? Access control. Um so that I I I tried hard not to interrupt you and be like, oh, oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Uh yeah, no, I love it. Well, and I'm doing the same thing. I'm trying to play play the guest and not the host because what you just said like elicited like 10 questions in my mind, because that sounds like really cool tech. And and you're exactly right on the cybersecurity side, being able to make sure that whoever's making changes to a program, a process, you know, a customer part, whatever, that they have authorization to do that. It sounds like that's exactly what you're doing. So uh we'll have to have you back on the tech ed podcast sometime to talk all about that technology, but I I won't hijack yours.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Let's do that. Okay, we get a couple of nonlinear thinkers here. So we just you know, have to be prepared for that eventuality that we may end up on some tangents together. Um, but yeah, I saw this uh post. I guess one of our team members, Albert, uh, he's been very good about kind of educating me um about my neurodivergence and things. And that he sent me this really funny video of somebody explaining like their thought process of how they got from like, hey, we're talking about A, and all of a sudden I asked you about, you know, Z, but here's how I got there. And it was all these different associations of like, oh, this relates to that, relates to that, relates to that.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

And so nonverbal ones, right? Yeah. I mean, it's going on in their head. Yep, I got the same thing. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

Uh and I think that also speaks to like clearly, you're you're a man of kind of many talents and you see opportunity in different places. The the American dream thing also, we we spoke a little bit before we got on the air um about PMMI and how I attended the executive leadership conference uh a couple months ago and saw Mike Rowe talk from Dirty Jobs. He of course has the Mike Rowe Foundation, uh, which he gives scholarships to people to go into uh these skill trade jobs.

Defining The American Dream Today

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Um and I still owe like more content about his pledge that he makes people sign because I think it's just really cool. Uh and one of the things that the pledge kind of um are you familiar with that by the way?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

No, but it would refresh my memory. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Okay. So to receive this microworks scholarship that he uh offers, the participant have to sign a personal kind of pledge to say that they value hard work and they're gonna go in and do their best every day and they're gonna, you know, they're grateful for the opportunity. And, you know, being here in America is like the, you know, you are grateful for having the opportunity that you do. And uh we're basically kind of taking like personal responsibility for their success if they're given the opportunity, right? And to take advantage of these tools and not, you know, whine and cry about oh, this and oh that. It's like, okay, you have all the opportunity in the world. You are now being given money to go pursue this opportunity. And so one of the things that he really wants people to do is kind of think internally and be like, I'm gonna be responsible for my success with this opportunity. And he said that it's funny because some people will apply and like their parents will try to red line the pledge and be like, you know, why should my child agree to this? And some of the things are, I mean, I I'm they're not political, but it is kind of like, okay, I'm grateful to be in America and to have these opportunities and to have the opportunity for hard work and all these things. So it just kind of brought me back to thinking about this American dream. A lot of talk, you know, in popular media discourse about it being dead and that this and about that, and you know, people complaining that that the economy is really not set up for their success. And like, yes, we can argue those points all day long. But I would love to hear from you like, what does that mean to you? And what I guess that was such a strong catalyst that it made you go from corporate world, you know, making money, and you probably could have stayed doing that for a long time, built another company, bought another company, advised PEs, like private equity companies on buying more companies like yours. There's a lot of that going on. Infinite opportunity, I'm sure that you had at the the conclusion of your last successful venture. What really is that passion for the American dream and what do you think it is?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah, absolutely. And and to be to be fair, I still do a lot of the things that you just talk about. So I'm on private equity boards, I'm on you know, corporate boards. Um, we still we're investors in probably, I don't know, 10 or 11 right now, different um small to mid-sized manufacturing companies, and we consider that part of our mission as well. So it's so I didn't have to leave all of that behind to do what we're doing now. And certainly our ed tech businesses um, you know, do just fine economically as well. But specific to the the work that we're doing on the on the American dream side of things, I mean, it first of all, I'll preface it by saying I agree with you. We don't want to go down the rabbit hole of, you know, did um you know, did the baby boomers screw it up for Gen Z? What about the millennium? I mean, we can argue about all that kind of stuff all day long. I just I prefer to stay out of that fray. To me, the American dream has always been this idea that the generation that comes next can have it better than we did. And and from our inception and from the very founding documents of this of this great country, that's been the truth, right? We're about to celebrate our 250th anniversary uh as a country and successive generations, and not necessarily every single individual, but generalizing, every every generation has had it better than the one that came before it. I just saw a quote yesterday that from Warren Buffett that's kind of paraphrasing, but it's like it doesn't matter, you know, people that are even living at the poverty level today have a better standard of living, believe it or not, than John D. Rockefeller did when he was walking the face of the earth in terms of the technology that's available to us, the creature comforts, the medical care, the nutrition. I mean, here in America, it is still that great place of golden opportunity. I travel all over the world. I've been to both China and to Europe in the last six months. Um, you know, there's great places all over the all over the world, but America is still that place where you can, like I said, you can start out sweeping the floor in a manufacturing company and end up running the business. I think the challenge that we have sometimes is if people either A, don't spend a lot of time reflecting on history, or B, don't spend a lot of time being grateful for what they have. It's easy to go down this, you know, this idea that, oh my goodness, you know, I think there was a recent survey that the millennials said that they had it harder than any previous generation. I mean, I don't, that's just, you know, I don't care how hard you had it. That's a ridiculous thing to believe if you know American history or know history in general. Um, I will say this. I I just two days ago I was up in Wausau, Wisconsin. Um, my father-in-law, who's a Vietnam vet, did his honor flight, right? And so it was, you know, now the you know, the World War II generation, the greatest generation is kind of, you know, most of them have have passed away and gone on to greener pastures, but we still have our Korean vets, some World War II vets, mainly Korean vets, Vietnam vets. I mean, you think about the horrors of war, you think about what these people did to protect our very freedoms. Um, you know, I walked through the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam about three weeks ago, and it that's not that long ago. You know, 80 years ago, uh you you literally had people because of their religion in Europe were being exterminated. I mean, and so we can't take this freedom for granted. We have it here in the United States. It's it's not a it's certainly a birthright, but it isn't guaranteed unless we unless we protect it for ourselves. And so to me, that's what the American dream is all about. It's recognizing our history, recognizing what a great opportunity and great time it is to be an American, despite our all our faults, and we certainly have them, and and how bright the future is if we play our cards right. This is still that incredible land of opportunity, and that's what the American Dream is all about is how do we create even better opportunities for our kids than we had ourselves?

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Love that. I I agree with you. I feel like sometimes the context gets lost. It's easier to to compare ourselves to either our neighbor or our most recent history, right? The things that that we have kind of in our circle. And and the truth is the world the big world, wide world is so much bigger than that, and then our history of the universe is so much longer than what we any any single generation can remember, right? And yeah, statistically, we are like we've never been better off as a as a human race and especially as a country. Um but I think it's easy to fall prey to looking around you and going, oh poor me. I you know, I don't have this or I don't have that or things are so hard. Um I do think that maybe because of just this the ability to compare ourselves and to have all this information and all these things like sold to us all the time, it can maybe feel like things are worse, right? If you choose not to exercise that gratitude and really choose to kind of look at the the brighter side of things um and the opportunities in front of you, there's always something negative anybody can focus on. And I'll say with us and the ladies, like the last few years that we've had, uh it would be very easy to be down in the dumps and and not be excited about what we're doing anymore. Um but ultimately it's like, yeah, that doesn't get you anywhere. So let's focus on what the opportunity is and and let's try to move things forward. Um, so in that, do you still like obviously you're you're passionate about the manufacturing industry being a big part of that and being an opportunity for people to achieve the American dream? Do you think that that's

Why Manufacturing Can Still Deliver Mobility

SPEAKER_03 15:05

changed at all in the last like decade or so? Or is it still um about the same? Like, are we making an impact? Are we making a change? Or are we, you know, some of the things that's like some of the candid conversations I'm having too is like we all want to bring more people into this industry. But the reality is in some cases, it does, you know, these positions could be better paid. There could be better culture at some of these workplaces, right? So we all want to toot the horn of like come into manufacturing. It's such a great place to be, it's such a great opportunity. Well, at the same time, it's like, yeah, there probably are also some challenges that are really holding us back. I guess, yeah, it's not really a very pointed question, but do you have any thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

No, I totally, I totally follow you. So I I would say, first of all, this um agree with with a lot of what you said. Are we making progress? Yes, absolutely. I can tell you that the kinds of conversations we're having generally in education with advanced manufacturing companies are a lot different than they felt 10 years ago. Um, and and I'll tell you, I know you're doing some really cool, um, some really cool writing and writing some uh some content for a couple of really high-profile organizations. Congratulations on that. I love to write. Uh, I've been writing for Gardener Business Media, which you know, folks will recognize um uh what they call properties or magazines like modern machine chop, production machining, products finishing, and those, those are all owned by a company called Gardener Business Media in Cincinnati, Ohio. I've been writing leadership columns for them now over 21 years every single month, believe it or not. Um I wrote a column, it was right about 2016, give or take a year, and it was aimed at manufacturers and it made a lot of them really, really mad. But the the but the title of that column was The Skills Gap is Your Fault. And my whole idea, and we still see some of this, and it drives me crazy. But people, you know, they sit around a table and they talk about this next generation doesn't want to, doesn't want to work. This uh next generation isn't interested in manufacturing, they don't have any skills. I mean, you still see some of that, but I can tell you, I mean, you're walking through uh a lot of high schools now have advanced manufacturing programs. You see awesome automation, you see awesome smart technology, industry 4.0 technology. So high schools are teaching that at the high school level, even some of that at the middle school level. We didn't have that 10 years ago. I would say the state of our technical education programs in our technical and community colleges in terms of adopting cutting edge technology way beyond what we saw 10 years ago. So I think we are definitely making progress. That doesn't mean that we don't have a long way to go. And it also doesn't mean that the skills and competencies that could make somebody successful in tech in manufacturing 10 years ago and certainly 20 or 30 years ago are the ones that are gonna be relevant going forward. And so the idea is that the the manufacturing person of the future is gonna be a lot more technologically adept. They're not gonna, they're gonna be a lot more, I don't want to call them AI native, but they're gonna be digitally native. And they're gonna understand how we can drive continuous improvement and advance performance in manufacturing using tools that we never had at our disposal 20 or 30 years ago. That's why, and I'll end with this on this question. That's why I'm so, so uh motivated to get young people excited about applied artificial intelligence, about digital transformation, about industry 4.0 technology, uh, you know, about manufacturing plants being the kind of places that people would want to come to work, because the fact is that we do have to have a good solid culture in our business. Every business has a culture. The question is whether you define it yourself or whether you let it be defined for you. We have to have an organization where people are excited to come into work, where it is a clean manufacturing plant. I tell people if you have the old dark, dirty, dangerous manufacturing facility, please, please, please don't invite students into that plant because that's gonna be their paradigm of manufacturing. We've got to make sure that we're bringing them into the cutting-edge advanced manufacturing facilities, the ones that work for with the kinds of organizations that you've already mentioned to drive continuous improvement and to be the kind of place that's gonna draw employees. People have options in terms of where they want to go in the workforce. And we in manufacturing have to make sure that ours is the number one option. Barbara Humpton, who's the CEO, was the CEO of Siemens USA when she was on the tech ed podcast with me. Um, she said manufacturing is still that place where you can start out on the ground floor. We're on the we're on the front end of a manufacturing renaissance. This is the great employment, the greatest employment decision that somebody could make in this day and age. But we need to make sure they understand that they're walking into facilities that are the kind of place that they'd want to spend a decade or more working. And that's on us as manufacturing companies to make sure we're providing that opportunity and that image.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Yeah, I will say that uh when Mary Barrow became the CEO of GM, that to me was like the first example I had ever seen. A, like of a woman, which was super cool.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Uh to like rise up the ranks and become the CEO of of a huge company, right? But then secondly, she started in that company a long time ago. Like, I I don't remember what her initial position was, but she did not like come in as a hired gun CEO. Like she worked her way up in the business, she knew it inside out, and she rose to that position. And and I graduated uh college in 2018, which was a rough time, and everybody was getting laid off all over the place, and people were, you know, like uh nearing retirement age and they had lost all their 401ks and they, you know, lost their job and they couldn't get rehired because they had like 20 years of one skill that they had just you know stayed in the same job.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

And I remember I my goal was kind of like I had seen like my grandparents like working in the same place their entire career, just advancing, they knew more, they got and my grandfather uh was in manufacturing in the dairy industry. And that's the the idea I had of work, which was go someplace, find someplace where you can be valued, you can learn, you can bring your talents, and then you learn more and more and more and more, and you become more and more valuable. And you know, I thought that the idea was you come in, you do a good job, and then at the end of the day, you can like feel satisfied that you put in a good effort and you come in the next day and do it all over again.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 21:00

And then it was just like this dream was just kind of completely shattered for me because A, it was like hard to even get a first job, and B, every time we got called into a random meeting, I was afraid that we were all gonna be let go, like we're all gonna be laid off or something.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

And then I realized I was in a sales position and not this particular company, but some of our competitors, they lay off the bottom like 10% of like just low performers every quarter. And as a salesperson, I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen that can make you have a bad quarter. And so just this idea like, oh, you are completely expendable. The company is not looking to invest in you in the long term. I just thought, well, heck, that doesn't even exist anymore. So what am I doing? Trying to, you know, think that I can kind of stay here. So I quickly my philosophy became okay, keep learning and keep being valuable and be willing to pivot andor find a new job like at a moment's notice. But then when I saw Mary's story and stuff, and then As I've been in the in this industry longer, I have seen that this actually does exist. It's more these privately owned companies. Oftentimes in manufacturing, there's still a lot of like family-owned companies. Um, or a lot of them that have sold maybe are now uh employee owned partially. And so it's still a surprise for me, a very pleasant surprise, but a surprise when I run across a company that has longevity like that and then has people that have been there for a long time like that, that started in a low position and are now like in a higher up position. Cause I just like I thought that disappeared from the world and it makes me so happy that it still exists.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

No question. I love that. Yeah. And I and I would just tell you that um it does still exist. As you know, I do a lot of work with FANEC America. I just had Mike Chico, who's the CEO of uh president and CEO of FANEC on the on the podcast. He's been on, I think five times, more times than any other guests that we've had. Uh, you know, I I hang out at FANEC and it's like the people you meet there have been there 25, 30, 35 years. They don't leave. Um and and that what that speaks to is the importance that we've already talked about of having the kind of culture in an organization where people want to stay and want to make a career out of it. Uh, you know, I've never fired a great person. You know, I've I've had to make tough decisions on employment of somebody that wasn't cutting it or maybe um, you know, maybe didn't have the interest or wasn't putting forth the effort, that those aren't fun, but they're, you know, they're a lot easier to do than than you know having to take somebody who's a valued employee and let them go. I've never had to do that. If you add value in your organization, and if you are versatile and you're willing to stand up and sign up for whatever the organization needs to do, needs you to do at that point in time, uh there's tremendous longevity in the world of manufacturing. There's just absolutely no question about that. I would also tell you, again, speaking back to a magazine column I wrote, this was probably right around the 2008 financial crisis. So 10 years before you graduated from college, if you graduated in 2018.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Wait, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I'm not that young. I'm just terrible at math uh or or numbers. 2008, not 2008. Okay, so this okay. I am like a decade older than I just pretended to be. Yeah, yeah. Well, I do I do the same thing. 2018 wasn't even that bad. 2008, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah, exactly.

Layoffs That Break Trust And Culture

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Right. I was thinking, wow, I don't need that. Must have been a pretty short financial crisis in 2018. I don't remember that one. Oh, 19 to 20, maybe. No, so going back to 2008, so you remember this. And I I wrote a magazine column and I said um it was called Lay Off the Layoffs. And the idea was look, we've all been in situations where we've been grossly overstaffed. I had a situation early in my manufacturing career where literally I had a major customer that cut half of half of my business. So I literally my revenue got cut in half in about a year and a half. There's no way that you can survive that and be true to your business model without having to downsize your workforce or nobody will have a job. So I've been through having to make those really, really tough, tough decisions and they're not any fun. But I also said if you're just laying off for convenience, if you're just laying off because you need to make your quarterly number or you're worried about what the year is gonna look like, or you're worried about how the market's gonna treat you. I mean, those kind of things are great short-term decisions to make if that's what drives you. But understand that you are totally wrecking your culture for the long term because you're not gonna be seen as a destination employer if your attitude is we'll keep you here just long enough to make sure that we make our quarter, and then if we don't need you, we'll kick you to the curb. So the m the message to manufacturing was be really careful about just downsizing your workforce for the sake of downsizing it and really make sure that it's something you absolutely have to do for the longevity and the sustainability of the company if you're doing it, because it does have some negative ramifications, which is exactly what you touched on a moment ago in terms of the perception of manufacturing that many young people have had about the careers in our space.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Yeah, yeah. And I'll say from a personal experience, my um my brother-in-law was working as a machine operator and he was like one of the latest hires, right? So I guess this company had kind of like a last in, first out rule. Um, but they had a slowdown over the holidays and they laid them off over Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Ouch.

SPEAKER_03 25:59

And they were like, please come back when we have more work.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

And it's it's like, oh, you expect you expect your employees to just survive for as long as you don't need them and then want to come back to that, knowing that they could get laid off again at any time.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

Not because of their performance or or anything other than just, oh, we don't have enough work for this machine right now.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

And that's one of the reasons too why I see it's like so important to to offer or to just have the I guess the understanding that like having somebody that just has a job that just operates like one machine is not a very is is not a very good way to do business because if that person doesn't have the transferable skills to do something else valuable in your business when things change, then yeah, you're you maybe you don't have any work for this person, right? And he's not the type of person that like he he definitely has always like found other things to do in a company if he's let, if if he can show, you know, show that or or have an opportunity to learn something else, right? Uh he has a lot of other skills, right? This company literally just stuck him on one machine and was like, that's what you do. And then when we don't have we don't have the need for someone to push that button anymore, we no longer need you. And I was like, even in 2025, right, at the end of 2025, like this is still the state of affairs with some manufacturing companies. Um I also met a woman uh a couple years ago, maybe now, uh, who is an HR and she does a lot of consulting for manufacturing companies. And she was telling me, she's like, she had a client that she went in and and they were having 90% turnover of their entire workforce year over year. Um, and they are the ones struggling saying, Oh, nobody wants to work, nobody wants to come get these jobs. Like and it's like, well, what exactly are you portraying to the market there?

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Right, exactly right. Yeah, if everybody's churning, or we had situations when I was running um company in Shelton, Wisconsin, which is about 70 miles north of Milwaukee, where um we just we had this group of people that just kept moving from company to company to company. So, like Aaron's company, if you know that, the snow thrower company, Dan Aarons is a good friend, we were just emailing the other day. Uh, Mercury Marine, there were a couple others that were a little bit less well known, but we just kept training, trading this group of employees that was churning from one company to the next to the next. And finally it was like, wait a minute, we rather than stealing each other's people, why don't we raise you know, raise the floor for everybody? Let's start investing in training, let's start thinking about how we can pay folks more to keep them where we, you know, where we need to keep them. You mentioned the machining industry, and I can tell you there's a bit of a crisis in that space right now where um students are making choices to go into electromechanical programs or making choices to go into automation programs. And we see this regionally, it may not be across the whole country, and but in certain pockets of the US where people are like, well, why would I choose machining if I can make more money in electromechanical tech? And the machining companies are like, well, you know, we we can't pay our people enough to keep them. And it's like, well, that's the free market at work, right? We're all red-blooded Americans. This is this is why we're here. You know, there's there's some solutions to that, and that's to make sure that you're a destination employer. And and compensation isn't

What Actually Makes People Stay

SPEAKER_00 29:00

top of the list. It's usually number four or five in terms of why people stay or leave a business, but it doesn't mean it isn't important. Um, we need to make sure that we're focused on creating the kind of jobs that people are going to want to have, or we're not gonna have people.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

Do you know what those other um top reasons are?

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Sure, absolutely. So uh a big part of it, frankly, is whether you probably the number one thing is do I like the people that I'm working with? Yeah, and so and it's not even who who your boss is. You would think, well, do I like my boss? Most people don't interact with their boss all day long, but they interact with the people that they're in the lunchroom with. They're they interact with the people who are standing at the machines next to them or sitting in the meetings that they're in. And so having a really good group of people that likes working with each other, super, super important. So that's number one at the top. The second one is is what we call respect. And we define that, or I define that by does the company respect you enough to listen to you? Does it mean that we can implement every single decision or every single idea you have? A lot of times we just, you know, we don't have enough bandwidth to implement every idea, but are you willing to listen? Are we sharing information with our team members about how the organization is performing, whether we're winning or losing? Where do we need to improve? What's the long-term viability of the organization? What are the long-term growth prospects? Even people, I shouldn't say even, people even in, and I guess I am saying even in entry-level positions in an organization, want to know that they're part of something bigger than themselves. Want to know that that organization is going somewhere. So does my does my employer trust me enough to share that information with me so that I can use that information to be a part of the long-term success of the organization? And then the third one is what we call freedom. People don't, most people, especially good team members, don't want to be micromanaged. They don't want somebody looking over their shoulder, telling them what to do all day long. And obviously, there's some freedom that, you know, there's more freedom in some positions. You're in, you know, in a business development position or a revenue growth position. There's more freedom typically in a position like that than there might be somebody who's a machine tender on the line. But within my personal responsibility area, how much freedom do I get at work? Those are the kind of things that are super, super important. And then especially with millennials and some Gen Zs, uh, this whole idea of mission. And do I belong to an organization that is trying to do something more than make money? I mean, making money for a company is important. It creates sustainability, it creates opportunities to reinvest in the business, reinvest in your people. But do I have a mission like for us, securing the American Dream for the Next Generation, that's bigger than all of us, that I can feel like I'm really making a difference at the end of the day when I go home? So those are those are some of the examples of things that are higher on the list than compensation.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

So they're really mostly culture related. All of them. All of them, exactly. And you're you're absolutely right. It depends on the I think the type of position you have, whether like your manager is the person you interact with the most and therefore is kind of a big driver of whether you like the job or not. I know I've left a job when my management changed and I no longer felt like we were aligned in in the mission of how and why we do the job.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Um and then I also, yeah, like I do for the first time in my career feel like I am now at a place where I actually can stay.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Awesome. And and feels great, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Yeah, I've never known that feeling. And I kind of thought it was elusive and like not possible anymore. Uh and and then it really just took not to say that I didn't have great employers in the past, but I had, you know, various different circumstances as to why I didn't quite feel like I could be long-term invested in their mission and vi vice versa, they were kind of long-term invested in me. Right. One of them, you know, obviously the kind of sales mentality position companies where they will just, you know, let you go if you have a bad quarter or a bad year. Um, and then another one I worked at, they had they had had a CEO that cut capacity drastically some years before. And then when business picked back up, they couldn't keep up with demand and they weren't handling that well and they weren't communicating that with customers well. And it made the, you know, just doing the job like very stressful. Um that was a short-term focused CEO looking at quarterly revenues that decided to cut a bunch of manufacturing capacity that bit them in the butt. And and it's a great company overall. Um, and I would definitely recommend that people work there, I have people that work there, but the timing and the situation for me was such that I couldn't feel in any way like comfortable with that.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Understood.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

But I do try to tell people that listen to this podcast because one of the reasons like that we started it uh from the kind of the automation ladies uh perspective, A, it's just called that because we are ladies and we like to talk about this.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

I was gonna say it's like the first podcast and probably the only one that I'll ever be on where I could say hey ladies and it would be appropriate, right?

unknown 33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:34

Uh and we're okay with guys too. Not I I don't speak for every lady out there, but the three of us have been in this industry long enough that we can be the controls guy too. And you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

I mean, let me in, so right.

SPEAKER_03 33:47

Yeah, we're not like we're not very uh firm on any of these um sort of titles and whatever. But I I we have met enough women that wanted to come into this industry or adjacent types of engineering jobs and so on. And they didn't feel comfortable, and so they left and went and did something completely different. And I see that as such a big drain on our industry. Um and really what the message I want to put out there to them is keep going and then find a good fit because you can find a better company doing what you're interested in doing. Uh, because there is this mix, like you said, don't bring people into a dirty, dark, and dangerous plant as the example of why you should work in manufacturing.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

And there are companies out there that have bad cultures that don't care about, oh, are you, you know, oh, we hired a woman, great. Now let's go stick her into a hostile and work environment where her coworkers are not gonna be appropriate. Right. You know, clearly that's not gonna make for a good work experience, it's not gonna make her want to stick around. And and we've tried to kind of, you know, both support people that we know that have either been our guests or or just followers that have messaged us and said, Hey, I'm in this situation. Like, do I I don't want to be here anymore? What should I do? Do you have any advice? And it's always tough, but like for us, we've we've all found our home somehow. And I think, you know, the winding path we kind of said earlier, it doesn't always, it's not always your first job that's gonna be that right fit. And another thing I would love to say to students or or people early on in their careers, because I know I my first job, my first job, they moved me. So I was responsible to pay back moving expenses if I quit within a year. And I wanted to quit so badly within that first year. Like I would call my my dad is one of my mentors, and I would call him. I I think I called him two or three times from work crying and just being like, I want to quit, dad. Like, this is really bad. And he always encouraged me, like, not because of the financials, but just also like, hey, you want to stick it out at least a year. You want to have that on your resume, right? Because your next opportunity, like, don't just jump into whatever else just to get out of there. Um, and then I was actually offered a job by one of my customers, but it was still within that one year period and it was a better paying job. But again, he kind of encouraged me to just stick it out long enough to meet that commitment.

unknown 36:11

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

And I ended up staying there for three years because kind of once you get over that hump, you get used to some stuff, and then you figure out your own way to deal with things. It wasn't a long-term place for me to stay, but I stayed long enough to where I felt like I got a lot out of it, and so did the company. Um but it was really it my instinct was to just quit because it was awful. I didn't expect my first job, my first full-time job. Like I had worked for years as an intern at a place where I loved. I loved the people I worked with, I felt like I was part of something, I felt like I was making it different. And here, this was this very kind of like opposite experience. And and so I wonder with students, are we preparing them well enough for not just the technical or or you know, job skills requirements of the job, but also just the reality of being a person with a job and what that means and how you know to navigate sort of the the challenges and the winding paths of a career? Because not everything is gonna be like I got my first job off the campus recruiting platform. It was somebody record for like recruiting at my college, and then I was like, oh my god, I hate this. I did not know anything about what you do when you end up in that situation, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Does anybody yeah? No, I've first of all let's let's credit your father with giving you some great advice, right? And and I think you touch on the importance of having uh a good mentor and having mentors in your life, and whether that's a parent or it's somebody that you work with or someone whose opinions you value could be a lot of different people and maybe multiple of them. Um that's really, really important.

Teaching Workplace Basics Without Shame

SPEAKER_00 37:45

And that advice is great. We, you know, in our businesses, and I like I said, I'm involved in 10 manufacturing companies and then, you know, three ed tech companies. I mean, we hire a lot of people, uh, we look at a lot of resumes, and whether I should or shouldn't, the first thing I look at when I see a resume is is this person a quote job hopper? And you know, if I'm looking at somebody that's been in the workforce, let's just call it since 2018, and they've had six jobs in eight years, there's no way they're getting a first interview with our company because I know looking at that that the odds that they're gonna stay beyond a year and a half are really, really slim. So I think it's important that you stuck it out and that you showed that you had that three-year period of time. Do we show a little grace during COVID when there was a lot of movement in the workforce? Absolutely. But you know, we're we're now five years removed from that. It's really important to have that longevity because you know, we we hire a team member. It's oftentimes a good 12 months before they're really adding value in our business, right? Because they're learning the company, they're learning the products, they're learning the customers. I mean, we invest tremendous amounts of money getting that person to a point where they can add value. So, really, really important that your resume reflects that. That was great advice for your dad. I would say um, this is a message to both students and to employers. Are we are we preparing most students the right way for the world of work? Probably. Um, you know, there's there's not that there aren't efforts and there aren't exceptions, but there's a lot of things we can do. I'll give you an example. Um, it's one of my favorite stories. Uh, we had a uh I was I had four interns in our business, four college interns. This was about three years ago. We were I had them write a whole business plan on an esports business that we were thinking about putting together. We ultimately didn't didn't start it up, but but they wrote the whole business plan. It was a great experience for them. And it was uh a Monday, and a young man walked in and one of the interns and he said, uh, hey Matt, I'm you know, just so you know, I'm not gonna be here on Friday. And I was like, um, okay. He said, Yeah, I'm I'm going up north with my family, so I won't be here on Friday. I'm like, interesting. I'm like, uh, so even on a day that you're scheduled to work and we're expecting you to be here, you're just not gonna show up. And he said, Well, well, no, my mom said we were going on vacation. And I was like, um, so your mom told you you can't work on Friday. He said, Yeah. I said, even if it costs you your job, and he sat there for a minute, and one of the other interns was like, For God's sake, just ask him if you can have the day off. Like she knew where I was going, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So finally, so I I finally I just said, I said, Ben, I would never tell you that you can't go on vacation with your family. I would never tell you that in a million years. But you have to come in here and ask if it's okay for you to take the day off. That's just normal protocol. You can't tell me you're not coming to work on a day you're supposed to be here. Yeah. And so we have we have this whole um, this whole philosophy in our business is this is that you're going to, especially because, again, going back to COVID, we had a whole group of kids who were middle school, high school, maybe late high school, now into the workforce, that had just had missed a whole three years of the kinds of experiences that the rest of us got. Do it, you know, in-person at school, maybe doing work-based learning, maybe doing an internship, maybe having a job at the Dairy Queen. I mean, whatever. We missed that opportunity. And so they didn't learn some of those basic workplace skills that the rest of us took for granted. And so uh the message to young people is yeah, the expectations in work, they're real. It's not easy. You're not, you know, you're gonna have I I had both of my kids, I won't go too deep into it, but both of them were required to work in manufacturing while they were going to college if they were gonna get any help from us. I said, we'll we'll help you with whatever comes after high school. And it can be anything. You go to technical college, you can go to community college, you can go into the military, you can go to a four-year university, you can go to direct to workforce, whatever. We'll help you for those four years, but you have to spend time in manufacturing. And and there were days I know for both of them that where they were just like, wow, this is really hard. And it's like, yeah, it is. This is kind of a little bit what life is all about. We need to teach you that. We also have to go talk to employers and say, look, if you're expecting the kind of employer, employee, you know, I'm in my 50s now. If you're ex if I'm expecting the kind of person that I was when I was 18 or 20 years old, the world has shifted. The world has changed. You're gonna be really frustrated expecting that. You need to tell people on the first day of work, hey, you're gonna do some things that are outside of the lines of what's appropriate workplace behavior. We're not gonna scream at you, we're not gonna fire you, we're not gonna keep our mouths shut. We're gonna say, hey, this is one of those areas where this is appropriate behavior and this is not, and we need to see the appropriate behavior. So correct it, and then they'll get back and you know, they'll get back with and they'll start coloring between the lines again. But we have to be a little bit patient with them. There's all kinds of things that we can and should be doing, you know, not just in higher education, but in secondary education as well, to prepare young people for the world of work, but we still have a lot of work to do there.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

Yeah, I think back to when I was in college, and there was definitely I felt like there was already kind of a mismatch in what I was being taught and what was actually going on when I went because I was already working, right? So I started working in middle school and I worked through middle school, high school, college.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

What was your job in middle school? You gotta share that.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

I started working, so I used to babysit, um, but then I started I realized I liked uh being in an office more than watching kids. Yeah. And and so I started working for my dad's company. He was an entrepreneur, um and he started his own business, and and so it was kind of like there's always something that could that I could help with. So I started interning um every summer, every holiday, and I kept doing that uh all the way through college.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

And as the company grew, I got to, you know, do different jobs. But in middle school, I mostly I started out kind of behind the scenes. I made uh a user manual for the terminal that went in the cab of the truck. So it was a tracking uh system for trucks and things like that. And so I got to write the data sheets for the the hardware and then the user manual for the system. And then I also wrote marketing uh brochures for for those. And uh I I moved on to learning how to do uh the the daily accounting and then the invoicing, and then I started answering the phones, and then I would do like the reconciliations at the end of the month, and then kind of every summer I would have a different like focus. And the one summer I did accounting as like my full time focus. I was like, whoa, this is not for me.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

It's good to know.

SPEAKER_03 43:55

Great experience to learn.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:56

And I realized I found that I've I I gravitated towards. I would like to be at the front of the house. I liked answering the phones. I liked the sales, like helping with the sales part and things like that. So it was a great opportunity for me to figure out kind of like what I was, what I enjoyed and what I was good at, not just from a learning standpoint, but actually applying it in the real world. So when I was in college, like I was mostly thinking of, okay, how could this actually apply? I remember I was, I accounting was like one of my least favorite subjects. And I really did not do that well in my accounting classes, like considering my overall performance normally. But I was also like, but I use software. I was like, I do accounting all the time. I've done it for like three years. I know what I'm doing, but the concept behind doing it and doing the ledgers manually versus working in like QuickBooks, you know, it just wasn't the same. And so I just thought to myself, like, if I was taking this accounting class and actually had never had accounting experience, I wouldn't expect the same thing. And granted, maybe if I went into an accounting career, obviously I wouldn't need to needed to know all of the nuts and bolts behind that. But the practical use of accounting skills was different from what I was learning in school. And then the other thing I remember that I just thought was ridiculous was I was told as a woman that I could not go to a job interview in pants, that I needed to wear a skirt suit with pantyhose, and that was the only way to go. And like I wouldn't be taken seriously or given a job if I wore pants. And again, this was like 2005 to 2008.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Right. Yeah, this isn't 20, you know, 1970 or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_03 45:34

No. And I also like I was economically challenged, and I could not, it was really hard to find a woman's suit. Like you can't go and buy those at Forever 21. Like you won't have them at the mall. You gotta I ended up going to Ann Taylor and looking at the price of the skirt and the suit and going, raise like from my family to buy my first suit for an interview.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Crazy.

SPEAKER_03 45:58

And then I never wore that skirt ever again.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03 46:02

Especially going into manufacturing, I was they were like, No, you can't wear that here.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Like exactly.

SPEAKER_03 46:08

You can't wear these heels in this skirt.

Closing The Education To Industry Gap

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Like as long as they got you the right job the first time, I guess. But yeah, I think a lot of those standards have moved a little bit. And certainly we're not, I'm not trying to tell anybody they shouldn't dress appropriately for an interview, but appropriately can be uh a much wider, much wider criteria than what you just shared with me.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

I feel like at this point for a woman, like a a crisp pantsuit or or even separates that like look put together is is okay. My point to that though, long tangential story, um, as as is common for me, is how wide do you think the gap is in between what companies really need and what workplace culture is, and then how long does it take for that to kind of like get to the education side? Are they pretty close together, or is there like a lagging indicator there of how quickly we can actually change what we teach versus what is required in the real world?

SPEAKER_00 46:56

There's a lot into that. That's a really good question. There's like three questions packed into that question. So uh, and I I'll take a moment on on kind of everything that I just heard there. Uh, you know, the first thing is um in terms of preparing students for the workplace, I think you have to divide things into two baskets. And one is the um, you know, the some people call them soft skills or workplace skills or what have you. Um some people are not calling them durable skills. I hate that term. Um and then the the other the other one would be um the uh the the you know competencies and and hard skills of doing the work. Uh part of the message is, you know, I sit in so many meetings with employers that say we just want people that'll come to work, stay off at drugs, and take a little bit of direction. We'll train them on everything. And when you say that, you know, be careful what you wish for, because that's what you're gonna get. And I hear so many employers who are saying, well, our, or so many educators rather, who are saying our employers don't want workplace skills. They don't, they don't want hard skills, they just want people who will come to work. We don't need to do technical education because they're not asking for that. And then I say to employers, well, okay, let's say you could get those three things that you want, and you also have somebody that understands basic ACDC and electric relay control and motor control and motion control and programmologic controllers and human machine interfaces and and measurement and gauging and lean manufacturing and quality and safety. If you get to pick between just coming to work every day, staying off of drugs and taking direction, or all of that, which are you gonna pick? They're like, Well, we want all of it. Okay, well, then that's what you have to tell your educators. So it's really it's an and not an or. We need to do, we need to be doing both of those. I would say in certain areas, we're doing really good work. Um, you know, I can point to the Whitehall School District in western Wisconsin, um, where we're where we've got some great things going on as far as training that next um that next generation of the workforce around advanced manufacturing skills, um, schools in the state of Michigan like Troy Athens or like um Delton Kellogg, where they've got full-on you know, mechatronics programs for high school, students earning Smart Automation Certification Alliance certifications, an organization I've been a big advocate for. Um and preparing those students for the workforce with project-based learning, with teamwork, and with the hard skills around advanced manufacturing. So it can be done. Uh, we just need to see more and more of it. We need to see it at every level of education. And then we get need to get more young people excited about careers in advanced manufacturing. We can't start in our junior year or senior year of high school and expect to grab them there. Young, young, young people, especially women, as you know, Nikki, will start making career decisions as early as fifth and sixth grade. Not so much that I want to do A, but that, you know, um, you know, I a career in engineering or a career in manufacturing, that's not for me. You know, those are the those are the career paths for boys and not girls. And it's just like, well, no. I mean, there's a huge tent in manufacturing and great opportunities for for men and for women in manufacturing. So so making sure that we're exposing them to those much, much earlier. So I think, you know, it can take a long time because we should be starting as early as middle school. A student who's in sixth grade today probably isn't coming into the workforce for another six or seven or eight years, maybe more. Um, but but that's okay. At least we're solving that problem a few years out. Then we've got all kinds of work-based learning, short-term training, boot camps, technical colleges, certificates, those kind of things that we can use to upskill the next generation of the workforce in a shorter period of time. So I think we need to be doing all of these things. We are, we've seen a lot of these problems solved in the last 10 years, still a long way to go. We need to compete and continue to invest in those younger people, get them excited about careers in STEM in advanced manufacturing. And then for people that are a little bit deeper into their either their academic career or new to the workforce, we need to make sure that we're upskilling them to your point earlier, not just saying you're a machine operator from now until the end of time, but how are we taking that person like your brother-in-law, who shows so much promise and so much potential in manufacturing and equipping them with the kind of skills that will help them, even if there is a slowdown, to continue to add value for their employer.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

Absolutely. Great. Thank you for answering my complex compound question. I love those kind of questions.

SPEAKER_00 51:00

That was great.

SPEAKER_03 51:02

I think we're running up to I have so many other things. Uh, I had

Industry 4.0 Learning Guide And New Book

SPEAKER_03 51:05

all these notes about things I wanted to ask you, but I tend to just let the conversation go where my brain or yours takes it.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

Uh so this has been uh really wonderful and enlightening. Um I had in my notes here that you have a book that you wrote about industrial internet of things. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Who's that for? And yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Yeah, I'll tell you, I'll tell you about two of them. So I think the one you're tet uh you're touching on is um teaching IIT, preparing students and learners for industry 4.0. Um the and that actually goes back to 2017. So it's 11 or no nine years ago now. And it was um, you know, we recognized at that time that everybody was starting to talk about industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, but nobody knew what it was, and none of the educators knew how to prepare learners, students and learners for that world. And what we said is look, it needs to look different in fourth grade than it does senior year high school, than it does in technical college. Um, but we really, it was kind of the the precursor in the early days of what we call the edge to cloud continuum, which is kind of you know where we are now. The idea that if we want to understand smart technology and manufacturing, we have to understand it in layers. We have to understand smart sensors and smart devices at the edge that have embedded intelligence, can make their own decisions and can communicate with each other, which, as you know from your time in manufacturing, is allowing us to proliferate like crazy the amount of data acquisition that we're able to do in manufacturing because we don't have the former constraints of latency and bandwidth that we used to have. Every single one of those sensors is communicating with some version of a control system, uh oftentimes a programmable logic controller, maybe a computer network. We need to understand what's going on at the PLC level, specific to your, you know, to your line of work, understanding visualization, understanding uh who has access to what information, understanding cybersecurity at the control system level, super important, and then to the fog and then to the cloud, where we're running all these cloud-based um software that is now integrating, wasn't as much in 2017, but now integrating like crazy artificial intelligence and machine learning. So what we did was we created a document. It wasn't quite a book, but it was you know probably 20, 25 pages long of how we prepare students and learners for the next generation of manufacturing technology because more and more of these are becoming technology careers and not, quote, just manufacturing hands-on, turning a wrench careers. So the so what we you know to kind of where we started on the podcast, that world is changing. Um, also almost done. We'll be releasing a book this summer uh that's a compilation of hundreds of magazine columns that I've written over the course of um of uh 20-some years. And so a little bit of a precursor for your audience. That's going to be basically a how-to book for people who are in executive management or senior leadership positions or supervisory positions in manufacturing of, oh, you know, I have this personnel problem, or I have this problem with efficiency, or I have this problem with a customer issue. Um, at one time or another, I've written a magazine column on every single one of those topics. So it's all right, let's turn to the page that covers this particular challenge I'm having today and use that as kind of a guidebook. It's also you could read it cover to cover as well. Um, but it's all those kind of things that I wish I had known now 30 years ago when I got into this incredible world of manufacturing uh that I I want to impart to people that are that are joining us today so they can be that much more successful in their careers.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

Oh, that's wonderful. We're I'll definitely be on the lookout for that um book. I feel like it could be a handy reference for me and lots of people.

SPEAKER_00 54:31

Your free signed copy will be on the way as soon as it's published, I promise.

SPEAKER_03 54:35

Thank you. Thank you. Um okay, so then I think we'll just dive into um our last

Where To Find Matt And What Is Next

SPEAKER_03 54:40

question. And I was gonna ask you some more about your podcast and things like that, but why don't we just wrap it up kind of into this one layered question? Uh, which you already started answering, which I typically try to ask at the end kind of our guests to say, what should people uh connect with you about and where shall they find you for different things? Um and then what do you have coming up that we should be aware of and or paying attention to? Um so that would include like your podcasts, your companies, or whatever it is that you think if somebody listened to this episode today, they may have a reason to either want to follow or reach out or or partake in some of the things that you have to offer um through your various different avenues of reach.

SPEAKER_00 55:21

Yeah. Awesome. I love that. So thank you. And uh, you know, I would I would say first of all, um, you know, you run into a lot of what some people call the darkness of doubt in manufacturing, right? Where every problem when you face it the first time in a manufacturing universe, and I ran manufacturing plants and I know what it's like to, you know, get a text in the morning or an email in the morning saying, hey, we had a major fire in our plant, and then the you know, to literally like go on to the local news facility news station um you know 400 miles away and see that the lead story is a flame coming out of your building, right? I know what it's like to have that. I know what it's like to get that phone call at two in the morning because a valued employee made a mistake and didn't use their fall protection and slipped into a 200-degree soap tank and fortunately stopped themselves before going all the way in, but had two years of skin graphs and laying in a burn center. You know, so I know what it's like to get that phone call. I know what it's like to hear from your customer that's half of your business that, oh my, you know, oh, by the way, um, we're moving it all to Mexico or we're moving it to China, and uh by the end of the year, your business is gonna be half as big as it is right now, right? I mean, there's those, I mean, and your stomach stomach sinks and you you feel sick and you're like, there's no way out of this. And I would say that, you know, we all face those days in manufacturing. Um, keep the faith. You know, I'm living proof that you can make your way through those. And if you have the tenacity and you have the faith and you have the confidence that you're gonna figure out a way through, as hard as that can be, you're gonna end up on the other side of that. But certainly, you know, I've never said no to somebody that sent me an email and said, Can you answer answer this question for me? Or do you have 10 minutes to jump on a virtual meeting? I don't know how to how to solve this. Always happy. I had so many mentors in my in my life that helped me through times like that. Always happy to help others. Um, you know, so my uh you can you can find us at techedpodcast.com is probably the best way, and there's a contact us there. Um so so check that out. Uh, in terms of cool things that we and that and that's probably the best way to get in touch with me. Um in terms of great things that we have um coming up, I would say first of all, you know, I'm gonna take a moment to highlight SokkaCon, the Smart Automation Certification Alliance is doing it's if people aren't familiar, we'd love to have you check that out. It's a it's a pet project of mine, something that I I really it's really, really near and dear to my heart for all the reasons that we've talked about so far in the conversation. So check out check out SoccaCon um at the Smart Automation Certification Alliance uh website. It's gonna be in Wisconsin, it's gonna be at the University of Wisconsin Stout, and the lineup of speakers is absolutely insane. We have Todd Wanick, who's the CEO and chairman of Ashley Furniture Industries. He's on the Forbes 400 and one of the wealthiest Americans, keynoting day one. We have on day two Rod Coops, who is the chief operating officer of Rivian, now doing some really, really cool stuff, helping to lead Slate Auto. If you're familiar with that, that company, EV, really cool EV company startup. Um, Jeff Bezos is is um super involved with that. But but lots of really, really cool um content at SoccaCon. So so definitely check out SoccaCon. We've got some great episodes coming up with the the Tech Ed podcast. I'm interviewing a Fortune 500 uh CEO in the automation space. You'll see that on LinkedIn here the next couple days, but he's coming into the podcast tomorrow. Um, so that that's gonna be a phenomenal episode. There's some really crazy stuff going on in the state of California right now around um what we require in higher education as far as standardized test scores from high schools. There's a revolt going on among their faculty, especially in the STEM space, um, because they're, you know, they they stopped valuing SAT and ACT scores, and and and there's not a lot of credibility necessarily in the letter grades that are coming out of high schools. Huge faculty revolt around that, saying we need to improve the level and the standards for high school students coming into STEM programs in California. I'm gonna have the leader of that kind of that whole effort on the podcast here in a couple days. That one's gonna be another really, really exciting one. I could I could keep going. So many great things. Uh I'll give you one more. Google Discover AI. So the word discover AI and then the words lab Midwest, and check out our video on how we're getting young people in high school excited about physical artificial intelligence. So we know about ChatGPT, we know about um perplexity, we know about um meta AI, we know about all these platforms. But if you look at what's happening, the real growth in um in artificial intelligence and manufacturing is how we're using it in drone technology, autonomous mobile robots, robotic technology, smart technology. We have a whole platform called Discover AI, which teaches students about applied artificial intelligence. Um so check that out as well. I could keep going, but I appreciate the platform to share a few.

SPEAKER_03 59:56

Yeah, that's that's great. And then um we can have your team also send us to put in the show notes and your guest profile on our website, automationladies.io. Any other links to things that you guys can share that you don't have to um recurgitate them all uh over the over the air here. Um also it's hard for people to go. That's an easy one, right? Discover AI, uh, go Google that.

OT SCADACon And Smarter Networking

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

Um and then the Sokka Con, you said S-A-C-A-C-O-N.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

Yeah, yeah. Saka.org is the uh is the website. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:28

Okay, very cool. Um then I'm gonna actually give a shout out here in my own podcast to my conference called OT SCADACon. That's O T C A S-C-A-D-A, SCADA. So it's not specifically for SCADA or OT cybersecurity only. It is the way that we kind of uh the name may be a little misleading, but the way that Ali kind of put it together was the it covers everything under that umbrella. So also talking about the sensors on the machine, right? The control systems on the machine, the building of the machines themselves, um, the processes, so process equipment or discrete manufacturing equipment, and then how that flows up, how the data flows up from those systems into SCADA, how we use SCADA and other systems to do things like manufacturing execution systems, and how do we do digital transformation? And uh one of the new speakers that we have this year that I'm very excited about, uh his name is Nate Piran. He is head of uh supply chain digitalization at Newell Brands, which is like RubberMade and so uh he is coming to talk about digital transformation. Um, and we have a number of other great speakers that are very generous with their expertise and their time. Uh, this is gonna be in July in Houston, Texas. Um, you're gonna get me to meet all of us ladies, although you don't need to learn from us, you need to learn from the great people in our community that are willing to share what they do. Um, but I have been asked more recently, like, oh, I'm not an engineer or I'm not a practicing, you know, controls person. Should I come to this? Uh, even educators. So I guess a good reason to bring this up on this episode is I recently got asked uh an industry friend of mine. He's like, I'm on the board of this college. They have a manufacturing program. I sent this to them. They were immediately interested and wondering if they're just an educator in the space, should they come see this? Um, or a person from PMMI that does research. She's like, I'm not, you know, I'm not an engineer. Is this a place for me? Absolutely, yes. It is an overview of these topics that is meant to be high-level enough for even if it's new to you, you should learn enough to be dangerous and then know where to go, how to connect some dots between these different things and where you can go to ask questions, who you can follow for more information. And that we found oftentimes too on the tech tech and engineering levels, whether you're new in your career or maybe like kind of mid-career, if you're not really feeling the groove, you're super satisfied with what you're doing and where you're doing it, going to events like this to A, find out about applications, technologies, and jobs that are adjacent enough to yours that you could make that jump, um, and or people that you may want to work with. Because another thing that's huge about networking in this industry is if you don't love where you work, but you want to find a better place, who better to find out from than from somebody else that works in that place, right? Because you're A gonna want to hear the culture stuff, like real talk from somebody, not just the the HR recruiting page.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:29

And then B, if you end up joining that company, guess what? You're maybe working with that person, and that is a huge part of the job satisfaction thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

So please check out OT SkaterCon. It's OTskater.com. Um, and then uh yeah, I I will encourage if any of Matt's audience is listening to this that normally is in the edge, you know, education space, may not be as familiar with us automation ladies and the work that we do, um, check that out. But yeah, link it up in the show notes. Yeah, I so appreciate uh having been introduced to you, Matt, and the opportunity to come on your show and have you on and talk about this stuff because well, just I think we kind of feel a kin, like there's the the number of kind of nonlinear thinkers doing this, willing to have a job and a podcast and run a company and write stuff. And I mean it's just some sort of I don't know what percentage of the population does this kind of stuff like we do exactly, but it's it's always a pleasure to kind of find that kindred spirit. And I so very much appreciate your time, Matt. Um, thank you for coming on the show. And we look forward to uh consuming a lot of this great information that'll be coming out of both on your podcast and uh the book. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:39

For sure. Well, you know, Nikki, first of all, I can't thank you enough for your advocacy and you set such a great example for people already in manufacturing, considering careers in manufacturing, educating people around advanced manufacturing. I mean, that message, you know, don't think for a minute that that isn't super, super important. You know, you've been called into this space to share it, to inspire other people. Uh, your knowledge of manufacturing is impressive. Uh, when you were talking about your um your convention coming up, that was all edge to cloud continuum stuff. That's the world in which I live.

Final Takeaways And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 1:05:10

So between between the knowledge that you have, between the connections and the voice that you have, and and just your incredible interest in driving manufacturing forward, it's important work, it's making a difference, and I really appreciate what you're doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:23

Thank you. Thank you so much. And to our audience, connect with each other, learn from each other. You know, don't be scared to reach out for help. Just don't be selfish about it. Don't send me another, hey, here's my resume, get me a job. I'm not a recruiter, but those of us that are generous with our time, when you ask with a specific ask of something we can actually help with, trust that, you know, that is one of the things that I think lights us up as people. So do that for each other uh and and you know, our guests as well. And we'll see you uh next time. Thank you so much. Bye. Thank you for listening to Automation Ladies. If you like our content and you want to stay in touch, please connect with us on LinkedIn, follow the show page, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and you can send us a message or a copy on our website, automationladies.io. We look forward to getting to know you. Our producer is Veronica Espinosa, and our music is composed by Samuel James.