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Automation Ladies
The podcast where girls talk industrial automation!
We interview people from all walks of life in the Industrial Automation industry. Through a personal narrative/conversational framework we talk about PLCs, SCADA, IIoT, Machine Vision, Industrial Robots, Pneumatics, Control Systems, Process Automation, Factory Automation, Systems Integration, Entrepreneurship, Career Stories, Personal Journeys, Company Culture, and any other interesting and timely topic we want to discuss.
Co-Hosted by Nikki Gonzales, Ali G & Courtney Fernandez - find them on LinkedIn!
Automation Ladies
From Passion to Purpose, Navigating Through Career Changes & Growth w/Alex Pool
What if passion, resilience, and community could lead you to unexpected heights in a career?
Join us along with Alex Pool from Masked Owl Technologies as we discuss how achievements, setbacks, fervor, and maintaining strong industry connections can pave the way for long-term personal and career success.
We delve into the complexities of transitioning from technical roles to management and the significance of safety, both physical and emotional, in ensuring a balanced work-life dynamic in an ever-evolving industry.
Huge thank you to Masked Owl Technologies for sponsoring this episode!
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Co-Hosts are Alicia Gilpin Director of Engineering at Process and Controls Engineering LLC, Nikki Gonzales Director of Business Development at Weintek USA, and Courtney Fernandez Robot Master at FAST One Solutions.
Follow us on Linkedin and YouTube for live videos, demos, and other content!
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Get in touch with us at automationladies.io!
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Hey, welcome back to another episode of Automation Ladies. I am one of your hosts, nikki Gonzalez. I feel weird introducing myself every time, but I realized that my favorite creators do that in every video. Like, I guess, just in case it's somebody's first time watching and I shouldn't be full of myself and think everybody knows who we are. So, yeah, I'll say that my name is Nikki and thank you for joining us today, and my co-host, allie G, is here with me. Allie, you want to say hi, hi guys Great week?
Speaker 2:Actually it's not. There's not enough sun, Seattle sucks.
Speaker 1:Otherwise great week, I'm assuming, also great week work-wise and lots of other things. I got a little bit of sun this morning here in Houston. I'll be grateful for that. And then we have our guest today is Alex Poole from Mast Owl Technologies. Alex, welcome to Automation Ladies.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We're very stoked to have you on. We had a minute to chat before we got on air and we have a lot of sort of connections in common and have been in some of the same circles over the last couple of years but haven't actually met before. So this is exciting. We get to know Alex on the show and I will give a shout out to Michael Weta, who is with Mastow that came to OT Skatecon and a longtime supporter of the show, as well as our mutual friend Sam Janes. Shout out to sam, if you listen, uh it's a fun music that gets us pumped up for every episode.
Speaker 1:That's sam. So yeah, uh, alex, this has been a little time coming. I appreciate you guys uh, reaching out after ot skater con and we are just kind of getting back to recording now for season five. So we're super stoked to have you here, and I guess I'll just start with our first standard question Can you tell us your story? How the heck did you get to be here with Masked Owl Technologies?
Speaker 3:Thank you. Yeah, that's a good question and I definitely appreciate Mike and the work he does for us and what he did kind of moving this forward. So Mike and I have known each other for a couple of years now. I hired him over at Gray and he came to follow me here. So my story how I got into industrial automation I was talking to Ali a minute ago.
Speaker 3:I grew up in southwestern Michigan. I got into programming young. I hated winter, I hated cold, and so getting inside and being able to do something to keep my brain stimulated with programming was kind of what started my programming journey. Now, back then we didn't have computer science majors. They weren't necessarily as prevalent as they are now. So I got a degree in electrical engineering. As part of that I worked in an automotive industrial manufacturer. We made interior parts for cars. So I had this industrial manufacturing background with an electrical engineering degree but a love for programming. And that's really what led me into industrial automation was combining all those things. I knew I wasn't going to go work at Microsoft or Google and sit in a cubicle and write code for hours. That wasn't me. The industrial manufacturing piece was a huge draw for me. So being able to combine those things is what got me into industrial automation a long time ago.
Speaker 3:Spent the first half of my career in automotive, moving around michigan. Got to tennessee for a little bit um, doing industrial industrial manufacturing for automotive paint assembly, body weld, just whatever happens to make a car. That was my first half of my career. I got into material handling when I worked for Domatic. Got into food when I went out to FMC Food Tech in California.
Speaker 3:Started my own company once before that's what got me to Central Kentucky, started Blue Star Automation back in the late 2000s, 2008, 2009 and uh, that's what got me to central kentucky, where I am now, and that that company closed. We couldn't quite make it and got into a project here destroying chemical weapons, which was pretty interesting. Yeah, it was. There's some talk about safety requirements, right. So that project was closing. It was a 15, 20 year project and they were about done. They destroyed all the weapons here in central Kentucky, but my wife and I wanted to stay. That's when I went to work for Gray Ray Solutions, worked there for a little while and then decided that it was time for me to move out on my own, went back to some of the same investors we had used when I started up the first time. They had been a little more successful, pockets were a little deeper and we've got MOT rolling. So yeah, I guess that's the highlights, the quick version of how I got where I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very cool. I love the fact that A you went out on your own and then you know, situations change, companies don't always make it. Even if they make it, sometimes they continue. Or you know, circumstances change or people's uh priorities change. We just saw a post this morning from one of our ot skater con attendees. He, you know, had bought a kit and all these things and and then he just said, hey, I need to sell this kit, I'm selling my house. Change of priorities.
Speaker 1:So I don't know what the situation in there is, but life is complicated and you never know what business life right. And I love hearing the fact that you kind of did that. You went and worked for Gray and then now you're doing it again and some of those same relationships they carry right. I think if you carry yourself with integrity, success doesn't necessarily mean, oh, you succeeded at that one thing and became a millionaire or whatever. That goal is that people see as success being able to go back to the same group of people and work with them again. To me personally, that's a huge sign of success.
Speaker 3:Whatever?
Speaker 3:other things people want to measure the contacts I've made over the years, and we talked about Mike, we talked about Sam, but you know I've made a lot of good, not just friends but professional contacts just to great solutions. There's some great engineers that are great people to work with there, but this investment team that I'm working with here I've known one of these guys, for I met him in my first job out of college and so it's it's been 30 years In fact. His daughter, who I've known him longer than his daughter has known him, works for us now. So you know, it's, it's kind of cool how that kind of stuff all goes. Like I remember when she was born and now she's leading my marketing department. So it's kind of cool, that kind of stuff's cool.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. We actually met also Sarah Larson. She works at Rockwell, but we met her last year when she was at Eplan. She's an engineer that grew up to be a marketer, if I can put it that way, but she also one of the marketing folks over at Gray. She remembers from when you know she was a little girl and it's a small world and in a way, right within automation in particular and the systems integrators community, if I can call it that right, we now have, like you have, industry associations, um, and you mentioned a little bit before the recording started that you know, one of the things that you've seen change maybe in the last five to ten years is sort of that networking within the integrator community. Yeah, um, you want to tell us a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2:I think that's forced it's forced I think that's forced by the boomers retire. We have no choice.
Speaker 1:The boomers are gone do you think it's by choice, or by force, or what? What's your take on it, alex?
Speaker 3:I think that it's. I think it's a little both, and I'm not hedging that answer because I think the technology expands so fast. There's so much new stuff out there. You can't keep up, so you have to. You're forced to talk to others and lean on others, because you know, what I might be good at isn't necessarily what somebody else is good at obviously right. And so we have to talk to each other and I think the need for automation is so great that it cuts down that competitive wall Like nobody's losing. Yeah, we might bid against each other on certain projects, but you know and we talked about this with the conversation with Walker a little bit Tomorrow we could be bidding together on something Right. We could go into a project.
Speaker 3:When I was at Dramatic, we bid a project with the US government that they wanted to award. It was two sites and basically they needed one company's conveyor experience and our ASRS experience. So they had. We took the lead on one project and subbed the conveyor to the other company, and then on the other project they took the lead and subbed the ASRS to us. And that was 20 years ago. But that was so unheard of and it was so difficult because we were competitors. We only thought of the other team as a competitor. And now that's all gone away, or a lot of it's gone away. You still run into it, but I think the fact that there's so much work out there, even in a slow time, like some might say right now, is that it eliminates that real, real, hard-fought bitterness that I think we used to see. So I think it's forced because you have to.
Speaker 2:there's so much to learn and so much to know that it's really hard to to know it all and To be the best at every single thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you, you can't, you can't cyber security versus. And then you get into some um different communication protocols or you get into, yeah, some instrumentation that there's one person that's the expert on it and you kind of got to work with that guy you don't have to, but working with him is going to be the most profitable way forward.
Speaker 3:Like you can go ahead and like struggle it on your own, but you're not going to make the money that you could right, you just just hand it to him, have it done, give up a little bit of the short-term profit or a little bit of the, but you're out of there faster and you're on to the next thing faster.
Speaker 1:Customers, happier things like that yeah, and you're moving more projects through. You're you're getting more goals hit with the customer, which probably means more jobs with that customer on both sides of the aisle, right, depending on it just looks better, yeah. So, allie, you've been doing a little bit of Happy customers. You've had a couple of like full.
Speaker 2:No, I've been doing it entirely Like my company. I wouldn't say I would say my company does more than half of the work outsourced. We can't do it. We have a lot of it, but I can't afford. We can't do it. Uh, we have a lot of it, uh, but I can't afford. Um, I can't afford 20 people on a W2 because of the payroll, taxes and the everything else I need. So do I need 20 people to do what I'm doing right now? Yes, I do.
Speaker 2:My company does need 20 different people to be doing, cause we have a lot of projects and, uh, it's government work, a state government work, um, and yeah, so, as much as I want, people come to me and they're like you know, you're, you could be making more money, and I'm like I know, I know, but like I also like it's not as simple as that, and so we were trying to do a game plan so that over time, you know when it makes sense, we can start adding those other people. But I only have two employees. I'm an employee of PCE and I have two other employees that are engineers and that's it All of my finance stuff, accounting, hr, even the subject matter experts that are helping my engineers are outsourced, so, and then there's other engineers that are outsourced. Sometimes I'll just give another company an entire work order and just say go ahead and work this um, and then we just make some money on it, but they need to close it out, um, and so I like that more because that's faster. But at the same time, I want to develop my people, so I do a little bit of halfsies, where I'll pay someone to mentor them on their work, so like they'll do the bulk of the work, but I'll give some subject matter expert some bulk of hours to make sure that what they produce doesn't suck not that they suck or anything, but uh, it's just yeah, uh. So you can't be good.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, um, I can afford to have help. Yeah, sometimes I can afford someone to help me, and sometimes I just have I'll help them myself. But if I want to, you know I want to not do engineering as much as I need to be doing, and so in order to do that, yeah, I need to have like help from everywhere and like I don't have super experienced engineers, but I have really good help to build them up over time and then eventually add like those key players that I need because I can't afford the cream of the crop, right? Uh, controls, people are not cheap.
Speaker 2:Uh, good ones, good ones aren't, um, and then, yeah, you're gonna have to spend money to get them to be better over time. Um, so that's kind of yeah, I've been, I've been struggling there, but yeah, I've been using the, the. Since conception of pce, we have been been almost entirely subbing it out. Yes, contract work has been a massive part of us getting anything done for the last two years and probably for the next couple of years it's going to be the same until we're all internal, which I don't foresee that for a while, more than five years before, all of the people that work for PCE actually work for PCE and not contractors.
Speaker 1:So, alex, having done this a couple times now, is the work that you're doing now similar to your past company or is it like completely different? What are you guys focusing on now? What's Mast Owl? If I were to ask kind of like, what's your calling card for?
Speaker 3:Well, that's a great question. So, to tack on a little bit of what Allie was saying, I mean that was one of the challenges with the first time we did this was we couldn't afford to hire what we needed. The industry wasn't, as I mean, the tools didn't exist to share information as well. The internet was there, but it wasn't what it is, you know, 15 years later, like SharePoint, yeah, or LinkedIn or you know just any way to reach out for help, and so being able to build out a team was one challenge. Now, so, to answer that question, what I tried to do the first time around and what I'm really trying to do here, is lean into the fact that we're good at automation now and a lot of systems integrators we want to talk about. We do distillery, we do pet food, we do material handling, we do cosmetics, whatever. What industry, what vertical? Like my marketing team, it took a lot for me to finally get to understand. I don't want to talk about verticals, because what we do is write code, design panels, build panels, install panels, commission code. That's what we do.
Speaker 3:The model for this started way back when I was in Tennessee. One of the first jobs they gave me was to take this. It was a front bumper for a Chevy van that they've been making forever. It's just this gray, simple utilitarian van, utilitarian fascia, not the bumper, the fascia and this guy had been hand painting it for 20 years and they wanted to put a robot in the painting. I said okay. So I went and grabbed him. I said, hey, you got to show me, you got to help me. He's like I don't know anything about painting. Let's work together and figure this out. And we did. We got through it very quickly. We got a good program and now that guy's still at a job. We didn't eliminate his job, he just had to push a button now and said stand all day, breathe and paint. So that model is what I try to do.
Speaker 3:Going forward, we've built out a team we call it our solution success team, and their job is so go interview them and understand how they do, what they do, translate that into words that my poor engineers can understand, and then we'll go design a panel, whatever we got to do to to emulate that process. Um, that's, that's why that question is it makes me laugh a little bit because it's such a long answer to a verse it's not food and beverage like. It's not the two-word answer that most people expect when they ask me that question, but we're programmed. It's what we are, it's what we do, it's where our we're. We most of us have spent a lot of time in plants. We know how to walk through a plant, we know how to identify where we can help with the process, but what we don't know is how the specifics of their process, the details of their process. So we built a team to help us and we've seen every factory.
Speaker 2:We go to the same hardware.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah we see the same controllers, the same crap inside of it. We're like that's why, that's why verticals don't make sense, and like I've never liked that question, cause they're like what's your niche, though? Like what are you good at? And I'm like, uh, plcs. And they're like no, but like what industry? And I'm like I don't know, like six different industries, it doesn't matter, they're exactly the same.
Speaker 2:Like the way that I do the work, that I do like take, take a IO list and turn it into a control panel and turn it into commissioning. That doesn't change from industry to industry at all, and so it's just like a lot of plug and play. So it's like why are you making me tell you what my niche is? It's an old school way of thinking, I think. And I think that there's yeah, at least for our industry, just because of the nature of so much overlap, because every industry didn't doesn't have its own Alan Bradley. Alan Bradley, is it for all the industries? Um, yeah, or maybe in some cases they use a little more or little less of something, but like across the board, they don't care where the power supply comes from. There isn't a power supply for food and bed. That's different from a 24 volt DC power supply for any other possible. It's all the same crap. So when I started seeing it I was like, oh my god, I will food and bed. That's different from a 24 volt DC power supply for any other possible. It's all the same crap. So when I started seeing it, I was like, oh my God, I will have a job forever.
Speaker 2:Once I started seeing the same things in the panels in different places, I was like, oh my God, I'm so good, like cause, I could just see things that I was like, okay, I know, I've seen this stuff before. I know what that is, I know what the terminal blocks are, I know what relays are, I know what contactors are, um, and all that crap is used all across the board. The only time that that's not true is like uh, intrinsically safe or explosion proof shit. Or like burner controls. Like yeah, there's some places where you you don't use a, a, a safety burner controller, in outside of, if you don't use a, a safety burner controller in outside of, if you don't have a burner, so you may have never seen that and so maybe you've never seen that type of controller before outside of that.
Speaker 2:Like they're just hooking up plcs and io it's the same, io it's the same. Controllers all across everything like yeah, even, yeah everything. Everything in the panel and even in the field, the sensors themselves are the same and the motors. All of that crap is just spray it all across every single manufacturer and not just manufacturing uh, infrastructure utilities and municipal everything, all of that uses all the same crap.
Speaker 2:So we have jobs forever, which is a faller well, it's, it's.
Speaker 3:I use this a lot. My valve doesn't know what's going through it like in general. As a general statement, I'm opening, closing a valve. I don't know if it's dog food, coffee, fluid water. I don't know, I don't, I don't, I don't know dust, right, do you just tell me when you want that valve open, when you ask this question a lot too what's it doing that when we're troubleshooting, what's it doing that it's not supposed to? What's it not doing that it's supposed to? That's really what you have to answer. I don't, I don't. You know well, the, the xyz isn't getting where I. What's it doing that's not supposed to? What's it doing and it's not supposed like we can fix it? It's the same question every time.
Speaker 3:And I'm not to say that every process is the same, not to say. But when you break it down to the finite elements that you have to to get into automation, you get right down to it. I used to say this a lot to the poor process. Engineers at Gray Solutions didn't like this. But I can't program TBD Like when we're writing code. There has to be an answer to every question. Well, I don't know what that timer needs to be. Well, me neither. So you're the process guy. Tell me, give me a number. You can fix it in the field. But I can't leave it blank now.
Speaker 2:Pick something.
Speaker 3:Pick something, or I'll put 10 million in there because I don't know. And when you get down to that level of finding it's 10 seconds right.
Speaker 3:Right, when you get to that level of finding detail, or 10 hours, 10 million, but yeah, when you get to that level of financial detail a lot of the big picture stuff goes away, like a lot of the big picture stuff, which is what 90 of the plant is worried about, 95 the automation engineers. We're down in that level going. Look, I just I need to know when and how to open and close this valve. That's what I need you know. I know you need to know when this photo I turns on what you want me to do with it, when you break it down. That simple it does mean you can fit into almost any industry. You just really have to know how to do the interview and get the information out of the process.
Speaker 3:Experts, like you're saying there's a job. My team, half the team that works at MassHouse Technology, did not come from industrial automation. I half the team that works at Mass Outlook Technology did not come from industrial automation. I did that on purpose and when I tell them it's on track to become a $400 billion industry, they're like that's huge. I'm like right, I just want one, four hundredth of it and we're good. And that's what I mean. There's so much work. It's like throw a dart, go 10 miles around and you can find plenty of work.
Speaker 1:To your point it's just everywhere and it's just going to get bigger. Yeah, it continues to surprise me when people kind of carry that scarcity mindset in the in the industry that there isn't enough work and of course it is cyclical and there are, you know, invest there's more investments in some cycles than others. But I don't know what sets apart those that just see all the work all around them and are willing to go after it versus those that think, oh, you know, if I don't get this contract there's not going to be another job, or if you get this contract I'm not going to get a job. You know that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:Well. So I struggle with a behavior in the in the business development side of what I call order takers. If and it. If you're in the business development side of what I call order takers and it starts with marketing. But the second phase is business development. If your B&E team just wants to sit around and answer the phone and take orders, then they're going to feel there's a scarcity Because 90% of the people that really need automation help are so busy they don't have time to sit at the desk and start calling. So if you're and I'm not saying everybody that's seeing a downturn in the market or saying that there's a downturn in the market is this way. But if you want your phone to ring and you're just going to sit here and answer the phone and then think you've got work, yeah, your phone might stop ringing, but if you're out, there looking for work.
Speaker 2:You're out there.
Speaker 3:The first person I heard Asking everybody yeah, and the first person I heard at mass teletechnology was marketing. The second person I heard was bd, for for a handful reason. One, I'm the engineer, so I was comfortable doing engineering. But and I'm not a salesperson, I'm not marketing. But also because the first thing I do is go find the work. Because you're not looking to find it, then you're right, you won't see it in that 10 mile radius. You won't see that there's a, there's a manufacturer right there, on point Adam, that I'm sure has automation in their house. Now we haven't even gone and knocked on their door yet because we're targeting other areas, but it doesn't mean you can't and it doesn't mean it's not there. So that's, that was, that's my opinion, and why I think people view the market different is they're not willing to find it.
Speaker 1:It's there, it's out there yeah, but you bring up a good point, though. You do have to have a sales and marketing function if you don't want to be just at the mercy of whatever projects are brought to you. And I think some people, if they start their business based on existing demand from past customers or connections, they don't have that muscle to go out there and market themselves or to sell, and then it can be tricky if you don't think that your company needs that as an investment. I have seen or feel like in the industry, some companies they don't really see marketing as the function that it should be. They often have a head of sales and marketing and they really overload that person with way too much, or those couple people they expect them to go to, like you know tons of trade shows every year and also be able to effectively you know, market themselves. And I mean trade shows are great and it's part of you know both the marketing and the networking side.
Speaker 1:I think even today, even more so than just marketing yourself, it's all about kind of strengthening those industry connections, both from marketing yourself as an employer, right, marketing yourself as a potential partner to other companies. But I love to see that one sales and marketing person at a company that I know should have the budget to pay for actually to actually be marketing themselves, not just you know? Oh, here's our latest white paper, or data sheet. Um, so is that something? Have you always had that mindset, or is that something that changed with your second time around, that you thought that that was important to do early on?
Speaker 3:so one of my best friends growing up. He went into industrial automation. He went out on his own and he was a one-man show and he didn't. He wasn't doing what you were doing, ali, with subbing out work because this was back. But when it was a little harder to do that again competition I was in junk about.
Speaker 3:But he came to me one time he said here's the biggest problem I have, alex. I'll do a project, I'll be on the site for three months and then that's done, and next thing now I gotta put on my marketing sales hat and go find more work. So that started the spark of. I'm like, oh, if to really do this at scale, you've got to have focused marketing and bd people so the engineers can go out and do the work. And then and you don't have that lull when we were, when we did it the first time around, um, a good friend of mine, there were three of us and I was the engineering arm and so the guy was doing the marketing and sales arm and he admits freely, he wasn't very good at.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, we realized this and hired a very good salesperson as we ran out of money and we just started getting some traction. In fact I remember the call. We had an opportunity to do this one project, but we were so upside down. Our concern was, if we took the down payment from that guy, we were going to use it to finish other projects and we would be what I would consider being very close to fraud. We were getting very close to taking people's month down payment to work on other projects, knowing we couldn't finish the original project right I've had that happen to me on a contractor, uh, business like residentially uh, and it is, yeah, a good call I guess.
Speaker 3:And we couldn't do that. Yeah, I said we couldn't do that. Yeah, I said we can't do that, we can't. And but what we realized there was the strength of a good sales team. What a good. So that's why we've done what we did, and that was that. That partner of mine then is one of the major investors now and that's what I told him. I said look, finances, we got to go at this different and we've got our largest budget right now because of the size of us is our marketing budget. Um, we're targeting a lot of shows. We go to a lot of shows. We we have two booths that we fly around and put a different shows around the country. Like we are heavily invested in marketing. Part of us get our name out, like people need to recognize our name. I tell marketing soften the ground. When our BD team starts calling, I want people to say, oh, we've heard you, we've seen that name before.
Speaker 1:It can make a huge difference and that does take a little bit of time. So you can't expect that, you know, your first time around. People immediately are going to you know, send you a PO, right. But all of that work it builds up to A both people thinking of you next time they have a project because they remember you, and or when you do call right because you want to be pushing, you want to be, you know, in front of people's uh, have some mind share right when these projects come along, then having that name recognition uh can be really, really helpful and I think that's something that ali's done a really good job of.
Speaker 1:Um, way more people have heard of PCE, or Process and Controls Engineering, or herself than I would say. You know most companies her size, especially because she's not you know the industry that she's in. That sort of thing like that could be completely quiet, like and that's a tricky thing that we have in our industry as well right, not being able to talk about our customers. We have ndas with a lot of projects that we work on. So even if you have all those wonderful case studies in your, you know, in your toolbox, a lot of times they don't pack as much of a punch when you have to redact half the information right we have that.
Speaker 3:We have a customer that we're talking to right now and he wants references and I'm like, well, I'll see what I can do. But you know, part of it is there's some NDA there. Or you know, one of the other challenges big picture with engineering is, once you solve the problem, it doesn't seem like it was that big of a problem. So you have this wonderful case study that the person came to you with a problem and you're like, oh man, think about all the work we did to solve that problem. Then, when you'd explain the solution, I'm like, oh, that seems like it was pretty easy.
Speaker 3:And so again back to losing that punch. Not having that punch oh no, this was a phenomenal thing my team did. But it, once it solves, it seems easier. Right when, when you're building the hoover dam, there's this huge thing at the end that everybody looks at and goes look at how much it worked that way. When you're writing code, you don't really get into the details of that microsecond decision that has to be made consistently every time in order for this facility to run right. Yeah, it just lacks the punch sometimes, but that's part of the job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's kind of like the the hell the sausage is made. I found that I found this out the hard way, with podcasting too. I thought this would be easy.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's definitely not and there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that I never knew about. And now when we talk to people about you know, they want us to come out. They're like, hey, can you come do something with us? And we're like, yes, okay, here's everything that's going to be involved. People are surprised because they say, oh well, you make it look easy or it just, isn't it simple. You just show up and you record something and it's like, no, all the work that went into that behind the scenes, you, you don't really know because it you know you're not talking about that in the, in the final content, but that's what enables it to get done it's anybody that starts their own, anything, podcast, business, anything.
Speaker 3:Again, having gone through it, I've been through a handful of startups outside of the two that I was directly primary on. There's a lot, yeah, and there's just a lot I know, know that.
Speaker 1:But like so I've worked, for I started out working for my dad in his small business. So I saw that from like the inside and from the family of the founder side and I really am surprised I didn't turn myself off from the whole entrepreneurship thing altogether, because I know it's not easy and sometimes it's not successful. Sometimes you don't end up walking away with some sort of big success, right? Sometimes your success is being able to get out from under it intact or, you know, not to mention the impacts it can have on your family, on your health. But I also I guess I have that trait that makes me also perpetually be able to be optimistic about being able to be optimistic about being able to do things, because I think also that if you can't do that, if you can't gloss over a little bit, that it's going to be really hard. You probably won't do a lot of those hard things.
Speaker 3:I think so. Recently I brought on a guy to lead our business development team and I made a point to him at one point when we were interviewing somebody. I said look, it's a different beast to interview somebody to come into a startup because it's startup and some people love it and some people hate it, some people don't have an opinion, but when you tell them it's hard, I think what goes through their head is oh well, I've done hard things before, but it's hard in a very different way Because to that it's the mental piece, it's the you had a bad day. That doesn't mean you're going to fail and being able to walk through that and get to the other side of it and not have it affect your outlook, not spiral.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, I'm going to say this. You know, my wife and I were married the first time I started business and she's the hardest part was closing it. It was, it was devastating to close that business. And when I came to her and said I was going to do it again, she was a hundred percent of all like there was no, there was no walking, there was no. Are you sure? It was like okay, whatever you're going to do, let's do this. And I think that's a huge piece that entrepreneurs specifically miss.
Speaker 3:Is you talk about family? It's hard on the family, it's a big deal to the family and you've got to have that support. You can't, like I can't walk out of this room frustrated and have everyone. I told you so I knew it was going to be hard. What do you like? That's just. That's what leads to real success. You talked about success is measured in a lot of different ways. That's what leads to real success. You talked about success is measured in a lot of different ways, but that part of it is I don't know. I don't know how anybody does it.
Speaker 2:That's mental torture. If your family's telling you that you yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know how you do it Right. It's hard in ways you never thought it was going to be hard. I'll say that Like it's. Just when we closed that first one, I went and worked at this project here in Richmond, kentucky, destroying chemical weapons and I told everybody it was semi-retirement. It had some challenges, but I was not initially, even at the end. I wasn't primary on anything. I led a small team. I was responsible for some very, very life altering decisions, but compared to running a business, it wasn't hard and I spent. That was the longest job I've ever had, cause it took me that long to get my head back into jumping in and doing leadership again. Like it, it, it, it it was. It was pretty, pretty hard, but I'm back at it again, so whatever that means, about resilience.
Speaker 1:Have you, have you taken some steps, um, or is there anything that's different in your life now about, like you said, taking on a leadership position? Is there anything that you feel like you've learned as a leader that you could either give tips to other people or just from a perspective of like, do you do more leadership training or, you know, is there anything that, yeah, changes your perspective on being a leader now versus back then, the first time around?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean. So, simon Sinek, he's got a lot of stuff on YouTube and he talks about finding your why. And honestly, when I, when I started MOT this buddy of mine that I've known forever, he asked me why. He's like, why, why are you doing? Because he knew I didn't want to. He knew for 15 years. I said I'm not doing that. I told Walker Walker asked me one time you want my job? I said no. So you know this guy's like why then, if you've saved her forever, you're never doing it again. Why are we talking about this?
Speaker 3:I think that's a big one, because there's a book out there called turn the ship around and it talks about middle management. I started reading it when I was a gray to help with some of the struggles I was having with my supervisor, and one of the things that calls out in there is as a leader, you're going to pour your heart and soul into people and they're going to hate you for it. And it goes back to that's the. You know. Still, find your why. And again, not to overquote, simon, but if you, if you're not doing it for the reward of whatever, if you do, if you know why you're doing it, just keep running into that, keep grabbing that.
Speaker 3:I'm not doing this because I want so-and-so to think I'm a great boss. I'm not doing this for the money. I'm not. Anybody that's come to me in the last five years and said they want it Cause we promoted a lot of people to managers when I was at Gray Solutions. We grew so fast I had to build managers and I always asked them why? And I always like why do you want to do this? Because if it's well, I think it's just next to my career. That's not going to get you through. If it's well, I want more money. That's not going to get you through. And so that would be my first and kind of core piece of advice is know why you're doing it and keep leaning into that, and if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, it's just not going to happen Like you're not going to be. It's not going to be what you want.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's something that, as I've matured in my career and gotten to know more about myself, I've started to you can be more clear on your why and really realistic about whether something really fits your why or not. I think early on in your career, like you said, you're kind of conditioned to just that's the next step, that's the next thing I should be doing. That's what you know. Everybody and my parents and you know think that I should do next, like for me it was people management. I've had so many people tell me over there oh, you'd make so much more money if you're a manager, like, why aren't you managing people yet? You know, it's like I'm in my late 30s now and I've held those positions and I just didn't feel like I was. It wasn't what I wanted at the time. I wasn't ready, I was still. I felt this. I feel this pull to be an individual contributor, like I just want to do my thing and like add my value.
Speaker 2:But that's because we're not bossy people. We don't want to tell everybody what to do, we just want them to do it.
Speaker 3:Right, well, there's that, that's. I tell people this too. The biggest transition from moving from programming to human beings is when I find a bug in software. It's done Fixed 85% of the time. Once I find the bug, I can fix it. Sometimes it takes a little bit of tweaking to make sure, but with human beings, once you figure out the problem, you just get started. Now it's constant coaching and reinforcement and adjustment. I told you not to do that anymore, but it's a different challenge.
Speaker 1:It's not like giving the machine instructions and then the machine changes on your instruction. There's a new support group for us.
Speaker 3:There was something else that came up in that conversation.
Speaker 2:I would join a support group with you.
Speaker 3:Leadership support groups. Yeah Well, one of the things again, Walker did a lot of good things, great solutions. I know we talked a little bit about this but and I've, I've kind of we started this there. I don't know where they've gone with it, but I've done it in MOT, a version of it, and it's that there is a development path after a certain point that leads into people management or IC, individual contributor, and the salary ranges are equivalent.
Speaker 3:Because what I really want people to realize is there's value in being an individual contributor, there's value in moving up and becoming an SME and being an expert in your field and bringing that to the company. And I want to reduce that stigma of, well, that must be the next step. Right, you don't have to manage people if it's not where you're drawn to, if that's not your, why, if that doesn't fulfill you're not how? It's not beneficial for the company for people to be in a position that don't like it. So, um, I want to give credit where credit is due is a conversation I had with walker. I know he started down that path. I don't know where that ended at gray solutions, because I left before that happened, but I took a version of that and built it out at MOT.
Speaker 3:And you know, again people came to me and were like why are we doing it? We're four people. Why are we worrying about this? And I said because it's going to be important. One of the people we interviewed said what's my progression, what's my path? Look like here. And we had it all built out and we were able to display it. So I think Nikki mentioned individual contribution. I think it's important that, especially when you're dealing with engineers like engineers don't want to think they have to manage people. Some of them aren't very good at managing people and it's okay to be an SME. Managing people is hard. It's a hard thing.
Speaker 2:I like people, but that's part of the problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I think that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Because I want people to like me. My wife corrects me me, but I say this a lot I don't like people and and I think I'm decent at managing people because again, they can hate me. I've said this, I've used this as motivation. I'm like you all have to get along with each other. You, if the only thing you bond on is that I'm a jerk, then bond on that, like if the only thing you guys have in common is that I'm a pain in the butt to work for the great. Have that in common, bond on it and get to be a team and go get the job done.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I don't worry too much about people liking me because that's my biggest problem is like I want them to and like I need to let that go completely.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, I'm working on it yeah, it's harder yeah, and I would recommend that book turn the ship around. It gets a little flow in the back half. But he's right, you know your job is to care about everybody that works for you. I had a. I had a someone in a leadership role at a specific company one time. Say to me he said on a leadership meeting Paul, he goes, yeah, we have to act like we care about those people. And I was like no, no, no, no, we have to act like we care about those people. And I was like no, no, no, no, no, we have to care about these people. Like there's a difference between acting like we care about them and caring about them.
Speaker 2:They're going to know you don't actually? Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it led to some problems.
Speaker 1:So what is your why with MOT now?
Speaker 3:This sounds all fluffy, but I will answer it. So I think that there's a lot of really really smart good and by good I mean morally strong, morally correct people in the industrial automation space. I think there's some good salespeople. I think there's good operational people. I think there's good HR people and I want to build a place where they can come, do a very good job and be comfortable doing. That's why I'm doing this and follow their values.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have a set of what I call foundational tenants at MassTowel and every time I send out any type of direction, it starts with you will follow the tenants first. Anything else that we do from there is based I say this two in the morning you're trying to get a machine running. If you follow the tenants, you don't get fired. We may talk about a better way to do it tomorrow, but if you have to make a decision in the middle of the night and you can't get advice, follow the tenants, you'll be fine. They will put you in a position and I was tired of seeing stuff in the industry where it was work 100 hours. Here's your $200 bonus and be glad you have a job.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't think that industrial automation needs to run that way.
Speaker 1:I could be wrong, but I'm probably not so if you're wrong, we're wrong, we'll all be wrong, but I'm probably not so if you're wrong, we're wrong, we'll all be wrong. Together we can uh, there you go in the wrong together club.
Speaker 3:I mean, we've heard this right take care of the people. They'll take care of the customers. That people, it's been said, it's it's people build companies on it. Heck, great construction, the original great company was built on that. Those that great families very much fans of, take care of people in their core values. They don't talk about profit, they talk about taking care of each other. And I said we can build that, we can do that. So that's why that's why I do, that's why I, every morning, no matter how frustrated in fact, 90 of the times I'm frustrated is because I'm like look, I'm trying to help you get past this Like you're looking at this problem right here. But if you look past it, you'll see that there's a future, there's a solution that's bigger.
Speaker 1:I think that's a hallmark of some good leadership, because, yeah, you know, people bring a lot of baggage with them if they've been around a while.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:Whether that's organizational culture they've gotten used to elsewhere or ways of working. I think also before we were all connected, like you were saying earlier on in the in. You know, there there just weren't all the tools to network with other integrators and find out who's good at what and, you know, reach out real quick to see who has availability and all those sorts of things. Like you would have had to kind of be local or part of some sort of chamber. You know network back then and now you can do that on LinkedIn or you can do that through CSIA or you can do that through. You know there's a number of different, whether it's industry associations or you know we've got SMEs that you know we can reach by Teams or Slack or WhatsApp or whatever. For us, otcatacon is one of those communities that has. You know we've been able to pull resources from and vice versa, and I had actually an outsider. But we were a little bit surprised that people not that we should have been, but that people that didn't know us at all bought tickets to this thing. But that people that didn't know us at all bought tickets to this thing, and one of them I had a meeting with him afterwards and he said, yeah, it was really good, but I kind of noticed that it seemed and he used this word incestuous. He's like like all the speakers, they all do business together all of the time already. And I was like, well, to a point, that is true, all the speakers were part of our network somehow, but most of them actually didn't know each other at all, except for, I'd say, like Josh and Caleb, a couple people had worked together in the past. But what did happen is we put them together in a group chat, like maybe three or four months before the event, and they did business together on their own ahead of time before ever meeting. They did business together on their own ahead of time before ever meeting, because one of those things again, it was an avenue where they got to introduce themselves to other systems integrators. They're still doing it. They're still. They're still doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they found out who does what. And you know, hey, I have this project, I I can't take it or I don't want it or I don't have the expertise, do you? And we sort of sort of saw that unfold in in real time, um, and I, I think that that's, uh, really cool, but those have changed. So do you find that it's, you know, maybe mindsets that you're having to change from, just like the industry used to be? Or is that more yeah, now anything?
Speaker 3:we call it unlearning. We talk about about that specifically, the more experienced. Like we're interviewing a person right now and I talked to the hiring manager. I said, hey, the thing I'm worried about is this person walking in the door and thinking we're going to do things the way we've always done. And the thing is, you know, you talk to people, you interview them.
Speaker 3:Well, mike White is a great example and you know, I talked to him before I had him interview with the rest of the team to come on board and I said, mike, we're doing things a little bit differently here. We're structuring things a little bit. There's stuff that is traditionally in the automation engineer scope that we're moving into a different department. He said, great, I love it. I agree there's a problem there, but when you're in the meet, when you're there, it's still hard to remember. Oh, that's somebody else's job. I need to go talk to that person. I've got a bigger team, I've got to lean on and so, yeah, it's a constant. Again, the word term unlearning is what we use, but it's, and it doesn't matter if it's the automation engineer, the marketing team, the BD team, the HR team I'm talking to Sydney I'm like, hey, yeah, that's not how we're going to do this and she's like okay, okay, and she's open to learning, but it takes some conscious, focused.
Speaker 3:One of our foundational tenants be intentional. It takes being intentional about your decisions every day. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? And just because we've always done it that way isn't an answer. And uh, yeah, it's, it's a thing, it's, it's something we have to focus on every day. Um, but that's okay, like that, we're going to embrace that, we're going to accept it, we're going to do it. Um, we're not going to run away from it. We're going to say this is worth the ask, it's the juice is worth the squeezy, whatever you want to call it. It's worth working hard to do it this way. So that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the tenants and I really like this. We're kind of as we scale or as PCE scales, and I say we because I'm on the board. You got to get some process and you got to start to get that message, those core values, out to the employees right, or the contractors, basically anybody that comes in touch with the company to understand the why, to be able to steer the ship together in the same direction. You kind of got to understand that. Um, can you tell us what this, what your tenants are, and where did you come up with that idea is? Is it like a specific framework that you use, or operating system, or that one's a little.
Speaker 3:That's a little harder. The how or the where it came up, so I'll first I'll tell you what they are. They start with be safe. You know that's. Be safe is the one that everybody.
Speaker 1:Thank you like uh, I don't know why that's a surprise, but good job, thank you, that's oh and.
Speaker 3:But when we talk about is it's not just hey, hey, you got to wear your PPE. Yeah, it's emotional safety. One of the things we do as we do one-on-one check-ins with the team is when's your last vacation, when's your next vacation? Just simple things of because, again, I don't want you working. There is going to be days where I have to tell people they have to work an 80-hour week. It's going to happen. You go to a job site, you site. You're not going home that night anyway. You might as well work and get the project. I get it.
Speaker 3:Automation engineers work a lot of hours, but that doesn't mean that that's the expectation every day of your life. It might be the expectation periodically, but the flip side of that is true. I also embrace the idea that we're souring, which means you get paid for 40 hours, whether you work 40 hours, 30 hours or 50 hours. So I'm okay with people taking off. I'm way sidetracking. But part of this be safe is you're not allowed to take a half day vacation. If you need a half day, just don't come to work for that period, like you don't have to take vacation. When I first people, what do you mean? I can't take a half day. Don't take vacation your salary. If you need to take off at noon, take off at noon. I don't Did your work get done. Yes, I promise you there will come a day where you make up those hours. There will come a day in the automation industry where you have to work 44 hours in a week, like it's going to happen, so take off, I don't care.
Speaker 1:That's all part of being safe, make this even longer. That was one of the things about my first job that really turned me off was it didn't matter if I was there until midnight the night before and on the weekend, if I was one minute late on the Monday morning for that 7 30 start time. That's what came up on my performance review. Yeah, and it just well we don't have.
Speaker 3:We don't do performance reviews either, but we have ways of giving feedback. The challenge I have is because you probably got talked to about it that day and then it also came up on your performance review. I'm like, wait a minute, they only messed up once. Why are we talking about it twice? So we have some things in place to have that conversation now. If you do something good, I'm okay with talking about it. You did a good job, well done and then we'll bring it up in front of the company later and talk about the good job you did too. I'm okay with that. But we don't need to beat people up. But we'll come to that because that's part of a tenant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, so be safe is more than physical safety, and it also is part of how we do design.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Our designs have to be safe. Again, it's a simple thing, but e-stop rules, intrinsic safety. These are things that have to be part of the design. They have to be. So let's be safe, Be respectful Again, it falls into safety. But it's be on time for meetings communicating if you're not going to be in meetings, you know what.
Speaker 3:Another thing that people really struggle with when we talk about unlearning Disagreement is respectful. If I trust you and I respect you, I can tell you when I think you're wrong and we're going to be fine. We respect each other enough to know that it's okay to disagree. There's depth to each of these. It expands, but that's be respectful and it's everything from no-transcript. We don't have a bereavement policy because if you tell me that your great, great grandmother passed away and you need to take time off, but I only say it's got to be immediate family, who am I to get into with that relationship? If I trust you to run a $10 million project, I can trust you to manage when you need to take bereavement, like these are all levels of respect. These are all things where, now again, if there's repeated problems, if it's, you've got 14,000 relatives that all pass away and you have to take a week off. Every time you gotta have a conversation, but that person's probably got problems in other areas of their performance. Like there's other things you have to do, and that's my problem with we're one of the things we're struggling as mass doll scales is.
Speaker 3:We want people are tending to want to write policies and procedures for the lowest common denominator and I'm like no, the lowest common denominator can't work here. Let's write a like just because a person is doing something, we talk to them with corrective behavior. If they continue to do it, they don't work here. We don't have to write a bereavement policy that says it's got to be X, y and Z person. Will that work when we're 5,000 people? I don't know. But that's where we're starting.
Speaker 3:So be respectful, be intentional. I mentioned that one. This was the one I was called the quiet tenant, because you can't be safe if you're not intentional. You can't be respectful if you're not intentional. If you walk into a meeting to provide correction and you aren't intentional about it, you're going to lose your time. I will lose my time. Be intentional. It supports the other tenants and it's again, it allows you to do your job.
Speaker 3:The last one, the fourth one, is the one that's pretty interesting and it's be bold. It follows up with you're allowed to make mistakes, try something new. The only wrong decision is to not make one. I say that a lot Doing the wrong thing is way better than doing nothing, being in control even if it's wrong, because we can fix that. We can fix a mistake Also if we embrace it, if we talk about it, if we allow you to make mistakes, then you raise your hand and you go. I screwed that up. I need help, rather than sweep it under the rug. Six weeks later we find out something was broken. Then you fix whatever it is. And be bold is not reckless. That's where, again, intentionality falls into it. If you have a plan, if you think about the risks, if you accept the risks and mitigate the risks, own the risk, but you're intentional about how you're being bold. So that's what we built that. Those are our four foundational tenets safety, respectfulness, intentionality and and boldness. It's what our and that's what built our company.
Speaker 1:Man, you're making me want to come work for you. So you said this may not work with 5,000 people. What is your goal in terms of and you've said scale as well before, which I think is important to note that not everybody wants to scale and be a large company. We work some of the SMEs that we work with at PCE and some of the companies like partners that I partner with at QuoteBeam. They intentionally want to stay small because they have a certain lifestyle that their family you know. They're not in that entrepreneurial journey, the same way that some people want to grow a billion dollar business. What does success look like for Masked Owl and where are you at now in terms of, you know, size and things like that?
Speaker 3:So I don't have a number for how big I want to be, from number of people or sales, dollars, revenue, whatever all those things. I really the whole nother conversation we'd have is my problem with the word revenue. But I want to build a company where good people could come work and be challenged and have fun and be safe and do what they want to do, whatever size. That is what size it is. I believe that means we're going to continually grow, because I don't think that the people that will come work here will be attracted to MOT, will be happy in a steady state. Yeah, yeah, always going to try something new. We have our vision statement. Part of it includes innovation and I have a department called emerging technologies. Their job, one of her kpis, is a new product every year doesn't mean we have taken a market we want right now, with the size we are, I want a new idea of something and like one that she's running down that we just briefly talked about today is more of an internal. I call it a product, but it would be an internal tool that we could use to help our project management team, but something like we're always got to be trying to find a new, whatever it is, we've stood up an ai team. We right now it's two people, but ai is something that's out there, that's coming, it's going to affect industrial automation. So let's be there, let's see what it is, let's understand it. Even if it's nothing, we need to be in front of it.
Speaker 3:I don't want to be the systems integrator. I don't, like, I don't know that we fit in that squarely, but I don't want to be systems integrator. That's 10 years behind on AI, like, and my investors don't either. We were talking about it. My investors yeah, go hire what you need, stand that team up. So we've got this young lady from. She lives in Boston, I think. She went to Boston University master's in AI and she's brilliant. So we're working with her. We've stood up. She's got an engineer, a product manager counterpart to help keep the scientist and the brilliant mind a little grounded. Yeah, but that's what I mean. But I don't know what we're going to look like. I don't know how big is big, I don't know when done is, I don't know what success is. A group of people that are working really hard and are happy, and I don't know what that looks like 10 years from now.
Speaker 2:I love listening to your answers because it just sounds like me talking.
Speaker 3:I'm like I must be doing shit right. Well, you know that's. I don't have a. I don't have a self-confidence problem very often. But there are days, back to the ownership piece, where I'm like, man, this is not the world I grew up in. Am I doing this right? So I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only person thinking like no, it really won't. I love it.
Speaker 2:I'm like don't make me answer things like I don't know how big pce is going to be. It's going to be as big as it's going to be, like you know, and we're going to keep growing it and we're not going to do it too fast because I don't want to kill it, um. But yeah, there is no I don't know greed ulterior motive, like I need to make a billion dollars, um, and that's probably why you actually will make a billion dollars I hope so, um not for me, but again I'm rooting for you yeah, there's a woman downstairs who deserves whatever reward we can give her because she puts up with.
Speaker 3:I have a. I have a 12 year old son who is identical to me. Like I started program very young. He started programming at six. Like he's, he's pushing bug fixes to reddit, no discord. He's talking to discord. He's like, oh, hey, here I found a bug. He's pushing. But so this kid, and it's funny. He's like, well, well, I take over mot. I'm like, oh no, I have no one because he has worse people skills than me at some point. He's got it often. But she puts up with it. Like she chose to marry me. She did not choose to have another one. Like she chose that other child, but not one. Just like so that she's a saint. But so financially, they'd be great to be able to reward people affected by these decisions in my life. But yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1:I yeah definitely yes, and we would probably have a whole nother episode about this, because you you kind of touched on that. Revenue isn't everything right and you can have an extremely profitable but relatively small company that is technically more successful than a huge multi-hundred person company. That has revenue.
Speaker 3:You know a lot of revenue, massive revenue, yeah we touched on the merger that Grace Solutions went through and I don't want to go too far into that. But I remember a very explicit conversation where you take a privately held company who is worried about cash flow and merge it with a company who is held by a larger entity Gray Solutions, owned by Gray Inc and their concern is more about return on investment. Right Gray Inc puts money into Gray Solutions and expects a certain number to come back. Right gray puts money into gray solutions and expects a certain number to come back. Those are very different financial conversations yeah cash flow versus your return on investment.
Speaker 3:Neither of them really are worried about how much money you made, like your revenue. Um, this was an area walker and I talked about a little bit. At one point he sold a job. It was three million dollars but it was at a 10 margin. It was all. It was all equipment. It was a bunch of servers that we were buying and selling to curie pepper. It was just easier for them to go through us.
Speaker 3:I'm like but, walker, our target is higher than 10 for revenue. Or our roi, our margin was higher than 10, so you brought our margin down because 10% is lower than the target. So now we have to sell more work higher than that to hit that target. And that's why, when you really start thinking about, like, I tell everybody, I don't care what you sell it for, I care how much money we're going to make, how much money goes in the bank, that's what matters. Again, this BD guy we brought in on learning he was very much wanted to set up sales targets for a sales team on revenue I said no, no, no, I'm not going to incentivize people to send a 10 sell a 10 million dollar project with 9.8 million worth of buyout. That doesn't help me and in fact it makes it worse, because I got to go borrow 9.8 million dollars worth of cash somewhere to float that or work out favorable terms with the vendor, whatever. So again, we could have a whole conversation on my my opinions on revenue and how specifically privately held companies fall down a trap by looking at that.
Speaker 3:But back to your question. We have 18 people right now. Um, we are at 18 people. Um, like I said, we invested heavily in bd and marketing, yeah, um, and then our emerging tech group that's over half the company is bd. Marketing and emerging tech. Engineering is not very big a, we could afford it, but kind of the point ali was making, if you bring them in and you got pam and b one of the areas we're lagging look, we don't have the sales dollars I want, we don't have the sales volume I would like to see, and so we can keep the engineering team we have busy, yep, but if I brought in too many more, they'd start getting bored and high performance Don't want to be bored.
Speaker 1:Nope, so they do not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, and and I think we alluded to this earlier we've got some pretty exciting large projects out in mid-phase. People are, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:They're waiting for next year.
Speaker 3:They're waiting for? Well, one of them. I don't know what he's waiting for.
Speaker 1:You're making decisions by not doing anything Lack of is also action. Well, this is about our time, and not because I wouldn't want to continue. We do long episodes sometimes, but my laptop is literally about to shut down here in a few minutes, so I think it's time for our wrap-up question, which is what should we see, if there's anything that we should be looking forward to seeing from mass doll technologies? Uh, and where can people follow you and or reach out to you guys if a they're interested in maybe working for you or collaborate on projects, or if they're a potential customer? Uh, where should people go to find all things alex pool and mass doll technologies?
Speaker 3:well, obviously the first one is I will come back to answer the first part of that question last.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I ask a lot of compound questions wwwmasthowelltechnologiescom.
Speaker 3:That's our website, One of the things you can be looking for. We are doing a revamp on the website. We rolled that out. The existing one's fine, no hard burn with it, but we're rolling out a new one, hopefully the end of the year, maybe early next year. Markets have been working really hard slightly modifying our messaging a little bit. That's the first place. Linkedin's an easy place to find us. Massdial Technologies, Alex Poole. No, E-P-O-O-L. Reach me there. That's the easy places to reach me. We do have booths at a lot of shows, but they're not the automation shows. Typically, we're doing a booth at food and beverage right now. That's the vertical. We just talked about why I don't like vertical, but we are targeting Marketing needs some place to focus, Fortunately, you can't be in all the places all at the same time, so pick one, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So we will have some boosts at some food and beverage shows in 2025. In fact, I think the target is one a month. All right, now the exciting things that are coming. We do have some products, some ways for recurring revenue, which is a problem with most product-based businesses. Yeah, businesses. So yeah, and I don't want to talk too much about them yet because but the target is for a beta by the end of this year and then early next year, emerging tech will be rolling out some products, a specific product related to ai and how it can help the industrial automation space.
Speaker 1:that's really exciting um, I would love to potentially have your ai expert on sometime, either as a standalone episode or maybe part of a panel, because I think you might be time for us to. That's really exciting. I would love to potentially have your AI expert on sometime, either as a standalone episode or maybe part of a panel, because I think it might be time for us to do a panel on AI. It's not, you know, I didn't want to do. I don't like to talk about hype stuff, things that don't have real applications, things that people aren't really doing. But Brandon Peters from Shockwave Automation has also been working on something with one of his customers AI application so we can probably pull now enough people from our network that have real experiences, real stories to share that we'd love to do something like that. So we will definitely be paying attention to your updates. We'd love to do an update with you guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and yeah, just I'm a big fan of MassDoll and everything that you've said today, so really appreciate you spending the time with us. I think our audience is going to love this. A lot of great tidbits as well. Um, we do have a lot of kind of small business owners or people that are, you know, have thought about going out on their own and I I love to get them the real kind of war stories and, you know, not just the shiny, but it is for some people it's kind of inevitable and, and it really is what you know, kind of keeps your curiosity going and, and you know, can answer that, why for you, uh, but like you've, you know, shown us there's also seasons to that right, it doesn't mean it has to be right now. Yeah, so, uh, that is all I have to say, ali, any parting words or questions.
Speaker 1:No, it's great to meet you nice to meet you yeah, thank you so much for being a part of our community and we look forward to seeing you around more often awesome.
Speaker 3:I appreciate. It was a great time. It was a. I really enjoyed this last time.
Speaker 1:So thank you very much. All right, thanks everyone. See you next time. Bye.
