Speaker 0 | 00:09.648

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerd. Today, we’ve got David Stevens. And David, welcome to the show. Please give us a little bit of your history and tell us about yourself.

Speaker 1 | 00:24.702

Thank you. My name is David Stevens. I’m the Vice President of Information Technology at TIE Industrial. And just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, we have two sites up in Michigan as well, along with our main site here. We are an aftermarket robotics CNC controls shop that does a lot of rebuilding, kind of solves different problems between our three different sites. So our IT side is always something new with all three different kind of disparate business units.

Speaker 0 | 01:02.803

Aftermarket robotics. So tell me a little more about that. Like you said, you’re doing a lot of repair, but what kind of robotics are you repairing?

Speaker 1 | 01:12.807

It’s a lot of the larger arms that you see that, you know, used for the automotive industry. But it’s actually across a lot of different industries. Our main core business here. uh traditionally has been around the cnc uh which is used by a lot of the machine shops um for a lot you know it can be used for any kind of machining um they’re usually very large items and we do the controls and the motors for those and they’re like i said the robots the larger robot arms uh we do um you know traditionally we do a lot of phanic uh uh parts as well as our is our biggest one they are the biggest in the industry we also handle some other groups as well and kind of exciting from the it perspective here in the last six months we’ve actually acquired robots.com so we’re getting that marketplace moved over to our site as well

Speaker 0 | 02:12.828

Wow, sounds like a different kind of a world than what I live in with the transportation and trying to move all of the product back and forth and the other organizations we work with. But right before the call, we were talking a little bit and we were talking about the environment that we find ourselves in as IT professionals and approaching the holidays. And you mentioned something, is this the new norm? And for those who aren’t. in the same mindset that David and I are. We were just talking about how the volume of work and the volume of requests and the volume, really the volume of work for IT or information technology people just seems to be increasing and the pace seems to be increasing. So, you got any thoughts about that, David? Let’s bring this conversation out to everybody else.

Speaker 1 | 03:10.272

Well, I mean, you know, certainly, obviously, across industries and everybody I’ve seen, you know, everybody has that trouble with the hiring. A lot of companies, you know, between COVID and other factors in the economy have really, you know, everybody’s been a little bit more conservative with their money as well. So, you know, your staffing needs or what people are willing to commit to, but the needs in the business almost constantly changing. You know, I mean, one of the biggest examples, you know, we do things with a fairly small staff here. But. Right at the beginning of COVID, we kind of went from occasionally some people working from home to where basically half our staff was working from home. And that was, you know, in about two to three days. That would be a fairly large project, you know, for anybody. And usually you would time that out. But I think that quick movement, quick moving notion is just really what we’re going to have for quite some time. I don’t really see that changing for most of the companies. Even as we come out and the economy recovers, that’s going to be another sprint where we all try to get back to whatever the new norm is after that. But I think having more users offsite, all of those things really do affect IT in many ways. And there’s just a lot more to the management and how we perceive things.

Speaker 0 | 04:31.110

You still have a how large of a chunk of your population, of your worker population is remote?

Speaker 1 | 04:39.852

I would say about a third now is what we’re down to. And some of the staff comes in for a day or two a week. Our production staff has to be on site. I mean, obviously, you can’t fix a robot arm from home too often. But a lot of our account management and some of the other staff, they either work from home part-time or in many cases full-time because they’ve kind of found where their groove was. And it’s amazing how many of our groups originally went home not happy about going home and then now are desperate to stay there because they love it. Because they’ve really worked. We had used Slack and then had just moved over into Teams. right before all that hit and it was just almost perfect timing. And that really we had to get up to speed quickly and get our end users, which aren’t always the most technical in nature, up on teams and how to use it quickly.

Speaker 0 | 05:42.962

Yeah. So we had a large population that was already used to the IAM scenario. And luckily for us, we had built all of the infrastructure for the remote work. One of my guys was telling me a few days before, he’s like, you know, I keep hearing this stuff. So I’m just going to start spinning up some more resources, make sure that all of this stuff is available. And he jokingly called it the doomsday servers. And then over a three-day period, we decided and like 90% of the people went home, had skeleton staff in the office. But we quickly came back to the office. And. at max i’d say we probably have five percent working from home um and even that five percent it’s still a majority of those were ones that were already working from home like the sales team who would travel out and go around the country anyway so they um they were able to stay remote yeah that was the that was the previous standard right yeah exactly yeah yeah and we had moved um

Speaker 1 | 06:53.499

A lot of stuff already to the cloud. That was already a move we were making. So that helped sped up a couple of, you know, obviously you just change your priorities and then move on.

Speaker 0 | 07:10.803

Right. And then the other new normal that you talked about was the professional environment and how. Now I’m competing against companies that are no longer local for the talent. They’re hiring people away, offering them national wages, and we’ve been able to enjoy kind of a local wages, air quotes around the word enjoy, depending on which side of this you’re looking at it from, from the business aspect or from the employee aspect. But we’re definitely competing with. organizations that we’ve never had to compete with before for our staff or our talent and the wage market. So retention has become harder. Yeah, there’s all and then just a number of projects that are coming at us. Even with the economy tightening up, I also have seen, you know, I was working at the same organization back in 2008 when things tightened up. And I was able to successfully argue that the IT staff, if anybody needed to increase their staff or maintain, it was IT so that we could help the remaining or the organizations do more with less. And I think we’re facing an even stronger wave of that right now and into the near future.

Speaker 1 | 08:46.481

Yeah, I mean, I think so, too. I think a lot of us that lived through some of the times around the technology boom, I mean, I remember back in the 90s when it really took off for the programming market in particular. And then, you know, back in some of the mortgage crisis and those, you know, we’ve dealt with times on both ends where there was more, way more work and people did a lot of job jumping. And if you didn’t protect yourself as a business, you could really get yourself in trouble and get. far behind and end up paying way more than the original people you were paying and now not have the experience that they had. So that’s always a concern. And then, you know, there’s the other, the concern when the economy goes bad of having, you know, the no jobs aspect as well. From our point of view, as a company, you know, we were deemed a necessary business during during COVID and so we made a priority to keep our technical staff as happy as humanly possible. given the circumstances. And, you know, that’s been important. And from my perspective, it’s been throughout my career, it’s been one of the more important things is, as you know, as technology changes, you know, in IT, you have to keep up with the latest and greatest technologies or you’re going to be way behind and it’s much harder to find a job. So one of the great ironies I’ve always found is that one of the best ways for me to keep people is to keep them happy and working on latest technologies. So the more marketable they are, the less likely they’re sometimes to leave.

Speaker 0 | 10:34.115

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then the keeping them up on those technologies. So constant training, constant. We were just talking about it, the career path, the professional development. So do you guys provide any kind of. incentives, or do you provide time in the day for that professional development, or is it something that you request that the employees do on their own time, but potentially try to provide some resources for?

Speaker 1 | 11:11.612

Well, I usually provide some sort of resources for them. It’s very rare that I find a need, I mean, that I find the time to just go out and have them learn, but… What I sometimes will do is on some of the projects, I may not choose the resource that might be able to get that done the quickest. If I see an opportunity to get them some knowledge on a new technology and give that to a more junior resource that’s never worked with that kind of technology. Someone else may not have worked with it much. And then the real key also then is once somebody has learned some stuff that’s new is to help them. allow them, I guess, to help some of their coworkers and get them up to speed on some of the new technologies. That way you’re not having to learn it all on your own. So, yeah. So, I mean, I guess, you know, you can say I am using some of the time, giving them the time to do a project a little bit slower, but, you know, helps them in the long run and helps, you know, hopefully helps the company as well.

Speaker 0 | 12:21.542

Yeah. So, like, one of the things that I try to do is make sure that… like the level one help desk people. If we’re not utterly slammed, which we have been as of late, and try to provide them with like an hour a week that they can go do some of the online tutorials or online learning that we’ve provided for access for them. But, you know, again, with that caveat of… If time allows, and as of late, with the environment we’ve been in, there has not been time.

Speaker 1 | 12:58.547

Yeah, yeah. You don’t want that to become a negative and push someone towards more overtime. It’s just not at all what you want.

Speaker 0 | 13:05.690

Yeah, yeah, definitely not for that. Now, one of the things that you mentioned a few minutes ago, you mentioned something about programming. And I remember you mentioning that programming was where you got your start. So tell me about the beginning of your career.

Speaker 1 | 13:21.745

So I came out around in 94, and I was a C and Unix programmer. Quickly moved on to C++ and then Visual C++, so I got a little bit further into the Microsoft side of things. So yeah, I did a lot of coding for a lot of software companies, largely in the Atlanta area, which was definitely a different environment than… some of these different other businesses that are that has a different priority uh software the software world when you’re that is your product and the way they uh the programming and all of that it’s just a different environment um so you know kind of work through c plus plus and the dot net c sharp and then i moved on to a lot of database work as well uh then kind of some dba work what sparked the uh programming bug for you So, I mean, when I was an undergrad, I was kind of bouncing around through majors. I was originally a physics major. Wasn’t sure what I was going to do with that for a living. Settled in math and minored in computer science. When I was younger, I had done some programming, old Apple II, BASIC, and then some Fortran on an old VIC-20. I wasn’t sure that that was the life I wanted to live, but bounced around and then I started realizing, well, you know, eventually I’m going to have to get a real job in this lifetime. And it seemed like this was a good move and I was pretty good at it. So it gave me some, you know, some, some, something applied for my math skills and I did that as well. Then I first few years out of school wanted to make sure that I was qualified. Wasn’t, you know, it was a little different environment or wasn’t as sure of the environment back then. And that’s when I went ahead and got my master’s degree in computer science as well.

Speaker 0 | 15:26.495

Okay. You know, I, I. I was a little confused or not really, didn’t have much of a focus when I was going and working on my undergrad. And I asked one of my favorite professors for some guidance. He’s like, hey, you seem to be pretty good at computers and you seem to know business. Why don’t you head that direction? And I kept telling myself, I’m never going to be a programmer, never going to be a programmer. And then it sounds like something that you found was that you were pretty good at it. I found that I was. really good at debugging and figuring out what was going wrong with the program. I seem to be one of the leads in my class on being able to figure that kind of stuff out.

Speaker 1 | 16:09.679

Yeah, I love that kind of problem solving. I still love that to this day. That’s not necessarily the golden side of programming, but it’s actually a lot of times the most interesting for me.

Speaker 0 | 16:24.458

Yeah, because it definitely, I mean, you got to start figuring out, okay, what’s it supposed to do? What’s it not doing? And how do I start isolating pieces of it to figure out exactly where it’s not doing what I want?

Speaker 1 | 16:37.367

Right. And what do I change and what does that mean when I change it? Which is one of the bigger items as well there.

Speaker 0 | 16:43.231

Yeah, especially if you’re somebody who’s into the fact.

Speaker 1 | 16:45.833

Yeah. That’s one of those things when I’m doing, especially some of the vendors, when you start. Realizing, oh, they don’t have a system for this. They are throwing things up against the wall and hoping they stick. And it’s like getting a handle on it. You know, and then you guys are like, no, we’re going to get a handle on this. We’re going to change this, and then we’re going to see what that means. And then we’re going to change this and see what that means.

Speaker 0 | 17:08.308

Yeah, step-by-step debugging and just problem solving. So after you got that master’s, where’d you head? You’re VP of IT now, so there’s a little bit of a gap between the programmer and that.

Speaker 1 | 17:30.015

You know, still some more programming jobs. It kind of moved into a team lead role. You know, you definitely find in this field that if you are just even a decent communicator, then you’ll end up moving up a little. And I think you’ll also… Start dealing with some of the different sides of the business quicker because you can actually communicate in a useful manner. And I think graduate school and then working a job at that time where I was probably the least bad communicator on the team. I ended up doing a lot more of the pre-sales calls with some clients or prospective clients. And so my communication skills improved. And then I kind of learned how to… deal with the different business units. That sort of helped me move up. Then I moved into a true management of the team role, learned my lessons, made my mistakes, I think as any young manager does. Then kind of moved into consulting, got to see the world from a little bit different view from the consulting side as well, and then was able to move into a director role. at one of my clients and moved up from there. Switched, just kind of moved to another promotion at a different company for a VP role. And then I’ve kind of, I’ve done that and I’ve run my own consulting company as well in the interim.

Speaker 0 | 19:03.150

But-So what are the things that you’ve found to be really important or the keys that helped you? So, I mean, you’ve already brought up communication, the ability to talk to others. um obvious well not obviously i i assume obviously but um i know that it’s a key or a critical thing is the ability to listen not just communicate but you got to be able to hear what others are telling you um so i’m assuming that you had that you had the ability to talk to them what other things did you find and like talk to me a little more about or explain to me a little more about the difference between um

Speaker 1 | 19:45.898

in the consulting world and what did you what what real lessons did you learn there well you know of course in the consulting world you know you have certain advantages of not being stuck you know, at your company and pigeonhole with what you’re doing. So, you get to learn a lot more things and see it a little bit from the outside. As you say, you know, listening to what they expect or what they want is important, but also a lot of times they will try to, what they’re going to try and tell you is they’re trying to solve their problem, but they’re not telling you what their problem actually is. They’re trying to say, can you do this for me? And what you need to do is, well, what problem are you trying to solve with that? And you can go a step back. And I think that’s sometimes where some of our colleagues in IT get stuck is they say no or no, that doesn’t make any sense. We can’t do that. And instead of, okay, let’s go back a step and see what problem are you solving? And can we solve that or can we solve part of that that makes your life easy enough that that’s no longer really your worst problem? And that’s really taking that extra time to not just listen, but also truly understand where they’re at, a lot of empathy. I think the empathy for their situation and what problems they’re trying to solve. Because they don’t always know what technology can solve their problem. They’re trying to solve it with what’s in front of them. And that may not be the solution for the problem.

Speaker 0 | 21:25.957

Amen to that one. There’s so many times where… Somebody comes and says, I need you to do this. And I’ve met so many people that are within our profession that they go,

Speaker 1 | 21:38.488

okay.

Speaker 0 | 21:39.448

And they grab that description and they run off and try to build that thing for them. And they never ask, well, wait, why are we doing this? What’s the goal? Which is exactly what you’re talking about of digging into it. Because, you know, they. There’s that saying that I don’t know how often you hear it. I keep hearing it a lot. You know, if all you got is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

Speaker 1 | 22:07.270

That’s very much what I was, you know, very similar thinking on that as well. Yeah. They tried to take the smallest thing and use that over and over and over again.

Speaker 0 | 22:18.798

Yeah, they take their frame of reference and use the tools that they know of and the tools that they’re used to. And. I’ve always found I tend to collect a lot more tools or be aware of tools that may be in the box that I may not be using, but I at least know who to go to to find out how to use it and try to help get to the actual solution that we’re looking for.

Speaker 1 | 22:47.773

Yeah, another thing that I think of, there was a negotiations class that I took. that I’ve been able to use some of the concepts from that. And just everyday life where, you know, stop looking at every negotiation or any dealing as a me win versus you win. It’s like, how do the two of us win together? And that’s kind of how I, instead of being a constant pushback, it’s, okay, I’m not sure that we can do that. And here’s why. Here’s my problem. So that, you know, that gives the user a little empathy for your problem. But what if we tried to do this and then we start solving the problem together with us knowing the technology side of it and then them knowing how they work? And how often did that at least at the very least, if we come out of it with that empathy for each other’s issues and we’re both we’re both on the same side here at TIE is the first time I’ve run into this. But we have a concept called noble intent. And it’s basically, it came from some, I believe, Army Rangers, that the idea was that there should be an assumption that our different teams, everyone has a noble intent for the business. Everybody’s goal is to do what’s best for the business. So assume that first. Don’t assume that anybody else is doing anything for the wrong reasons or because they just don’t want to. I’ve heard people describe IT that way before. And I was like, well, that would be crazy for IT to not just want. to do something, they probably have a reason. So, you know, so, you know, noble intent says, assume that if you’re getting pushback, that there’s a reason. And if you need to know why, or, or that, you know, you should ask, but don’t go away angry, you know, and, and, and just, and look at it and assume that everybody is working for the best of the company.

Speaker 0 | 24:47.108

Yeah, no, that’s a great, a great point because, um, There’s so many times that, and I don’t think there’s anybody out there that hasn’t experienced the reading of a text message or reading of an email through their emotions and misinterpreting what’s going on. And having that understanding or that belief in noble intent would help slow at least the reaction to that. or the response to that versus people’s tendency to just take it as, well,

Speaker 1 | 25:28.812

they’re trying to do this.

Speaker 0 | 25:31.494

Whether it’s us or whether it’s them or, and even that right there, that statement, us versus them, we’re all on the same team trying to achieve the same goal of keeping the business profitable and doing the best that it can.

Speaker 1 | 25:49.069

Right. Yeah. And we just have our group that’s, we do it because we use technology to help. Our job is to use technology, to help our teams use technology to solve our larger problems.

Speaker 0 | 26:04.215

So I noticed a lot of project management capabilities in your resume also.

Speaker 1 | 26:13.759

Yes, especially when it came around to the, on the consulting side, it was fairly important. to keep that ability. And that’s when I got my, uh, my PMP. Um,

Speaker 0 | 26:26.445

that takes a few days.

Speaker 1 | 26:28.527

It does. It does. That was, uh, that was a more difficult test than people might’ve given it credit for. Um, and that whole process, um, you know, and, uh, I’m certainly not a strict, uh, PIMBOK, uh, PMP. type of person. I definitely think each organization has different needs that need to be solved. One of the things that’s working for, you know, like when you’re working to a small or a small to mid-sized company, I don’t think you, I think you should take the advantages that you have and being able to move quickly and then, you know, have the process meet the need. Because you can, you know, one of the advantages in a smaller company is you can move quickly. larger companies, obviously, there’s so many people and so many things going on, you do really have to worry about the larger processes. So, you know, those are really the concepts I’ve taken from it the most. I am not an inherently organized person. So adding those skills to my toolkit were important for me and how I manage processes.

Speaker 0 | 27:44.049

Yeah. Um, it’s definitely a skill set that is, seems to be, there’s a certain subsection of us that just love that and take to it like ducks to water and then others that, um, struggle with it. Um, I’ve always been kind of good at managing the chaos and, and working through the chaos, but, but like you’re talking about where. that it fosters things in the smaller organizations but i’m getting to that point where i recognize that it um stifles things in the larger organizations and and actually a lack of it causes a lack of um deliverability on the larger and faster

Speaker 1 | 28:32.753

projects that need to be done for the larger enterprises right yeah and that’s definitely why you know a lot of the development these days is done in the more agile models as opposed to the older waterfall models but the agile ones and i mean you know the whole concept around agile is to make sure that you are fitting the right process around uh what needs to be done um and and have a consistent repeatable process um and you know we’ve we’ve played around here quite a bit depending on what projects we have on our length of our sprints um And sometimes we’ve gone for doing a sprint, weekly sprints, because that way we could follow up. And that was what worked best for our team. And we’ve now settled out where we do essentially monthly sprints. And then I’ve actually had different sprints for my staff internally and then some of a different sprint for some of my outsource staff as well. But like I said, it’s about, you know, fitting that right role and what. what needs to be done. If you have one programmer working on one thing, then you don’t really have to worry about your process near as much. But suddenly, when you have multiple people working on similar things, it’s a whole different ballgame. For sure.

Speaker 0 | 29:59.913

The sprints and working with that, how long ago did you start doing that?

Speaker 1 | 30:04.034

How and

Speaker 0 | 30:07.275

I mean, switching from the waterfall to the agile, was it kind of a natural transition? Was it something that took some time? Was it something that you brought to the current organization and said, you know what, we just need to go this way?

Speaker 1 | 30:25.216

Yeah, the current organization, they were trying to implement some Agile stuff. And that was actually one of the things that they, when they brought me on, I think excited them about me. And so we kind of revamped their entire process at that time. They were already using Jira. I don’t really think that they really were getting the concepts around some of the Scrum in particular. I don’t even know if they were trying to implement Scrum, but that’s essentially what I implemented here. In my history, we very quickly got a lot of advantages, very quickly, especially when we suddenly now had some of the different business units and a business owner that felt like they were part of the process. was one of the advantages we got from using Scrum and the Agile, was that they could now understand, okay, this is what we think we can get done. These are the items, types of things we can get done. Which ones do you want in this amount of time? And when they’re part of it, then there’s just a lot less of the finger pointing. They really get the empathy for what the team’s doing, and then we’re moving forward consistently. And then they’re not waiting for three months and then they get something dropped on their desk and they’re like, what is this? This is not at all what we wanted. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 32:01.193

So, you know, we’re right back into that whole thread of communication. So that constant feedback loop, that constant communication with the business side of the house, making sure that you’re on target, that you’re delivering, or they’re seeing the progress being made. And that it’s headed in the direction they want versus that old school waterfall or the cost over the wall. Let me go work on this. And then you return, like you said, three months later and just drop it off. Well, I’m done.

Speaker 1 | 32:38.827

Yeah. Well, and then I think it also helps, you know, when there are mistakes made, we’ve made the mistakes together and then we’ll learn from them and then we can quickly move on from them. And what’s next? And, you know, we’ll succeed together and we’ll make mistakes together, but it will be together and it will be done with, as we say, noble intent.

Speaker 0 | 33:08.477

What other things would you like to bring up about the career and the history? And what can we tell the youngins who are listening to us or even the old guys that are trying to? get out of the programmer’s closet or to stretch their wings and challenge themselves?

Speaker 1 | 33:28.426

You know, for the younger folks, I mean, I definitely think, you know, making sure that you can find the right job or at least the right fit for you. Make sure that, you know, you’re set up for success. You know, one of the things you’ll find… especially moving into more of a middle management role, is that you don’t always have a ton of control, but you do have a lot expected of you. At that point, you’re managing a team, but making sure that you can stay on the same pages as whoever you report to and making sure that they’re good with the direction that we’re moving, why you’re moving the direction that you are making is extremely important. Make sure that this is a job that you’re not too badly redefining what is successful. You want to make sure that you have a certain amount of control over your own destiny.

Speaker 0 | 34:28.841

You actually bring up another point that I’ve been hearing more and more about. And it’s something that my children and I, you know, sometimes I go into a job and I just keep going and I do. my best to succeed at that and and you you mentioned a job that’s right for you um What are the lessons that you’ve learned around that? What have you discovered? Because I’ve been with one organization for 20 years. You’ve got 20 plus years in the industry, but bounced, not bounced, but migrated from different types of jobs, different roles. What have you found along the way around as you ventured down that journey?

Speaker 1 | 35:23.570

Well,

Speaker 0 | 35:24.791

defining what is the right job for you. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 | 35:28.313

Well, you know, a lot of it has to do with where you are in life, where you are with, you know, with kids. One of the reasons I stepped back at one point in time, back into I went back into consulting. Like I said, I ran my own consulting company. And then while I was doing that, I actually got divorced. And that sort of changed. My life now, I was a single dad wanting to make all my kids soccer games, and I’m also a soccer coach for that matter. So that kind of changed what was the right fit for me at that point in time in my life, something that had a certain level of flexibility. As the kids got older, then it was, you know, it’s just a lot, it was easier to get back into a job. But I still… wanted a certain level of flexibility. One of the things I like about where I’m currently at is our ability. I can be flexible when I need to be. I was able to, if I needed to suddenly go jump up, and it’s not far from my house or my daughter’s school, I was able, if suddenly she was sick, it was very easy for me to go pop right over, take her home, come back, or do whatever I needed to do. Those are some of those things that make sure your work-life balance is good. Um, make sure the goals of the company. I think another major thing that you should look at is, is really the people that are around you. And do you have good mentors, um, at a company? Um, do you have people that are going to help you and care about you and your career and have done some of the things that you’re, you’re looking to do?

Speaker 0 | 37:09.327

Um, interesting. You know, I, I, um, I find myself contemplating those kinds of things today. And, you know, what’s next? Where’s tomorrow? So I love that you’ve found that and looked for that. And I hope that you’re enjoying yours.

Speaker 1 | 37:38.535

I do. It’s actually a very good place to work. We have a lot of people here that have been here, you know, 25 and 30 years. You don’t get that. that much anymore. And there’s some reasons for it here.

Speaker 0 | 37:55.083

Okay. Yeah, there’s not too many people that are in the 20 plus realm at the organizations that I’m working at. Of course, the owner and the co-founders and that group and the family, but the number of people out of 3,000 employees, I think there’s under 20 or 25 that have been at the organization 15 or more years so that’s still not a bad you know some of that of course i’m sure is growth as well but yeah yeah of course and then transportation we have a you know the industry norm for turnover is like 85 percent if not greater so yeah but that’s that’s more amongst the truck drivers than it is the office staff um sue When it comes to entertainment or when it comes to your personal life and downtime, are you on computers? Are you watching movies? You playing video games? You out hiking in the woods?

Speaker 1 | 38:59.339

As I said before, I am a I coach club soccer. Yeah, I coach club soccer. My daughter is still a soccer player. She’s a senior in high school. Now she’s at a different club. So that’s quite a bit of my time there. And I’m still debating on whether or not I’m retiring as a soccer referee. So that takes a lot of my time. Love going to music festivals when we get a chance. Went to a great one in Memphis this year. So those are kind of my new things. I guess as soon as my daughter is out of the house next year. In college, I’ll be empty nesting and have to get back to maybe some of my older things, including I was a bass player and I used to be a scratch golfer, but that’s gone long down. I haven’t even picked up a club in a while.

Speaker 0 | 39:59.715

So it sounds like you’re not spending your downtime on utilizing technology. You’re out there enjoying, you know, the mentoring that you were talking about with the coaching, music, and, of course, the golfing, which you haven’t done in a little while. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 40:19.903

Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think I mean, sometimes from a career perspective or if something comes out, I’ll. I’ll listen to it, but, um, to stories about, uh, you know, podcasts or things, but, um, I don’t, I don’t do a lot of technology anymore at home. Um, I do, uh, one of the things I have been working on is I’m trying to get some, uh, uh, timers and controls over, uh, a central thing for my, uh, I have several saltwater fish tanks and, uh, do some of the tracking, um, water quality and stuff like that. Uh,

Speaker 0 | 40:55.494

on technology but that’s really probably the biggest thing i do technology wise at home there’s some of that yeah just trying to build those so you can’t just buy them ready-made or or they’re just too expensive and you know too much about technology to be willing to pay that much for it that’s that last one um trying

Speaker 1 | 41:13.704

to justify just trying to justify that as you’re about to send a kid to college uh that spend saltwater tanks are expensive enough as it is so uh Some of those systems run quite a bit of money. The lighting alone is enough money. So, yeah, trying to manage all that. And I’ve got enough of a technology background. And sometimes that helps keep me up on my technology. As you know, when you get into management, sometimes you get a layer above the hands-on. And sometimes it’s good to have a little bit, get your hands a little dirty again.

Speaker 0 | 41:51.185

Yeah. Okay, that’s an interesting topic, too. How much do you find yourself doing the management slash leadership versus the actual hands-in, deep dive into the technology, guiding the team, or helping them solve things? Do you find yourself separating that?

Speaker 1 | 42:18.040

I probably help the team. Probably 40% of my time, 40 to 50%. I get a little hand, you know, direct hands-on, you know, maybe no more than 10 to 15, probably, percent of my time anymore. And then the rest is more management style, pure management style duties, you know, managing the sprints, managing priorities, working with the executive team, those kinds of things. So a lot of it is… Helping them think through and work through their problems. Sometimes I’ll touch code doing that, or I’ll look at code with them when they’re running into a problem and help them think it through. You know, there’s always that classic about the time they explain it to you, then they understand what the problem is in their own head, and they just walk away.

Speaker 0 | 43:10.886

Yep.

Speaker 1 | 43:11.586

I was going to talk about that. I’ve had that many times myself. You’re just banging your head into a problem, just cannot solve it. try to get some help and you’ve explored and in your explanation you’ve solved the problem yourself you’re like i’m done never mind i’m good you’re walking through it and you’re like oh man that was obvious tearing me in the face because i couldn’t see the forest for the trees yeah

Speaker 0 | 43:36.939

and it’s just using those different circuits inside of my own brain to verbalize it versus being stuck in my head just looking at it and thinking it through right which is it’s it it’s always interested me how we do that and it seems to be a common thing for for all of us within it trying to you know i’m stuck on this problem and let me explain it to you oh wait never mind and then walking away just like you’re talking about um all right so uh here’s something else that we all are saddled with anymore so is it an android phone or an iphone i am on iphone i wonder Was it the first one that you picked up?

Speaker 1 | 44:21.400

It was not. I had an Android. I originally had a Blackberry. It was my first smartphone, if you want to call that a smartphone, if you want to call that a semi-smartphone. And then I had the Android. I liked the Androids. And oddly enough, I actually, I was just a few days from being able to get a new one. And my Android. got wet at an amusement park and got ruined. And the only thing I could get for free at that point in time was an iPhone. So I switched to the iPhone. And ever since, once you kind of get used to that technology, that’s what you stick with. You know, I think I would have normally stuck with the Android, kind of like the openness of that market a little bit more as a developer. But yeah, I’ve been an iPhone user now for probably at least 10 years.

Speaker 0 | 45:16.435

Okay. Yeah, I remember when… the the blackberries as i used to call them um having those and that was actually one of the devices that i was i’m sitting there reading my emails with my uh my blackberry held over the the giant pot of spaghetti that i was making for the evening or boiling the water with the noodles and i realized wait a minute what am i doing it was one of the first times where i finally just set my phone down and said i need to be where i’m at instead of on the phone And it was interesting. But I also remember how much I used to think that those new smartphones were some of the dumbest devices that I’d ever had. Because simple features that they didn’t include anymore, like speed dial or to use speed dial. It was so complicated that it was just frustrating.

Speaker 1 | 46:16.548

I definitely remember the old keyboards on the… Crackberries. That took up most of the device. It was just like tiny little things. I’m not sure. When I was younger, I think that it really wasn’t that big a deal. I mean, my eyes are not quite what they used to be. I don’t know how difficult that would be on me anymore.

Speaker 0 | 46:36.736

I think I could still use the keyboard on it. I used to have a drawer full of Blackberries where the little rollerball was broken or gone.

Speaker 1 | 46:49.101

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 46:49.602

oh gosh i’d forgotten about that yeah and then then all of the fun with the blackberry server the blackberry enterprise service enterprise server and all the fun that we used to have with that um all right i got anything else you want to bring up you got any anything you want to promote any personal projects that you’re working on

Speaker 1 | 47:17.950

Like I said, our biggest thing right now is we, well, I don’t want to say it’s our biggest thing, but the biggest thing from a public standpoint is we are looking at the robots.com and moving that over under our brand. We’ve kind of done the first stages of that, taking it as is and just switching it over to our site. But we’re very excited about that as a marketplace. And. I think that there’s going to be quite a bit of opportunities for our business moving forward.

Speaker 0 | 47:55.723

Go ahead.

Speaker 1 | 47:56.623

Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 0 | 47:58.004

I was, you know, I brought up robots.com finally and started looking at it and some of the pictures that they have on the site. You know, I’m now looking at some of the giant arms that you’re talking about, the different types of robots like that. So do you guys have a floor out there with like? 30 or 50 different models of those robot arms out there to like show customers or is it just that you’re repairing them and then moving them out or are you guys trying to do creation around new capabilities from these devices are you is there anything interesting or new and challenging that you’re doing along those lines the robot side um i mean

Speaker 1 | 48:46.318

We have an extremely large warehouse here in Tennessee. We actually have another group that does a lot of the robotics arms up there, up in Michigan as well. In fact, that’s that there’s strictly robotics up there. Here we, like I said, we have this very large warehouse full of our CNC controls and our motors. And then we have another third of the warehouse, which is dedicated to the robot side. There we probably have in stock I don’t know, around 30 to 40 robots, robot arms at this facility that are in different levels of ability to go out the door. And then we have several that are sitting and being demoed or being ready to be tested or are going over long term testing that are just running constantly on our floor here. And then up in Michigan, we have, like I said, that’s actually strictly robots. So we have quite a few more. robots up there sitting out there on that floor. What we have is kind of a unique offering is what we call integration ready. Robots have to be very customized for whatever use they’re gonna, whether they’re gonna be used for. And so there’s a lot of, there’s companies out there that perform that service of service providers essentially that take integrators. that take and integrate that robot into a customer’s plant. One of our unique offerings is that we actually go an extra stage from what they normally deal with, which is a very basic robot. And then there’s going to have to go through that customization. Ours comes out what we call integration ready, and that the integrator is able to take it, do very little, have to do very little work with it, the basic. adjustments that have to be done. And then it is ready to go in at a client site. That gives us, you know, we’re pretty much the only one in the industry that has that, especially on the aftermarket side. And, you know, obviously what makes us different is we have the industry experience to be able to do that and know what that’s going to look like. So we have stuff that’s ready, but we go, like I said, what we’ll have to do is. We have a full project management routine that we have to go through when we get in an order because every time it’s going to be a little bit different. They’re going to have different software needs, different risk needs, just different setups on each one of those types of robots. And we actually perform that here as well.

Speaker 0 | 51:32.497

Okay, so I was wondering as you were speaking, you know, and you started to mention a little around it, the different skill sets that you have to have available. to be able to do that level of integration no matter what the customer’s systems are. Is it, I’m assuming that it’s not fairly standard across the industry to interact with these robots, it’s all around the ERP or the management system or the production system?

Speaker 1 | 52:03.982

Yeah, it’s the production system and the control and however they want to get that set up to do whatever it’s doing. Because, you know, these robots can be used for quite a few different things from just moving. You know, it could just be moving pallets. That’s a very specific, what, simplistic task. But these robots can, it’s the same, essentially the same robot with different setup and different integration that does welding. And the way a weld cell works is it actually can work on multiple parts at the same time. And like, well, you know, it does. part on one part, and then there’s going to be a cooling cycle. It moves over to the other side, starts to weld part of that. It’s just a lot just depends. And there’s just a million different things that you can do with the robots. You know, or you even run into different robots that are literally, their purpose in life is just to put tops on things. That’s a different style than that arm robot that you’re looking at. But that’s, you know, you might see 24 bottles get… pulled into something and then those tops come down and get screwed on top properly. You know, there’s just a lot of different things in robots. We don’t do as many of those. We have some of those, but the arms are primarily what we do as of right now. But like I said, there’s a lot more when it comes to that integration. And like I said, the integrators are the ones who put it in at the end, but what they’re getting from us is they know it’s a much more ready. for them to work with product. They don’t have to get that in three months before it goes live and go, okay, now what’s our problem going to be with this one?

Speaker 0 | 53:46.926

Yeah. So you guys are bringing them the physically ready reconditioned device that they know is working?

Speaker 1 | 53:55.792

With the right software on it, the right licensing, all of that.

Speaker 0 | 54:00.335

Okay. Sure. Got any wild stories or things that have Any of the myths or not even myths, but, you know, just the stories that get told around the water cooler for the new employees about things that have happened? Or am I crossing a boundary here?

Speaker 1 | 54:27.149

I mean, I don’t think, I mean, it’s obviously it’s a different environment. in terms of what our users are used to. And, you know, we’re very much more like a… a mechanic shop or something like that in terms of our users so not necessarily our users aren’t always the most sophisticated um in terms of actually using technology we have several groups at our company that would never would refer never to use email ever um but

Speaker 0 | 55:03.130

i don’t know that i have anything that i that i really could share okay yeah i mean i i definitely not looking for the skynet story and definitely don’t want to put you in in trouble with i will say the musician

Speaker 1 | 55:16.894

The company I mentioned before, Fanuc, it was a Fanuc control that helped destroy the Terminator, the first Terminator movie. When he was crushed in that vice, it was a Fanuc control that was used to do that.

Speaker 0 | 55:30.958

That big button that they were reaching out and grabbing?

Speaker 1 | 55:33.378

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 55:36.819

Well,

Speaker 1 | 55:37.099

it’s just our other website for, like I said, on the control side is Fanucworld.com. Okay. So, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 55:46.422

All right. One more chance. Anything else you want to promote besides robots.com and Ty?

Speaker 1 | 55:53.986

I think that’s it.

Speaker 0 | 55:55.586

All right. Well, it has been an interesting conversation. I’ve really enjoyed the time. Hope you enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 1 | 56:04.411

I did. Thank you very much.

Speaker 0 | 56:05.992

Been great to meet you, David.

Speaker 1 | 56:07.933

Nice meeting you.

Speaker 0 | 56:08.974

Nice meeting you. I hope you have wonderful holidays and we’ll hopefully talk again more soon.

Speaker 1 | 56:14.697

All right. Sounds good. Thank you.

Speaker 0 | 56:16.518

Thank you, sir.