To celebrate reaching 10,000 downloads of the podcast, Chris and Melissa mix things up and interview each other so that you can get to know your hosts better!
We talk about what we were doing before joining CircuitHub and Worthington, our journeys towards getting there, imposter syndrome, our love affair with Grape Nuts, and more!
pickplacepodcast.com
To celebrate reaching 10,000 downloads of the podcast, Chris and Melissa mix things up and interview each other so that you can get to know your hosts better!
We talk about what we were doing before joining CircuitHub and Worthington, our journeys towards getting there, imposter syndrome, our love affair with Grape Nuts, and more!
pickplacepodcast.com
Welcome to the pick place podcast, a show where we talk about electronics, This is Chris Denney with Worthington.
Melissa:And this is Melissa Hough with CircuitHub
Chris:Welcome back, Melissa.
Melissa:Welcome back Chris,
Chris:So I'm very excited for this episode. We had mentioned, I think last week that we officially reached 10,000 downloads It just feels amazing. So thank you everybody for listening. I hope that we've brought some education and enlightenment to
Melissa:hopefully you haven't slept through all the episodes.
Chris:And hopefully you're not as frustrated with my We got some interesting feedback from a listener. We always get quite a bit of interesting feedback, but this one and Melissa, you suggested we should we should mention it on the show. Would you care to read the piece of feedback from what is it, Mr. Mr. James, we'll call them just Mr. James.
Melissa:I would love to. So James, we were having an email thread with him and he replied that manufacturer unless the board cannot be manufactured just by asking for it. I get the impression that the knowledge is sacred or perhaps no one wants If the PCB of your manufacturer was forthcoming then I can make minor changes Why would manufacturers not give feedback? I would love to have my boards critiqued. That's how you get better. Agreed.
Chris:I can't agree more with this statement. Everything about what he said is so incredibly true and oh, not every word that, but his sentiment is so true; the feeling he has everybody experiences it. I'm going to speak from the perspective of an assembler. I think he's specifically talking about the perspective of a fab Yeah. So from the perspective of an assembler, he mentioned that he gets the impression I can't rule that out as a possibility, but what is that phrase that people something along the lines of that, like it don't assume the worst it's probably
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:And in our case, it is absolutely true. We don't, I mean, for goodness sakes, we have a podcast that helps people design Certainly we're coming from the perspective of, we love to So maybe not every manufacturer is like this, but we certainly And we. But being forthcoming about it and like being proactive about it is so hard. And what I mean by that is like, when you're, I think if you're in a position circuit boards, you're absolutely going to be forthcoming with design feedback. As a matter of fact, you're probably going to be constantly changing or and first-pass yields and all this kind of stuff so that you don't And you've have, your tests are just flying through 99.9, nine, 9% yield. You're absolutely going to do that, but you're incentivized to do that. Right. You're going to build a thousand and it's going to be painful. And you're like I don't want to build another thousand like this. We got to make some changes here,
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:But when you're building like 25, and you're building somebody, hundred pieces in somebody else's, you end up in this position where
Melissa:of time.
Chris:Yeah. Just the lack of time. So I'll give you an example, anybody on our floor, in their operation, whether an inspection, or even for goodness sakes, even packaging depanelizing, everybody And each of them are capable of suggesting Hey, don't do this, do Everybody's so focused on shipping and getting stuff out the door People pay for solder joints. They don't want to pay for feedback. And honestly it would feel like a little weird to be like, oh Yeah, we'll tell what purchase order for so that we can spend the time to tell you what needs to change. Could you imagine that's insane. Like I would never do that. So the financial incentive isn't there. And so what do you do? You just naturally gravitate towards what you are financially incentivized I think that's really the root cause of it here. It's not any sort of malicious intent that, oh, we got to We don't want anybody to know so that we can jack up prices. No that's so not true at all. And he's right. If we were more forthcoming with design improvements, each design we build, then And the designs that would come in would get better and better. And it would be this cycle of a constant improving each new design, So there's this hidden incentive to constantly be doing it. It's just so hard to actually buy out the time and do it, I guess,
Melissa:Especially cause fabs often they don't know if they're ever going So taking that time to provide advice when you don't even know if there's Time is so valuable for us.
Chris:You hit the nail on the head, you hit the nail on the head. Now, one thing I am a little disappointed by is he even says that
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah. That's true.
Chris:that's weird.
Melissa:So if someone asks us for advice and then we just ignored them,
Chris:A thousand
Melissa:yeah.
Chris:That I've been in situations before where people have asked for feedback. They'll probably reach out to somebody like John, who we Cause he's your account manager perhaps. And they'll say, Hey, you're building 50 of these for me, I want to build 5,000, so I'd love to know how it goes. If you can provide any feedback and we see that a fair bit not as much as you I'd like to see it more. We'd love to know if you're doing prototypes with us, please let us know Cause that does help us. Anyway, I won't digress on that too much, but and so I'll run into these situations using James as the example here, James wants to know what he can change about And he'll probably reach out to me and Dave and I will very likely be the moment that I get this message from John, I probably can't respond to him. And so like maybe a few days or a few weeks go by before I do respond I think I've usually gotten back to him with Yeah, Make these So I guess I would just encourage James or anybody in his position
Melissa:Yeah, follow up.
Chris:and be maybe less specific. What am I trying to say? Don't ask if you were to ask me, Hey, how is the footprint for my Xilinx SPGA? Because that's the most expensive part on my board. I might look at it and go, Yeah, it's perfect. It matches the manufacturer's recommended data sheet. You got filled in plated pads, all good. Meanwhile, there's some glaringly obvious, horrible thing about his design that So if maybe if he's just, maybe if you're looking for feedback from your like, Hey, I want to be able to reduce my costs and I want to be able to get What about my design are you struggling with, what can I change? Just leave it a little bit more generic like that, and possibly they ask again, ask a third time, you ask a fourth time, be the squeaky wheel. It just seems strange that they wouldn't get back to you specifically, if you And maybe it's just the culture we have CircuitHub and
Melissa:So use CircuitHub, or Worthington
Chris:There you go.
Melissa:and we'll give you advice.
Chris:And listen to the show and thank you for everybody It's fantastic. It gets a little weird to talk meta about the show, right. But we're very happy with the number of unique downloads I think it honestly surpassed my expectations at this point. We still haven't reached my ultimate goal, but we're getting close. So I'm very excited about it. Maybe we'll do another special episode when we reach my secret goal. We'll keep a secret.
Melissa:Okay.
Chris:But because of our 10,000 downloads we're going to do a special episode today. What's today's special episode and anybody who's read the title
Melissa:So we decided that it would be a good opportunity for you, the listeners to So Chris and I are going to interview each other today.
Chris:oh, I'm nervous.
Melissa:So if you don't care who we are, then you can just stop listening.
Chris:Yeah. Just
Melissa:to the skip this episode.
Chris:there's probably not going to be a whole lot of design advice, but there and background of who each of us are, but obviously we'll, we're gonna relate it
Melissa:Not our just general life stories. That'd be strange.
Chris:I have two pugs and I've been married for
Melissa:I think everyone already knows about your pugs,
Chris:know about the pugs by now.
Melissa:yeah.
Chris:All right. so let's start with you, Melissa. We'll put you in the hot seat. We'll get the spotlight going. We'll put the super, the super special lighting in and all that Right.
Melissa:yeah. Sounds good.
Chris:Make sure your lighting's perfect for an audio only program. all right. All right. Let's start out with a more generic thing and then we can reverse course, but what So somebody calls into CircuitHub and says, Hey, what does Melissa do there?
Melissa:I don't really have, a typical day because up until recently, probably just a ton of different hats because as a startup you end up doing that. There's a lot of things that need to get done and if there is Within the last about a year I've started to focus mostly on the marketing
Chris:well, I took you seven years.
Melissa:no, actually let's see. Nine. Yeah. It's been nine. Yeah, almost a decade of my life, which is really weird to think about.
Chris:Starting to feel old aren't you?
Melissa:Yes. Don't remind me.
Chris:Me too. That's why I say it.
Melissa:So a lot of my time recently has been spent doing this podcast Editing the podcast editing, especially. We're just right now looking at the best ways to market CircuitHub
Chris:I remember early on when Worthington and CircuitHub got connected And I've largely gotten out of the, the day to day customer service kind of stuff. But do you still end up getting involved or have you been able to focus more on,
Melissa:I don't really do much directly customer facing stuff day-to-day account management team, like John that we had on a few episodes ago. And we have a sales team that also helps with everyone that is brand
Chris:But you're doing more of the, when we say marketing, what does that mean? Is does that it doesn't just mean the website. It's got to be a lot more than that, right?
Melissa:There's so many small things that it's hard to.
Chris:I get home sometimes, I have no idea what I did all day. Like literally have no idea what I spent my day doing.
Melissa:Same, exactly. But then once I think about it, I'm like, oh wait, I actually did this and things, but it didn't feel like it because none of those were really
Chris:right.
Melissa:So usually I have a bunch of small things and then I'll have. Right now I'm working on a
Chris:Oh, that's fantastic. That'd be great.
Melissa:we had a great talk the other day. I can't think of a better person to encourage people to use CircuitHub.
Chris:Yeah, that, dude's a man. You, I know we've worked on some projects in the past and I think maybe we can the the stackup page, I think you should be very proud of the stackup page on It really is nice. Like it's so easy to read and understand.
Melissa:Yeah. So any, anything that's on the external site, when you're
Chris:the public facing
Melissa:Yeah. I'm yeah. I manage that. So anytime we need a new page.
Chris:Capabilities all that kind of, Yeah. Awesome. So now that we know the destination, let's talk about the So how did Melissa end up being a world famous podcast? I'm genuinely curious about this. I know you went to college, but did you go straight from high school to college? Like most people, or did you do anything in between?
Melissa:Nope. I went straight from high school to college.
Chris:Now what'd you major in, in college.
Melissa:So I majored in sociology and minored in human complex systems.
Chris:And did you enjoy your time in college? Did you hate it? Some people love
Melissa:Oh my gosh, I love UCLA so much. It was great time.
Chris:That's awesome.
Melissa:I remember when I was applying for colleges, it wasn't even And then I got accepted and I went to do a tour there and I
Chris:Yeah. sure. Who wouldn't. I mean, that's beautiful campus.
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:And then, okay, so the farmers thing was before college, and while some side jobs or whatever, but you didn't really have a career
Melissa:no, I mean, I did some other internships. I worked at a coffee shop, which it was just great. I love making coffee and you just, it's just a good time. You meet all different sorts of people. Get free coffee.
Chris:Right. What the heck are we doing? Making circuit boards. Screw this. Let's just go be baristas. All right, so then you graduate you ended up graduating with You mentioned. And did you go straight to CircuitHub from there? Do you do anything in between?
Melissa:I had been doing an internship at a PR firm that One of my friends that I knew through UCLA through salsa dancing actually cause I was He told me about this company that he was starting and then they got accepted to YC.
Chris:Which is if you're not familiar with it, Y Combinator is Like a startup accelerator.
Melissa:yeah. Incubator
Chris:Incubator. Yeah, a really prestigious one. Yeah.
Melissa:One thing I really didn't like working at, not a big, but it's just disliking the, the bureaucracy behind everything, all I just didn't like feeling like I didn't have a direct effect on what was happening myself, rather than having to go through three people in three levels of things That's the main thing that encouraged me to decide that. Oh, yeah. I really want to do this.
Chris:And so then did you move to San Jose?
Melissa:yeah, so I moved to San Jose
Chris:Where they still at YC at the time or they
Melissa:no, they had just finished. So we were YC 2012, I think winter 2012. And then I moved there in August, 2012,
Chris:Okay.
Melissa:which was nine years ago. Right.
Chris:That was the math adds up.
Melissa:So yeah, then yes.
Chris:That's awesome.
Melissa:And the rest is history.
Chris:So early on, what was the product? Cause I know what CircuitHub is today is totally different from what it started. What was the idea that it started with?
Melissa:So we always have. Manufacturing as the end goal.
Chris:Oh, okay. All right.
Melissa:it was actually just a matter of how we get there. At the beginning we hadn't launched yet when I first joined, but our first The idea behind that is you can log into CircuitHub. We have tools that allow you to create footprints and 3d models of
Chris:this was like, like a Snap EDA or an ultra librarian or something like that. Yeah.
Melissa:So we launched that, I think in 2000 and 13, I want to say. That was a really exciting day. We've got like thousands of users sign up and it's is just so
Chris:That's so cool.
Melissa:to see something go from nothing to people actually using our product.
Chris:Yeah, for sure.
Melissa:So we were working on that for a while and then the problem we great business model for how do we actually make money out of this? So it was at that point that we switched over to doing manufacturing
Chris:And I'm trying to remember when Andrew first reached out to me. want to say it was 2013. It could have been 2014 though.
Melissa:I think it was probably the very end of 2013.
Chris:Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. I remember I sorry to steal this away, but I remember when I think it sounds like a great idea, but I'm, we just hear like lots of And so I just assumed oh yeah, best of luck to you. Let us know how we can help. And then I got an email from him and he's Hey, I'll be there Monday. I was hoping to spend a couple of weeks with you. And I was like, wait a second. Yeah.
Melissa:When he thinks someone is a really good fit, Andrew can
Chris:He's very persuasive. Yes. for sure. So how do you recall that experience of when Andrew was like, Hey, we might and I'm like, Melissa, I need your help to do X, Y, Z, or how did all that go
Melissa:I definitely remember when we launched our manufacturing platform. And so I think that was before we actually officially brought Worthington on board.
Chris:Cause you guys assembled some things yourself.
Melissa:We did. It would, that was an experience. We'd launched, I love product launches. Cause there's just this rush of adrenaline. Doing the PR for it and seeing people write articles about this thing that and effort, putting your blood, sweat and tears into and seeing people write I remember the first project we got uploaded and we were all so excited. I think we didn't sleep the entire night cause we were working on the launch and then we got our first order. I forget exactly what happened, but it ended up being that we had We ordered the boards, we ordered all the parts. And then something went wrong and the customer, they needed it the next day. And DigiKey sent us the wrong part.
Chris:No.
Melissa:I was like the night before. I think there was like a snow storm or something.
Chris:There's always a snowstorm
Melissa:Yeah. I'm pretty sure there was a snow storm.
Chris:They get snow storm starting this time a year. I'm exaggerating, but man, Yeah.
Melissa:I told Andrew no, it's okay I know this place where we It was like one of those places where you have to sort
Chris:radio shack
Melissa:You would have loved it.
Chris:and not fries. Was it.
Melissa:No, I'll try to look it up after
Chris:It's like a micro center, I think, but like for parts
Melissa:And so that was our first order that we ever made and then we
Chris:Awesome. Now, so what yeah I'm always curious about like you working at a small business, you love to be able to have an impact and you like to see something that Is there anything in particular that you're like really proud of you're like, I'm so I love the work I did there and how it turned out.
Melissa:That's a good question.
Chris:I'm looking for a good answer.
Melissa:I mean obviously the podcast
Chris:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:considering one day where you're just like, oh, we should start a podcast.
Chris:we should start a podcast. Believe me. It is one thing that I look at with genuine like pride. I do. Yeah.
Melissa:Yeah. Our website redesign, cause that was a really big project we worked on.
Chris:it's awesome. My opinion. I think it looks great. Yeah.
Melissa:but I think also just. Looking back on all of the customers I've worked with and had conversations with, I think that's just something that's really cool to look back on.
Chris:it reminds me of what rusty said back. Gosh, 10 episodes or so now where he said, the individual things that he It's, he makes the building blocks for what other people do. And he gets really excited by that. And I feel that same way, like knowing that. Our products go into is just, I get such a thrill from it. And I may have mentioned this on the podcast before, but think it seems me is so excited that we have circuit boards inside R2D2 for the movies. But yeah. that's super cool. I, Melissa, you have a quote in here that I am, I'm intimately familiar with,
Melissa:So I think when we originally talked about doing this whole interviewing about, which I guess we will now, because I am specifically pointing it out is
Chris:Oh, yeah. Holy cow.
Melissa:that's been a really big thing for me
Chris:I'm not at all surprised to hear just knowing you. I'm not all surprised to hear you say that.
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:Yeah. And not because I think you're an imposter. That's not what I'm getting at, but like just knowing your personality. No you tend to be overly self-deprecating and like you
Melissa:Kind of perfectionistic and yeah. I'm well aware of my flaws. You don't have to point them out.
Chris:I'm sorry.
Melissa:No, but especially, going into the startup world when and three, not an engineer. I often just, yeah, I often just felt like I don't belong here and We're working on a product that's for electrical engineers when I don't have
Chris:But you proved them wrong.
Melissa:I still couldn't design a circuit board, but I can tell you a lot about
Chris:The people that you've worked with certainly don't view you that way. And thankfully you did not end up in a poisonous culture. Andrew and Renno the founders of CircuitHub, they they certainly I mean, they don't, I don't think they cared that you were young. I don't think they cared that you were a woman. I don't think they cared that you weren't an engineer. They just saw a talented, smart person. And they, it doesn't at the end of the day. I don't care how much experience people come to my company with, I care. About how hardworking they are and how smart they are. You can teach anybody anything, and they can learn anything if A thousand percent.
Melissa:Well, and also something that I had to learn, especially when I first I would perceive them as these important people who are, the CEOs, the And they're going to see through me, they're going to see that And then as time went on, I realized that one they don't None of us know what we're doing and they're just people . They lead I think the first time I heard this specific quote was in a talk that around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter You can influence it once you learn that. You'll never be the same again.
Chris:Have you gone through that moment in your life?
Melissa:I can't pinpoint the exact moment, but oh, what was your moment?
Chris:I had, so it's funny listening to you because it's like a total, It was echoing in my head because as you're saying it, I'm Not being a young woman at a startup in Silicon valley. Right. But in the sense of I'm trying to convince these people to spend money and have faith And then being up at night, going, oh my God, I just spent hundreds of thousands I saw, man. I really hope I made the best decision, and what am I doing? Who am I to say, if that's the right thing to do? You know what I mean? Like you get these, you get all, all up in your head. And then you talk to these customers and you're like, oh my gosh, this Oh, It's no, he's just, like you say, it's just a, but I had that moment. So I had a few years under my belt with working at Worthington, but And there's other people at Worthington that are smarter than me. And that, that is, that was true. Then that is true today that has not changed. Everybody is smarter than everybody in their own way. And they each have their expertise. And I think that's a good life philosophy is to view everybody So that you don't gain too much pride, but we had this I've mentioned had this customer who didn't have any engineering support anymore. They had these products that were designed not for production. They were, they had, we had to build them by hand. We could automate almost nothing about the assembly process. And a lot of the parts are going obsolete and I was like, Can I try redesigning these things? And I struggled so much through it. I struggled so much. I can't even tell you how much I struggled to figure it out. And at the time YouTube, like YouTube was getting pretty good. This is six, seven years ago, but there were still, it was pretty But if you want to fail, learn how to engineer a circuit board. There wasn't a ton of at the time. Right. And so there was a little, there was plenty out there's people who there wasn't just this amazing, like today YouTube has a niche. Like every niche there's like thousands of videos for it. But back then there was like maybe a few dozen or maybe a hundred at best. And I, and all of them maybe talked about the same things. So I couldn't quite get the answer I needed, but I worked through And then I finally I, this is taking too long to explain, let me just get worked through all these really difficult problems and I didn't give up on it. I did give up on it and then I would have people pull me back in and say, no. you can finish it. And then I did, and then we started shipping it. I put a little logo on it because I was so proud of it. And I. I don't know that I cried,
Melissa:Oh,
Chris:but I was so overwhelmed with emotion when we started shipping it. I couldn't even explain how wonderful that felt. And then all of a sudden I had that moment. So like when Steve jobs, he goes it, he says, and you can And once you learn that, you'll never be the same again. And I absolutely feel I'm a different person since that day. I can't even explain to you how empowering that was, because now I have that experience to look back on and go, I can do it. Like I can figure this out. I might not be able to do it as fast as that guy or that I will get it done. And that was just, it was totally life-changing for me. And I'm finally at that point, it's not that I ha I wouldn't say that. Probably you may feel the same way. I don't think that I have this incredible sense of pride. Like I'm better than any other engineer. I definitely don't feel that way. I just have this comfort. I just have, I feel like comfortable with myself. I feel confident and I don't feel like such an imposter anymore. Yeah. I guess that's what I'm getting
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's like a constant work in progress. Cause I definitely still have days where I'm like why am I a co-host of
Chris:Yeah. Well, let's see, there's there, there is a, there's a yin and Let's kid ourselves.
Melissa:to be fair. We wouldn't have any episodes if I wasn't here, cause Chris
Chris:I would forget to record. I would never edit anything and I would have perfectionist syndrome And that is the yin and yang we have together, Melissa.
Melissa:Yep. I think we make a good team.
Chris:All right. Let's leave it at this. Let's say if anybody has any other questions for Melissa, then reach out I think the best way I can think about what Melissa does at CircuitHub is You can serve somebody a meal, but unless you plate it right And I think Melissa plates it, right. She garnishes it properly and she serves it in a way that And not physically, obviously, but like mentally digest what it
Melissa:Yes.
Chris:Yeah. There we go.
Melissa:So I think I'm off the hot seat now. I think it might be your turn.
Chris:All right. Spotlight has moved. The eye of sauron on is on me now?.
Melissa:Yes, it is. All
Chris:All right. ask away.
Melissa:Ask away. I was not as prepared as you, so I did not note down all the questions,
Chris:This is actually the total opposite normal. You're the and I'm the one who rolls up.
Melissa:But yeah. So for everyone that doesn't know, what is your day job for Worthington? Cause I know you do also a lot of different things your day to day. Isn't just the same thing. It's also a lot of running around and answering the requests
Chris:That's probably the best way to sum it up. Honestly, we have a team of 35 people now, and each of them might need a little And they have to explain their problems that they're dealing I like to think of it is I try to spend as much of my time working And what I mean by that is working in the company. Like a lot of times I do have to work in the company. I have to like right now due to a number of various reasons, I before we started recording this, I had to order some stencils so I don't like to be in a position where I'm relied on to do that, because that I'm a lever. I'm something that, that can help amplify force and an increased And ordering stencils is not amplifier necessarily, right? It's something that's so necessary and absolutely has to get done. It has to get done well. But it's not really expanding and improving and growing and which is So that's that's what I try to spend most of my day doing. It's not specific. I wish I could offer some specific things, but I'll give an As an example of a specific thing, but this could, you could extrapolate Like we're probably going to be buying a new pick and place equipment this year. And so I'm probably going to spend a fair amount of my time on the phone and gathering data and understanding features and benefits and trying to And that's not working in the company, right. You're working on the company. That's future looking. That's, forward-looking, that's an example of something I I would And and I might do that on a daily basis. I might spend 30 minutes a day doing something like that. Yeah.
Melissa:I feel like we're similar in that way. That it's hard to just sum up what we do and just one You know?.
Chris:Yeah. And I think one of, one of the things I love doing, I really enjoy. And I've had a great opportunity to do a lot of it at Worthington is when we do can about it using that equipment for six to 12, to sometimes 24 months in best use that equipment and get the absolute most that we can possibly get So that's something I really enjoy doing.
Melissa:oh, yeah, that reminds me. I think we might have told this story before, but wasn't it, when one that basically got Worthington using the selective solder machine.
Chris:Yes. Well, that was when I first started at Worthington.
Melissa:Yeah. W like at the very beginning, like it had just been sitting there.
Chris:Yes, week one. That's. So there was another engineer that worked at Worthington. There was a falling out there. And then nobody else has really trained very well on how to use the equipment. So they, when they hired me, they were like, Hey, look, we have this, Can you please find a way to have it start making money?
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:And I spent six to 12 months, basically just running the machine, how to best use it and then training other people on how to use it.
Melissa:Well, let's backtrack a little bit. So before you started at Worthington, what were you doing? I guess, so did you go to, did you go to college right after
Chris:I did. Yeah. I worked throughout high school? and college at a circuit board assembler in, in south Jersey They were the owners of the company. They were. I was friends with their sons. So that's how I ended up becoming working there. And I just was like, I would put a board on a bed of nails Like
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:that's what I did starting out there, but then got more And they're like, oh, Hey, this kid, he knows a lot about computers. Let's show them how to use a machine and just they, they felt comfortable And I guess I was reliable enough that they thought I was worth investing in. And so then I had a good relationship with some of the engineers at the go into electrical engineering's or electronic engineering, which I don't But electronic engineering is like controlling the I think electrical engineering is more like controlling I think like you may be electrical engineer works on a Maybe I'm being too generic, but I really hated school. Like hated school, like K through 12. I hated it. I just, I loathed going to school each morning and I could, I would count So I was a crappy student. Like I didn't really do my homework and like I could get A's, but Cause I just didn't work hard and decided to just go to a tech school. Cause I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for college and in the end. Yeah. And the engineers were like, Hey, there's this there's this It's, it was super cheesy and all my friends and I joked about it all the time. Cause they advertise on
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah. I remember this.
Chris:you never want to go to the school that advertises on TV. It was like always on MTV and stuff like, Oh, go to Devry. But it was actually a really good education. Like I, I loved it. I really loved like the experience of going there. And it was super cool to go to school with people who were in their thirties And you got this great life experience from these people and, that was a different college experience from what I could imagine, UCLA.
Melissa:yeah.
Chris:But that, but it was very serious and there was no like campus, it was and with labs and professors and school bucks, it was but it was good. I honestly, I think it was a great education and I retained a lot of it. And then I went to work for some I. I met my wife while I was in college and we got married very early and I was I decided to reach out to we, the other thing is we wanted to move to So I decided to reach out to a machine manufacturer that I was familiar with. And they were like, yeah, we're hiring. And they were a startup at the time. I think I was like the third employee, second or third employee. They were founded by six people. And then each of those people may be put in a little bit and everybody put in most of the money and then the other four put in a little bit. And but so it was a good size company when I got hired, I think it was like And anyway, they actually there had to have been more than that. Anyway, it doesn't matter. And I was an applications engineer, truly one of the best jobs I ever had. It was unbelievable. Like eyeopening. And I got to travel all over the country, Canada, Mexico got to see all of these I got to go to massive. Just you can't even I went to this one factory that was so large foundation, they had to calculate the curvature of the earth for
Melissa:oh, wow.
Chris:concrete it was going to take. It was just huge. Yeah. It was a Honda supplier and they, it was just absolutely massive. And then I went from, and then I would go to other companies that was husband and wife ran the company and like their four kids were like running So I got to see like everything in between. And that was such a cool experience, but I was married and I wanted to So I got a job for six months at another cm. Terrible cm. And I'm not going to say who they were, where they were, but I I was glad I did it because I got to be home, but I was so And then there were local manufacturers, rep, firm found out that I wasn't working And they're like, Hey, what's that kid doing? Can we hire them? So they hired me. And that was another super cool experience. So if you're not familiar, if you're a listener and you're not familiar with model of a manufacturer's rep they are independent, meaning they don't get like. They're their own business. They sign their own contracts with equipment suppliers. So maybe they'll go to a Fuji pick and place company. We had Panasonic pick and place machines, and we had a contract and exclusive So nobody could sell a Panasonic pick and place machine in new England, but us. And if any sold within new England, they would cut us a Presumably because we sold it. Right. Not always true. Some
Melissa:so if
Chris:if we didn't sell it. Yup. even if we didn't sell it. So yeah, because yeah, because you might lose money on that first sale time trying to get that first sale and it's not worth it, but then you hope And so that's just how the business model works. We had Panasonic pick and place DEC stencil printers, which got bought by ASM. We had Vitronics reflow, which got bought by ITW, but they're Oh, we also have them for wave soldering and selective soldering. We had yes tech AOI, which got bought by Nordson, but I think they're We had ECD, thermal profilers. We had flex link conveyors. We had SCS conformal coating machines. We had I'm trying to think of all the, we had IAC work. We just had a whole, we had tons of contracts with we could almost needed in a building Kester Kester, soldering wire and paste and flux. We had tech spray chemicals for cleaning, and wipes and swabs and Like you name it almost anything in a contract manufacturers That's we carried a lot of products. The trouble was, I did this in 2007, 2008, 2009. Like the worst possible time to be a salesman selling capital equipment. It was just awful and I was getting peanuts. I just could not sustain it. And I had a terrible territory. The partner, the business partners, I was an employee of theirs and And of course the business partners gave themselves the best customers and they
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:I really struggled. And then the owners of Worthington, I had met at a trade show and they had There's really not much nearby. And I there's, there was another really large shop, like 300 employees I was like, I can't see myself going back to a cm. I like being on the road too much. I like meeting different people too much. I don't want to just be stuck being an engineer again behind a desk. It just wasn't. I think I'm not trying to degrade people have that job. I think that's a great job and it just didn't, fit me. As you can tell, I host a podcast. I like to talk and I like to meet people. Like I just couldn't, I couldn't see myself doing that at a giant so I wanted to work at a small company. And these guys I could tell they were ambitious. I got along really well with them. And I was really excited for the future. And the other thing is I was just, I had this incredible itch to scratch I've been in and out of so many CMEs and I've seen all the nonsense that they do. And I don't, I want to prove that it can be done so much better. And I want to show people like how it can be done better and how you can really It doesn't all have to go overseas. And not from a what is w jingoistic like sort of perspective, but from just a great jobs that pay well, you don't have to just, use super low cost labor They felt very, they had very mutual view on the future and I took a big leap and which I don't know if that was a smart decision or not, like maybe I should Cause one of the people say there's only two ways to make And I'm doing neither right now. But I I really enjoyed the ride. Like when I think when I started there, we were 10 people, maybe 11, and then we And and we've grown it and grown it and we have just like this, Like I love the people I work with. I get excited too, like I, the way I described it to somebody recently, one within Worthington that you can tell, have it when it, comes to helping And one of the things I try to tell them is like training other people and building It's like being, it's like being, Spider-Man I can't swing from a skyscraper but a Spiderman can write, he can shoot his web and he can swing from And having people trained and having a team that trusts you and and that you trust is like having a superpower because it's I Lisa does, and she's going to do an awesome job at it. And all of a sudden tonight there's going to be 200 of these things built in that. That's what I mean by having a super power. You don't have to do everything yourself. That's such a cool feeling. It's such an awesome experience and something that I wouldn't have gotten. If I stayed in sales,
Melissa:True. True. Yeah. You guys really do have an incredible team. I think if anyone wants to get a, like a feel of the vibe of what it's like
Chris:Hey, there is something to be super proud of That Join us video on our
Melissa:Yeah. That was really fun to do, to be
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. That was, that's something that Melissa did for us. We, everybody's always trying to hire the best people and we wanted to put Oh, absolutely. There are people who have watched that and come to us and say, I just, I was excited to have the same feeling about my company. I didn't Really like working at Joann fabrics or, and Yeah.
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:no legit like, there's somebody we hired that gave that experience.
Melissa:Oh, that's cool. That makes me really happy. Yeah.
Chris:But Yeah that's my background. And talk about imposter syndrome. Like I like sitting here dispensing advice. Oh God. I've never felt like such an imposter in my life than when. Then when I, well, this podcast, but before this when
Melissa:I remember.
Chris:that was the most intimidating, like I had to walk in there. Now this was after my Steve jobs moment. This was after my like, okay, I'm never the same again, I've gone through that then I walked in there and I'm like, oh, all these people, like they would've And it took me a year. You know what I mean? So I totally felt like an impostor. And yet I gave that talk. Like I came up with a silly name for the talk called what did I call it? It was oh, your manufacturer's stupid. Yeah. And I felt like that was a little bit too insensitive because I didn't want So I said, your manufacturer is stupid. Help them and w and, the response to it was incredible. The room was jam packed There were people spilling out the door cause Huge applause at the end, people followed up the whole conference afterward days The YouTube video has been seen thousands of times, lots of comments on it. People reach out to me, it's still to this day that have watched the video. And it was like, oh my God, I didn't have to feel like such an impostor.
Melissa:Yeah, well, that's what I was saying. It doesn't just doesn't just go away
Chris:it does not go away No, it does
Melissa:That's why I actually, I had that quote written, handwritten
Chris:Hm.
Melissa:I, you know, feeling feeling a little overwhelmed,
Chris:this, I had this same. I had the same conversation with an engineer at our company. I said he, he was, I think he was like 19 at the time, or maybe even 18. He was really young and he was really new, but he did something for us that I This kid definitely has something going on. And I basically had this conversation with him. I go, look, I know you've probably had guidance counselors and your parents, and And everybody told me this a million times when I was 18 to, but like you, don't mean that I don't mean that hyperbolically you want to do something. You can absolutely do it. If you think, that you're incapable of something, forget that if you You will be able to get it done. And if you need help, ask for help, people will help you get it done. And this individual has turned into just one of the shining stars at Worthington, so much for the better because of their talents and their ability to see a It's just, it's been a joy to work and they're still only 20 years old. This has only been a couple of years. And I, getting back to that's a little bit of talking about the imposter having a team it's just, it's so exciting to see this person embrace No, nobody is any smarter than you just go do it and they totally
Melissa:That reminds me, I think it was like our talk with maybe Eli, just
Chris:he got very philosophical.
Melissa:yeah. But yeah, hiring people, not for their specific, they have to have knowledge of that they can bring to the table from their experiences and being able to look
Chris:The sign of a good leader is somebody who can leverage It can be really hard when you've been doing something. For 10 plus years, and somebody comes to you with a different perspective. It can be really hard to listen because you just want to go, no, we tried that I really do feel terrible about it, but I it's something I constantly fight with.
Melissa:yeah. Me too. Look, you immediately want to go Nope, no, I'm right. You're wrong. And then you go, okay. Okay. Maybe you have a point.
Chris:The best experience I've given. And I think I've talked about it in the show before is we had a And I looked at him like, what do you mean? This is we ship products like this all the time? What do you mean? They don't look right? He goes, well, look, this is what I'm used to seeing from my other supplier. Oh, how'd they do that. I look at what their other supplier did and I'm like, how did they achieve that? And that for me, because I was so ready to just tell this guy I'm the one who does this for a living. You don't know what you're talking about, what you're And then when he showed me the proof like other people are doing So his argument was very persuasive. He basically goes, look here. It was the best way of explaining to Chris Denny that he was wrong. Prove it, show me. And he did. And oh, by the way, we ship all our products that look like his now. So thank you very much for proving me wrong. I appreciate it.
Melissa:Yeah. All right. So I,
Chris:else? Any other philosophical tangents we want to go on here?
Melissa:I'm sure there's some, but
Chris:How about a pet peeve? I'm ready for pet peeve, Melissa, let's do
Melissa:well, before that, I was going to say, well, we don't have to,
Chris:I'm super excited about pet peeves, but go
Melissa:I'm very excited about my pet peeve, but just to keep this podcast a any design tip of the week that you can fire out to our, to our listeners?
Chris:Oh, geez. Wow. Off the top.
Melissa:come up recently.
Chris:Yes I can. This is a weird one. We had we had a job recently where there were a hybrid connectors So in other words, it was a, it was, I think it was a, Yeah. it was some kind of a spring loaded connector on one side and a USB. Micro USB port and the opposite side, the micro USB port had surface But then it had the support pins that went through the board to keep that talked about endlessly on the show about what a great design that is. And it is, it truly is a great design. However, if you put a product like that on your design, it has to be on the So in other words, if you have a double-sided board, you want to put all on one side, and then on the opposite side, you want to put your heavy inductors and everything on the other so that when you reflow it a second time, they're not You want to have your lightweight parts hanging off the bottom. And then the surface tension of the solder will hold them on. This particular design had the spring loaded connector that had the support pins holding that making that connector nice and strong. And then the opposite side of the board had the micro USB port. Now the trouble is the design of the product. Like the shell that this thing goes in like that is the design of the product. Like you need the spring-loaded clip for it to function properly on this side. And you need the micro USB port on the opposite side, That's the requirement of the build. However, it made it borderline impossible to assemble with conventional methods. Now we came up with a, we came up with a method of doing it and It was pretty creative and want to hold those cards close to my chest for now, but But Yeah. Try to consider what side you're putting parts on. And especially if you have any leads that protrude through the board on on opposite sides, your stencil won't sit flat and you can't get a good print But a good CM might find a way around it.
Melissa:Well, there you go. If any, if anyone skipped this episode because they didn't want to learn about
Chris:All right. How about the
Melissa:Okay. Okay. Now we can do the pet peeve.
Chris:Okay.
Melissa:So my pet peeve is it's just why do all at least American cereals, Why isn't it possible to find cereal without sugar? And
Chris:It's so true.
Melissa:so I've been trying to cut down on sugar and limit If I'm going to have something like dessert or ice cream or whatever. Yeah. We try to do it just on the weekend for the most part. I mean, there's some days where I'm like, I really need some chocolate right now. Like
Chris:I guess I shouldn't tell you about the fluffing out sandwich I
Melissa:that is a lot of sugar,
Chris:That's a lot of sugar.
Melissa:but yeah. Why okay. My favorite cereal right now, which I think a lot of But that's okay. Is grape nuts.
Chris:Oh, I love grape
Melissa:I love grape nuts.
Chris:They're one of my favorites.
Melissa:they, yeah, me too. I forgot about them for years. And then I had them at my, what? They don't have any sugar in them.
Chris:What are
Melissa:They don't have any added sugar
Chris:There's a very good chance that it does not have any added sugar
Melissa:They're not grapes in there and not nuts. They're wheat and barley
Chris:barley now. barley has a lot of natural sugar. That's why you get beer because that natural sugar is converted to alcohol and. I know, it sounds silly to say, but that's why I love grape
Melissa:Oh, brewing beer, like the smell.
Chris:The smell. scents and tastes are connected. Right? So when you're brewing beer, it smells exactly like how grape nuts tastes to me. And I love the smell of brewing beer. Not fermenting beer smells terrible, but brew the boiling It smells like the, one of the best teas in the world. It just fills the house. It's awesome. yeah. Yeah. I'm with you there a hundred percent because I, we're probably of a similar cereal commercials and we wanted all the cereals that our parents could buy us. I loved cereal for breakfast. I still love cereal for
Melissa:Oh yeah.
Chris:I generally like my go-to is frosted mini wheats,
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:That's a
Melissa:I'm not saying, I'm not saying get rid of all of the cereals with sugar. Cause I think there is a time and place for them, sometimes yeah. Dessert or sometimes I know when I was growing up, my mom would only like on the weekends, she would get those little, the snack size boxes.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:to have those on the
Chris:Fruity pebbles.
Melissa:Yeah. Or what is it? Peanut butter captain
Chris:Reese's peanut butter. Reese's peanut butter cup
Melissa:Oh yeah, those are good.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I that's my go-to as an adult because I feel like, oh, it's healthy. It's many wheats, but It's not it's loaded up with tons of sugar, but I love grape nuts. I gotta make sure that Costco carries. I don't think they do see that's the problem. If they don't carry it, I don't buy it.
Melissa:Well, okay. And yeah, that could, that gets me into my second part was so yeah
Chris:This was not planned by the way. I had no idea what Melissa was going to talk about before.
Melissa:well, you knew it
Chris:have a
Melissa:you knew it was breakfast related, but you didn't know. Yeah. So I ran out ofgrape nuts. It was very traumatizing. And so then I planned a trip to target specifically to buy grape nuts There were no grape nuts so that I was like, okay, well then I can at least get That I like getting it because it doesn't have any added sugar out of stock. And then almost every single cereal that didn't have sugar in. It was out of stock. So clearly
Chris:there's
Melissa:yeah. There's demand for it. People don't want your sugar filled cereals. So please make more of the sugarless cereals.
Chris:there you go. What's going on. Well, so I w I the capitalist in me would like to say that supply Because the people will see the demand and they'll start producing more of it. But capitalism forgets about, Well, that's a total completely non true about the fact that addiction is an influence and people are addicted No question about it.
Melissa:Anyways, if you are also a fan of grape nuts, please let us know.
Chris:Seriously.
Melissa:we need more people on the Grape Nuts train.
Chris:Absolutely. And Costco, if you're listening, please carry grape nuts because that's probably
Melissa:By all the grape nuts in bulk.
Chris:does trader Joe's carry Grape Nuts?
Melissa:they don't.
Chris:Ah, see, this is, yeah, there's two places we shop at Costco and trader Joe's.
Melissa:Yeah. I wish they sold them at trader Joe's
Chris:I'm just going to make a special trip to my local grocery Now
Melissa:yeah, they had them I think big Y they had a good supply of grape nuts. Don't buy the grape nuts flakes though. Those do have added sugar.
Chris:the flakes are a lie.
Melissa:Yeah.
Chris:All right. I'm going old school, grape nuts. What was my favorite growing up was the, they were like Squares. They were like grape nuts, but they were like, meatier. I forget what the heck they were. Yeah. They had what the heck were those things called there? They were loaded with sugar. Oh, my gosh. I can't think of what they were called though.
Melissa:I know what you're talking about. I can't think of the name, but I know exactly what you're talking
Chris:They were amazing whatever they were. And I used to go to my friend's house after school most days. And. His mom would always, cause there was four boys and so they all loved them too. And I would go there and right after school, I'm like, oh sweet. I'll pour myself some of this. And then one day, like after a month of doing that, like all I was like, Hey Steve, we're, where's the cereal. And he's oh yeah, my mom hid him from you because eating all of them. Yeah. Yep. Nothing's changed. Chris. Chris still takes advantage of everything. Oh yeah.
Melissa:All right. Well, if you ever come over, I'll hide my cereal from you.
Chris:You should. That's a smart thing to do. And your beer, certainly your beer. All right. Well, if anybody is a fan of grape nuts, or absolutely hate grape nuts, I would love to have a Twitter conversation about grape nuts. I do imagine if we get a retweet from post, that would be amazing. You can reach out to me at CircuitHub or excuse me at w of
Melissa:Thanks for listening to the pig place podcast. If you liked what you heard, consider following us in your favorite us a review on apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from. everyone.
Chris:Thank you. so much,
Melissa:Thank you grape nuts Thank
Chris:That's an episode.