New Beginnings

This podcast episode features Amos Breyfogle, an experienced professional in the additive manufacturing (AM) industry, who shares his diverse career journey and offers insights on navigating the AM landscape. Key topics include how to enter, grow, and transition within the AM industry, the importance of people skills, career longevity, negotiation tactics, and the potential future of mass customization in AM. Amos also discusses his current entrepreneurial venture in New Zealand, focusing on outdoor sporting goods.

Key Themes

• Navigating an Unconventional Career Path in Additive Manufacturing
• Essential Skills for Success in Additive Manufacturing
• Transitioning within the AM Industry
• Negotiation Tactics in the Job Market
• Entrepreneurship and Additive Manufacturing
• The Future of Additive Manufacturing

Quotes of Note:

• “Can this person take something complex and make it easy to understand?”
• "My passion was really more about how do you help people be happier with their jobs and be happier with their career paths."
• "I think if you're not negotiating that as a employee or potential employee, you're making a horrible mistake."
• “The smaller the company, the Smaller amount you can get away with of kind of the counteroffer.”
• "People move here because it's an incredible place to live and have a life outside of work."

Resources Mentioned:

• Podcast: Rick Rubin’s podcast
• LinkedIn: Gil Levy
• Book: Never Split the Difference
• Website: pivotio.com

Transcript

S2 EP1 New Beginnings

[00:00:00] All right, welcome everyone to this next edition of am insider. I am dustin klemkin. I 
am pretty excited to have the guests that we're having on today. This is someone I've known for 
quite a few years and someone who's kind of found his way through the additive industry in a couple 
of different perspectives.

And as many of you who are probably listening in know, there isn't really a easy career path of how 
to navigate the waters of additive manufacturing. I don't know, Justin, if, if you've run into that 
given your background before. Yeah, no, I mean, trying to figure out what to do as far as what are 
the jobs available in a sense.

It's still fairly new, right? So it's people know what 3D printing is now. When I started it, it 
was brand new. So it was just no one knew anything in a way just kind of started. But It's hard to 
decipher what those positions are and where to go. I feel like once [00:01:00] you have entered 
into that, then you start to learn about the community and the community is pretty held together 
tightly in the sense that it's easier to kind of navigate that.

But trying to get in from the outside, if you've never been in it, is a lot more difficult. 
Exactly. And that's where I think this guest today will be perfect to talk about that because he 
has seen all different angles of the industry. So without delaying it too much longer, why don't we 
go ahead and introduce our guests?

So our guest today is Amos Breyfogle. Amos welcome to the show. Hey, thanks. And that was 
surprisingly good pronunciation of my last name.

Well, after a couple of years knowing you, did he mess it up at all? Or was it, it was nailed it. 
Like it's very, very rare that somebody can even say my first name. Obviously it's not the right 
way, but you know, it's my way. So it's fine. So good job.[00:02:00]

Well, great on, on that front. Why don't you just give us a elevator pitch a little bit about 
yourself for those who might not know you in the industry. Sure. So the first most important thing 
is that my name is not so easy to pronounce. I think that's the, yeah. That's mostly it. No, I've I 
got into additives around 2010, 2012, somewhere there, I officially started working in the 
industry.







So I started off as a customer working through injection molding product design, and that's where I 
really found 3d printing is like a prototyping tech. Eventually realized that that's something I 
wanted to devote a lot more time to. Found my way into the Stratasys ecosystem and kind of grew 
with that company.

Got some really cool opportunities there. Just before COVID, I happened to take a little vacation 
to New Zealand and then the borders closed. So I got, you know, air quotes hard here, but trapped 
in New Zealand for COVID. And just [00:03:00] kind of stepped away from what Stratasys was working 
on and all the stuff I've been helping build there to move into a little bit new industry.

So now I'm working a lot with helping emerging brands to develop like outdoor sporting goods. So we 
work on bikes and snowboards, whatever else, supercars and weird projects for local billionaires. 
Yeah, we're trying to be a kind of. The Alfred to all the local billionaire Batman. So cool stuff 
we get to get our hands into.

And obviously additive is a, you know, having a deep insight into that industry is a, is a 
phenomenal superpower of my own, where it just continually people are shocked and like, wait, we 
talked about this yesterday. You have a solution today. Oh, yeah. So yeah, that's a quick and very, 
very dirty with a few things skipped over in the middle.

Yeah, great. That's a great start. There's a lot of different things that I think you can shed 
light on [00:04:00] for some of our listeners here, because as All of you guys here on this call 
probably get, you know, if it's at a show or you know, out visiting a company, you know, sometimes 
you get questions like, Hey, how do I get into the industry?

And then you might get questions from people who are in this industry and say, well, how do I keep 
growing within the industry? And then you're going to run into people who say, well, look, I I'm 
looking to kind of keep growing. How do I exit the industry or what, what do I even pivot into? And 
you know, we're lucky to have Amos here cause he's kind of done all of that different stuff.

So kind of excited to explore that. And so Amos, you know, as we just start off, I know you've done 
recruiting before for additive and You've probably had lots and lots of conversations. And so for 
the people who are looking to get in the industry, maybe this is the first time maybe they're fresh 
out of college or, or maybe they're in a different industry looking to get into the additive 
industry from your perspective.







You know, are there certain tools or [00:05:00] experiences or skill sets that you think people 
find really, really useful in the industry? Yeah. So there's a couple of things that. I mean, these 
probably aren't so solely applicable to additive either, but there's a couple of things that I've 
always looked for when I was hiring people.

And I find a lot of my peers that were in hiring positions, you know, whether I was working as a 
recruiter or actually as the manager kind of look for one of those, certainly within additives. I 
think all of us in this call worked in the, the application engineering side of companies. And like 
the people skills are such a huge part of it.

The, like, obviously technical skills are good and it's good to understand how to get around cat 
and do that. But the, what I would almost always prioritize was how good are these people at 
talking to other people? How good are they at taking a very complex topic and making it [00:06:00] 
simple? And that was, that was kind of my first, the first gate as I'm looking to help people find 
new jobs or higher than myself.

It was just like, can this person take something complex and make it easy to understand? So that 
was a, that was a big one. The other one, like, as far as, you know, resume or CV or past 
experience, what I really look for is has this person done something for more than two years, more 
than three years straight, whether that's, you know, university degrees, holding a single job, just 
like, can they commit to something?

It's becoming more and more rare, but certainly in the additive world, there's so much nuance and 
so many, so many different rabbit holes for people to go down. It takes a really long time for 
people to get up to speed in order to be making money for whatever company they work for. So we 
found it in pastoral.

About 18 months before people were fully self sufficient in a [00:07:00] job, which 18 months, if 
you know, on somebody's resume, they leave every 12 months. It doesn't really add up. So we look 
for longevity in their, in their career. So even if it's working, you know, some terrible job 
during university, if you stuck to it, that's a positive for me.

I want to comment on that because I very much agree with you. I mean, every time I've looked at 
hiring in a position as a manager, I always look at that historical record and whether they're 
coming. Into additive or are already in additive. It just shows a little bit of commitment on that 
side that like, yeah, I







don't want to have turnover very quickly because like you said, there's a lot of nuances.

And by the time you get that person trained and like you said, it could be around 18 months before 
they kind of feel good about them knowing everything. Then they move on and then you're back at 
square one. So it's, To me, it's also a very important aspect to [00:08:00] see, you know, a little 
bit of length somewhere within a position not bouncing around specifically, you know, it depends 
on, you know, COVID's a little bit different and you kind of have to look at the dates and stuff, 
but in general I would agree with that very much.

And that's obviously it's, I mean, I think we're both on the same page there, but I'm not, I'm not 
saying that every job that people start, they should stick to because sometimes there's just 
terrible jobs. And if there's a good reason that they left one job, like cool, but if there's a 
reason they left every job they've ever held, like there's something bigger to look at here.

So, yeah, there's always, there's always in all things nuance, right? We're not, we don't live in a 
binary world. Yeah. I wouldn't say that that would disqualify anybody, but it definitely is a 
positive. You see, you know, multi year time. So you, you mentioned that you were an application 
engineer before. How did one, how do you go from application?

Did you go from application engineering [00:09:00] into recruiting or what were those steps? And 
like, how did. I mean, to me being an application engineer, an application engineering manager, I 
can never foresee myself doing that particular aspect of it. But see if I can see if I can answer 
this without burning bridges, huh?

But who listens to this podcast? Oh, no, I'm just kidding. Everyone. Everyone. Oh man. Oh man. I'm 
not answering that. No, that's a really good question. That was As you know, I came into the 
additive industry because I loved kind of exploring what was possible with technology and solving 
problems as many people with that follow the engineering path paths do, right?

It's like solving problems, whether those are problems with. You know, how to get parts to build 
correctly or where they fit in the customer's manufacturing shop or whatever. That's like a big 
driving factor for a lot of us. As I moved through my career, I went from being an application 
engineer and [00:10:00] working with customers to solve their problems to one one fateful bit 
Stratasys.







My, my boss's boss came to me and said, Hey, you know, your boss is moving on to another, another 
department and we need a new manager. It's like, yeah, cool. And they said, who do you, who do you 
think should be the manager? So obviously I just named somebody else. Cause that's the last thing I 
want to do is deal with people you know, as a, as a peer engineer and that was, that was 
interesting.

I, I named somebody else and apparently the rest of the team team named me. So I drew the short 
straw on that one and got the manager position. And it was really hard right away. And then I 
realized that helping other people grow in their careers was kind of like the engineer and what I 
loved about engineering in general is it's problem solving just with a different flavor.

So at that point, my career sort of shifted more from the deep technical knowledge to how do we 
help people navigate this [00:11:00] thing? And that was the problem that I really looked at 
solving. So. With that, as I moved out of the position at Stratasys. My passion was really more 
about how do you help people be happier with their jobs and be happier with their career paths, 
which was a bit of a change in the technical side, but that mixed with my, my absolute love for 
drinking.

That's probably as long as my mom doesn't listen to this. We're okay. But you know, I, I know a lot 
of people in the industry and I love meeting people and hearing what they're passionate about. It 
just kind of made sense to try to connect that to, you know, how do I help these people find what 
they're going to be passionate about next?

And how do I fit their actual passions outside of. Work into what could be a super fun career path 
for him. So that's kind of how I went into the recruiting side is, is more about problem solving 
for [00:12:00] people rather than the technology. So I just want to double click on that for a 
second, because you know, I've run into a number of AEs or engineers over the years that say, well, 
I want to be a manager, you know, and, and so.

And then the people who don't want to be a manager, AKA yourself, wind up getting tapped to become 
the manager. So why, why do you think everyone was voting for you to be the manager? Is it, was it 
just sheer engineering prowess or was it a personality trait that you had? I mean, I know you might 
not know, but I, what I'm really trying to uncover here is again, what are those traits, 
personality characteristics or experiences that.







That might make other people want to, to, to follow you. Yeah. I think, you know, the short answer 
is that I'm just pretty awesome. I'm very, I'm the most humble person. I'm the most humble person 
around. No no, I think that you, that's a good point. If, [00:13:00] if I think back about managers 
that I've worked for, the worst managers that I've worked for were the people that wanted to be 
managers is it's.

I think that there's a huge difference between management and leadership, and by having a team of 
people say, we want this person to be in charge, that's more being elevated to a position of 
leadership rather than, you know, someone from higher up being like, you have the most years of 
experience, you are now a manager.

So I think that it comes down to people trusted me from how I acted. I'm you know, contrary to 
popular belief, not actually perfect. I obviously make a lot of mistakes and I'm happy to share 
those. And I think that that, that won a lot of confidence with the people around me that. They 
knew what I stood for and that I stood for better life for all of us and something that we all 
enjoy more.

And that, that seemed to resonate with them. So they wanted to follow somebody who [00:14:00] had a 
mission and was something they felt like they could trust. So I think that's how that's kind of how 
the, the step into the leadership position started. Great answer. So once you fell, you know, got 
put into the management position, you said, that's the last thing you wanted to do.

And you said it was a struggle for a minute. Like what, what skills did you use or what made you 
fulfill that particular position that you're like, all right, I can do this. Cause a lot of people 
end up in management positions that, you know, once they're there, they're like, Oh I'm not sure I 
want to do this.

Right. Yeah, I definitely didn't want to. So what are your highlights of, of what changed you into 
fill fulfilling that position and what people can take away from your dog is not happy. Find out 
that somebody is at the door. He'll [00:15:00] get over it soon. Yeah, that's a good question. I 
think for me, I'm an incredibly competitive person too.

So anything that I do, I want to be the best at, which is probably not that healthy of a thing as I 
get older and still do like biking and other kind of dangerous activities. So I'm trying to reel 
that in a little bit, but in the in the management side of that, like basically once I got tapped 
to do that, my, all of my reading and audio books shifted to.







Just any information I could consume about how do you lead teams? How do you manage people? And 
that's kind of where I've eventually came to this conclusion that managing people wasn't, wasn't as 
scary as what I thought it was. It was more of like, how do you help these people that you're 
working with do better?

And like, that's something I love to, you know, I think a lot of us can resonate with that is that 
we love helping the people around us. So as long as I kept that lens on it how do I help people 
improve? [00:16:00] Then it was a, it was a natural fit for me. As soon as it was, how do I manage 
this? Like, that sounds like Spreadsheets and meetings and I want nothing to do with that.

Yeah, it's a great point.

So then once you switched or you, you did a stints with recruiting and I don't know if you're still 
doing that or not, but, i, I'm sure your perception on the industry may have changed. Is there, is 
there anything that you think people who are looking for a job in additive or looking to get into 
additive that you think they should know that maybe kind of came up over and over in some of the 
conversations with people you spoke to over the years?

I don't think there's really something that new, I think that it comes back to the earlier question 
about what was important for people, and it still is important. It's like showing some longevity on 
kind of what your career path is, but I think an important thing to know is [00:17:00] that 
curiosity is, is really important too.

So, for instance, I did some recruiting work for metal, metal based companies. Most of my career is 
spent doing all of those. It doesn't really matter as long as you get to the core of looking at, 
like, what are these companies doing? And they're all just solving problems, but most of them are 
trying to solve problems that no one's ever solved.

So unless these people either trying to come into the industry or in the industry are furious and 
willing to try new things, it would be a rough place for them to fit. So I think that. Yeah. Hey, 
go away. He's very ambitious today. I think that the, as I started looking at the recruiting side 
of this, Jesus, I started looking at the recruiting side of this.

Sorry about that. [00:18:00] Now there's a garbage train. So this is a very eventful day. Here we 
go. Yeah. So I think the curiosity thing, like, as people were looking at different industries, I 
had a lot of people that came out of







working with just polymers. And they're like, I want a job with, you know, maybe they were an 
injection molding person that came in and say, I want a job in 3d printing.

And it's, it's interesting to see the people that say, I only want to work with one technology or 
the other really. Narrowing their scope far enough, it makes it really hard for them to find a good 
job. Whereas somebody who's just like curious about the world, I think it's much easier to find a 
fit in this industry.

Yeah. So having someone who are, are you still doing HR or, I don't know if you answered that. 
Whoa, don't bring that phrase into this. That's where I draw the line, buddy. No, I'm I do a little 
bit of recruiting stuff. I just the last one that I did was actually [00:19:00] getting the guy 
from helping the guy from the U.

S. Get a job here in New Zealand, which is like. For me yeah, a really good moment. He had some 
really good reasons for wanting to relocate. And obviously I've relocated to New Zealand and 
absolutely love it here. So it was really cool to get to help somebody kind of follow their dream 
there too. But yeah, so I do still, I still do a little bit of that.

Basically I'll do about anything somebody is willing to pay me for. I mentioned I have a, I have a 
startup I'm working on and don't have any money. So tell us more about that and kind of how it 
started because I, sometimes I know ideas are born out of additive and it's like, Hey, this is 
actually pretty interesting.

I should explore it more. Or was this just something totally random? Yeah, that's a really good 
question. To be honest with you, when I was, I worked in additive for like, yeah, directly in 
additive for around 10 years. So, [00:20:00] every 2 years, I would change kind of what I was 
doing, just shift the flavor, shift management to, you know, to kind of broader leadership or shift 
from individual contributor to manager or whatever.

And about nine and a half years in my, my dad passed away two years before he retired and it was 
just like really shook up my world. I, I decided then that I needed to take some more time off work 
and actually figure out, you know, do I really want to be working and not doing this job? So that's 
what led me to taking, I ended up taking a six month sabbatical from Stratasys.

And then that led me to New Zealand on a, just a stupid joke because someone, a German friend in 
the office asked what I was doing for vacation. And I said, what do you think I should do? And she 
said, well, if you get a chance to go to New Zealand, so I booked a one way flight to New Zealand 
the next morning.







Well done. Yeah, because I thought it'd be pretty funny. I didn't realize [00:21:00] that COVID was 
about to kick off and all the borders around the world were closing. So now I live in New Zealand. 
But yeah, I came here in New Zealand, you know, I think a lot of people have maybe seen it from 
Order of the Rings or whatever, but not so many people, certainly in the States, have spent much 
time here.

New Zealand is a stunningly beautiful country and it has access to any of the extreme sports that 
you'd want in heaps. We have a Red Bull event here happening here next week for the like natural 
selection or something, gnarly downhill mountain biking. We have some incredible stuff here, but 
there's almost no industry.

So the town that I live in has about 70 percent of its revenue comes from tourism. A really bad 
place to be like during COVID, for instance, but it's also just not a good place to make any money 
as an engineer. And so I settled in Queenstown because I love the place and it had nothing to do 
with work.

And I actually started guiding mountain bike tours. [00:22:00] And I run a sauna across the river, 
which is about as far from the engineering world as you can get just super hippie, mostly naked, 
sitting in a hot box and taking people to swim in the river. And so it was probably two years of 
that before I, before I stepped back into kind of the technical, but I remember the first time 
somebody came into the sauna actually.

And they said something about a mountain bike that they were working on designing. And I asked him 
a question that definitely led down the engineering road. And just everybody looked at me that, why 
do you know this? Oh, I forgot to mention that I have a pretty long history in engineering 
globally. Yeah, that kind of sparked something in me again to get back into the technical side.

I started investigating what, what opportunities were in New Zealand. Like, how can I stay here and 
keep making a living, which is actually when the recruiting stuff started to so I did some 
recruiting [00:23:00] internationally and did some other stuff internationally, but I, I love 
working with people. So working online is fine.

Like being in a room with people is, I'm much more passionate about that. And so I started poking 
around of like, what unique things does Queenstown, New Zealand have that other places don't. And 
it is the mountain biking and skiing, all the incredible athletes that are here. So basically what 
we've done is I've started hosting events here and found that there's a lot of people like me here.







There's a lot of people that have incredible careers in the past, arguably much better than mine. 
They came here and just decided to stay regardless of, you know, no work. So they work as whatever 
baristas or they work in, there's a lady that designed a bunch of solar farms and built them in 
Spain that now installs carpet for the company next door.

And it's just, there's so many underemployed people here. So that's our opportunity. So. What we're 
building here is very [00:24:00] much linked to the place of like, how do you connect outdoor 
sports to the amazing people that are here to grow something really cool. And conveniently 
manufacturing doesn't really exist here.

So additive obviously is. It's a huge, a huge asset for me. Right. We can produce things through 
additive that you don't need, you know, a 500 million facility for, we can do one offs for, you 
know, the top Red Bull riders in the world. And yeah, so that's kind of how I shifted into that. 
We'll see where it goes, but it's that love for people, place, and then mixing that with the 
technological past that I have so far, it's been fun.

Well, if anyone's going to be able to figure it out, it's going to be you. Cause you, you do have 
that in my mind, unique skillset of being able to do, we'll say design work with people, work with, 
with problem solving in a humble way, even though you may brag a little bit once in a while, but 
that's kind of normal, but it's all good fun.

[00:25:00] Come on. But that'd be, you know, I, I do think we're moving into a different time, a 
different era with how things are made and when they're made and how frequently they're made. And 
so that's kind of an interesting position geographically where you don't have a lot of industry, 
but there are a lot of, we'll say experts living there, underemployed, like you said.

So that's a really interesting situation. Yeah, I think that we're coming into, I mean, not to go 
too deep down this rabbit hole, but with the political changes in the U. S. we're coming into what 
could be a really, really interesting time for manufacturing globally. I work with, I work with a 
lot of brands from here.

New Zealand is very much the very end of any supply chain. It's like, not the very end. Because 
most of the boats going to Antarctica leave from here. So I guess Antarctica is the end. It's 
pretty close to the end. So it's a horrible place [00:26:00] traditionally to manufacture. Unless 
you're only manufacturing for the people here.







It doesn't, it doesn't make sense to make stuff here and then ship it to the US. Or ship it to 
Europe. And it'll be really interesting to see. What changes in the next couple of years with, you 
know, proposed sanctions or tariffs or whatever you want to call them of goods going into the U S 
and there's already a lot of small companies here that import most of their market is in the U S 
and they're just fully panicked.

Like they, their companies might be shut down overnight, depending on what happens with the 
political situation there, which I think is. Obviously it's scary, but I think it leads leads to 
some huge opportunities for like, for me personally, as well as for just additive as a whole moving 
manufacturing out, as you guys know, like it's pretty easy without it.

You don't have to ship tools around the same machines exist all over the world. So if you're doing 
production here in New Zealand, then all of a sudden it needs to be done in the U S like, cool. You 
find a [00:27:00] manufacturing partner with the right tech there and just plug it in. So I think 
there's some really cool opportunities that will come out of this.

Yeah, it'll be interesting for sure. Yeah, it's always amazing what people will do when they can't 
get certain things right. Yeah. Like what we saw during Covid there, people are like, oh, yeah, 
we'll just print it. And then it's, it's like, we tried to convince you that for two years, and now 
all of a sudden you're like, all right, let's, let's do it.

They're like, wait, I've got this great idea. I'm like, yes, you do.

Yeah. Yeah. It'll be. It'll be really cool to see if this, if like this bit of potential hardship 
for people will lead to Innovation, which it almost always does right? There's no there's no Major 
innovation that comes from just easy life and everything's easy Like something has to something has 
to you know Go wrong for someone to find a cool solution that ends up changing the world.

So I'm excited to see what happens here And, [00:28:00] you know, at a little different angle, you 
know, something that comes to mind for me is think of like Amazon, for example, it's just a 
massive, massive company. I, I'm assuming it has global presence. I don't know what countries it is 
or isn't in, but I could imagine.

Being a business, it wants to keep expanding and keep growing. And so, you know, I could see them 
maybe setting up, we'll say like parachute in a mini factory in Queenstown and be able to, instead 
of doing delivery from Australia







or wherever the product comes from for certain products, you just print it up on demand in that 
area, which minimizes the lag time and the shipping costs and stuff like that.

So I could see in the future as some of these companies get so big and they want to keep expanding 
where that might be worth it for them. Yeah, yeah New Zealand strangely does not have Amazon, so 
it's getting stuff here is really difficult which, yeah, it's funny [00:29:00] because we're, 
especially as Americans, like we're so used to just having access to stuff and COVID obviously 
changed that, but here it's like, I ordered a book the other day and it took two weeks to get here.

Cool. That's, that's not normal. Also, why am I ordering books? A lot of, a lot of questions for 
myself or something. But yeah, that's a, that's a good point. I think the one thing that, you know, 
added it from, from the time I got into the industry, we've always kind of been trying to nudge 
forward this idea of distributed manufacturing.

And there's a lot of stuff that happened like through COVID as well as potentially what's happening 
now. And just like the psyche as a whole. It'll be interesting to see if that idea actually takes 
off. You know, it's, it's something that the technology is getting close to ready for now. It's 
just the mindset around it has to be there as a population to be okay with it.

Yeah. And then just going back to your business for a second [00:30:00] here, you know, is there 
for people who are listening in who maybe visit New Zealand or know people there or something like 
that? Are there certain resources or personnel or companies that you're looking to work with? And 
so, and the reason I ask is if they happen to know, maybe they can reach out to you and bridge 
connection.

Yeah so basically what we're, what we're built here or our building here is an incubator for 
outdoor sporting goods. And so we have, we're doing a lot more work with mountain bike companies, 
with road bike companies. We have a kind of a commuter bike moving in here in a couple of weeks. 
It'll be really exciting.

And it's, we're looking a lot at kind of unique ways to serve our market because in New Zealand, 
there's a lot of focus on sustainability. There's getting to be more globally, of course, but New 
Zealand is, it's very easy to see. Like there's, I'm sitting here on the call, looking out the 
window at these pristine mountains, and there's a beautiful clear river behind me.[00:31:00]







And it's easy to see when pollution comes in. And so people here seem to be very focused on. How do 
you just make what we need? So we're looking at that a lot through the, through the products we 
help people with is like, how do you make a bespoke product? That is exactly what somebody needs 
when they need, which sounds a lot like additive.

So for me, it's just like, I'm interested in meeting people. One who want to relocate to New 
Zealand, which I think there's a few out there in the world. And it's how do we get more people 
with those cool skill sets here in Queenstown?
And then if, if people are looking for really crazy custom sporting good stuff or just have a 
billion dollars and want to do some cool stuff, like that's who we're looking for.

All right. Yeah, we we have a, I think we have one, one New Zealander, one Kiwi that, that works 
with us out of the [00:32:00] eight people that are here. So everybody else is from all over the 
world and just have come to call this place home. So it's a pretty cool mix of people here in 
Greenstown. That's awesome.

Yeah, very fresh. I didn't think that was going to be as good. You picked the one day that you were 
getting deliveries in two weeks, right? Yeah, all my book the circle back to the, I have a kind of 
like the recruiting question, maybe you could shed some light on. So let's say you found a 
candidate.

And so you think they're a good fit on the flip side for the candidate. How should they negotiate? 
Is there room to negotiate? Like, what are your thoughts from the opposite end of that spectrum? 
Like, does it offend you or maybe the person that you're working for, if they try to negotiate up 
or, because I feel like a lot of people leave money on the table because they just don't ask, but 
you mean, what [00:33:00] are your aspects on salary specifically around salary or even benefits, 
right?

I think if you're not negotiating that as a employee or potential employee, you're making a 
horrible mistake. I work with, I work with a lot of a lot of people that I work with undervalue 
themselves massively and I think we've a couple of us have sat on the other side of the table where 
we're hiring employees and I remember people coming across the table.

And just the value that they put on themselves is half of what I brought. And so it's really hard 
if you're at the company side to offer someone more money than what they asked for. HR doesn't like 
that so much. But from the employee side, that's a lot of the work that I do with people is really 
talk through about, talk to them about what their value actually is to a company.







And what they should be asking for. And I don't know, I'm maybe a terrible recruiter, probably. 
Yeah, I'm a horrible recruiter. [00:34:00] Now I think about it, but my, my intention with this is 
not to place as many people in as many jobs as I can. It's to help people that I like get jobs that 
they love. And like, why, why would I not help people that I like get a fair deal?

And I think that there's if we look at the finances on that and how people like it, we'll see. 
There's an insane thing when it comes to the discrepancies between men and women in negotiation 
practices, which I think leads to a lot of the pay discrepancies. But anytime that I hired females 
through my career, I have placed them, we would give them a job offer and they would either accept 
it or come back with a counteroffer very, very close.

We're men that were under qualified for the position. Would be like, Oh, I'm never taking an offer. 
I need 60 percent more money or whatever. So it's, it's the negotiation thing is a really 
interesting point where, yeah. I, I wish like if there's one thing that people can learn going into 
[00:35:00] new jobs is that you, you have to negotiate it's expected that you do it.

There's also a psychology side of that where it's if I'm if I'm an employer and say I'm trying to 
hire Dustin and I tell him I'll give you whatever 100, 000 a year to do this job. And he says, yes, 
my feeling is. Crap, I couldn't offer him less and so it's actually worse for me as an employer if 
Dustin doesn't come back and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, I need 130 K and then we can 
negotiate and find it.

So it's actually psychologically puts both parties in a better position if the candidate counter 
offers. So I always tell people to counter offer. Yeah. And so you gave kind of two different ends 
of the spectrum. So the person who asked for like 60 percent more, where's that, that threshold 
where it's like you're offensive, like, [00:36:00] okay, guy, we're not going to get anywhere on 
that.

Or is it, is any negotiation acceptable? I mean, obviously there's a line and everything, but I 
don't think that the. I don't know. I, I don't think you can see this as being offensive. You're 
just not going to get the job, right? So a lot of it comes down to like what companies they're 
working for. So for instance, right now, if I offer Dustin a job, it's going to be a lot closer to 
no money, but I'll give you some shares of the company, which is, it's a hell of an offer.

I know. Maybe I'll help you get a visa in New Zealand. That's the real offer. But it's, it depends 
on the company they're going to work for as well, right? If you're going to work for, regardless of 
industry, like a fortune 500 company versus a







mom pop shop, probably like the small company already offered you very close to what they can 
actually pay you, whereas the big companies like HR protocol say that this is the offer.

So I think in [00:37:00] general, the smaller the company, the The smaller amount you can get away 
with of kind of the counteroffer, but it's yeah, it just needs to be a conversation. And it's sadly 
for a lot of the candidates that the person that wins the negotiation, which wins is not a very 
good word for this is often the person that cares less.

And so if, if someone's going into a job and they're like, that's the only job that I want, this is 
my dream job. This is the one I need to work like. You're probably not going to get as much money 
as you could have, as if you went in and said, you know what, I'm okay with losing this offer. So, 
yeah, the threshold is the threshold is moving.

And I think that working with. With good recruiters, hopefully I'm not the only one that advises 
people on stuff like that. I've never really worked with recruiters on the other side. But I would 
hope that you can get some insight into how the company operates and kind of what sort of wiggle 
room is [00:38:00] there.

Right. I also think that you brought up a good point. A lot of people, when they get a job offer, 
it looks solely at the dollar amount. And I think that the benefit side is way easier for a lot of 
companies to move than the dollar value sometimes. So especially at a small company, say it's the 
vacation stuff.

It's like, you know what? I can't pay you more, but I'm happy to give you whatever, four weeks of 
paid time off or even four weeks of unpaid time off, which depending on who is trying to get the 
job might be like the most valuable thing in the world to them. I know that for myself, I will 
never take a job with American vacation policies again.

Like somewhere less than six to eight weeks of vacation a year. Like I won't do just from. From my 
experiences and like the quality of life that that offers. So for me, that'll be a massive 
negotiation point. If I ever go back looking for a job from [00:39:00] somebody in the States, it's 
like, yeah, more important than money is my free time.

Right. That's a very good point for people to kind of put in their pocket. Right. And it's like, 
it's not just money. There's lots of things that you can ask for and talk about and you should ask 
for some things. I mean, yeah, a hundred percent.







And you should be okay. With some of them with not getting some of them, I even tell that to people 
when they do counter offers and like, like, if you're going to ask for more money, say more 
vacation, a company car or whatever country, these are different.

These are different likelihoods, but like have a couple of those that you're okay leaving behind. 
And, you know, maybe you are okay leaving. A few thousand dollars a year behind in exchange for, 
you know, whatever. And the negotiation is a dance. There's some, there's some really good books on 
negotiation that reading like two or three books already puts you at the top, whatever, 3 percent 
of the population and [00:40:00] negotiation tactics.

So definitely if you're looking for a job, read up on negotiation. What are those books tell us? 
That's a, that's a good question. I should have thought about that before I told you that. There's 
a couple books. There's one that one, the first one that pops to mind is called Never Split the 
Difference. Yeah, it's a good one.
Which is a, a bit of a harsh one, but it's a, it's a really good take and it's a good take that 
most people don't have. Most people don't have the confidence to negotiate like that. Just 
realizing that the cost of failure is actually pretty low in this circumstance with a job is pretty 
empowering.

So that, that's a really good one.

I forget the other one. It's a small orange book. It's got the number 11 in the title. Yeah. My 
visual system has failed me after 10 years. But yeah, I, I, the other ones don't pop to mind 
immediately. No worries. Any other advice? Just [00:41:00] I think this is obviously super easy to 
do and anybody can do it. Is in general, people should believe in themselves a little bit more.

It's a, for me early in my career, I looked at people in higher positions and even people, you 
know, I really wanted a job in additive doing like application development. And I looked at the 
people doing that and I very much put them on a pedestal of This person must be better than me 
somehow. And I think that people are realizing that like, we're all the same more or less is it's 
just whatever we've decided to put our passion into.

I, I remember meeting CEOs of several very large companies like some of the biggest companies in 
the world and meeting the C level staff and the head engineers of these companies. And then, you 
know, on off to the side and confidence, just being like, [00:42:00] Wait, what's actually going on 
here? And that was a huge moment for me to realize like, Oh, none of us have this figured out.







Like everybody's on the same journey of just figuring out where they fit in the world. So I think 
in general, like you're closer to whoever that person on the pedestal is than you actually think.

So then that's actually a really good segue here. So one of the questions we've been asking people 
to come on here cause we have people from all different positions and experience, but based on some 
of those conversations, what do you think might be the next big breakthrough or breakout 
application?

And, and why do you think it hasn't happened yet when it, when it comes to additive manufacturing 
or 3d printing? I think the, let me just look at what the next thing is. For me, at least, I need 
to look at what the last things were, and if you look at where additive manufacturing really got 
traction obviously the prototype and [00:43:00] stuff came first, but the move into manufacturing 
facilities is what grew many of these companies to be massive or many of the additive companies, 
but I'm not sure that doing more of that is actually the answer.

I think that it's whatever the next thing is. And I know this has been out there for a while, but 
the mass customization stuff, I still think has massive potential. If we look at, if we look at 
like, we'll just focus on the sporting goods thing. Cause that's where I sit now. Some of the bike 
saddles or bike seats are really cool.

And some of the stuff you can do with additive, you can't do with any traditional materials. But 
for me to get a bike seat that fits my, my, you know, Very custom sized, but after eating lots of 
lots of ice cream during the summer, it's like, it's really tough physically we can manufacture it, 
but getting the data to make that seat that fits me as a person is not very easy still.

So I think that data acquisition and then going [00:44:00] from point clouds or whatever that data 
acquisition is to an actual CAD file ready to manufacture is not a very seam seamless process right 
now. So as we get machine learning is obviously going through an insane phase. Sorry. Now the 
photographers are here opening and closing doors.

Anyway, back to it. So machine learning obviously is going through a pretty insane phase right now 
where it's like AI and the power of looking at data. It's getting so much attention that I think it 
really helps us on the CAD side too. I think it's only a matter of time before there's really good 
CAD solutions to actually make custom products for people.







The manufacturing is there. The additive technology I believe is there for the most part. It's just 
where do you get the data that goes into it to make a special part for me versus you. So I think 
that's the next big application that I'm, I'm hopeful for and I'm betting on is that mass 
customization.[00:45:00]

Interesting to hear what is old is new again, to some extent, except that maybe it's shifting a 
little bit with how you get there. And what I keep hearing and seeing is, you know, it's really the 
software. It's really how do you manifest that design and then be able to tweak it for your exact 
needs without being a CAD engineer, you know?

Yeah. And customization stuff that. You know, many of us are all three of us in this call. I've 
worked on earlier in our careers was like, how do you put someone's name on a product? Which isn't 
really the thing. Like in my eyes, it's, it's an interesting one, but it's not like really the 
thing. So now instead of the product on the wall that has my name, it can be a thing specially made 
for me and how I interact with the world.

And I think that that's the incredible power. I would, yeah. My assumption is that we get there in 
the not, in the next not so many years to the point where people expect things that are made custom 
for them. And it fits in with the sustainability models that a lot of us are moving towards. 
[00:46:00] Yeah, that's what I think.

Love it. So, so what resources would you suggest people to look into to like stay up on additive or 
resources that you use or, or it doesn't even have to be about additive. What, what things do you 
go to to find information and find interesting? I, I do a lot of driving here. The nearest surf 
break is about two and a half hours away, you know, so it's a, it's a haul.

Obviously my life priorities have shifted a bit if I'm worried about surf breaks, but I listen to a 
lot of podcasts and one of them that's like incredible about just knowledge on weird topics. Not so 
much additive is Rick Rubin's podcast. I don't know if you guys have ever come across that. Nope, 
I'm not a huge music guy and he's kind of legendary music producer, but he's just really, really 
good at asking questions.

And that's, that's an amazing resource to me. It's made me kind of fall in love [00:47:00] with 
poetry and a lot of other things that I never thought I would. So that's really cool. Otherwise, 
I'm the more additive side. I'm I really like the 80 20 rule that I want to spend as little time as 
possible to get as much information as possible.







And kind of the overviews are pretty important to me now. So I do most of what I look at for 
additive news comes from LinkedIn. And most of that is from a couple of key players. So like Gil 
Levy is very good at breaking down kind of industry as a whole and what trends are looking like. So 
I, I give, I give his posts probably more attention than a lot of the others, just like for a 
really quick overview of what the industry is.

Yeah, those are, those are two things that I put a lot of And otherwise, I don't know if you guys 
have heard of books, but books are actually like really good. Oh, they take like two weeks to get 
to you. I mean, why would you do that?
Yeah. It's worth the wait sometimes. Not always, not always choose wisely, but I think that there's 
like audio books and how easy they are to get.

You can learn insane [00:48:00] things like the negotiation stuff. If you know you have a 
negotiation in two weeks or like a possibility of one, just like listen to an eight hour book and 
see yeah, what you can actually learn. It's crazy how much that puts you ahead of the curve because 
there's so many people out there that just don't.

And you might be even able to create a chat GPT bot to practice negotiation going back and forth. 
Yeah. Yeah. That'd be interesting. I never have, but that I'm, I almost guarantee there's some bots 
out there. You can just get, you can probably even put in variables. Yeah, absolutely. Or even just 
tell it, this is the company, how much money can I make in a real search glass door and whatever 
else.

But yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see the responses from that, right? You 
could be prepared for anything. Yeah, it could be really good or just like really weird. You forgot 
to say New Zealand though. I mean, that's, that's your number one, right? Yeah. Yeah. So then you 
get I guess if you [00:49:00] put that in the bot and then, you know, if, if your counter offers 
like 110, 000, they were like, actually we'll pay you 35.

Yeah, it's a crazy world here. I looked at, I looked at working in industry here and it was Any 
fairly senior engineer engineering role I could get paid less than my first job out of college Wow, 
it's like yeah, cool. I'm not working for someone else then so It's a bit of a shift in worldview, 
isn't it? It is, and it's people don't move here because they're going to make a fortune here.

People move here because it's an incredible place to live and have a life outside of work.







Well, I guess I'll have to book a trip. Yeah, man. For sure. Anybody coming down to Queenstown, I'm 
I love connecting with people and sharing like what I love about this place. That's why I guide 
mountain bike tours and why I do the other things. It's just, as you guys [00:50:00] might know, I 
kind of like talking.

So it's a good opportunity to it's a good opportunity to share some of what I've learned about the 
place and what I love about the place. Yeah. Just be careful. Your employer might not let you come 
down here because there's a high risk that you just will never leave. We'll have to keep that in 
mind.

Maybe edit that part out of the podcast.

It's been really awesome speaking with you and I hope we have another conversation is I learned a 
lot and it's rare that we get to talk to people in that area of the world because of time 
differences and stuff. So thank you so much for your, your time. Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed it 
for sure. I'd love to chat anytime and yeah, it makes sense that you don't talk to many people in 
this part of the world.

There's only like 35 people here, so maybe a few more than that. We actually, one of these real 
nice facts about Queenstown, people that live here. It's a tiny town. [00:51:00] And last year we 
got 3. 2 million visitors. Wow. So it's a really interesting place to exist. Yeah. Anyway. So, so 
before you, before you wrap just real quickly, do you have a website for the startup that you have 
just so you can give it a plug at all?

Yeah. So the website for the startup is pivot because you know, we all got to pivot out of our 
jobs. Maybe not all, but pivot, you know, I, and then, oh, dot com links to the, the charity that 
we're starting here. Basically the incubator that we're building up is actually. It's going to be 
shifting into a charity just with the sole goal of helping people create cool businesses and 
products.

Awesome. Great. Check it out. Yeah. And once again, thank you for, for joining us. Yeah, for sure. 
Thanks for having me on. It's been a real nice chatting with both you guys and good to hear from 
you again, Dustin and meet you, Justin.
Yeah, absolutely. [00:52:00] Same here and we'll wrap it out here. So thank you everybody for 
joining AM insider and we'll see you next time.