Lessons in Innovation After Transitioning From a Software CEO to Manufacturing Owner with Drew Honeycutt

In this episode of Watching the Sparks Fly, gain insights into the complexities of the metals industry, the significance of cooperation among machine shops, and the potential for growth and disruption in the coming years.

Donnie Garvich speaks with Drew Honeycutt, CEO of Talladega Casting and Machine Co., about the challenges and opportunities in the American manufacturing industry. Drew shares his journey from running a software company and tech incubator to purchasing a machine and fabrication shop. He also touches on the importance of innovation in a traditional industry and his vision for the future of manufacturing. 

Watching the Sparks Fly is part of the Stella Source Podcast Network.

Metal Made Simple - that's the guiding ethos of Stella Source.

To learn more about Stella Source, follow these links:

https://www.stellasource.com 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/stella-source/

Transcript

Did you know? The amount of time CEOs spend in their position is on the decline. According to research done by Harvard in 2023, the median tenure of CEOs decreased by 20 percent between 2013 and 2023. While smaller companies may have more quote unquote forever CEOs, which are people who stay in their positions longer, they're not immune to CEOs who decide to move on from their position.

In small and mid sized companies, this often leads to someone from outside the company becoming the CEO.  Which brings us to today's guest. So today I'm joined by Drew Honeycutt, the CEO of Talladega Casting and Machine Company. I got that right? That's correct. All right. So I met Drew in the world of technology.

We, we had crossed paths a couple of times. We had some mutual friends. We lived in the same world and being in Birmingham, Alabama, that's a pretty small world. And you originally had, you were founder and CEO of a startup, COO of a startup that we were, that's the first time you and I had worked ever together.

And eventually, you were the CEO of of an incubator here in town that was fairly well known, but since then you moved a whole new world and I want to talk about your previous life, right up to and also the world that you're in now. So Drew, welcome. Thank you for being here. Yeah.

Thank you for having me. 

So tell start, let's start by just kicking off, talk about that world that you and I lived in, which is crazy. This is decades of technology,  right? That we lived in and now you're in a different world. And I am too. With Stellasource in the metals industry.

So this is a weird confluence and I'm glad to get to find it. We had coffee a few weeks ago and realized, oh my God, we're having these weird, paths. So tell us about, where you came from and what you're doing now. Yeah. I'll start with, you never know where the, where life's going to take you.

And yeah. I guess where we met was in the technology world and still very passionate about innovation and technology. I'll get back to that and one of the reasons why I am where I am now, but yeah, basically had been an entrepreneur all my life and had a unique opportunity that just some weird circumstances that brought two parties together.

And they were the former owner of the business was looking to sell and I wasn't necessarily looking to buy, but just went on a tour of the business thinking I was going to have coffee that day and ended up. seven hours later, he had me convinced I should buy the business. And literally I got in the car and I called my dad and I said, Hey my dad loves woodworking and called him.

And I figured he would enjoy what I what I had just visited and told him a little bit about what it was, but I didn't know what I saw. I just knew that, it was in the steel business and metal business. And yeah, so he and I partnered up, we bought the business, didn't know the first thing about the metals industry had never been around it.

Never. really spent any time, like I said, didn't know what a lay from a mill when I was looking at it. But really got comfortable with the team and the history of the business that had been around for 73 years at that time, and just fell in love with the Americana aspect of it. The blue collar, hardworking making making from raw material in products that were making impacts in different industries.

It's interesting because I remember my introduction into the metals industry. And I'm a software guy and have been for a long time, consultant and things like that. And  way too often the things that I work on felt intangible. Right and software often does and I remember thinking just how tangible the world is in Metals and it's pretty cool.

I You know, it's a world that you can fall in love with so that first you're out there, right? I'm gonna have coffee and you've got seven hours and One of the things you know, the name of this podcast is watching the sparks fly And that's one of the things we know people in the metals industry love to do  given their preference They're gonna watch the sparks fly.

They're gonna make the sparks fly, right? They're gonna go cut the metal They're gonna bend the metal they're gonna do the thing, they're going to make something in the world that's new. And that first day, like seven hours what did you see? Walk me through your mindset of this is a shop.

First time I've ever seen, probably the first time you've ever seen, at least at that scale and thinking, wow, this is cool. I it's almost,  it changes your viewpoint in the world. Right when you see it. So what, tell me about that first day. The two things that stand out in my mind, one was the burn table.

Okay. The burn table in the la in our laser tables. They were going full bo that day. Like you're saying, sparks were flying. Yep. And I'd never seen that. Yeah. In person. I'd seen it on TV obviously, but it just drew me in and then from there.  I just saw capabilities. I saw our shop is unique.

We do everything from cutting to gear cutting, machining, fabrication, painting, assemblies, rebuilds. We do a lot of different stuff in house. And just not even really knowing what any of that was. I saw a lot of different completed equipment and parts, and I just knew that there was something there that they could make a lot of different stuff.

And that was, I was intrigued around that shop then  because for anyone who is listening who's not necessarily familiar You don't always have a shop that can go into end, right? A lot of times you've got a paint shop that you're gonna send it to somewhere else Someone's might weld it right and all these other things.

But what you're saying is that shop in particular It is an end to end thing, so you were able to see up front, oh, I see some materials over here, and over here I see some actual finished. That's exactly right. Cool looking stuff that I recognize. Yeah, and I didn't understand the process in between, but those two endpoints were really what helped define, oh, okay, this is how things are made.

Yeah. And  then from, and it took me a while. It took me probably a year of just being in the business until I could start looking around  metal items, in everyday world started popping out. And it was like, okay, this is, we can make this, or this is how this is made. And just that was just the very beginning of it.

And then you get into all the depths of the metals and the. Requirements for different things and we service a lot of different industries. We service the defense, the wire drawing industry, underground mining rail, power generation. And so every one of those industries has different requirements.

And so on any given day in our shop, you're working with a lot of different types of materials and a lot of different types of applications. And. And so it gets complex and that's been a really fun piece of it is just how complex and how that complexity in a an aging industry that doesn't have a lot of innovation in it that you just see opportunities throughout and they just bubble up and it's so what are some of the, like you, okay, yes, you're coming in brand new.

You're a year in, you're looking around, you're starting to recognize, You know,  this versus that, right? Whatever that might be and get an idea. What was surprising you in that first year? Cause we're the first year you're looking around and there's going to be moments where you're an outsider and you're going to think, wow, why do we do something that way?

Or why is it that way? What were some of the things that surprised you in that first 12 months? The first thing is how much I had to rely on other people. Literally if I was going to have a zoom call or a phone call with you,  about anything related to our business, I would have someone that knew.

You had to grab somebody. Yeah, somebody was sitting next to me because I needed the assistance and still do it at a lot of levels. And that's how we operate. But, um, the surprises for me were just how complex it is. And  when you're making, let's say a full assembly, how many sub assemblies and how many parts go into those sub assemblies and just, If you break down a full assembly into parts and how you actually make it, it's a very complex process and scheduling and managing the materials to, steps throughout the routing process.

It's really complex, much more so than I ever had ever imagined. Yeah, I think, we were actually upstairs earlier and you and Sean Hughes at Stellan's Horse and I were talking about the complexity being surprising to all three of us. And it really is the hidden industry you take for granted.

Until you step foot into it and begin realizing just how complex it is and folks are solving  Every day very unique problems, right? And they don't never the same but they rhyme a lot of times and so you're walking in you're like, hey The complexity is surprising me It sounds like you still have pro like professionals that you grab and you're like, oh, I got a zoom call And I need so and so come ride shotgun on the zoom call.

I don't know what I'm talking about  So you're a year in, let's say, right? You're a year in complexity has surprised you. You're starting to get a feel for  roughly, what the world looks like.  What was the first moment you thought, okay, I think I could change something, right? It's, there's a confidence there.

Yeah. And when was the first time you thought, okay, I'm confident enough to say, I think here's a moment where I can see future state changing. Yeah. So  being an innovator my first. initial moves, first year even, were to let's innovate. Let's find So you walked in the door. Yeah. I walked in the door and thought, let's innovate.

And and so I was out really looking for product opportunities to either partner with folks on that didn't have the means to prototype and iterate. And, that way we could assist with them and partner up. And so we went through several different products, I'd say probably three or four products the first year.

Just honestly, in East Alabama, there's a lot of innovators that are working on everything from trucking industry to mining industry, like the farming, that they're working on instruments and tools and trying to develop something new, but they have a hard time getting it to market. And so we went through that process a good three or four times and it finally hit me that. 

iterating and prototyping in the metals industry is in fact pretty expensive. Yeah.  Similar to software  and some, somewhere in the back of my head. Turns out. Yeah, it turns out in the back of my head, I was thinking, oh, this can't be as bad as software, right? But it's the same process, product market fit.

And, when you're taking a new product to market. And really from that step, we took a step back and we said, okay, let's look internally. We've got so much internally. We've made tens of thousands of parts over the years. What do we have internally that we can  productize and scale up and, really grow the, help grow the business?

And one of those was architectural metals. We had  just didn't even recognize it as being a different thing, but engineered product lines or architectural lines are different. And we stood up another business focused on miscellaneous metals, architectural metals. Doing everything from beautiful back rear lit wall art to handrails and bollards for parking decks and, buildings and just more niche type one off projects.

And stood up that business. That was the first one we stood up. How far in were you when you start how far in were you when you started thinking about that and then what it was at the time? Yeah, that was, that, that idea came up about a little over a year into the business. Okay. Cause.

I started recognizing some patterns and it's different, that, that world's, it's just two different worlds and but they all manufacture the same and end of last year end of 23, it really started focusing on that in earnest and stood it up at the beginning of this year, had a lot of success with it this year, seems like we've found product market fit had a couple meetings today actually where People are leaning in and saying, yes, we need your help in making these custom products because it's harder and harder now than ever to find people that are willing and able to make custom quality steel products.

And yeah, that's we're leaning into that kind of stuff, but at the same time, we've identified some opportunities that I think we can build some software around that We're dabbling in right now to figure out if there's some commercialization around that. So when you say that, you mean within your company already, you're doing something.

Yes. And you're wondering if you can productize.  When you say software in the metals industry, a lot of times I think front office. Stuff, but you're potentially talking about production. You're correct. You're talking about the whole shop, right? Correct. Okay. Yeah  Less ERP, not ERP, we do the same thing.

Yeah up to and include up to and not including ERP yeah, so yeah, there's some opportunities. I feel like that just an efficiency and communication and smoothing out the production and manufacturing process Really not just  in our industry, but across the buyers and, just all the way through the chain because we're in a unique position.

We're making parts and equipment for the very beginning of the supply chain. We're helping those suppliers or OEMs make their equipment, but a lot of times it's processing equipment that they need that equipment running to make their product. And we're pretty critical in that path in a lot of ways that our, Their equipment being down and us not being able to repair it can affect that product and Okay, so let me make sure I understand because you and I have talked a bit but I don't think I've ever grasped this.

What you're saying there is you're dependent on a lot of times. To have parts and  make things for the machines that make the machines. That's correct Which is a  we know a very different thing than making a machine Correct And so what you're saying is primarily a lot of the parts you focus on probably hard to get probably hard to design It's very high tall or very narrow tolerances a lot of old equipment that they don't make parts and equipment for the businesses have been out of business for 30 years a lot of reverse engineering  Does that take the form of someone has I've got a broken part, reverse engineer?

What kind of forms does that take? Everything from, we get a lot of gears sent in. We get stuff sent to us from all across the country. Okay. A lot of times they'll mail, they'll send a picture and we can tell them if we can help and then they'll mail the part over.  So we'll use different ferro arms to scan and then our engineers will do manual measurements and actually design, the part and then we'll manufacture it from there.

But yeah, these are typically hardware parts. A lot of times are pretty critical in the process in the wiring industry. It's a drawing process where they're drawing copper rod down into whatever gauge wire that you're going to use. And all the parts and dies and components that go into that, if they go down, that lines down, and we're talking, millions of dollars an hour in lost productivity.

Yeah, for me, my reference point there was automotive, so I spent a lot of time writing software for automotive companies, whether it's your Toyotas or Mercedes or whoever's. And I, It always amazed me when you talk about a production line, how efficient they really are these days. And you have things like lunch breaks and they're 30 minutes, let's call it, per shift.

And you have a mechanic crew. And that mechanic crew has 30 minutes during lunch. That's when the machines are planned to be maybe not moving. They have 30 minutes to repair whatever it is, and that's it. And they go out three times a day, 30 minute increments. And watching the efficiency of, they have to have their parts, they have to have everything right, and they go out and get it done that's a level of efficiency that a lot of people never, get witness to.

But the reason it exists is simply because these companies depend on those production lines. That is their entire method of making money. That's it. And they simply cannot afford for them to be  Even slow, much less down. Yep. So you've got these companies, right? And you sit all over the country and they're saying, Hey,  and this is the business you came into in a lot of ways.

Yes. Which was, this was the business and you said, Hey, I came in, looked at some patterns, all that. There's also architectural business. Those do sound like very different. Yeah. They are like concerns. The way you address the market, at the end of the day, you still make parts. Yep. And it's the same core materials.

When you started looking around you're doing what I would call pattern recognition, right? It's okay, I see a pattern here that I think I could turn into a product. A thing that we do better, maybe better than anybody else do you think in, in, in this industry that  Those things are able to be changed right and what gives you the idea that hey I can change these things from right here in Talladega Like what is in Drew that they makes those two things true?

First and foremost, I believe in the in our team  Being a 70 I guess 75 years old now  It does take a while. Yeah. Yeah, company 75 years old, old habits die hard and so that's been, getting the, turning a 75 year old business into more of an innovative business takes time.

And we've really just been focused on identifying opportunities and going back to what you were saying earlier, a lot of our innovation is in product lines. So for the wiring industry, for instance, we are innovating on some of the parts that last longer that we're like ceramic coating on some of our stuff and it lasts a lot longer.

And so we're selling those parts and they're replacing old parts with those. And it's, it's just helping their uptime stay in check. So there's a lot of other innovative things that we're doing to help our customers in addition to looking for business opportunities. And so that's really how we're focused on and is how do we add more value to our customer every day, be more efficient, add and really, Help them be more efficient and stay up in what they're doing.

So you do you personally talk to a lot of those customers and learn about the, yeah, do you go see their operations? Yeah, I'm pretty active with seeing and visiting with customers. We have a lot that come to see us as well. And yeah, especially with the military stuff, I'm very much hands on with that.

Why would you not, right? That's part of the fun, right? Yeah, I get to come see how they're doing. They're gonna pull wire, right? I need to know, what does that even look like? Yeah, I find that stuff fascinating. In this process, now how long have you been,  what is your total tenure right now? January 25 will be three years.

Three years, okay. Yeah, coming up in three years. So you've been there three years, and you're talking about some changes you've already  seen in your mind's eye of where you want to go. And you've started making them. Has there been a moment when you thought, huh, this is gonna be tough? This is actually gonna be harder than I might have thought it was.

Yes. So  we inherited a really good business. The, on the heels of COVID manufacturing was on shore and again, and there was just a lot of activity. And so we inherited a good business. And so end of the first year, it was like, Oh, this is great. This is exactly what I was looking for.

It didn't take, but a couple of days, to get the rude awakening that this business is hard and there's A lot of nuances that go into it and had a lot to learn. And yeah, I would say at the end of the first year, it was a rude awaking of, this is a business I'm really going to have to sink my teeth into and learn as much as I can, because I'm going to need to know, I can't just run this as a business operator and not be hands on into what's actually happening in the business.

If I'm going to take this thing to the next level, I've got to be, neck deep in it with everybody else and understanding and full understanding of from the time that we get an RFQ in the door to the time we ship it out, what happened. And then, even after that, when we bill it was, it's taken me two years post that first year to now I'm at a point where, okay, it's time to come up for air and really focus on growth and what that looks like and identify really deep, deepening my dive into opportunities and and market discovery and, talking to customers and and being less in the business and working on the business more.

So I picture, I'm going to tell you what I picture in my head. It didn't happen. This is not what happened, but in my head, here's my picture. I picture first year, you're in you're learning some stuff. And at some point, 12 months, 14 months in, you come walking out of the office, rolling up the sleeves on your, nicely pressed white shirt.

True does not, he's not a suits guy, never seen you in a suit. I don't think, but you're, rolling up your sleeves like, all right, I've got to learn. I've actually got to learn. the nuts and bolts of this this work. So in my head, that's what happened. Yeah. I'm a city, I'm a city slicker.

And Talladega is in the country. We don't just raise cars there. There's, we're in the country. And that's when you do a good job of raising cars. Yeah. We do that around a trial. But it's, yeah, you're right. There was this aspect of, okay. It's time to roll up the sleeves, and it's time to really, because there's so much here, and it's I find it so incredibly interesting, the more, every single day, I find find my way deeper and deeper into it and there's just  layer after layer of interest that that I find in it and it's, I'm just tipping, touching the tip of the iceberg.

And so some people have been in these industry, this industry for 30, 40, 50 years and there's just no way to get that knowledge without being there. It's an experience. One of the things that has impressed me is it is an experience first industry. Where, what that, what I mean by that is, the best way to learn it is to be part of it.

And was there actually a trigger moment where you're like, okay, I've got to roll up my sleeves? Was there something that happened or was it just more of an overtime, I'm going to have to get in the middle of it? Our team hate to keep saying this, but we're a 75 year old business, right? Yeah. We have  a couple of guys that have been with us for over 50 years.

Yeah, and, I knew this when we bought the business that we had. a good number of folks have been with us for 25 to 30 plus years. And then there was a good number of guys that have been with us for less than five, but that between five and 25 years, there was very little. And that's a direct reflection.

I think you would see across the industry that there were not near as many people going into the trades. And so there's a, there is a absolutely a skill gap and not just this industry, but the trades in general. And that moment for me was the realization of,  Okay, we talked about this when I bought the business, but here we are, a year, two years later.

I really need to start thinking about the future and how we plan for the future. And, our entire team is still with us and everything, but just for planning for five to ten years from now, how do we do that? And I think it's going to look different than the way we've done it the last 75 years.

Yeah. Yeah, things are changing so rapidly with the digitalization of the world that, This is one industry that I feel like has not really focused too heavily on it. And that's our path forward is how do we drive more inbound leads? How do we manage our customers better more methodically using CRM?

And, just the modern day tools that are out there that historically I think a lot of companies in this industry just don't really know about. It's not a lack of, I don't want to do it. It's just knowledge of the products. Thanks. And so that's a lot of what we're focused on right now and moving forward is how do we use the internet and how do we use technology to really boost our business?

It was interesting and we said this in the previous podcast, and I'm beginning to believe we talk to folks in the metals industry is going to continue to be something we say. It's easy to look at the metals industry and not think about innovation, but I went to Fabtech last year, that's going on right now down in Orlando, but I went to the one in Chicago last year.

And.  There's innovation. Oh yeah. It's mind blowing levels of innovation, and not as much of it as in software. And  I feel like software has, at some point in the past 10 years, 12 years, 15 years, co opted the word innovation to mean software, and it doesn't. And so these businesses that are 75 years old, 100 years old, whatever, they have changed every day to get to be 100 years old or 75 year old business.

They have innovated along the way, probably in ways that seem effortless or invisible a lot of times. And then the digitalization we're talking about, is something that's that the industry is not far forward in. And so there is room to be innovative there. And what I have found is people are not necessarily resistant to innovation or change as much as it is.

This is the kind of innovation and change that is here present in the modern day. And I think that's super fascinating. So along the way, you've talked about your team quite a bit.  You come in, so Drew comes in, Hey, I'm the new guy. I feel like the new guy for a year round a year. I roll up my sleeves, stop being the new guy a little bit at a time.

One day at a time.  Who were, you've got this, you have this mind, you walked in with this mindset of change, right? You told us that. So you walked in, you're like, I'm ready to innovate. But now you're 12, 14 months in. And you're like, I have to learn more to innovate. So who are the allies that you were finding in the business to be like, okay, what,  who are the people that you know?

You don't have to use names, right? But what kind of folks did you find in that, Was it the five year folks, the 25 year folks, the 50 year folks? What was the mix of people that were like, these are my allies in driving change? Yeah. In the organization? Yeah. Inside your company. Yeah.  Interesting when you walk into a business that's been around for, an established business that's been around for a while, that there's a lot of people saying don't listen to this guy.

Don't, it's, it takes a little bit of time to get through the mud to figure out like who are those people. And really. It comes down to a handful of folks, right? One was, originally it was our accountant. The accountant had been working on the business since 92, and we got comfortable with them, and really leaned heavily on them.

But then, our COO, he'd been there forever. He'd done everything in the business, plus just, salt of the earth guy, couple of the, our sales guys, and folks that have been with us for 50 plus years. Hearing their stories of how things were during the heyday of the business and how the founder operated the business.

But then at the same time,  I love hearing the young guys and the guys at 22, 23 years old that have been in it for two years. What do they need? Because they're the future of this and we're trying to build a business that one creates an opportunity, a lot of opportunities for everyone both financially and professionally.

But really like we want to create an environment that people want to come work there because it's harder than ever to find a good machinist or fabricator that will consistently show up and wants to work, and it's not, and it's not necessarily because it's not an inflection of people.

It's just an inflection of there was such a gap there. And lack of people learning the skills and the trades that there's just not a talent pool of people, right? And so that's where automation and artificial intelligence and, all those things will come in, I think, in the future. And you're already seeing it happening.

The struggle we have in automation is we operate as a job shop. And so everything's custom. And so automating around customization is not as easy as it is if you're doing, running production parts. And there's always going to be a need for humans to do what we do. You can automate almost the entire process, but there's always going to be required a requirement for humans to do what we do.

And so that's, I think that's one of the big challenges going forward is like how to, as an industry, How do we come together and say, we need more in this industry, because it's the heartbeat of our country. Sure. And this is, everything we encounter on a daily basis is, comes from, or is shipped on, at some point, slid across metal. Yeah, exactly. It's all, it touches, everything touches it. We share that in an industry, in a world where your talent pool is smaller than the need. That's a reality in software development world, software engineering world, reality in your world, different reasons, but it's the same set of problems, and you do have to have a mind towards creativity when you talk about these folks.

It's, one of the things that I did learn working in and around factories is the only way you can truly make a process is if you  absolutely know the problem. ahead of time.  If that's not true, it's really hard to make a process around it and it requires some amount of creativity. Exactly. And we run into that a good bit where it's, it sure would be nice to go and say we want to create an assembly line that develops software or develops whatever, but  the only way that works is if there's no variation.

Yep. And if you do live in a world where variation is the differentiator or a key component of what you do,  people become very necessary and the skill required to do it is very high, right? Creative people who can also work in a very production oriented environment. It's easy to find artists, right?

It's hard to find artists who can make money, right? That's a very different thing. And it's a fascinating thing to watch. So you're going around this business, right? You got lots of folks, you got politics to play.  Did you intentionally set out to say, okay, I'm trying to figure out who the allies are going to be in change?

Because We already know the, I knew when you told me this is what you were going to go do that Drew was going to try to make some changes in this world. So did you set out and say, okay, look, I am going to find these people. And if you did, what were some of the things that kind of triggered you said your accountant, right?

Your COO. What were some of the things that they said or did that made you think, okay, that's actually someone I can depend on to. to help back some change that we got coming in the future. Yeah, and I failed to mention in that, that previous list my CFO. Okay. He's my best friend from college. Yeah, it's like you're winning an Emmy, like I can't leave somebody out.

Yeah, seriously, because he's one of my best friends from college. Okay. Ends up being this whole story is about timing and how things, just align. And he'd left his previous engagement. At the same time that I was buying this business and so he became my CFO and just having my buddy from many years, many moons ago that, my  phone call away and knew the business, that was such a critical moment to align myself with somebody that can, that I can trust that I knew, I trusted everybody in the organization, obviously, I've trusted him for a long time and he trusts me, right?

And so having that ally gave me a lot of confidence to go and move forward. And yeah, you're doing a lot of things blindly. And, ultimately I'm, at first year I'm looking at the bank account more than I'm looking at any type of reports because I couldn't figure out how to run the reports, and but it's really been a incredible learning experience. And, I just, I can't thank everybody that's played a part of it so far. And there's been partner vendors and partners and, so external, yeah, exterior, external partners. So let's hit on that for a minute, cause you had mentioned to me, before we started recording that there is a world where you're looking out, you have, it's almost impossible to innovate completely internally.

And this is a  podcast about what it takes to innovate on the inside. And when you do that, you immediately have to start looking outward, right? For people who would be attracted to innovation and things like that. So when you're looking out in the world. What are you looking for now that you're expanding your horizons of, we're gonna innovate, we're gonna change, we're gonna do some things, and I'm gonna need partners out in the world to do these things as well.

What are you kinda looking out in the world and seeing and what are you looking for? Yeah. The interesting thing about our industry is that even though we do a lot of services in house, there is a lot of things that we do not do in house, like flame hardening or heat treating or just some various.

Things that we don't do in house, right? And machining. There's plenty of machining that  we don't have the capability to do on a certain sub assembly of a part. And so we'll, we'll cooperate with another machine shop and they'll run it for us. And There's a lot of cooperation in this industry, way more, that was one of, a really surprising thing to me was just how cooperative machine shops are with each other and because You mean how willing to coordinate?

Yeah, I mean we share work with each other because one machine shop has capabilities that another one doesn't and at the end of the day customers have needs and the current state of the machining or manufacturing, the manufacturing end that we're in. There's not that many of us left in the country. And trying to find somebody that can do all of the things that a customer needs in one place is not always capable.

To have, if we had, if you can send it to us and we can do 85, 90 percent of the work, and then there's this one small piece that we need another machine shop to help us on.  It makes more sense for us just to coordinate the entire thing. Are you feeling like you've found those, a lot of those relationships?

A lot of those were already in place when I bought the business. So it was just you indexing them, inventorying them, understanding them? Yeah, just understanding their capabilities and figuring out how we could help each other and leveraging what they do and what we do to help, build something bigger.

But we're, at the end of the day, we're on, Separate businesses, obviously, and pursuing different stuff, but yeah, and vendors too, every, O'Neill Steel and, different suppliers and their teams as they come by the office and  giving insights as to what's going on in their industry, that's been really helpful.

Cool. Yeah I,  it has been interesting to me to see how everyone in this industry is a frenemy. Yep. Set up. You don't find people with beef. And they are separate businesses. And they generally will be helpful and to a person, the person, the people I've met are just fantastic. Okay.

Absolutely. Just to a person have been fantastic and willing to be helpful. And so I can, I have seen a what you're describing as a good bit of collaboration on as long as it makes sense for both of our businesses. Let's figure this out, and there is almost always a path towards figuring it out, right?

Because at the end of the day, what drives that is, someone needs the job done, and they're willing to pay to have the job done, right? What does that look like? When you say you're,  Your shop can do a lot, and you do have to depend on other shops. Is that an everyday thing? Is that an every week thing?

Is that an every month thing that you're out there talking to people outside your business and learning how their businesses operate and stuff like that? Yeah, we're shipping hundreds of parts and sub assemblies each month. And yeah, it's pretty routine. Yeah, it's pretty routine.

It is. But the vast majority of the work happens in our, all the fabrication. Most of the machining, if there's any, it's really niche little machining that has to be outsourced. The main bulk of our outsourcing is like flame hardening or some specific heat treating that our heat, our furnace can't do.

So there's some Because you guys do have a furnace. We didn't cover that. Yeah, we do. And so we, we do handle some heat treating and And so just really like niche little items that we can't pick up. That's where other folks get involved. And yeah, but it's a good network of folks.

So knowing what you know now about, you've got this business, you've got these folks that you trust. It sounds like  some really great allies within the business. It sounds like you've got some great allies outside the business. Do you think given kind of Drew's vision for the world, do you think that,  Things are gonna change. 

I do. I do for a number of reasons. I think,  and we've seen it since COVID that America needs more American manufacturing whether it's,  we just need more of it. There is needs out there that are not being filled on the foundry side, for instance. There is a fraction of steel foundries compared to what there were 25 years ago.

And. It's getting harder and harder to get parts shipped in from China and, delays and just everything that goes with that.  And so I do think that,  I think that demand  for a while, and I wasn't in the, in this business up until three years ago, but I think the demand is going to drive people to innovate and to look into how do we double down on what we have? 

Because I do think it's, these are the type of businesses that would be very hard to go start from scratch. They're very capital intensive. And so if there are, a business out there that you can acquire, what we did, um, it's like, how do you set that business up for the future? And I do think it's going to be different, whether it's the way you sell, whether it's the way you drive leads online.

Whether it's the way you subsidize your team on, to, through automation or there's just a lot of different things that, but I do think it's going to happen. The adoption, I think, is going to be slow. And the adoption, I think, will come from changing of the guard with a lot of these companies.

The generational shift. Yeah, the generational shift, but that also poses a problem because, I talked to a lot of aging and business owners in our industry right now, and they don't, they can't figure out who to sell to or how to, how to create a succession plan. And so there does seem to be a gap there that their family may have moved on and moved out of small town USA.

And not everybody wants to move to that small town, USA, but, just trying to keep those businesses alive are critically important to our infrastructure and just our, livelihood in America. Whether we, it's hard to realize that until you see the things that we're doing to help keep in the wiring industry right now, power lines being installed in North Carolina, right?

That's a critical piece that if you don't have the, if you don't have the line to install, then you have no power. And it's just a, it's an interesting time. It is. And I think, I feel like it's just, it's like right there on the cusp of and that's what I'm really, one of the things I'm really excited about is just turning a industry that, just really key little niche areas in our business that I think could have a real impact on other areas of other businesses.

That it's just ripe for disruption. So describe that.  Say ripe for disruption and we've talked about a lot of different things. Have there been any moments where you've felt successful so far? Are there little successes you're building on? Are you hoping to have some in the future? 

Yeah I love small wins. Yeah. Like the big wins are they're great and all. But I like, I love the small wins along the way. Probably more so than the big hoorah, yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot of those. I'm just trying to be crafty. Like we're a HUBZone contractor. I don't know if you know anything about SBA programming, but, um, trying to leverage all the opportunities that are out there to give us one step ahead, and so we're an SBA contractor and doing a lot of work with the government and and just trying to  take what we have and that's a benefit of being in a small town, right?

And just trying to look at what are the benefits that we have. The opportunities at hand, pair those together and just try to make something of it. See that, too often, Drew, people point at the big moments and they're like look at that innovation. And the big moment is really not a big moment.

It's the result of a million small moments. And what I have told people over and over again is, talk about the world series. Baseball playoffs are going on now.  They didn't win the World Series in Game 7. They won it in practice in, in May. It really is the daily wins and the constancy of  optimism and moving forward and alignment of allies and those things that lead to the kind of change that, I know we both want to see in the world different viewpoints, different places, but positive change, right?

Making the world a better place to live in. So look.  Look from Drew, right? Fairly still new. In this industry, a pup, just a mere pup, only three years in in the metals industry. Look five years away and tell me, you've got these, you've described kind of these shops that have these generational moments maybe hard to find someone to acquire them.

Do they continue? Do they not? Do they, what all happens there? They are incredibly high capital investment to start a new shop. The machines are expensive.  Facilitation and then even if you did the skills are almost impossible to find so  Look five years out and tell me what drew thinks is going the metals industry the fabrication industry is going to look like Five years from now.

I think there's probably going to be fewer players than there are currently And just for that very reason that we just talked about that's one. I think it's going to be  Those that are innovated and have been working on that for the last five years Will start to realize their gains.

And I think in five years is probably that, that tipping point of when things really start changing. And up until that point, there's going to be a lot of, this is just my personal take that there's some pushback on adoption of a lot of the stuff, it's just the way we've always done it.

And this is, I'm in the, near the end of my career and I don't really want to do that. But I do think in the next five to 10 years, you're going to see a lot of people retire, a lot of new people come into the industry with new ideas and, you it's, yeah, I just feel like those that are leaning into that and then to talent like we're looking to hire.

We just hired a couple of folks on our team and they are not from the metals industry. They are coming from other industries, but they really understand how to go and do some specific things to help grow businesses and, bringing that outside view into a business that doesn't necessarily have that is going to be important.

Excellent. So you're seeing five, 10 years. We talk about inflection points in industries and you're seeing five, 10 years from where Drew sits today is probably the metals industry. We'll see a lot next five, but you're saying five to 10 for sure. Yeah. And it's not going to be, I don't think it's the hard thing for me is Like for the grocery delivery business that was pretty evident that there was a lot of ships and, all these others that popped up.

In this industry, it's not going to be as evident because for the person on the street, because they don't see this stuff, right? But in, if you're in the industry, I think there's going to be some pretty drastic changes. Just more visibility into supply chain. That's a really broken piece across the entire industry of, just how things delay each other.

And. American for a long time, we hung our hat on this is American made and buy American made, right? But it's got to be more than that. It's got to be quality and it's got to be built on time and, at a competitive price as well. And that's where I think America really, we were great in that and then we lost our edge when we offshored so much to China and overseas.

But I feel like we're gaining that back. As we gain that back over these next five years, I think that is when you are going to see, okay, we are not going to just, we are not just going to bring it back, but we are going to innovate on it, and make it better than it was before. And really I think that will open up more opportunities for more people wanting to get into the industry, that it is not just your old traditional, manufacturing, where you are doing the same thing every day, it is, It's different and it's more advanced and there's more opportunities for the future and that, I think that's, that will be more enticing.

What an optimistic outlook. I love it. I think so. So I, I'm I'm definitely bullish on the industry. I wouldn't be part of it. So I think, I think that's a great place for us to stop. So I'd be curious if people wanted to reach out to Drew. And people wanted to get in touch with you.

What is where would they go look for more information about you, your organization, your company, whatever? The website address is tcmco. com or you can email me at drew at tcmco. com. I'd love, welcome any interaction. We'll love to chat with anybody that has any questions or just Yeah, and if you've never been to Talladega, it is a great spot.

There is there are a couple of racetracks in Talladega. Yes, the dirt track. Yeah there's some great tracks out there. There's a great forest, that's a fantastic fall drive in Alabama. And there's some good barbecue. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because I really do welcome anyone that, especially if you've never been in a machine shop, fab shop, but really anyone that wants to come and see what American manufacturing looks like.

It's not all automotive like you see on TV. There's a lot more that goes into it. And so I welcome anyone that would love to see that firsthand to reach out to me. And I'd love to give them a tour. I'm going to do that. So we're going to get a team together. Drew, thank you, man. I appreciate it.

I guess we're going to wrap there and sounds good. Thank you so much for having me.