People in Production Podcast with Ryan Nelson

Fred Stipkovits - Part 2: Leading through Listening in Manufacturing

• Circle of 5 • Season 1 • Episode 3

Share episode

Leadership today transcends mere management techniques; it thrives on genuine connections and understanding your team's needs. Fred Stipkovits with UltraTech Aerospace shares invaluable insights on the power of listening, the importance of authentic communication, and how he transformed a struggling organization into a cohesive and empowered workforce. 

• Fred's unconventional journey into leadership 
• The detrimental effects of the technical expert trap 
• Emphasizing the power of listening in decision-making 
• Building trust through communication 
• Raising performance expectations without fear 
• Streamlining organizational structure to improve efficiency 
• Importance of documented communication 
• The role of personal support in professional success

Ryan Nelson:

All right, we are ready for part two of our interview with Fred Stipkiewicz, and I think you probably really enjoyed part one. Part two he gets into more of his own journey at his company, how he has shown up there, what he's done. We see a little bit of him talking about the power of listening and avoiding some of the traps that we get into in the industry, and he also talks about the importance of knowing your audience in order to have effective communication and you might need a pg-13 warning for that in that moment, but Fred does a great job just communicating how he communicates. And then he says a line in this interview that I just love. He talks about how you can't lead by fear, and I think that's something that's just inspiring and I really appreciate him boldly stating that. And then he'll also talk about some of the communication challenges in the company and how to avoid those.

Ryan Nelson:

So enjoy this part two of our interview with Fred Stipkiewicz. But hey, let's talk more shop. I want to. You had an interesting journey into this role. You interviewed twice for this role. Can you talk to us about this, because I think there's a critical nuance in this that we need to understand about what leadership is.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah. So you know, as I mentioned back, I spent when I left the military. I got into the aviation fueling industry. I worked for a couple manufacturers in Kansas City that built aircraft fueling trucks.

Fred Stipkovits:

I was spending 120, 150 days a year on the road all over the globe, I mean all over the globe Venezuela, colombia, vietnam, nigeria, afghanistan negotiating equipment contracts with global oil companies and had gotten divorced, had gotten remarried a few years later was starting a family, and it was time that I was not getting anywhere from a career standpoint, from a financial standpoint, from a growth standpoint. It was again, as I mentioned, lessons in what not to do. When you're afraid that your people are going to leave, that's because you're not treating them correctly. And so I left. But I don't know what I was going to do. So I get on Indeed and I punch in aviation and up pops this business development manager position at Ultratech Aerospace. I'm like, I think I could do that. Let's just throw my name in the hat Interviewed, got the call, interviewed, interviewed with, you know, some of the holding group, holding companies, folks Interviewed a number of times and didn't get the job. And I'm like, well damn, you know, I was really looking forward to that one. I thought aerospace would be fun to get into. Everybody I met were phenomenal folks that I interviewed with, so I left. I went off to another manufacturer phenomenal folks that I interviewed with, so I left.

Fred Stipkovits:

I went off to another manufacturer. I started a, went off and did government contract work with another manufacturer growing their government contracts division Was there three or a handful of years, a couple of years, and ended up leaving. Got a call from an old fueling account fueling customer of mine to take over as a vice president of ground support equipment operations. So I oversaw all ground support equipment maintenance at 60 airports, which was a disaster of a job. It was back to traveling three weeks a month all over the US. I was there six months and the vice president of HR from our holding company, from our parent company, called me up Random phone call. Hey, I know you just got this VP position, but would you be interested in talking with us again? I'm like I guess, sure, what do you have?

Ryan Nelson:

I don't have any new stories to tell. I'm still the same. I guess. Sure, what do you have?

Fred Stipkovits:

I don't have any new stories to tell I'm still the same guy I was before yeah, same crazy guy I was then. So overcomes the job description and it's for the president of the company. And so I'm like, hey, I'm really confused. Didn't get the BD position. You call me back a couple years later for the president position. What's up? Well, you know we've had three positions, three people in this position since we've owned the company. We didn't hire you for the BD position because we didn't think you would stick around long enough to you know it wasn't going to work out for you. We truly believe you have what it takes to come in and lead our company and help right the ship and get it going better and in the right direction.

Fred Stipkovits:

So, interviewed that was in July of 21,. Interviewed July, august, september, got the call in October, accepted and started in November and it's been, you know, a lot of sleepless nights and long days since, but it's been unbelievable. The ownership team is probably one of the best ownership teams I have ever worked with. I have ever worked with. I couldn't have turned this place around without their support, their commitment, their hands-off approach. They let me do my thing. I meet with them once a month.

Ryan Nelson:

I call when I need to call, otherwise they've exhibited full trust in my abilities, which is hard to find you know one thing I want to explore a little bit with you, because when you've talked about this before, I've heard you talk about how the fact that you didn't have machining experience was one of the things that made them unnerved about that. I think our industry has a problem that I call the technical expert trap, that we think to have someone in charge, they have to know how to run all the machines and they have to know how to do that. But what we end up doing is we take in. I use it this way we take the guy. We expect this machinist to run a hundred widgets an hour and we got 140 widget guy and we had an 85 widget guy, and when that supervisor leaves, we naturally move the 140 widget guy to supervisor because he 85 widget guy. And when that supervisor leaves, we naturally move the 140 widget guy to supervisor because he knows how to do his job Well, doing your job and managing people are two very different skill sets and we end up creating a lot of frustration with our supervisors because the one thing that they were really good at, which was machining, they're no longer doing and now they're trying to get 85 widget guy to move up and because they're falling behind, they put pressure on the 100 widget guy.

Ryan Nelson:

Now everybody in the department is stressed out and miserable because no one's doing what they're they're capable of doing. Talk to me a little bit about how shops need to get past this technical expert trap and understand that leadership is not about the machining, leadership is about the people. Can you open that for me a little bit?

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah so you're right, ryan, I've never been in a machine shop. My father's cousin had a manual Bridgeport milling machine in his garage that I used to see him messing around with years ago when I was little. But I wasn't hired to be a machinist. I wasn't hired to make widgets. I was hired to harness the powers, the superpowers of those that can make the widgets.

Fred Stipkovits:

And in order to harness those superpowers, you have to understand what they do. And the only way to understand what they do is if you listen to what they do and if you ask any one of these guys, if you give them the opportunity to sit in your office and just talk about what they do, how they do it, why they do it, you'll learn everything there is to know about machining parts. I know I can't necessarily go out there and run a machine, but I can tell you that I walk out on that shop floor and I have enough technical knowledge on what goes on in my shop that I can regularly look at a problem and provide them recommendations that end up a result of fixing a problem. And I learned all of that through listening to every one of these guys and girls that are on my shop floor.

Ryan Nelson:

I want to talk about that because your first eight weeks you dedicated to listening. And I have this. There's one of the things that we can do for companies where I tell people and this isn't original to me but you listen from the bottom up and then you prioritize from the top down, and what a lot of companies do is they you prioritize from the bottom up and you implement from the top down. I got that wrong at first and the idea is, if we make priorities at the top without understanding how the systems work, we're actually hand tying our machinists and our team from achieving what they have the potential to do. And I like to come in and help companies. Just how do we listen from the shop floor all the way up through supervisors, managers, to the leadership, and then we prioritize our systems to implement them?

Ryan Nelson:

So you listened for six to eight weeks. You told your powers that be, listen. Don't expect return on your investment for these early stages. I am just going to be trying to understand what we have. What were you listening for and tell the little bit of the story about how you went about business those first six or eight weeks.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah. So I ran every single person that was here through my office for an hour, two hours, three hours, however long. They wanted to sit in here and talk whatever they wanted to talk about, how they got involved in machining, what they do on the outside, what their family, their life do on the outside, what their family, their life and, above all, out of every shop you've been in. Give me the good, the bad and the ugly. What did you love about other places that you work that you wish it would be implemented here? What do you hate? I mean, look guys, I'm new. I didn't implement any of this stuff. You're not going to hurt my feelings, so what do you see? What do we do wrong? What do you think, as a machinist with 20, 10, 20, 30 years of experience, needs to happen? All you have to do is ask and they'll tell you everything that you want to know, and you just start taking notes that you want to know and you just start taking notes. Things like we didn't have things like grid patterns on machines. Actually, I was just talking about this. Today, my CEO was down with a couple of our board members for a tour and I was explaining to them that listen, the $20,000 that we spent on new aluminum tombstones and then we gridded them out and they're going to live with that machine, the advantages of standardized workholding. And you got to break it down into layman's terms for people that don't understand. I explained it like playing Battleship where A5 is always A a5 and so if you grid out your tombstones and you grid out your work holding and your programmers can now standardize their programming of where a5 is and that's where everything gets located. It's not my idea. I I didn't wouldn't even think of that as a logical step in the way your machine should set up. I'm not a machinist, but my machinists thought about that and my machinists told me that why don't we have standardized work holding? Why are our machines not set up with grid patterns? I don't know. You tell me. Why aren't they? Because nobody ever wanted to take the time, the money and the effort to do it. Okay, and it's not cheap. Nobody ever wanted to take the time, the money and the effort to do it. Okay. So over the and it's not cheap and it you have to take the machine down, but over the course of the last three years we just finished gridding out our fifth machine. This week we have 18 machines.

Fred Stipkovits:

You know you have to find a time, you have to buy new right, but all of that leads to improvements that aren't my idea. Same with heat shrink and tool holders. One of the machinists said we should run heat shrink tool holders. We're using these old collet styles or whatever and there's inefficiencies associated with that. We can get better tool life, we can get faster cutting, whatever the benefits are.

Fred Stipkovits:

So what I do is I help them learn the business side of it too. So I tell them okay, you think heat shrink is valuable, call up a heat shrink guy, whatever brand you think is the right one, have them come in, put the numbers together, put the numbers together, put the data together and present it to me. Well, yeah, but I'm just a machinist. No, it's your idea. You think that there's value in it. Let me help you with my side, what I have to deal with, so that you understand what goes into it. You help educate me about the benefits of this implementation on the shop floor.

Fred Stipkovits:

I'll help educate you about the business side of it and what goes into it, and how we do an ROI, how we show the $60,000 investment, how we show cost reductions, how we show all of this to justify the expenditure, so that it's like your kid. You know your kid wants a new pair of tennis shoes. Well, you beat those ones up. You help me understand why I need to buy you a new pair of shoes, right, whatever you got to. And so that's the exercise I do with these guys. You want pad jaws for all of our lathes, because it takes three hours to change out the fixtures and it's 50 pounds and you've got to use the jib crane and we can switch out 6,000 bucks we can switch out to pad jaws and we never have to change out. Another thing Perfect, show me, show me the money.

Ryan Nelson:

You know, I had a CPA friend of mine who was a mentor to me while I was in the nonprofit space helping to build teams and stuff like that, and he said, Ryan, it doesn't matter what business you're in, you're in the people business and you just really illustrated that you're in the people business. It's not about getting stuff out of your people and making them run the machine. You actually expanded their worldview and their business acumen by having these conversations and now they understand that my actions has direct implications on our organization's success or failure. And I have to think through why we're making choices that we're making.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah, absolutely. And I get ideas all the time, right, and, as a result, those ideas continue to flow, those ideas. I got machinists that walk in here and say, hey, I'm looking at this part, man, if I reprocess this, if you allow me to reprogram this or reprocess this, I think I can shave X amount of time off of it. Go for it. We have cost reductions in place all the time. Where folks come in and I agree to split the, split the benefit with them, you're going to save five hours apart. That results in X amount of dollars, whatever. That would be that we already have the job, we already bid it, we already want it. So anything above and beyond is gravy. So I wasn't going to make it to begin with. I wasn't going to have that money to begin with. So if we're going to increase that profitability, you should benefit from that instead of the company. We'll both benefit. I'll give you some of it and we'll keep the rest.

Ryan Nelson:

Let's talk about communication, because we tend to think that communication is being eloquent in speech and inspiring our people with here's what we're going to do and we're going to accomplish these numbers and this, that and everything. You've so effectively listened to your people that when you speak, you know your audience. I think a lot of leaders they speak eloquently to some level but they don't even know their audience. So what good is the fancy?

Fred Stipkovits:

speech. So that's funny, you bring that up. So actually this was a birthday gift. So my welders, my welders welded up a custom, a nice box for me, okay, and in it I had a nice mug. I will warn everybody of the language, okay. So right, fucker in charge of you, fucking fucks.

Fred Stipkovits:

My favorite word I'm not above Eloquent speech is the $5 terms and the nickel. It's not my audience. I talk to my team. They're real people. I'm not above them, I'm not below them. I talk on the shop.

Fred Stipkovits:

Some people disagree with that. I've been criticized for that and my comment all the time back to that is you didn't hire me. It's not criticized by my owner, by my CEO, but there's been some others in our leadership team that have, and my comment is you didn't hire me to educate these people on how to use big words that they need to look up in a dictionary. In a dictionary, if I throw out some big word that they don't understand, that doesn't get my message across and that doesn't put me in a position where they're not going to respect me. Because I'm a polished eloquent public speaker, I all too often accidentally drop the F-bomb in meetings that I probably shouldn't. But I'm real and that's important to me. I'm approachable, I'm real. Anybody in my company, from the janitor up to my director of operations, has the same opportunity to walk in my office, talk to me about personal problems, business problems, concerns, just bullshit. I got guys walk in my office all the time and just want to talk, talk knives, talk guns, talk cars. Whatever I stop what I'm doing and I talk to them, my goal is to not be above them, not belittle them. I joke at these.

Fred Stipkovits:

Somebody once told me that machinists are the most undereducated intelligent people you'll ever meet and I thought that that was a kind of a. I didn't really like that analogy because the assumption that they're uneducated Right, you know. And I corrected them. I said you know what? What does education have to do with any of it? I've got people on my team with masters. I've got engineers, I've got and I've got people that didn't graduate high school matters here, because I can't split fractions of a thousandth of an inch like these machinists on the shop floor can in their head. So the eloquent words and throwing around your master's degree or throwing around your Ivy League education, none of that. We check all of that at the door at my shop.

Ryan Nelson:

You got to speak to your audience, you got to know your audience and you've got to speak to your audience Absolutely. So you talked about how that first year that you were there, 50% turnover in your staff, no one was fired but you had a lot of people leave because you raised the bar. Man, it's one thing to move into an organization and raise the bar. What advice do you have for the guy who's running an organization and he's created the dysfunction and he's starting to recognize he's got to raise the bar?

Fred Stipkovits:

So you can't lead by fear. I've worked at places where I walked in every day wondering if I was going to lose my job. You can't lead by fear. You can't manage by fear the bar. You know. I had shop supervisors that weren't the best shop supervisors. That's now one of my top performers that has he's my senior estimator and the guy is phenomenal. Um, he was under a lot of stress on the shop floor. He wasn't given the tools he needed to to properly lead the shop. That resulted in in in um, what I didn't like, what you know, and he.

Fred Stipkovits:

You have to look at their strengths If you need to raise the bar. I think raising the bar again starts at the top. I stand in front of my people all the time and I tell them you may not like everything I do. I will always explain to you why my decisions.

Fred Stipkovits:

There are certain corporate decisions that obviously people can't be privy to, the behind the scenes things, but for the most part, I will explain almost every one of my decisions and I never make a decision in a vacuum. Every one of my leadership, everybody on my leadership team, even folks on the shop floor, have the opportunity for input on decisions that are going to be impactful to the company. Raising the bar isn't about your ideas and what you think the bar, where you think the bar should be. I think raising the bar should be looked at as what's best for your team and your company, and they're not always aligned, so you have to find that middle ground where it's the right thing for the company but it's also either communicated or laid out or structured in a sense that is the right thing for the people that you're leading as well.

Ryan Nelson:

Well, and that Jim Collins principle that you kind of alluded to getting the right thing for the people that you're leading as well. Well, in that Jim Collins principle that you kind of alluded to getting the right people in the right seats on the bus and you have shared in the past that you had some guys that weren't thriving, but you moved them to the estimator role or you moved them away from a supervisor role to a technician role and all of a sudden they are absolutely crushing it again, because you brought alignment with who they were instead of what you were asking of them within the organization. So listening to what will get them out of bed in the morning. You're able to get a lot more results if you're aligning with what they value.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah, the ones that are still here, that were here when I got here. There's a good you know 20, 30, 30%. Yeah, the ones that are still here that were here when I got here. There's a. There's a good you know 20, 30, 30 of the people that are still here here. They are all in different or elevated roles than when I got here. They're they're they're leading larger groups, larger. They've been promoted to supervisors. They've been put in roles that have been that they're thriving in and have been extremely beneficial to the company and their knowledge. And they're still here for a reason they're my heavy hitters.

Ryan Nelson:

Yep, yep, hey, one more line of questioning and then we'll do what I call the rapid feed round and we'll wrap things up here shortly. But here's what I want to know what's your structure of your organization in terms of there's your perhaps C-suite, and then you have managers, then supervisors, then techs, or is there another layer in there somewhere?

Fred Stipkovits:

So I've restructured that. When I got here there were directors and then managers and then supervisors. I eliminated that kind of that director role up until recently, whenever I recognized that my level of expertise in operational efficiencies I, I, just I, I was tapped out. I didn't have the bandwidth and I also didn't have the level of expertise that I, that I needed on that team to to serve the company well. So I brought on a director of operations.

Ryan Nelson:

So they come from within, or did you bring them?

Fred Stipkovits:

from? No, we brought him from from outside. Uh, we talked with a couple from within. Or did you bring them from outside? No, we brought him from outside, we talked with a couple from within. That you know. I approached. That said you know, hey, you need somebody higher powered than me. So I have myself, I have a director of operations. Under that director of operations is my quality manager and production manager. And then I have a customer and operation support manager that reports direct to me, that's over a customer support, purchasing, estimating, engineering, kind of planning and engineering. My controller and financial staff report direct to me and it reports direct to me. So it's it's really mostly managers. And then I have a shop supervisor, a warehouse supervisor, and then I have a program manager supervisor. So I have five managers, three supervisors. So me, one director, five managers and then three supervisors.

Ryan Nelson:

We're a company of 55. Okay, so communication is a constant problem in manufacturing. So many emails get sent with no responses. You don't know if anyone read it or not, or whatever. What are some keys that you figured out in communication to create efficiency through your organization? Or is that just a constant refinement process?

Fred Stipkovits:

You know, I think it's a constant. It's always going to be constant refinement. We have multiple layers of. We have, you know, teams meetings, teams, groups where we've got quality team, and all these different groups, chat groups that are kind of don't need to be meetings, don't need to be emails. You know, internally I'm a fan. In my opinion, I'm a fan. Email is a form of documentation, not communication. Opinion, I'm a fan. Email is a form of documentation, not communication. And so we regularly have management meetings or shop meetings, or I have one-on-one meetings that we discuss things, we talk, we take notes and then a lot of times it's followed up by hey, just to recap our conversation, it was this is what's going to happen. This is what's going to happen, this is the executable option.

Ryan Nelson:

So you document what was said yeah, but you're always going to happen. This is what's going to happen. This is the executable option, so you document what was said.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah, but you're always going to have. There's so many moving pieces. I mean, I think right now we have upwards of 1,200 open jobs that are rolling through the shop right now, and so, between purchasing and estimating and the program managers and sales and engineering and all of that, there's always going to be a missed something. Yep.

Ryan Nelson:

So you've got to give yourself some grace and understand there's a lot of moving parts and you've got to keep moving, figure out how to move forward.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah, absolutely. But you know, we've got a pretty robust ERP system. We've got a pretty robust ERP system. We've got a pretty robust comms. I think for the most part we do fairly well on comms.

Ryan Nelson:

That's great, that's great, all right, rapid feed round.

Fred Stipkovits:

You ready for this?

Ryan Nelson:

Let's do it All right, just first reactions of these. You're a little bit at a disadvantage because we haven't released the first podcast yet, so you've never heard any of these questions. So here's the first question. If you could go to a Chiefs game with any famous person, who would you want to go hang out with?

Fred Stipkovits:

Man, that's a tough one. I'm not a real starstruck person, sure.

Ryan Nelson:

And it doesn't have to be famous to everyone. Maybe it's just important to you to be famous to everyone. Maybe it's just important to you.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah, you know, to me going to a sporting event isn't necessarily about the sporting event, because you miss so much of it when you're in the stands compared to what's on TV. So I look for the experience. Christmas Day last year I took my at the time six-year-old to the Chiefs Raiders game. So you know, I'm going to go with my little boy because he's a diehard fan and it's a memory and an experience that he just soaks up.

Ryan Nelson:

That's a great answer. Love it. All right For those early mornings in the shop. What's your energy drink of choice? Are you a coffee guy? A energy drink, caffeine of some kind?

Fred Stipkovits:

I'm a straight up black coffee until 10.30 am. I will down coffee until 10.30. 10.30 is my switch over and I switch over to water and I drink water the rest of the day, unless I have some event after work, where then I partake in some adult beverages.

Ryan Nelson:

Gotcha All right. What's the greatest threat to manufacturing right now?

Fred Stipkovits:

Understanding the cost-benefit analysis to keeping it onshore. You want a penny pinch and you want to take it offshore. You're going to get what you pay for. It's always going to be able to be done cheaper, but the quality is going to suck. That's why I'm an advocate and preach so heavily at the NTMA meetings about the benefit of sharing of work. Sharing amongst shops within our community, so that we can not only keep it onshore but keep it within the Kansas City network.

Ryan Nelson:

Yep. And so by community you're literally saying Kansas City region, not necessarily the manufacturing community.

Fred Stipkovits:

Yeah, if somebody doesn't have the capabilities here, we'll branch out, but at the end of the day, let's keep it close to home.

Ryan Nelson:

Love it. What's one tool you couldn't live without in your leadership role? And by tool, it's just a skill set that you have role and by tool.

Fred Stipkovits:

It's just a skill set that you have, man, one tool I couldn't live without. You know, this is gonna be it. This is gonna be a off off the I think this is gonna be out in left fieldand-left-field one I'm going to have to say, without a doubt, my support network at home. That's awesome. I could not dedicate the time or effort or any of that to what I'm trying to do here and build here and take care of people here and do what I try to do for our community without my wife carrying substantial load with the kids at home.

Ryan Nelson:

Yeah, man, I love that. I really respect that, and I think more people need to understand that their work life has a direct reflection on their home life and their home life has a direct reflection on their work life. If either of those is out of whack and miserable, it's going to show up in the other place my wife never gets on me about.

Fred Stipkovits:

She knows that. You know I'm entrenched in all of these different organizations and it's purposeful. Everything I do is strategic and purposeful and she is behind me all the time.

Ryan Nelson:

A similar question what's one skill if you could master instantly? You wish you could master for your organization's benefit?

Fred Stipkovits:

um, you know, I could master for my organization's benefits. Uh, you know, I mean, honestly, if I could, if I could master a skill and I had the time, um time I would. Again, I wasn't hired to be one, but I would really love to be able to go out there on a shop floor and run a machine, and that's a skill that I don't have. That, I think, would bring a whole different perspective and I probably if I could walk out there and they'd show me anything. But that's a skill that I don't have, that I think I would love to have. That, I think, would bring a whole different perspective and understanding Cool man.

Ryan Nelson:

Well, last question for you, and this is for your benefit here what's a question you wish I would have asked that we didn't get to today? If there is one, what's something you'd like to talk to our community about?

Fred Stipkovits:

uh, I don't know, man, we covered a lot of good stuff, right? I think this was such a diverse podcast where we covered so many different good things talk about is again, I think, the same. Some of the threats that people have are our sales techniques, our, our customer portfolio and our employee retention. Every everybody in this industry wants more work, wants to retain people and hire better, better people. I'm not saying the way that I do it is right, it works for me, uh, but I think if more people would open up to what they do and how they do things, we could all learn from them and figure out how to do things better and we could all grow and become stronger together. But I don't know that there was a question in particular that you asked or didn't ask that that I felt should be. I probably will come to me know later on and go the night exactly right.

Ryan Nelson:

Um, hey, if people want to get in touch with you I know you're super active on linkedin. Where can people learn more about you, your company and that type of yeah, definitely linkedin.

Fred Stipkovits:

I'm all over linkedin. I try to support and support and support my people and my company on LinkedIn, ultra Tech Aerospace. My last name doesn't get mixed up in the fold. I'm not a Smith or a Jones, so you can Google Fred Stepkiewicz. You'll probably find my father on the East Coast and me, but I'm the one with hair and not much of it anymore. But yeah, you can always reach out at fstipkiewicz, at uterocom email call. I'm always happy to meet and have a coffee and learn and make a new contact and figure out how we can we can grow together.

Ryan Nelson:

All right, man. Hey, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for investing in this conversation.

Fred Stipkovits:

I appreciate being the maiden voyage here too, right, and I think this is going to be great and I look forward to hearing more of your podcasts.

Ryan Nelson:

I have no doubt that that was worth your time, and Fred just dropped some great insights into leadership and I hope you just took them in. I hope you are not only thinking about them, but you are applying them in your work context. Thank you, fred, for being a part of this. If you are listening on Spotify or some of the other podcast apps, would you please subscribe and would you rate us with a five-star rating? That helps us get more attention, as you know. And if you're watching on YouTube, please take a minute just to leave a comment.

Ryan Nelson:

Share something that Fred shared, that you appreciated, something that's challenging you or encouraging you. Just take some time to express your appreciation to Fred for his contribution. I would love for that. Keep growing in your leadership. In our next podcast that we're going to drop, we're going to have Brandon Herring from Zephyr Products, and Brandon is going to share some unique insights from his perspective as a part of a sales team in a manufacturing company. So keep your eyes open for that. Until next time, keep doing your thing. Keep growing as a leader.