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The First Million Is Always The Hardest
The First Million Is Always The Hardest podcast is your introduction to the mindset and mechanics behind success. In this podcast, host Bo Kemp breaks down why the first million —whether in dollars, impact, or purpose — is always the hardest milestone to achieve.
The First Million Is Always The Hardest
Building Legacy, Not Just Value: Divya Behl on Redefining ETA & Generational Wealth
Video Version: https://youtu.be/GgH9oDkyRmI
In this episode, host Bo Kemp sits down with Divya Behl, a rising star in the world of entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA), who’s breaking the mold — and building a 100-year business, not a quick exit.
As the leader of PFA Friction Products, Divya is taking a long-term, values-driven approach to business ownership. Instead of consolidating companies for a fast flip, she is focused on building a family legacy through purposeful acquisition and enduring operations. With roots in the automotive, manufacturing, and engineering industries, she’s now applying her experience to grow something that will last for generations.
Bo and Divya explore why Divya views ETA not as a transaction, but as a path to generational wealth, how she identifies acquisition targets where she can preserve the legacy of original owners, the unique lens women — especially women of color — bring to entrepreneurship and succession planning, the SDA’s initiative to build a cohort of women ETA entrepreneurs to transition profitable businesses from retiring Baby Boomers to next-generation operators, and how Divya is turning PFA Friction into the foundation of a family empire, focused on long-term value creation, not short-term exits.
This episode is a powerful look at how entrepreneurship can preserve jobs, communities, and wealth — and how one woman is doing just that with vision, strategy, and heart.
Are you ready to grow your business, build wealth, and spark transformation in the South Suburbs of Chicago? Visit Southlanddevelopment.org today and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected, get the resources, and be the first to hear about the achieved side, where entrepreneurs, developers, investors, and change makers come together to ignite growth and opportunity. Don't just watch change happen, be a part of it. Join the movement at Southlanddevelopment.org and start building your legacy today. Diviya is redefining entrepreneurship through acquisition, not as a transaction, but as a path to generational wealth, legacy, and long-term impact. This is the conversation about ownership, responsibility, and building something that truly endures. Hello, and thank you for coming to the First Million is Always the hardest. I'm excited to have you, Divya. And for the benefit of everyone who is listening and watching, just tell us your name, tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now and a bit of your background.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's so nice to see you in person again. You and I met a couple weeks ago. Um, and I can't believe we're here again.
SPEAKER_06:But we were quickly here.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Um it still all feels surreal to describe what I do today.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um but I am the founder and CEO of BKV Holdings, um, and then the CEO of our first acquisition under that group PMA Friction Products, which is a 40-year-old manufacturer of custom engineered friction material.
SPEAKER_06:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Um I'm new in this space, so we just started this journey in July of 24. Um, I started a family business, and uh, I'm excited to talk about it here with you today.
SPEAKER_03:I was one of the things that you said that really piqued my interest was that you were intentional that you were starting a family business. And you were intentional about creating a holding entity that would in fact be the vehicle, or in part at least the vehicle for your kind of ETA, as they call it, entrepreneurship through acquisition. Um how did you determine, a, I want to start a family business? What was a driver that made you decide that that was important to you?
SPEAKER_01:Great question. Loaded question. Um So I am like, I am the fur, you guys can't see me on a podcast, but I am the Well, they can see you.
SPEAKER_03:This is on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay. I am the oldest daughter, right, in an Asian family. So I have always felt like and made to believe that I get to carry the torch. And so when I started down this journey, and we'll talk a little bit about the movement from you know public to private, um, but my dad and my mom always taught us raise the tide. So if you're gonna do something, do it together. You know, I'm as competitive as I am, I'm really bad at board games. Because I can't win in spite of somebody else. I I can't do it. I like to win as a team. So when I went on this journey and thought, okay, I'm gonna start this. Um, I brought my brother-in-law and my dad along. And my dad's still in meetings, everyone kind of looks and talks to him, and my dad's like, no. I'm not in charge. That's I that's not how it works. She started it and she brought me along. And but I I did it as a family because I just I believe in my family. And I always, you know, to my husband and my father have always felt like I want to stand shoulder in shoulder and say, Hey, I got this. You know, to my husband, it's anything ever happens to you, I got our family. And to my dad, I always wanted to say, if anything happens to you, I've got the next generation. And that's not just my four, that's your 13. Wow. And so I brought my brother-in-law along, um, and my dad along.
SPEAKER_03:So, what your parents have 13 kids?
SPEAKER_01:13, meaning there's three of us. So I have a good great question. Um, three there's three kids. So I have a little sister, she's a GI, she's a doctor. Um, I have a brother, he's a lawyer, um, but they're kids.
SPEAKER_02:I see.
SPEAKER_01:So, you know, for my nephews, I have six nephews. Um five nephews. We have one daughter, and then all the next six are boys.
SPEAKER_06:Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_01:But for them, and that that's where I say, not just for my four, our immediate four, but act, you know, in the eyes of my dad to say, am I truly raising the next generation of our family?
SPEAKER_03:So I would imagine, because I have four kids as well, that the fact that you've done this and brought your father in gives you a lot of reason to be able to stand at the Thanksgiving table and announce to your brother and sister that I'm clearly my dad's favorite.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because my kids constantly ask me, even though they are adults, which one is the favorite all the time. So does that ever cause any kind of friction within the family?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, great, great segue. Ironically, my sister is probably my dad's favorite, um, because she just has a heart. She's a really good thing. Yeah, always. And then my brother's my mom's favorite because he's like the gem of a child, and she can he can do no wrong for all of us. Um, but even though, you know, I started the company, my dad's a huge reason why we could do this, right? He's our biggest investor, he's our biggest sponsor, he's our biggest mentor. Um so we still owe. Sure, I started the company and the idea, but it, you know, it's all because of him.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I'm sure he's just insanely proud of the fact that he gets to work for his daughter in that process. And, you know, starting businesses can be complicated with family. There are some people who believe you should never mix family and business. Um, and I was raised with that as kind of an ethos, um, and it kind of a track that you hear always in music and you know, film and all that. What I experienced when I got blessed enough to be around people who were truly wealthy is they do the exact opposite. Like truly wealthy people actually do business within their family and with their family. Um and were you ever at a point where you were doubtful whether or not you should do business with your family, or was it natural for you to just say, no, obviously I'm gonna rise all these boats. I feel, as you said, and I like the way you put this, I get the opportunity to kind of carry that load as opposed to I'm burdened with it. And so I'm moving forward here, but was there ever a moment of doubt about that?
SPEAKER_01:Very good question. And I no, not for a second.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, and there's there's a couple now in this world I've met other people, and even they say that the family business, they're so kind of strict that it just carries on like through the children and no spouse is involved, you know, and it's kind of that line. And for me, my partner is my brother-in-law, you know, and who can I love more than he who loves my family, right? And so I really want it to be a family thing, and it really wasn't wasn't a second, second thought for me to bring my family in. And my brother-in-law, who's not from manufacturing, and my dad are the whole reason that we can we can do this. You know, they jumped in and had that trust and faith that okay, she's gonna lead this. That's incredible.
SPEAKER_03:Is your dad an engineer also?
SPEAKER_01:He is. My dad isn't, but he's in academia, so business is new in our family. We're not businessmen, you know.
SPEAKER_06:Um, you're business women.
SPEAKER_01:We're business women. That's right. We sure are. Um, he's an academia. So he was a dean at uh Northern Illinois University for a very long time. And um grew up in that. Was gosh, what everywhere I go, it's still do you know Dean Borah? You know? Um that's my dad. So he's uh not and then he went into the private world after he retired from there, but he's an engineer, so he's a big, big part of why I went into engineering.
SPEAKER_03:That's amazing. And and you went to Northern as well. I did, yeah, that was smart too. I'm sure that was like you saved me a little bit of money. Yeah, you sure did.
SPEAKER_01:You know, and I always I say um that my dad and I actually next week are being inducted in the inaugural Hall of Fame class at Northern.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:Um so there's four of us, and I don't know how I made the list. Um my dad obviously is on the list, and um that's what I shared with them is he loved the school so much and he believed in what Northern could do so much that he was like, well, you gotta go here. So I have two degrees from there, and then my for my PhD I went. They didn't have it at the time. So I think that's the first time.
SPEAKER_03:Were you at the Notre Dame game by any chance?
SPEAKER_01:I sure was. Now my husband is the head team doc for Northern. Oh my goodness. So we get to go to a lot of the football games, and I sit on the alumni board of directors now. So we have to keep giving back.
SPEAKER_03:For those who don't know, last year Northern beat Notre Dame and what was not a fluke. Um, interestingly enough. I think it's very clear now that the coach actually built this game plan specifically to beat Notre Dame, so much so that the Notre Dame coach, it was revealed later in the season, called him and said, like, hey, how'd you beat us? And he told him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, Notre Dame's a a phenomenal team and had a phenomenal year. Um it was a very humble victory. You know, d the Husky fans in the stadium all throughout the game were, I think, very appreciated being there. Yeah. Um, and were just humbled by the that we got the chance to to win that game. Um, but it was well played. It was sure c was close, all the way till the end. Um, but that's not an arrogant victory. That is uh that is an honored victory. And Notre Dame went on to be a you know phenomenal to be a few.
SPEAKER_03:But now here's the thing. Um I am sure they will not play you again anytime. Yeah, not pay to play us. Yeah, no, that won't happen again. Well, that's amazing that you're being inductive with your father. It's such an honor. And the idea that you're building this family business, one of the things that we're really interested in, and you know this, you know, there's a huge class of baby boomers who are retiring. Um, roughly 13, 15 million business or uh thousand businesses uh or million businesses are outstanding that people need to sell. But only one in ten of those businesses are being sold. Because a good portion of those businesses aren't ready to be sold. The the entrepreneurs have had successful businesses they've lived off of, but they never built that business with the idea that someone's gonna come through and do an analysis and get ready to sell them. Some of them, frankly, are just not as valuable as they thought they were. And so there's this huge disconnect between, and I know you go through this in your buy box when you're figuring out what I'm gonna pay for a company, what they think it's worth, what someone can actually finance this business uh is. Uh a lot of them just haven't prepared for succession. So even if they're strong and they've got cash flow businesses, they're just not they're just not, you know, sale ready. Part of what we hope to do at the Southland Development Authority is to move that from one in ten to three or four in ten, at least in our market. We think that there are a couple of underrepresented groups that actually could be buyers. Um women in particular and women of color, and I said this to you when we originally met, is the fastest growing of all entrepreneurial segments in the United States since COVID. Um we think veterans also present a unique opportunity, a unique skill set that is under represented and under misunderstood moving into the corporate space. Um, but you're kind of in that area right now where you're trying to figure out like how do I get to those businesses? What made you think in particular that this was the time to go and start to acquire businesses? Um and given your past experiences, which we haven't talked about yet, but I'm sure we will get to in just a minute, what were kind of the influences that made you think this is what I need to do to make this happen?
SPEAKER_01:You know, I sit on the National Association of Board of Manufacturers. And I have been a part of that organization along with their uh manufacturing institute for well over a decade. And so the visibility to the shortage of manufacturing in this country that we're gonna have over in the next two decades has been front and center for me for a very long time. And so, gosh, now I feel like I'm late already, right? Not so much that it's time, but we have to secure that investment for our people, for our country, for our communities. I mean, manufacturing in local communities is incredible, right? It's it's an incredible part of the GDP. It brings back um supplemental jobs, and it's great healthcare benefits, it's great jobs, it's long-term tenures, it's retirement benefits compared to other industries.
SPEAKER_03:National supply chain resilience, there's a whole series of things.
SPEAKER_01:It's so much. And so for me, I felt like, you know, and we'll get through the story of how I personally got here, but my gosh, we need to accelerate that securing of manufacturing in the United States quickly. And so if I can be a part of that, well, so you you took it upon yourself to go and do this.
SPEAKER_03:And it's interesting given the background that you just described. Um, you know, I'm curious. One of the things we find in the Southland, because we've got, you know, well over a hundred metals and manual metals and manufacturing businesses that are operating. The average business is about 48 years old. Um they have less than 20 employees. The average employee has been there for 15 to 20 years. Um, but when these entrepreneurs typically retire, um, their businesses don't get sold. And what they do instead of selling the business is they pack the business up. They literally will sell off any pieces of equipment that are sellable, scrap the rest or give it away, um, sell the land, fire all of the people that they're working with, not because they don't care about those people, but because they don't have another way to take care of them. And most of them have been taking money out of the business over the years to invest in other real estate, and they're using those other real estate investments or the real estate investment of their land as their retirement fund, right? That's how they're funding their retirement. But there's a lot of negative things that happen, right? So we lose the tax revenue of that company when they stop operating. Um, not only the tax revenue of that company, but we also lose the employees who also were getting paid from that business. There is a supply chain connection, right? Because these businesses don't live in a vacuum, they work with other businesses, and when you actually take away one business, you degrade the network. And that has an impact on our competitiveness as a region, right? Um and obviously um we take away the job opportunities, right? Um so not just the people who are currently working there that we're getting paid, but future workers. And all of those are reasons why I think it is in the best interest of the country for us to be focused on how do we keep those businesses alive. You sitting on that board in manufacturing, having seen this, and now you're invested in this space, you know, what are some of the things that you guys are talking about? What are the things that we should be adopting maybe as a regional economic development group and how should we be thinking about this as a country of to resolve this issue?
SPEAKER_01:I what what you just hit on is so important and speaks, I think, to the heart of one of you know, one of our family values. And I spent almost a decade in the aerospace space before I before I founded this whole this holding company. And one of the things that we saw was exactly what you were talking about. We would see these small to mid-sized manufacturers, right? 75% of them or under 5,000 employees, and we started to see in the last decade the transition of owners and their kids don't want to do it, they've got nobody to pass into, and they would either shudder or they maybe would make decisions that I'll just say wasn't in the best interest of their family legacy, and then they regretted it. And so when I set out to do this in this space, the thing that was most important because I had just come from it was how do we protect our employees and how do we protect our customers? And so we actually did, and I will tell you again and again, not a finance person. Yes, you can worry about that. Don't worry about it. Yeah, all right, that's right. But we decided to buy the company in a stock sale, which is not traditional.
SPEAKER_03:Asset sales are almost always the way you go.
SPEAKER_01:And we did that to put our money where our mouth is, to say we want it to be as seamless as possible to the employees, and we want it to be as seamless as possible to our customers. They didn't have to worry about contracts, what bank account their checks were going to, how their vacation had been accrued for the last nine months. We just wanted to do it with integrity so that the owners that were giving us this gift of a 40-year-old company felt like it was in great hands. And that gave them the ability to say, we're gonna transition out and hand the baton rather than throw something across a wall. And so that is such a big part of how we are looking at acquisitions and how we are looking at growing ourselves is you know, our we still have the owners that come in and out. We talk to them all the time.
SPEAKER_05:That's great.
SPEAKER_01:Um, we'll actually tell you a story, a very personal story about how we're keeping their legacy intact. Yeah. Um, so on the day of the sale, and it happened, you know, kind of also when you're doing a stock sale, you have to diligence that much more carefully, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I have to say, I'm I'm I have a lot of questions in my mind about the stock sale part and you know what it does to your basis and all these other questions that we'll get to perhaps.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and there's a nice tax way to do that. Um, but we had I was leaving this big career and it was this huge change for me. And and I'm really a person of a lot of faith. And I I knew that it was the right decision, but you know, just kind of in the back, it's like, and when you have faith, you don't always look for signs because you know. But we went and and on the day of closing, we were kind of waiting until the last minute for like this consent from something, and we were sitting at the table and we had had a wonderful negotiation, so much so that our banker was like, I don't think I've ever seen a closing go this way.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But we're signing the papers, and I write that somebody had asked, What's your birthday? Because we had to fill out something on a sheet. And so I wrote, you know, wrote down what my birthday was at 127. And the three owners immediately looked up and they said, That's our dad's birthday.
SPEAKER_02:How about that?
SPEAKER_01:And everyone just started crying. Oh on the whole table, I cried, they cried, and it was just like this beautiful moment. And so on our birthday, then the next year, as a present to them, I got a beautiful black and white picture of their dad, and we put it right in the front of the building. Oh, that's nice. And so that he can kind of watch over us and they know that he's always a part of that. So that was my birthday gift. He's since passed.
SPEAKER_03:Um Well, I think, you know, that kind of Sensitivity to the legacy of a family that has invested to build this asset is honestly something we have to probably get back to. I think it had previously been a large part of the way that we thought about corporate America at one point, but we had kind of moved away from it and I think undervalued what it means to individual uh you know workers. I you know, I think a lot of people forget how important loyalty of your workforce is to your ability to execute what you do. And they are much like your kids, they watch what you do, not what you say. Right? So if they don't see you doing things that demonstrate that you have loyalty as part of who you are, as your kind of founding core, they don't care what you say, right? And sometimes the money is not enough. Um and sometimes the money isn't the reason that they make the choices that they make anyway. Um so I think that's wonderful that you do that, and that's worthy of more conversation. It'll be interesting to see over time your capacity to continue to do that as you grow. And I'm curious, and we're gonna move around in the conversation to a lot of different topics, but as you think about how do I build on PMA friction to and I look for my second and my third acquisition, what are the things that are important for you to be similar, um, whether it be in how you identified the opportunity, you know, how you pursued the negotiations, and what are the things that you think might be very, very different? And we have an audience in part, I think, of people who are interested in being entrepreneurs through acquisition, but also don't have a finance background and also may not come from the exact space. So your experience kind of in making those transitions should be really relevant to them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I appreciate that. I I think if we're, you know, I think about what's next. I have certain principles that I think when even when we were buying, you know, this this company, and and we'll continue with the acquisitions when the time is right, right? It's not rushed. I always say we're hungry, but we're not starved.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and so we'll do that when the time is right and when we find the right fit. But there's definitely a framework that I look at when I think what what at the minimum does this neck next acquisition have to be.
SPEAKER_03:This isn't an ad, it's just our experience. At the Southland Development Authority, we've spent the past five years growing our team. And time after time we've turned to LinkedIn, not because we had to, but because it works. It's where we found people who share our mission, our energy, our commitment to the community. For a small but growing organization, it saved us both time and money and connected us to the talent we might never have found otherwise. If you're looking for the right people to help grow your business, I can tell you from experience, LinkedIn works. You're buying for the long term, right? So, and that's something that you said that really caught my attention as well. Um, you aren't buying to say I'm gonna turn around and necessarily flip this. I'm buying because I'm building something that I expect to last as a family legacy. So that gentleman's legacy becomes part of your family legacy that you then move on in another way. So I don't know to what degree that really changes the types of businesses you buy. I presume it does. Um, and I don't know if you can share a little bit how that might change, you know, what they call your buy box, you know, what are the elements that you're looking for? And if there are elements, you may not be looking for an acquisition. But if I put in front of you this thing, what are the things that would make you say, you know what? I know I'm still digesting this meal, but man, that looks tasty. I'm not starved, yeah, but I'm hungry.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm hungry. Yeah. You know, we look at I'll I'll share because so I only know what I know because people shared with me, you know. I'm I'm the farthest thing from self-made that anybody can be. So I'm I'm happy to share that if somebody's looking. I'd want them to buy the same great businesses.
SPEAKER_02:Hopefully, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So as an engineer, for me, it always starts with product. And the first thing, first and foremost, is you know, I look for something that has product or process IP or trade secrets that's really a value. And that's the bottom, you know, that's the big barrier to entry. Because I'm not interested in a commodity business. I really enjoy the product development, process development side of it.
SPEAKER_03:I don't want to mess up your flow, but I have a question, right? Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. So when you are buying that business as a stock, right, as opposed to an asset, how is that changing how you value that IP, that intellectual property, right? Because you could get the advantage of the goodwill that comes from buying the IP. Um, maybe you still take advantage of it through the stock sale. I'm not 100% certain myself. But does that change any of your calculation at all?
SPEAKER_01:It does. I mean, I from the finance perspective, I think it matters on the multiplier what you're gonna what you're gonna pay, right? I think it also is then the types of business that you have. Businesses with product or process IP tend to have longer contracts, you get a bigger backlog. Um, but for us it was really in the multiple on what we would look at. Um, the other piece is your IP can be a trade secret or it can be true IP, right? And so if it's IP, then you're literally buying the patent.
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:But if it's a trade secret, um, that's just knowledge and expertise. And so that's very important on how you're gonna carry on into the next generation of that ownership because it's not written somewhere. You're not buying any IP. Um we had some piece of that. We have a lot of things in the business that are trade secret, yeah. And so it was really important for us in that transition to say, do we really know it? Did we get it?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, um, is it about or did it walk out?
SPEAKER_01:Um, and so we've done some really neat things with AI to capture some of that very quickly in the first 12 months.
SPEAKER_06:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01:Um, not out of fear, but kind of to get ahead of that and to make sure that what was the trade secret was locked and we had that. Um and so automation and AI was a big help in that knowledge transfer and expertise. The other piece is the relationships, right? And so because we have such a wonderful relationship with the previous owners, if there ever is a question, um we have had a lot of calling up the phone and they're still there. Um so that has been helpful.
SPEAKER_03:So it's interesting in a stock sale like that, do you have a structure where they have seller financing as well? Or how can can you do that in a stock sale?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you can. Um, but we and this is where I talk about we've been so lucky. You know, we have like traditional bank financing. So we went out and I will tell you a funny story. Um so I there's an I love podcasts. I think I think they're incredible, um, especially when you're driving and traveling. They're just they're so great to listen to. And I heard was listening to the story of Howard Schultz. Yeah. And um Starbucks. Starbucks, uh CEO, but not founder.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and so he was talking about how he had to raise money, right? He was given the chance to buy Starbucks. There's a couple of stores at the time.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And he had to raise um about four million dollars, you know. And um we're in multiples of that, but let's say similar, okay? And what he had to go through and what people have to go through to raise equity or to raise financing is crazy. I mean, that many phone calls, and you gotta go to seed rounds, and then you give away your equity, and that was never gonna be my model. Okay. Um so our local bank, who my dad had been, and when I say we couldn't have done this without him, we are not businesswomen. We've had jobs, we've saved our pennies over the years, but we you know needed financing for this because when we were gonna do this, it needed to be big. I wasn't gonna leave my career for a month. Make it a and so some financing, and we just went to our bank, and we went to Panera, and my dad had banked with them for um for I'm 41 for 39 years. You know, it started with a little bit and just still nothing crazy, but you know, grew it over time, and we just told him our story, and we didn't pitch him, and it was no deck, and we were sitting at Panera over a lemonade, and we met with them and and I said, here's what we want to do. And they said, Okay, it's you know, it's tight.
SPEAKER_03:Um, well, so I wanna I think that's amazing, and it's a testament to a couple of things. The first is relationships. Part of the reason you were able to do that is because you and or your dad had relationships with the banks, not necessarily business relationships, but you had developed a brand and a uh reputation that facilitated a connection that allowed you to actually call that person and meet at Panera. Um and I think for a lot of people we underestimate the ability to do that or the importance of doing that, right? So um that's just a lesson for everyone who's listening. You know, those relationships matter, and sometimes that person who starts as the teller ends up becoming the person who is the loan officer, right? So those relationships matter over time. I think the second thing that really strikes me is the fact that you were brave enough to just pick up the phone and call. A lot of people don't make that call. They they go through all the reasons in their head of why they're not qualified, why this person wouldn't take the call, why they wouldn't take the meeting, and they just don't take the act of making the call itself. Um but you said this a couple of times, and this is a good line that I haven't heard before, which is I'm hungry, but I'm not starving, right? And people sense when you're desperate. Uh and being able to, like you say, not pitch, but describe this is what we are doing. Um and I do have a background, I'm pretending I'm you, that is reasonable to be in this space, right? Um but just those three things alone set you apart from so many others in that process. And getting access to bank financing, oh man, and and this is not SBA financing.
SPEAKER_01:No, this is a bank like our bank, it's a and it's a wonderful bank.
SPEAKER_03:And do you want to promote them? You don't have to.
SPEAKER_01:I think I probably should. You should FNBO. Okay. They're out of Omaha, they're family-owned. Um my gosh, they're incredible. Conservative. Yeah. They are very conservative. So the fact that we're able to do this with them. So then the other half of this, and gosh, I'm really transparent, so I hope I'm not like sharing what I shouldn't be sharing.
SPEAKER_03:Nonetheless, you're not. Okay. You're fine. You can share as much as you want.
SPEAKER_01:So the other half was seller financing. So then the building, what and it's a you know, large building, and we weren't gonna buy the building at first. And um wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into. And right, and was confident, but with some humility, and so we weren't gonna buy the building at first, and and the sellers came to us again, relationship, and said, Hey, you know, we'd really like to sell the building. And I'm very transparent again. And I said, I appreciate that. I can understand the stress of, and I said, I don't have an appraisal, and I didn't. Um, and I said, but this just cash-wise is what I have to be able to put for the building. And it's not based on an appraisal, and it's and I was very truthful. Yeah, and they said, Okay, we'll finance it. And so then the sellers financed the building, and we were able to buy a wonderful asset thanks to them.
SPEAKER_03:That makes a lot more sense now. So you decoupled this because this is very typical, particularly for manufacturing businesses. That they have an operating business, they own their building in a separate entity. When they sell their operating business, they often expect the seller, the buyers of that business to become landlords. Leasers. Yeah. Like they're gonna, they're gonna, they become the landlord to that person. And that's one of the ways that they facilitate their retirement, right? Um and there's always this debate of should I buy the the property or not. And many times the owners of the business don't want to sell the property because they're they're dependent on that property for tax benefits, for the income that comes from it, from a whole series of other things. So I share that just for everybody listening, that that decoupling between the operating in the business and the real estate is something that you will find happens quite a bit. Um the fact that you were able to, in a very nice way, say take it or leave it, which is not how you say that at all, but essentially is what you said. This is all I got. Um and they said, you know what? Um we're willing to work with you, it's a big deal. And that means, and not I don't know all the details of your deal at all, but the the building, typically in deals like this, the building can actually be almost as worth as much as the the company, um, depending on where it is and how large and so on and so forth. Um so it wouldn't surprise me that it was at least a substantial portion of this. And that's a way for them to finance it and still allow for a stock sale of the operating company. Because I presume you don't have a you you bought the asset of the building. So that that helps me understand. And the reason I'm even going through this detail is for those that are listening that want to do the same thing. Um, you know, maybe they want to pursue a stock sale too of the operating business, but that may be a way for you to still do an asset purchase of the building in the stock sale of the company. Yeah. So that's that's fascinating. That's fascinating.
SPEAKER_01:And legally it's good too to keep the entity separate.
SPEAKER_03:It's better beneficial for you.
SPEAKER_01:Excuse me, can be.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it can be if if structured, you know, properly. You know, I want to go back to something you said about raising money. Um, I have raised money and it is utterly painful. Um and you were just talking about what you went through, and I'll tell you my story. I'll tell you one of my stories. Um I've raised so I I've had a business every year since I was eight. Um, and I raised money for the first time when I was 18 years old for a business. Um, and I've raised money since. Um but one of the most painful periods I had, I had to raise money. I remember at the time uh I was raising money for a media company, and we had$40 million that had already been verbally committed to, um, letter of intent signed from a private equity firm to invest in our business. But last minute something happened and the deal fell through, and we only had about three weeks on the letter of intent of the companies we're gonna acquire to raise the$40 million that we thought we had. And it was, you know, July 4th weekend when this all happened. Um, you know, this is summer of 1999, uh, and uh we just it was just an impossible time frame. We went from having$40 million at once to end up raising$60 million, but we raised it in three and four million chunks. Oh my god. Which is as painful as you could possibly do this process. We had like one big chunk that came at later, but I mean it was just so I mean it meant that you were so literally we didn't have an office, um, we didn't have any staff, it was just two of us. Um and uh we would set up in hotels at this time it was in New York and act like we were staying at the hotel so that we could get you know um service and we could get uh you know taxes sent to us back and forth, we'd have all the own meetings at these fancy hotels, but it was utterly, utterly painful and talking to hundreds of people. Yeah, and you talk to five people in a day, and they're say there are five components to your plan. One person in each meeting will tell you to change something in one of the components in order to get money, right? So, like, you know, it it was never a stable uh process. That is what fundraising is. That is really what being an entrepreneur is, is if you don't get the funding, you don't get to do the thing. Your process was a little bit different because you went to a bank, but you still had to raise capital, I presume. What was that experience like for you?
SPEAKER_01:When you say raise capital.
SPEAKER_03:Did all of the funding outside of what you guys personally put in come from the bank? Oh my goodness, you guys are both.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's no outside equity and there's no outside ownership.
SPEAKER_03:And given your efforts to develop a family business, would you take money from others? Or is your intent to try to finance this completely yourself?
SPEAKER_01:Right now the intent is to keep it in the family. Um never, I'll never say never. You know, we have some wonderful relationships in outside investing, and it may come or a deal may come. Like you said, right? You're not starving, but sometimes you see something and it and it just makes sense. And at that time, um there's uh opportunity potentially to go outside. But right now, the intent is to keep it in mind.
SPEAKER_03:So one of the things about this that's really difficult. Um when uh when I was in private equity in the early 90s, um, which uh I guess makes me sound really old. But um there was In the 19th century, yeah, yeah, the 18th century mom. It was a totally different time frame. The um there was this effort to try to see if you could scale businesses, particularly in this case, it was women-owned businesses and women color com uh businesses of color. But the restrictions around that designation meant that you had to own 51 percent of the company. It's one of many restrictions, but that was a key one. The problem was is that as you scale in size, it's one thing to be a$10 million business or$1 million or$50 million, but when you get to a hundred million plus business, to have one group own 51% of that business becomes very, very difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. And we went through this whole process of trying to argue to the regulatory guide uh committees that control should be a separate issue from ownership.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because if I want to be a billion-dollar company, you know, Ruper Murdoch doesn't own 51% of News Corp, you know.
SPEAKER_01:But has board controlling board control. But has board control, right?
SPEAKER_03:Same would be for Microsoft, the same is true for Tesla and all these other businesses. It's rare that the entrepreneur actually owns a controlling stake in the business. Um, but I say that, I tell that story for the purposes of just describing kind of an issue, but the reverse is true for you too, which is for you to scale and become a hundred, two hundred million dollar business, it's very difficult to keep a controlling stake. How are you guys thinking about that as um you know a hopeful issue that you have that you've grown so big that you actually have to think about your controlling stake differently?
SPEAKER_01:Full disclosure, Bo, we're learning so much in this space. And so, you know, we don't have all the answers yet. It's a principle. Of ours, and I had a great leader that always told me principle is not law, but it's principle. And so as we grow, you know, and that will help determine what pace is our growth, what pace is acquisition, when we're ready, um, how we build, how we save, how the business can fund itself in that growth. And so, you know, time will tell. We have some great examples of large multi-billion dollar businesses where it is owner controlled and not even majority-owned, you know, all owned. And so that's our model today. But we gosh, we're so new, we're so early into this that we'll have to determine, you know, how that goes over time.
SPEAKER_03:That's a completely reasonable answer. I I'm curious, who would you use as a prime example that if I wanted to build a majority-owned or even completely owned business, um, who are some of the examples that you might point to that have successfully done that?
SPEAKER_01:You know, I here is here is my dilemma in this world is there's not a lot of meeting you has been incredible because in my journey, I don't see a lot of it. Yeah. I see, I come from the public space. You've been working. I've been working. And then the companies that I see even on the boards that I'm on are multi-generational large companies. And so they've held it in the family, or that's been passed on through generations. So I don't have a huge network of this path that I'm on, which is you bought an existing company, you're not private, you're looking to hold. You're not, you know, I've got a lot of examples where they've got the you know, three to five year turnaround, it's a private equity model. That is not our model. That is not what we're looking to do. So that's the network that even I'm looking for and to build and to see who are those, you know, um long-term, multi-generate, and what did they do a hundred years ago? Right. You know, what did the Vermeers, the Dan Fosses, what did they do a hundred years ago, um, that set them down this path? And so that's that's the self-discovery that I'm on is how do I structure it, how do I hold it, how are we gonna grow? Um it's open for me right now.
SPEAKER_03:You know, it's interesting. Um I'm we're just talking, no one's listening to us. But you know, when I think about what you're doing, I think, hey, position yourself as this kind of not even acquirer, but this is the goal of what I'm doing, and this is the space that I'm interested in working in. I would bet that there would be a lot of businesses that would say, I'd like to sell to someone like that.
SPEAKER_05:Really?
SPEAKER_03:Right. I I would prefer they're getting phone calls from middle market banks constantly and business brokers that are pitching them on how I can help, you know, build your business or get you ready for sale and this or that. And and they are listening to all those conversations, and we do that to some degree too. We difference is we're not-for-profit, so we're doing this from a different perspective. But I think for people to hear that um if I'm gonna sell my business and I want to extract the value of what I've created, but I want to also make sure that I leave my legacy intact, I'm looking for businesses like you. Is it PKV is the name of the BKV? BKV. Um I mentioned that just because that may be a really important positioning. Because I think your point is, hey, there's a whole world of people that have a whole roll-up strategy, a leverage buildup strategy that people have been running since the 80s that is tried and true and works and can add value and doesn't necessarily have to destroy companies, right? They're not all evil.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um of them are, but not all of them are.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, some of they create wonderful long-term investments for all involved.
SPEAKER_03:Right. But there aren't many that say, I'm setting out on a mission to build something that's gonna last for the next hundred years. Yeah. And I'm intentional in that process, and I want assets that are gonna play a role in helping us do that. Um I think that there's probably a a pocket of people who would say, yeah, I'd rather have a conversation with someone like that than um than not. You know, one of the things, and I'm jumping around a little bit, but I have a good friend of mine who uh uh is from France. He ended up wanting to go and buy a company in the north of France, um, I think it was in Normandy, where he was. And the trouble was not only was there this disconnect in terms of the valuation that the owner wanted way more than what it was worth, but the owner was also um he had a family member who worked for the company but wasn't the one to run the business. And he couldn't fire that person right away, although he knew that that wasn't the right person. And he couldn't sell the business unless everyone in the family was comfortable that the nephew, let's call it, that was gonna stay in the business, was gonna be treated fairly. Didn't have to be promoted and but needed to be treated fairly. So what this guy ended up doing, his name is Renault. Renault ended up saying, This is what I'll do. I'll work for you for a couple of years, um, under you and with your nephew. Um and on the basis of my work, I want to prove to you that not only am I a good steward of the business and capable, but I'm the person you can trust to run this business. Um and actually in that process also get to know what the family dynamics are, have a better understanding of the business. And he did that for a year, and then they actually sold the business to him. I think Reno has now sold that business uh and it's is out of it. But it was a really smart process. And the reason I tell that story is it feels very similar to kind of where you are, in that um you want to get to know these businesses so well that you really have an understanding of not only who they are and what they are, but how they integrate with you, um, to the point where you don't have the same questions about uh operations and trade secrets and all those things because you're in it a little bit. Uh have you started to think through a strategy of how you do that going forward? Because some of your acquisitions may take several years if that's the the plan, if you're gonna follow the Renault uh strategy that I just described.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. We we right now, and actually, you know, aside from from our conversation, I don't talk much about the holding company. You know, right now we're learning PMA friction, we're building it, we're um putting in some of those things that even the old you know owners would have loved to do, but just didn't get to it, didn't have time. Maybe that wasn't their path. So I'm focused on that growth right now. And I heard a you know, wonderful saying a long time ago, and it was like, and I wish I remembered who I could attribute it to, but it was on stand-up comedy.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. We're gonna attribute it to you now.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. Okay. Um sorry for whose ever quote that is. But the um it was an improv session, and they said, How do you know when to enter an improv? How do you know when to come into that scene? And the comedian said, When I'm needed. And so that is how I think of acquisitions and what's next for us is right now we're growing and we're doing wonderful things with PMA and we're learning. There's so much to learn in that business. And our next acquisition will happen when it's needed and when it's ready. And that's when we're enter scene. And so, as much as, you know, I yes, this is legacy in that next 10 years, that's what we want to grow. But right now, we're in the scene, we're watching, we're learning. And when you're needed, and when we're needed, we'll show up.
SPEAKER_03:So let me let me go.
SPEAKER_01:And that goes back to the we're hungry, but we're not starving. So that's the growth. But I I'm not sitting at home saying, what's my next company? My what I'm thinking about is how is PMA gonna just blow the roof out of our growth and serve our customers in a way that we never have before. And when we can do that and that model's good, you know, end scene.
SPEAKER_03:So I'm gonna I'm gonna couple two things. I want to go back to your very early stages and ask you, you know, what your uh interests were when you were a little girl. What'd you want to be? I don't know if it was an engineer, but um, what those were. And I'm really interested in the moment that you decided that I'm gonna leave what I used to do and I'm gonna go and start this legacy business, kind of how you went through that process. Two very different questions. But please, you know, I'm I really believe fundamentally that dreams are a really important component component of who we are as people. And um whatever it is that you dreamed to be when you were young was a subconscious thing that you may not even be able to put your finger on why. Um and I'm always curious about how that travels through people's life. Um sometimes people drop it. It's a very common thing that they have what they call a U-shape. You start wanting to be this thing, you give it up because life takes over and you do other things, and then you rationalize why I'm no longer pursuing it, and you're okay with it, but there's still this underlying desire of who you are and what you want to be. What was that for you, or what is that for you?
SPEAKER_01:I have wanted to be an engineer as long as I can remember, and so much of it is because of my dad. Yeah, you know, my dad is this joy of a if joy was a person, you know, that would be my dad.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:And if heart was a person, it would be my mom, you know, and he just was this person, and he always talked about engineering and that, you know, we make things better, we make things better. And there's a sense of servitude in that, yeah, you know, that whatever you're given, that how do you make it better? And so I, you know, I started my career early as an engineer, and it was we worked on process, you know, how do you make this process, how do you make it more efficient and optimize it and make it safer for who's working on it? And I love that. I love at the end of the day, which is why I love manufacturing so much, and you see what you do, right? You see, you see the product, you can smell it, you can touch it. That's why chemistry was never my favorite subject. Yeah. Um, you can see it, you can touch it, you can feel it, you know, you can hand it over.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I have, I just love that. I love, you know, that that feeling. I love how we contribute. Um, and so I always wanted to do that. And I I didn't ever have dreams of being an entrepreneur. Um, I think at some point, you know, I was like, oh, it might be neat to kind of own your own business, but it wasn't my thing. And my career um, you know, took off and it was and I loved it and it was wonderful. And so um I went down that path, you know, and I went from, you know, being an engineer to I worked at several different companies. I've worked in in retail as an engineer, um, in a program manager. I've worked in automotive.
SPEAKER_03:I've worked on the So when you say retail as a uh in a uh retail engineer, is that process oriented first?
SPEAKER_01:They at at the time that it was a very large public company, and they had wanted industrial engineers to be project managers because you understand the process of a product. And so I went into that field. Um I was in logistics first. Um and then my one stint in this space was at a small privately owned automotive manufacturer. And that's when I learned this world, you know. Um, but I tapped off at that. There, I became the VP of operations and engineering, and the next level up was the owner, you know, there's nowhere to grow. And so that's when I reached out, and I had um my PhD work is in systems engineering, and that's you know, large-scale product design and and uh aerospace and loved that. And so I went into that and I grew there and uh most recently was a vice president general manager of a very large business unit there. Um, but that's where I had the epiphany that you know it was that career was wonderful. I spent almost a decade in aerospace and and I loved it. And it was um I was grown and treated so well there that that you know company really showed me what great culture is and what it is to believe in your people. And what I started in as a director, I my most recent role there was VPGM, the youngest first female VPGM in the company history. And you know, the irony is that when when people believe in you so much that you kind of start to believe in yourself, and so we had I, you know, been in the VPGM role. I had a large business unit, we had plants all over the country, and I was doing all this stuff that as a little girl I would thought was so cool. You know, the private jet and the embroidered vests, right? And the Wall Street investor days, and and it was all that, all the you know, glory and a wonderful product and great culture. And um, and I was home from my kids a lot. I've had little kids, I still have little kids, and you know, I realized, hey, this is this is incredible, and we did well, we did really well in in the business. And I kind of thought to myself, you know, this career is great, but I'm kind of doing it um to my family rather than for my family. It's my career, you know. And I thought, well, what if we could do it? What if we could do it for ourselves and the wonderful culture that we've seen and I've gotten to learn from who's creating the next one?
SPEAKER_06:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know, what's the next organization like this? How do we scale that culture to these other suppliers that I've seen in this role that have, you know, been bought out by in transitions that didn't hold up integrity and they changed their price model. And I don't want to do that. I want to build more of this. And so I just I had that epiphany that what if we did it ourselves and I did it for my family rather than because of my family?
SPEAKER_03:So so you sat down and you're with your husband and your family, and you're saying, Everything's great, I'm gonna mess it all up now. We're gonna do something totally different. How how did you figure out what bits of information did you need to hear from maybe your children, maybe from your mom and dad, maybe from your husband that gave you the comfort that, okay, we can take this risk, and I don't know what's gonna happen. Um, but everybody's on board. Everyone has a reasonable sense of how difficult it's gonna be, and um, we can move forward.
SPEAKER_01:I want to be very honest and talk about privilege because I was very privileged in that conversation to be able to bring that up. And my whole family, so my family's very close, and my husband and I both work a lot, and so my parents had moved across the street from me.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and they both worked too, but they had moved across the street.
SPEAKER_03:You could have just put them in the house, but you're like, no, no, no, we're sending kids over to you.
SPEAKER_01:No, we asked them so many times to live in the house, and they said, Oh, we're young, and you guys need so anyway, so they moved across the street. And my sister lives a couple streets down, so we support each other a lot. And I was traveling a lot in my role, and I missed, you know, I travel is always a part, and I work a lot. I've always worked a lot, but the day that I was away most of the time was was something that I didn't enjoy. Yeah. But when I had that conversation, Bo with my husband and my dad, it's not lost on me the privilege that I had for them to be able to say, Yeah, we got you. Yeah, um, we'll carry the family, we'll invest with you. You know, my husband, oh my gosh, he didn't bat an eye. And I had a great job, you know, all the all this stuff, right? And my husband is a a saint of a human being. His name is Rishi, which in Hindi means saint, but he just is a saint. And he didn't bat an eye. Yeah and he said, Yeah, go do it. And, you know, even in days, because it's new and you know, and we're investing a lot back into the business, which was our model, which is what we committed to ourselves when we wanted to do this. And so some days I'm like, man, you know, and my old company stocks doing great. And he's like, That's okay. You're building equity. You're you know, don't compare it today. But those entrepreneurs that have to do that and all of a sudden don't have a salary and are taking a risk and don't have bank funding and don't have that support, I'm sure, you know, it's very hard. I'm sure it's hard as it is, but I I want to be very clear and have so much gratitude of the privilege that I had.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I I would just say to this, you know, um I've been blessed to be around some people who were very wealthy and still didn't have the privilege that you just described, right? So money and that privilege are not necessarily connected. And no one enters into this field without taking a risk. Because there's a reputational risk, right? There's your own psychic risk of the effort that you put into this. Um and I don't belittle that because to be honest, for most entrepreneurs, the pain of losing money is nothing compared to the pain of your reputation or and and often it's self-imposed penalty of not being successful. So um you were blessed to be in a position to do this. Both your husband and your uh father and mother could have had a very different opinion, and it might not have stopped you from doing what you were doing, but it may have changed the dynamics. Um and you are still taking a risk, right? Because you still face everyone and you're expecting expecting to build something from this, and it will not come easy. But I appreciate that that honesty, and I just want to temper it with also a perspective that part of being an entrepreneur is in part being a little delusional, right? Um, and you've got to have enough of ego to get yourself past all of the reasons why you can't do something, because there are many and they are legitimate. I always say there's a thousand reasons not to do something, I need 12 reasons to say yes. Only 12 out of a thousand. If I can get that, I can figure out a path. So there's a little bit of the ego and delusion that comes in that process, and that comes with risk, right? Of what happens afterwards if I'm not successful. Um, and so it's not a small deal at all. This isn't a sponsored message, it's just what's worked for us. At the Southland Development Authority, we've been using Dill.com for the past years to handle our invoicing and payment processing. For a small but growing organization, it's been a game changer, saving us time, keeping us organized, making sure payments go out and come in smoothly. It's simple, reliable, and cost effective. Most importantly, it's freed us up to focus on the work that really matters, serving our community and growing our impact. If you're looking for a better way to handle payments, Bill.com has been the right fit for us.
SPEAKER_00:Your listening to the first million is always the hardest. We are now returning to the show.
SPEAKER_03:I'm interested in your experience. First, when was the first time you were ever on a manufacturing floor? How old were you?
SPEAKER_01:Oh gosh. Um manufacturing floor. I mean, I've always been in operations since I was like 19 years old.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Um interned in college and probably sometime in college, I percept foot. Some tour. I mean, we had labs in engineering school. And so um, god by 18, 19.
SPEAKER_03:Because, you know, it is still to this day, maybe a little less so, not common to see people who are running the manufacturing areas be female. So you're dealing with a lot just going onto that floor. And even though you're coming from an engineering background, that has its own dynamics. And you've obviously excelled in that environment. And from you didn't say this, but my intuition says not only did you excel in this space, but you were well liked in these spaces, which is probably not an easy thing to do. You can't always be liked. You got to throw a little blood on the wall to make sure people know you you, you know, you're still in charge. But um, that is a very difficult dynamic to manage. Um, and it reminds me a lot of my experience when I was on Wall Street. The women who I worked with on Wall Street who were in senior positions, um, they had a whole different dynamic to play because, you know, it was a cutthroat space. Um, so you have to be at least cutthroat enough that people respect you, but they were not in the same position to be as mean and aggressive and cutthroat as men in their same positions were, right? But you also couldn't be not cutthroat enough that you weren't worthy of the position. I don't know what that dynamic is as a woman on the manufacturing floor, but I'm assuming there's some sort of text that's kind of in that space. How did you navigate that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I love that question. I get I get asked it a lot. Um, because I always have felt a bit like a bit of an anomaly in any space that I'm in. Um and it's changed over my career. So I'm gonna speak to more of who I am, you know, now. But I'm girly. I'm really girly. I'm also very technical. Um, and I'm not very aggressive. That's not my leadership style, that's not my personal style. Um quite quite often I'm in jobs where I know less than I really should. And so that humility comes really easy when it's the truth. Um but I I think that I'm just I'm a thinker, you know, and so I always like to learn. And you're right. I mean, there's a lot of things to navigate as a woman. And, you know, fortunately, unfortunately, you get a taste of that being an engineer early on, right? You're only 12% of women in a drink, then you go to women of color, right? Um, and it's even less, and then you go to a you know, public aerospace company where there's even few women uh women and women of color and people of color.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um but I have you know to go to my privilege again. I the entire time I was with my last role, I worked for the same person. And Bohe built me up in such a wonderful way. Yeah. And not only did he do that, but I had a peer group that was phenomenal. And so you asked about what happened when I told my family that I wanted to do this, but we didn't pick on what happened when I told my job.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_01:And so I made that phone call, and my boss at the time was on vacation. It was July 4th, and I picked up the phone and I said, Can we talk? And he was on vacation. Yeah. And we're close, you know, but he was like, That's weird. And so we called him, I told him, and it was very sad. And he was very close to me. And you know, over the years, my um, especially the last couple years of my career, my mentorship had been taken over by the CEO.
SPEAKER_03:And um, you had gone so far that the next level was CEO.
SPEAKER_01:You know, that was what we were working and tra training for. But there's so so many things that have to happen before you can do that.
SPEAKER_03:I'm just saying it for you so you can be humble about it.
SPEAKER_01:So um, but he said, I know, I know your heart, I know your family, and I I understand it. But um what if this? What if we did this? What if we did that? What if we did this? And then I had some more conversations, and so I stayed with that company for eight more months.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The year that I bought, you know, PMA. And I stayed we worked on some strategic projects, and I still have a great relationship with them. But that was hard. That why you know, are you sure? Like, what do you what are you doing? And I have a mentor, and um uh, you know, they're like, Are you are you sure you want to leave? Like, there's not a lot of women that are at this level in aerospace.
SPEAKER_03:Are you kudos to your manager? Game recognizes game, as they say, right? And the hardest thing to do in any business is to find good people.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And so he was like, nah, I'm not gonna make this easy for you. I want you to stay. But that's credit to him. Of he's gonna try everything, and you maintain a good relationship, which is really important. You never burn bridges to the degree that you can avoid it. But I want to take a second and talk a little bit about the mentorship. And I'll start with a little story, which is uh when I was about 12 or 13 years old, my father, who I didn't live with, but I was close to, but we only really had two things to talk about sports and business. Um and um he said to me one day, he said, you know, you will find people who will be your mentor, but lots of times they're not gonna be who you think it's gonna be. It's not gonna be the person that looks like you or comes from your background or has the same political or religious beliefs. It's not gonna be the person that you would ever think um is gonna find you, but they're gonna see something in you that reminds them of themselves. They may see something in you that reminds them of one of their children that they wished that they were able to provide for, but you have to stay open to the possibility that this person that doesn't fit any of the demographics or background that you expect is the person who's really gonna develop you. And based on you having worked for eight years with the same person, obviously that person saw something in you that was worthy of an investment. Even so, even more so, they saw enough in you that when it was time for you to be mentored by someone else, they didn't try to hold you back. He tried to keep you, but that was smart. But he didn't try to hold you back from potentially taking a job where you he may have reported to you based on what you were describing.
SPEAKER_01:But he was still, you know, still in higher leadership role, but he but you're right, it was uh uh such care. And you know, so boss isn't even the right word. It was such care and leadership and mentorship that um that it mattered. And I've had so many mentors that are my peers, I've had mentors that have worked for me. You know, in our culture, I'm Indian. In our culture, there's this concept of a group, you know, and it's it's a leader and a like a knowledge, a knowledge leader. And that group for me has come in so many different walks. You know, it's been a boss, it's been a leader, it's been a subordinate, it's been a friend. Um, and they've all they build you up in different ways if you're open to it.
SPEAKER_03:You have to recognize that person. They don't come and say, hey, I'm your guru. You have to actually recognize that that's what this person is, either in that moment or for this journey.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Right? So that's a testament to you as well. And I'm curious, how do you do that? Because that's a skill set that a lot of people that hopefully you're listening to this want, if not need, to develop.
SPEAKER_01:I I said it earlier joking, but I it's so true. I have done so many different jobs in so many different industries, and now this whole other venture in life that I often find myself in situations where I probably should know more than I should, and I don't. And so I think that um that awareness that there's so much that I have to learn, and I am just I'm just open and willing and open to seek that from everywhere, you know. And if I could give advice, I think it goes, you know, maybe back to gratitude, be grateful for what you have and find that in others, you know, understand your privilege where you're I mean, to be able to ask some of these amazing people that I've gotten to know the questions that I get to ask them is so is comes, you know, I is such a place of privilege. Um, and then give it back. How can you be that for somebody? But I I think just and I probably earlier in my career wasn't so open to that, you know, especially as a young woman engineer, felt like I needed to know everything. And the older I've gotten, the more I feel like it's okay to say, you know, I really I don't know much, um, but we can figure it out. This is a tough thing. Here's how I'm gonna figure it out.
SPEAKER_03:Tough thing. So I I was a very young manager as well. And um, and you know, and because I was a young manager, I also was feeling myself sometimes, right? And I felt very much like I needed to know these things. And I was fortunate enough to go through a cycle, still at a very young age, where I kind of matured into what a manager is. And I finally came to this conclusion to understand that um when you are in charge, your job isn't to know everything.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Your job is to find people who are gonna do the analysis and bring options to you and make recommendations, and then your job is to become really good about choosing which of those recommendations you're gonna do.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:And it isn't necessary that you know, and I don't have to pretend to know. That's what I hire you for, right? Your job is to know, your job is to tell me, and then I get to make choices. But it takes a long time to disassociate that power, to recognize that the power isn't in knowing, right? The power is in actually choosing, right? Right? Two different things altogether. Um, but it also extends to the idea of who do you choose as a guru, right? Because there are lots of lessons that are being taught to you all the time. Yeah, and you only really learn the lessons from the people that you choose to digest it from. Yeah. Right? So if you're not conscious enough and say, oh, that's a lesson, yeah, and that's someone to learn from, you'll miss it.
SPEAKER_01:I have a mentor that was given to me in my old role. Um, and when I switched, I said I had a meeting with her, and she was a very high-powered executive at GE. And so she was a mentor for me in my in my old aerospace role. And so I left and I had this meeting with her, and I said, Well, I I'm gonna miss you. And she was like, What are you talking about? Yeah, I'm not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_02:You still call me?
SPEAKER_01:So she's still my mentor. Of course, and we meet every month, and she tells me what I need to know, you know. And but like you said, it's finding those mentors, it's letting them know, you know, but it it's if you can find some good ones, it's amazing. And the amount that they'll invest in time is is incredible. I'm so grateful to her. Um, and she's been incredible this last year and a half as life has changed.
SPEAKER_03:So one of the things that's really difficult when you are an entrepreneur, and particularly in the role that you play, where you've kind of switched from a corporate space to now you're doing this, is it's lonely. There aren't a lot of other people that are doing what you do. And the ones who are, you don't run across them every day. You know, you're not sitting around and, you know, having a coffee with all these other people that you can talk about what your experience is in integrating the new culture of PMA friction with you and your family, or you know, how you're thinking about developing these new markets, uh all whatever those issues are for you, how do you supplement that? How do you put yourself in a place where A, you're spending some amount of time learning um how to do your job better, um, and B, you have an ecosystem of people around you to just give you advice, you know, yeah, bounce ideas off of it.
SPEAKER_01:I appreciate that. Very I don't have the right answer, but the way that we're I'm trying to go about it now is be very purposeful about seeking mentorship. Yeah. So when I started down this journey, and I speak a lot about my mentors, but that's that's how incredible they are in my life. And I said to to him, the one I talked about, and I said, Do you have someone in our supply base, right? Of mid-sized suppliers that you would say would be a mentor for me. And he took a week or two to get back to me and he said, Divya, your problem is gonna be that's not who you're gonna want to emulate.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So we I put in a principle of this model, which is think big, act small. And so a lot of what we're emulating is the big companies, systems, processes, good strategies. Um that's a piece of my mentorship. Is I go to those formal mentors to ask, what do you do? What's their experience? And the other piece is I've had to go supplement that with this new world.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So just a couple of weeks ago, there was a women in manufacturing summit, and there happened to be a group that was bringing together women owners. It was a subgroup of that of that session. And I said, okay, I'll go. And it's so hard to leave the business day to day, right? Because you love it, it's fun, you're learning. But I've got to go. And that's where we talked about I got there, and so much of what I've seen, ironically, for women who are now CEOs of their own businesses, is it's their fourth, fifth, sixth generation.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because second generation usually went to the male heirs.
SPEAKER_04:We did.
SPEAKER_01:So did the third. And finally, by the I mean, I can't tell you, Bo. In that room of probably 30 women, 28 of them were fourth, fifth, sixth generation.
SPEAKER_03:What's interesting to me though, is that you're not finding enough women like you who I didn't come in from any generation. I bought into this.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right? And so how do we actually elevate? And I'm asking in a very selfish way because I'm looking for entrepreneurs to support to buy businesses in the Southland to help grow those businesses. But I'm looking, I I mean, I'll take the fourth and fifth generation too. But I'm looking for you. I'm looking for more people that we can elevate like you.
SPEAKER_01:Well, let's start it. I mean, you have Southland, right? But let's go start it. Because I, in my looking today, there isn't. There isn't a lot of women that are starting a family business for generations. And I think that's where we have to maybe look in the mirror and say, you know, can we be it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I have to do what you did, huh? Say, oh, well, I guess I gotta go start this thing. I'll start it with you.
SPEAKER_01:Let's go start it. Let's go find, we'll build them, we'll help them. Yeah. We'll have mentorship and training models for them.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but they can do it.
SPEAKER_03:No question about it. Well, Divya, thank you so, so much for taking so much time out of your schedule to come here and talk with us. We will have to have you back and get an update on how PMA Friction is doing and all the other things you're doing, but we're really grateful and you have a wonderful story. So good luck to you.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.