Leadership, Engineering, and Faith with David Nickens | #LeadWithLegacy | Episode 24

What does leadership look like inside the fast-moving world of engineering and manufacturing?

In Episode 24 of the Lead with Legacy™ Podcast, Dr. Jim Chambers sits down with David Nickens to discuss leadership, teamwork, engineering, manufacturing culture, faith in the workplace, AI integration, and developing strong people-centered organizations.

David shares his journey from childhood fascination with engineering and drafting to becoming a manufacturing leader responsible for transforming engineering processes, developing teams, and helping modernize operations in highly technical environments.

This episode explores:
• leadership development through consistency and trust
• building healthy communication across teams
• integrating faith into leadership without forcing it
• why emotional intelligence matters in leadership
• the future of AI and robotics in manufacturing
• developing skilled trades and the next generation workforce
• how teamwork and accountability improve project outcomes
• balancing technology with human relationships

David also shares practical wisdom about leadership growth, continuous learning, project coordination, and creating environments where people can thrive professionally and personally.

🔔 Subscribe for leadership insights, honest conversations, and practical wisdom you can apply immediately.

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www.iolglobal.com

Connect with David Nickens on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-nickens-1b11b752/

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Contact our team to book a time to be on the Lead with Legacy™ Podcast:
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Transcript

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Lead with Legacy, the official podcast of IOL Global. Here we will explore leadership that outlives titles and trends. Through conversations with faith-based and marketplace leaders, we will discuss integrity, conviction, and purpose. To learn more about us, visit us at iOL Global.com. All right, David Nickens. Wow, thanks for being on. Thanks for having me, um, Dr. Chambers. Been a while. It has. I don't know how many years it's been. Yeah, it's been a it's been a little while. Uh before we start, let me um let me just say uh it's great to have an old friend, David Nickens, here. Um, we're gonna get into a discussion with him about teamwork and about um this weird world of engineering, I guess. Uh that's not a world that I understand, but uh I think it's gonna be a great discussion. But before we jump into that, if you are um listening to the podcast or watching on your favorite platform, then just um remember to like and subscribe. And we're on all these different platforms. I can't name them all, iHeartRadio and uh Spotify, and I guess every other YouTube or whatever the case may be. So just like and subscribe if you want to get more information. You can also check the button and we'll send you uh a link. David, it's great to have you on. It's been a long time, even though I kind of watch you on LinkedIn over the years. I've kind of kept up seeing what's going on uh when you with your work and with your life and so on. But um, I noticed when they first set the podcast up, the note came across my desk and it said, well, that we met while uh I was working on a Navy project and you obviously work on Navy projects, but that's not true. We actually met in church. Uh we met uh many years ago, my gosh, um uh at a church in uh in Chesapeake area, and that's how we first got connected. And so uh uh as we jump in here, I just wanted to correct that in case it got out there, but we both did. David works for a company, I'll let him tell about that, and I did two different uh two-year projects with uh with the Navy there in the Portsmouth, chair, ch Chesapeake area. And um so we do have some shared background there, but most of our background has been through um through church stuff. So, David, tell us about where you work and um and what you guys do. You know, what you can tell us. So I I work for a company in Norfolk, Virginia called Tappet Manufacturing. We do a lot of work for various factions of the government, um the Navy, the Army, uh we built some parts for Marines. Um we our main our main business is our enclosures, electrical enclosures. Uh we built boxes for all the distribution boxes for the Navy. Uh do it from cradle to grave, raw material to make the box and then populate the electronics in the boxes. Wow. So you you make so you make the box, but then you put the stuff in it that needs to go in it based on the the requirements. Okay. What about installation? Do you install the stuff or does that go to someone else? No, we don't do any odds at any shipboard installation. Uh most of our direct customers are actual um direct contracts to the Navy. So we don't have to do the installation. Our direct customer does the installation. Um for the items that we sell directly to the government. Again, we're just we sell it to them and they put it in their supply chain. I see. I see. How did you get involved in this? I remember if if my mind is still there, I remember a number of years ago sitting down with you and your and your beautiful wife and talking about where you were going to go with your career. That's back when I had all my hair and most of my brain, and and you had all of your hair. Uh, tell us how you kind of got involved in this in the first place. So I my engineering uh background actually started when I was like nine, ten years old, when I got my hands on a scale um plane, model airplane, um blueprint. And I spent days upon days staring at that thing, fascinated with the just the dimensions and everything. So I started I started that this process all the way back then. Um in my 20s, I kind of took a sideline and did other things that did not um follow my engineering um desires. But that was around the same time that I met you when I was actually uh correcting the the course again to where I where I knew my skill set really really was best. You you and I kind of converged on that say at that same point. Right. So I remember you and I met until now, that's really been where my true trajectory started. Yeah, I remember um several times going to lunch with you and Amy and setting and talking about you know what you were doing at the time and what you wanted to do going forward. Sometimes it's just good to bounce stuff off of someone. And when when there are times in our lives when we course correct, we go back to what's our passion. Talk a little bit about that. You know, the the back from childhood up through your 20s and then making a decision to do what you're doing now. What did that look like? What did that journey look like? So when I got my hands on those blueprints, maybe it was a little bit later than nine years old, because I I believe it was within a year that my parents actually got me a drafting table. Really? They they went out because they knew that that was my interest and they wanted to kind of foster that that interest. So I started just drawing things up, trying to redesign airplanes and whatever could come come to my mind. Um, at the same time, I was also a tinkerer. I was taking things apart, trying to put things back together when things were broken. Like, you know, the boombox radios that were popular back in the I took a few of those apart. Some of them I couldn't have put back together. Right, right, right. And then uh in high school, freshman year of high school, when I was still living inside Buffalo, I went to a technical um high school, and my main um course was um Cat Cam robotics. Had I stuck through all four years at that high school, I would have graduated with the knowledge to be able to program um robotics to be able to do certain functions. And that was in the 90s, early 90s. Um then after my freshman year, my sophomore year, I moved out of Buffalo and to a city outside of Buffalo, Tanawanda. And the next three years of high school, I took every tracking class, uh, even took some electronics classes that I could. Um, I joined the Air Force after leaving high school with the intentions of being an aircraft mechanic and eventually getting an AP license and then getting an engineering degree that's focused on being able to design aircraft. Um it was during that time frame where I started making some bad decisions when I was in the Air Force. Well, we've all made some bad decisions. That's true. It's kind of funny that it's kind of it's come full circle. I'm not designing aircraft now, but in my tenure here at Tabot, uh I've been involved in many design projects where we're designing things that go on um Navy um boats on their vehicles, on aircraft, uh designed some commercial work, the things that go on and trap trains. So it's kind of come full circle where my original desires back when I was graduating high school, I'm not designing aircraft, but I'm designing everything else that goes around it. Right, right. And what happened to you in terms of your faith that caused a course correction in your life? Because you not only changed course a little bit career-wise, but basically your life changed, right? Yes, overnight. Almost uh maybe it wasn't really overnight. It felt like it was overnight. Um my wife and I, we we were going through some personal issues, and then we decided to start going back to church, the same church that I met you at. And we recommitted our lives to to Christ, and probably within a month uh I started seeing different things come to come into play. I was already going to school for to get a drafting degree. I was about, I think, six months out from being able to graduate from that program. And within a month of me recommitting my life to Christ and changing my personal habits, uh, I got my first job as a drafter. And in that role as as a drafter, I was privileged to be able to design hundreds of different components for the Navy class subs, as far as like the furniture, um, different cabinets, different shapes, different sheet metal parts that went on that. Yeah, I remember uh talking to you about it because I had a contract um as well. We were redesigning the leadership development program at the shipyard at the time. The um tell me a little bit about um your experience with teamwork. When did you move from like just working on stuff yourself to working like on a team kind of experience? That I would say that started when I got to Tabit. Um, my previous uh experiences, I had a role to fill, whether that was programming machines or drawing parts or even um planning for shops. It really wasn't a team effort. That was uh me do my job and go home. And when I got to Tabit, uh the owner at Tabit, um, which he he's been a great leader over the years, he is he saw in me what others didn't really see. And he he gave me the um the space to grow. He he gave me tasks, he didn't tell me, he didn't, he didn't micromanage me in those tasks. He gave me a task, I did the task, and I figured out through that process that if I would communicate with the people in the shop more, different leaders in the company, uh, I got better results. Yeah, so you're that you're working around a lot of engineers. What other kinds of roles are there besides so with engineering, you've got projects going on all the time, right? Yes, continuously. And so you interact with other engineers, but what other kind of people do you interact with? I interact with uh everybody in the manufacturing shop uh from the production manager all the way down to the people grinding welds. You're interacting with all of these different people on, let's say there's a new project and they're putting the putting the pieces together. Do you guys meet like in it with a project leader, a project manager? How does that work? Yes, so I have currently I have three project coordinators, and they're all assigned to certain customers. So when we have a new project coming up, I'll meet with the project coordinator and first we at that point we'll review all the requirements. If there's any any gaps in the information that's passed on from the sales team, then we meet with the sales group and fill in those gaps. And then after that, we we read if we do if we already know what process we're gonna take, whether we're gonna bend the parts on this machine or that machine, then we start rolling with that and communicating with the engineering group to tell to share with them what we believe the task should be as far as their programming. And do you to communicate, do you use uh compute computer software like Microsoft Teams or any kind of things like that, or do you guys just meet in person? We do both. I have weekly meetings with the project coordinators, weekly meetings with the engineers, uh, we have monthly meetings with the whole group together, and in the intermediate, we use um different lists and tasks on Teams in order to communicate a lot of that information. But I I find that the in-person face-to-face has a lot more impact. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. So, how about taking responsibility for things when they don't work? How does that work in your environment? To me, taking responsibility for things that don't work, whether it's because of a failure in a machine or or you made an error on planning, programming, or drawing, um I expect everybody in my group to take responsibility. And I I have I've shown them over the years that I will take responsibility for everything that I do, whether it's in my control or not. Um and it's not taking responsibility of this is messed up. It's more of I'm taking responsibility to find the solution. Right. Okay. What happened? What was the you do the root cause analysis and figure out where the issue went. And then that way you can learn how to correct it on this project and moving forward on other projects. So it's a constant, continual improvement process from probably from start to stop, right? Yes. And even after you're done with the project, you go back and you figure out your wins and losses so that you can do it better next time. Yeah, because at the end, at the closing of a project, you've got this time of reflection and kind of rethinking what worked, what didn't work. Quality control, talk about that a little bit. How do you guys manage that in terms of your teamwork? So our um tabit, we are ISO certified, which means our quality systems fall under certain guidelines and a certain rigor. Right. And with that being said, we hold probably quarterly quality training meet groups to train various individuals in the company on what our quality standards are. We believe that quality is inputted from the beginning of the project, right? All the way down to the salesman. If there's an error in the quote, then there's probably going to be an error by the time you um ship the cart. Right. If there's error in the planning or in the drawing, the programming of the machines, then that's going to go downstream and affect production and also affect our ability to ship not just that project, but other projects on time. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And for those who don't know, the ISO standards, they're across the board, right? For engineering, for manufacturing. There's all these standards. I know I've used them uh in my projects, but more from the learning development side. But there are these various standards that you guys have to meet on a regular basis. Yes. And it's not just manufacturing, they use the ISO standards in many different industries. Uh it's it's a means of being able to track where where you're winning and where you're losing, and have it having proof on being able to improve on your processes. Now, are your um your project coordinators and and other people have they been trained formally in project management, or is it something they kind of grew up with? No, it's actually I've trained them. Um the this this process was created by me when I took over the engineering group. Uh, prior to my my taking over the leadership role, uh, there really wasn't an engineering group. There was um two people, and one of them was getting ready to retire. And so he had he had pretty much stepped away from any processes. He he was kind of he was done. Uh then when I took over the role, I redeveloped the entire front-end process to streamline everything and get everything done before it needed to go to production. Um but that being said, the the project coordinator role, that was something that we created and um we developed different processes in order to make them more successful. Now I I do have a couple of project coordinators who it it comes natural. So it really wasn't a hard learn for that. Right. But you did run them all through some kind of training so they're on the same page and understand, you know, what your expectations are and so on. Yes. And it it's it's there's really a no closed-end training program for that. It's it's more of a continuous every day they're learning something new. I I I've been in the industry for a couple of decades now, and I'm still learning different things. So your growth and development as a leader, talk about some of the challenges and maybe some of the real uh success points. You know, I know in my case, I didn't grow up, I didn't have formal training, project management or anything like that, but but when I look back, my whole life's been about managing projects. You know, from the first things that I ever started doing, the first jobs I ever had were managing projects. So when when I finally did some formal training, um, it was all kind of, I thought everybody knew how to do this kind of stuff. But um, but then when I got on really big projects, I had some serious learning curves. You know, when I went uh from a small team of people to a massive amount of multiple teams and people across different uh industries and different countries, that was a real big wake up for me about uh stepping up. So what are talk about some of the things that you had to go through in your leadership development? What went easy, what didn't come easy? I would say that my biggest challenge was trust. Uh always assumed that because I was capable of doing a task and put in a role to do the test, that I would be trusted to do it. And it it became evident that it it's not just your capability, it's the your consistency and your integrity in the process. And that that was a hard learn from me. Um probably with in a about six months with me taking the role, I started asking questions of the other leaders who I I always consider myself on the equal ground with them while I've been at Tabit because other rather than even though I didn't have the title, I still had all the responsibilities and can consistent communication with them. But I learned quickly that uh just having the title and having the capability, um they still didn't trust me because I I didn't have I wasn't in the position long enough to show that I would be consistent with how my leadership was going to work. So how did you build that trust? Just being consistent over time? Communication, being consistent, um allowing the other leaders' room to speak their mind. That it kind of leans on my my gift of patience. I I'm a really patient person. At times it's um it could be a downfall, but uh most of the time because I'm patient, I am able to sit in a room with other leaders yelling back and forth, and I can be quiet and just listen. And then when I speak, they know that I'm speaking with some some substance. Yeah, so so listening is something we've dealt with on the podcast before. Um, it sounds like even in your environment, being able to listen beyond just what's going on. I mean, there's a lot of noise in a in a team meeting. There can be a lot of noise, a lot of opinions, and this and that. What you're hearing on the front end with the noise may not be really what's going on. You got to listen deeper. And I think uh people have to that's a great connection between trust and listening because I think that's how most of us build trust with with uh people that are are working with us is to learn to listen to them, hear what they're trying to say, process it, not jump to conclusions and and so on. Um, what's some other things you you had to work on? Oh. Like you had mentioned earlier that there's times when you're like, oh, people don't already know how to do this. Uh I'll look, I can look at a part and just instinctively know how to draw it. Or I can look at a drawing and instinctively know how that bent part should be unfolded. Right. And I I would go through training with a new programmer and I would tell them, just unfold it in your head. And they they didn't understand what I was talking about. And it's it's a constant reminder to me, and I talked to other leaders in the company that we we have to remember that they haven't been doing it as long as we have, or they don't have the natural instinct. So we can't expect them to see the things we see. We have to develop it. Do you think there's a do you think there's a difference? Or what do you think the difference Would be you didn't grow up with a computer, right? You didn't start out with a computer. And now you're surrounded, I know, by all this technology and stuff. So you think there's a difference in those of us who grew up having to do things manually and this next generation or two that starts out with technology? I've had this that same discussion with uh one of my um lead drafters. He he grew up in this new era where he didn't learn how to do drafting on a drafting board or t-squares, but he learned it on a computer. He would insist to me, and he's he's probably one of the one of the best that I he's definitely one of the best that I know as far as being able to create things in a 3D environment. And we would have discussions and he would try to bet me that he can do something quicker on there than I could do. And you're right. If you don't have that manual experience, I felt like there's always a disconnect between the virtual world and reality. But in today, 2026, uh it's even further disconnected from the manual world. And we have to find the the balance between what is good fit in virtual AI, new technology versus the manual side. Yeah, I found that too in in my work. It's um I had to grow up thinking about things like how the brain works, how people learn. You know, my my thing of uh basically my world has been about helping people master knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits that move their career forward or move their you know capabilities forward. And I still remember having to draw stuff out, draw stuff out on paper, how to understand how the brain works, how processing works, all manually, you know, writing it, reading, doing that kind of stuff. And now you can just ask AI to explain it to you, and um, it's a whole different thing. Are you guys beginning to leverage AI in your work? Definitely. We um it this industry has been obliterated over the last 20 years with um the constant push for getting our youth to go to college to um get a degree um and not focusing on trades. We have a huge uh gap in um skilled trades. Uh so that leads us to okay, so how do we fill that gap if we can't get a person in here um to even train them how to do it, let alone get somebody that already has a skill, um, we we have to leverage technology. Um uh and that's not just AI, that's also using um the robotics, the options to be able to program a machine that nobody has to learn how to operate. They just have to put a part in there. We're also using uh AI to leverage information on the front end to help develop work packages and analyze data so that it makes us better and quicker on the front end um and and gives the production area longer or more more time to be able to make the parts. Okay. Um when it comes to AI, it's a question that comes up once in a while in in some of my discussions, and that is how do you use AI yet to solve problems or just to provide information? Both so we we currently, the AI um language that we currently are using, we we have subscription that it's a corporate subscription that keeps all of our information within our database. So the AI model is not learning from our information. So I've I've spent probably a year and a half to two years now basically training it, constantly feeding it information about the company. So now I can go to it and say, hey, on this machine, I'm having this problem, how can I fix it? And most of the time, no. Um we we also use it to um to make it easier to create work instructions or other type of documents where in the past I would be sitting there for hours typing. Like step action, like step one, two, three, how to how to do something? Those plus different um standards, um stand work partnership standards that we would have. Right, right. Or even contracts that we have to create for the government. So it's over time you're saying you you had access to the AI and you're training it by giving it information that's proprietary to you guys or to the work you're doing. So you're learn it's learning what you're doing, not just from the general public, but it's learning specifically from what you guys do. Yes, yes, definitely. And we're we're actually we're working on a current project with the um that the Navy's funding that this outside company leverages it even more. They they'll create workflows using the AI and using our current infrastructure that will um that will streamlines the whole process on on the front end. That's great. That's that's really interesting. I know there's a lot of there's a lot of interest in AI now, good and bad. Some people think it's gonna blow up the world and take over. And uh uh I haven't used it that much. I do use it some. Uh uh when I have a question about something that I'm not familiar with, I want a quick study on something. I do, and this is outside the scope of the conversation, but I do quite a bit of work now editing books, you know, textbooks and things like that. And so used to, if I needed a citation or reference to something, um, I can, you know, I I kind of I know how it works, I know where to go to get that stuff. But I found myself being a little more um AI savvy now. I can just ask it, you know, keep it open and ask it where who who made this quote, you know, who quoted this or whatever. And then we use plagiarism checkers, you know, on all the books and articles and stuff that go out to make sure that we're not violating any um standards or agreements and so on. So it's kind of helpful for that. But I haven't really got into like deeply using it uh for anything. So it's always interesting to hear what people are doing with it. Um let me switch gears a little bit. Talk about some leaders that have really influenced you, especially when it comes to project management, teamwork, leadership, those kind of things. Who are the people that have really had an influence on you over your career now? So personal influences, I would say uh you you had a big influence on me. Um one of the biggest things I think that you influenced me is that um when you're a leader, you'll make decisions that others may not understand because they don't have all the information. Um uh Bob Grobes, he he influenced me a lot. Yeah. Um he he he's actually doing emotional intelligence training um in in the corporate world. And um during during some time under him, he mentored me uh uh on that same aspect on emotional intelligence, being able to read people and respond to people based on who they are and not just the situation that's right. Right, right. Valuable stuff, really good stuff. Intelligence in leadership is is greatly important for you. Uh my my current um boss, the owner of the company, Jeff Jaccox, he's he's had a huge impact on me because every company I've ever worked for, I have not seen any owner of a company, especially one this size, that's willing to throw his tie over his shoulders and get his elbows dirty in the manufacturing spot. And um he he's he's been very steady in his leadership, incrementally growing the business as well as incrementally making um smart improvements to our processes. And then outside of personally, uh I've I study a lot of uh John Maxwell, and his his I've probably read at least ten of his books. Right. So have we all. They're greatly impactful and they're they they play a role in everything that I do. You know, and you can read them, you can you can read it once, come back to it a couple years later, and just get a whole bunch of stuff from it again. I just think those books are if there is such a thing as anointed writing outside of scripture, uh some of his stuff is just phenomenal for that. You can read it once, read it twice, read it three times, and still come away with new insights. Yep. And having met him in person a few times and and uh time with him uh when I lived in Atlanta, uh it's easy to understand why. I think he's just got a very unique anointing on his life. And I followed him way back when he was a young guy coming up. So I've seen how the Lord has used him. Um, you want to talk a little bit before we uh get toward the end, a little bit about um how your faith, your work, and you got your faith, your your work life, your family life, all of that. How do you keep all that stuff together? How do you integrate? I know you got a you got a stressful job and then you got a wonderful wife and a family. So how do you manage to integrate all this stuff together and keep balance? So uh when I was um considering getting um going back into the engineering or into manufacturing, I always had this this stigma about manufacturing that that there's a bunch of rough necks that sit there and cuss, and and it's exactly opposite from that. Maybe maybe in the 80s it was probably maybe like that, but now I I find that it's not so much like that. And it it's probably a byproduct of different laws that have been created to um kind of make the manufacturing plant a more professional environment. But but that that outside of that, um having the faith that I have and the out the Christian leaders that have mentored me, it's made me who I am as a manufacturing leader. So Tabit, we we we have a new building that we we broke ground on actually a month before COVID, the COVID breakout. Uh prior to that, we had one little tiny building. Um and then when they broke ground over here and poured the foundations, every single morning I would walk the foundation and pray. Pray over the company. Um, pray that the leadership of the company would um would prosper and that um anybody in leadership that didn't have Christian values would um adopt the Christian values. That made a huge impact. And uh I don't think I've ever told my boss that I prayed over his company, but he's he's reaped the benefits from it. Part of the prayer was in the small building, we had no space to put any parts we were making. We we had so much going on, we had no space. And one of the prayers that I had was God make this building as full as the other building. And five years later, we have no space in this building. Well, yeah. Which is a good problem. And and having the faith is that's the linchpin of everything. Um being it dealing with the stresses of work and being able to walk out that front door after I'm done for the day and drive home and not allow the stresses of the day to affect my family life. That that's all centered around faith and and being uh being able to uh distinguish where the work stops and where the family relationships and relationships of God continue. You know, I've heard people talk about this, that they're really I can't remember when I first heard someone say that you're never gonna get everything in balance. So it's more that's why I use the word integration. Um I'm I was never able to get when I was coming up, I got training, you know, we're supposed to have a work-life balance. I was never able to achieve that. Uh my kids will tell you that. Um that it's always you, there's always the stresses of work, the stresses of home, all that kind of stuff going on. But when I was able to start thinking about uh integrating my faith into everything I did back when I was younger, uh, that seemed to make a big difference for me. Uh in the beginning, it was kind of like people wanted you to, you got your you got your church life, your faith, you've got family, you've got work, you've got school or whatever else you're doing. And I never could, it was stressful for me trying to figure out how to balance that all out. And then someone said, Well, you you're never gonna get there. You know, just forget that, forget about that, and just try to integrate your faith into your work. You don't have to beat people over the head, you don't have to take your King James Bible to work every day and and uh make everybody uh uh uncomfortable with preaching at them or whatever. Just live your Christian life the way you want it lived and uh the way you think Christ would have you live it. And that's gonna open doors for conversations and so on. And I remember kind of going through that thinking, you know, I should probably hand these people a track or give them a sermon or something, uh, but that's not effective in the workplace. Maybe it never was, but just integrating it, I think that helped me a lot. When you think about this uh this generation of of uh people you're working with now, the younger ones, so what kind of things in terms of legacy, uh what kind of lessons would you leave for these these younger people coming into the into the field? So I I would say one of my biggest focuses on redesigning the engineering processes to create um not a division between engineering and production and quality, but that it's we're all one one group. And over the years, I'd heard uh from other different companies um that there's always been friction between engineering and production. In the construction industry, there's friction between the architects, the drafters, and the construction workers. My goal is that uh engineering, or at least what I am able to control and build, is not that friction that we that we're engineering for manufacturing. Instead of engineering something and saying, okay, here's the print figured out. Um and that that comes with open communication with everybody, um, having an open door policy where if there's a fart down in the machine and they have a question, they can come into any of our offices at any time. Um and the other side is uh for the youth, understanding that technology and modernization is not always the answer, especially in manufacturing. We lose a lot when we rely and simulate a part in a machine working perfectly. But if I don't see it running on the machine physically, I don't know that it's really working. So the the youth have to understand that as they grow up with this technology all around them, and that's what they're learning, they also have to take a step back and figure out how we got there in order to be able to continue to progress and integrate technology with the people. Because it once once we embrace technology fully and forget about the people, then what's the use of any of that? Right. So if you get to the point where you, well, hopefully you won't be like me. I never retire. I've been retired three times, and it never lasts but a few months, and then I'm back to work again. But let's say you did eventually leave and uh go do something else with your life. What do you want people at this company to say about you when they think, you know, if your name comes up or whatever, what kind of things do you want to leave behind? What kind of things would you like to hear them say about you and your leadership? That I helped transform the company and that I I stood on my principles. Most people here know that I'm Christian, and not because, like you said, I don't beat them in the head with the King James Bible, but they can judge me by my fruits. And that's what I would prefer. It's not even the end result that I can program 50 machines. That doesn't matter. What matters is um what did I leave behind as far as the impact on people's lives. Yeah, I feel the same way. It's always amazing to me when I run into somebody that I had some form of influence on. Sometimes you don't even know, right? You don't even know the influence you're having on someone. Um amazing. Uh tell me a little bit about um about where you see things going in terms of technology going forward. I know the AI piece, that's gonna be, I'm sure, a big factor, but what else is coming down the the pipeline in terms of your uh your world? I I think that we're going to see a lot of cobots, robotic engineering, um, inf infiltrate manufacturing as a um a supplement for not having skill trades. Um as we hear our nation's leaders talk about bringing manufacturing back to the states, um, we don't hear enough about standing up schools to skill to teach more skill trades and um how how to integrate the technologies with skill trades. And the only way to um to combat that is by putting a robot next to a press break. And I I would expect to see as the um the the robots that they're developing continue to progress, we'll start seeing more of those inside manufacturing plants. So what's gonna happen to the workers then? Are they gonna shift their roles? I don't know that that's really going to be a problem because uh, like I said, the skill trades they there are not very many people willing to learn skilled trades or even have the the the ability to because of the lack of um schooling, lack of focus on that. Uh now the current workforce it really depends on how the customer or how the company is set up. Tab it, we're focused on people. Um even though we have to fill the gaps in using technology, the focus is that we're not putting somebody out of work because we put a robot on a machine. It's okay, you're gonna start programming the robot, or you need somebody to maintain the robot. Um you still need even even if you have a a factory full of robots, you still need people to maintain them and work them. So what do you guys do to invest in those people? What kind of things do you do? You s you mentioned training earlier, it's just training's ongoing, it's not like an event, it's it's ongoing. What other kind of things does a company do to build value into the people side? Most of it's just uh continuous training. Uh and it's not just if you're a press break operator or a CNC MIL operator, um part of training and continuing to invest is teaching them other skills. Okay, well, you can run this machine, let's teach you how to run this machine as well, to continue to increase their skill sets. So kind of cross-training, keep their knowledge base growing, that kind of thing. Uh, what do you guys do in terms of sending people out for more education? Do they some of your people continue to to grow academically while they're doing this? For the most part, we don't do a lot of that. Uh the leaders, we do have uh leadership uh schools that we send new leaders um to different leads for the different areas. Um we currently are in a from what they call Cobot Alliance with the shipyard and a bunch of other companies where we actually have a training facility on on our premises to train the welders who have always used just manual weld machines to program the cobots to do the welding as well. That that's a continuous thing where we usually send one to two welders there on every class that they have. So it sounds like learning, education, all of those kind of things is just kind of built into the fabric of the company. It has to be. I there's really not too many outside sources for that. We we actually were talking about that a couple of days ago in one of our um our bi weekly management meeting. Uh one of the items on our list is training for welders, uh she metal mechanics, and uh various different areas. And it's really hard to find that. Outside source that isn't going to uh take the employee away from their actual jobs for too long. What are we going to do if we can't get enough people trained? I know here in our area, I live in rural Arkansas now instead of the city. Um, I know there's a big push here. We have um, you know, the electric companies have a um what do they call it a school where these guys go become electricians that work on big high lines and all of that. We have an aviation, we have a college that has an aviation program where uh people can go to learn those kind of skills. Um where do you think all this is going if we can't get enough skilled uh craftsmen? I call them craftsmen. I don't know what they would be called in other industries. I need plumbers, electricians, I need people to work on stuff. Uh and so what's gonna happen if we don't get enough of those people? That's that's a concern that all of us have, I think. That's a huge concern. And I I don't have the answer on what will happen if these companies come back to try to manufacture and they can't employ anybody. Because what's gonna happen is that they're going to um offer higher wages, and the smaller companies like Tabit won't be able to hire the the oldie skilled trades that are out there. Um I I always I had a dream I that if I ever won the lottery or got a huge windfill, that I would stand up a huge trading facility. I I think what really needs to happen is all the companies that make all these manufacturing machines, um like the like CNC Mills or even the weld machines or the laser cutting machines, they need to create an alliance. And um, if they want to be able to continue to sell their machines and factories, they should create an alliance that stands up a training facility to offer skilled trades for free. Yeah, that's a great idea. I know, and it's a lot of things are industry specific too, and I think that's you know, that's where we've got to look as well. I did uh spoke at a conference not too many years back on the lack of knowledge workers. I was able to pull down a bunch of research. The and and now that was in 2020. This is 2026. So within six years, all those predictions that the research said we're running out of, we're running out of people that know how to do certain things, and that knowledge base that they have is going away, and we don't know how to fill it. And so it's a little bit scary. It's not just in your industry, I think it's across the board. Any other thoughts and comments you might have for people listening who, you know, they're going through the challenge of growing as a leader, growing as a project manager, growing as an individual. Um, kind of things would you say to some young people? Hey, if you're gonna have a long productive career, here's some things you probably should uh focus on. Should have focused on what you did yesterday, should focus on what you want to do today, focus on tomorrow. Oh and also it's not just for the young people, it's for older people. It's never too late. It's never too late to restart your career or learn the right way to be a good leader. Excellent. Man, it's so good to reconnect with you, and I hope you'll come back.