February 10, 2026 • 31 mins
Terry Iverson grew up in the family machine tool business, eventually becoming the third-generation CEO of Iverson & Company. But as American manufacturing declined, Terry knew the legacy he inherited wasn’t enough — he needed to create something new.
In this episode, Ben Walter and Kathleen Griffith sit down with Terry to talk about what it means to walk away from a century-old business, and why he created CHAMPION Now! to rebuild interest in American manufacturing, using songwriting, youth outreach and hands-on education as tools for change. This one’s about legacy, reinvention and the long game of saving an industry. These are The Unshakeables.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Every story has a hero. Some of them are very clearly heroes visibly, the muscles, magichammer/lightsaber/chainsaw, but sometimes they're unlikely heroes pulled into trials kicking andscreaming. Either way, what makes a hero is the willingness to stare down the challenge and thecourage to take it on, even if they have no idea how they're going to survive. Terry Iverson was staringdown a major challenge in 2009 when a client Iverson & Company had had for 80 years severed ties.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I don't know if we can make our way out
of this. It's easily seventy percent of what we did
at the time.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
This was a company founded in nineteen thirty one. It
had survived the ups and downs of the depression, wars,
shifting politics, social trade winds, huge financial losses, and more
over its eighty year history. It had survived it all,
first under Terry's grandfather, then Terry's dad, then Terry and.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
My dad was very adamant he wanted me to close
the business because the business model had changed so dramatically.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Terry's dad loomed large in his life, he had operated
Iverson & company under his own exacting standards, but this
time was different. Terry was in charge and he was
willing to stare that challenge down and take it head on.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I'm not going to close the business, I said, there's
people that I'd like to get to retirement age, and
so my goal was to double down and make sure
the company survived. But at the same time, I had
to also plan for after the company, because I wasn't
sure when that was, and forming CHAMPION Now was part of that.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And today's story is more than just the company surviving.
Terry is on a quest to save his entire industry.
Welcome to the Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Study for iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
(02:05):
There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on America.
They don't just drive our economy, they define our communities,
create opportunities, and inspire the next generation of dreamers and builders.
On the Unshakeables, we are sharing the daring moments of
business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories
(02:25):
of how they got through it. As always, Kathleen is here.
Kathleen welcome.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Glad to be back with you.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
This episode is super interesting to me because we've touched on this issue before. Labor, andspecifically the shortage of labor for manufacturing is an issue here in the US. Our guest today is notonly a huge champion for fixing that challenge, but he's also the third generation owner of a USmanufacturing company. On today's episode, Iverson & Company and CHAMPION Now! from Chicago,Illinois.As I mentioned at the top, Iverson & Company was founded in 1931. As it approaches 100 years ofbusiness, I was excited to talk to Terry. I've been doing a lot of research myself on manufacturing andreshoring, so it's a treat to talk to someone living it every day. Terry, welcome to The Unshakeables. It isgreat to have you here on a sunny afternoon.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Thank you, Ben. I appreciate the time and I appreciate
the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
I understand you're not only a small business owner, but
you're also a third generation business owner.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Iverson & Company was our family business that started in 1931 by my grandfather. My grandfather wasfrom about 1931 to probably sometime in the '60s. My dad started in 1958 and was active through themid '90s. And I started in 1980 and was active up until earlier this year.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Three generations of Iversons have led the company through historic moments and very differenteconomies. But one thing that never changes is that no matter how or where the business is, it will facean Unshakeables moment. Terry's grandfather pushed Iverson through the Great Depression and aworld war. Terry's father faced a huge threat to the company. It was a moment that could have shutdown the whole operation when Terry was in high school.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
He had had about a quarter million dollars embezzled, unbeknownst to him.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If this was in the early '70s, that's like $2 million today. I mean, that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It was a lot of money then, it's a lot
of money now.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Terry's grandfather passed suddenly, leaving his father the company. He
had to get up to speed quickly, and he started
with the books.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
He understood numbers inside and out, and so he's going
through the financial it's like something's not right.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So Terry's dad went to visit the accountants and together
they looked at everything.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
They started going through and initially it was one hundred
and fifty grand and two hundred grand, and I think
they quit counting after two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
The office manager in the nineteen seventies was tasked paying
the bills. Instead of paying each bill each month, she
wrote out checks to herself a little at a time,
year over year. Terry's father could have gone to the police. Instead,
he set up a meeting with the employee.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
He said, "I don't know how much you've stolen from the company, but I know it's sizable. And you havea choice, either to go to jail or figure out a way to pay it back." He set up a payment plan. It wasn't aboutjustice from the standpoint of sending her to jail, which would've been devastating for her and itwouldn't be any better for him, because he wouldn't get any money back. I think somewhere I evenhave the file that I saved all these years. Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Over the next decade, as this payment plan ticked down,
Terry grew up. He went to college, got married, and
started a family. He was working in manufacturing, just not
for the family company. Even though his father had asked
a few times.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I almost immediately turned him down.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
You see, Terry's father had high standards, and Terry wasn't
sure he wanted to take on that level of pressure.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And it was really my wife that said, get over yourself.
Why don't you give it a shot? And I'm like, Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The first few years they weren't easy, and his father's
demands got more and more exacting. Then everything changed. Terry's
dad was diagnosed with colon cancer.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
So metaphorically and physically, I think I was twenty six
years old at the time. He handed me the keys
to the shop and he said, you're more than capable.
I'll mentor you, I'll answer your questions, but going forward,
even if I do survive, this is your gig to handle.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Terry managed to steer the company well, taking on new
lines of business that held steady until two thousand and
nine when Iverson & Company's longest most stable client, suddenly cut ties.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
So in 2009, Hardinge decided to restructure their distribution platform.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Okay, which was your largest supplier.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Right correct? And because my grandfather was so close to
the original founding entity. We had quite a bit of
stock in the family.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I know I've said that diversification is key, but then again,
they'd been in business together for almost one hundred years.
Through any ups and downs, the relationship had held.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I didn't think that it would involve us at all.
Over the years, there have been so many different changes,
and of course up and down the ladder, we were
immune to almost all the changes that would come about
because essentially we were family.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
But this time not close enough.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
It was dramatic. It's easily seventy percent of what we
did at the time. I think if the decision was
up to my dad, he would have signed off probably
that day and said, okay, yeah, we're done.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Terry chose to keep the business open with one caveat
his wife had to come on board.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So I said, if you can come to work with
me and helped me, then I'll go forward together.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
They expanded the business again. This time, rather than chase
new lines of machinery and distribution, they focused on rebuilding equipment.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
We expanded the service end of it, so we redefine ourselves.
And that's one thing that I'll say that my dad,
he was really good at adaptation and changes. The word
today is pivot. Now. I don't think that word was
used before. But he adapted really, really well. So I
learned Terry figure it out.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Terry figured this one out, but companies were having to come up with novel solutions across thecountry. By the 2010s, more and more companies were offshoring, moving their manufacturing facilitiesand jobs to lower wage countries. We'll come back to that later. But in 2009, as Terry pushed ahead withIverson and Sons, he started thinking about a bigger issue. Yes, he wanted to solidify his business'future, but he started thinking about how to save manufacturing in America.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I had this idea of changing perceptions. I had spoken to high school, and college, and technical collegeyouth about the importance of manufacturing, and so I'm trying to sit down and put thoughts together.And so I started doing initials, Change How Manufacturing, Change How Manufacturing Perceived,Change How American Manufacturing's Perceived. Oh, cool. CHAMP
Speaker 2 (09:25):
The acronym CHAMP quickly expanded to be CHAMPION, Changing How American Manufacturing isPerceived in Our Nation, and Terry wanted things to change now. So the idea was called CHAMPION Now!.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
In the very beginning, Champion Now was a concept, and
I knew what I wanted to do, but I hadn't
really figured it all out, And to be quite honest,
more times often than I could tell you, I kept
trying to push away from the table.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Terry was busy wrapped up in the day to day
operations of Iverson & Company, spending time with his grandkids
and coaching soccer. But the pull of Champion Now was
so strong Terry didn't have a choice but to answer
the call.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I kept meeting people that kept getting me to the
next level of either focus or elevation for the concept.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
On a thirteen hour flight to Taiwan, Terry finally spelled
everything out.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
At the end of the trip, I had about forty
thousand words. It would be such a waste if I
didn't do something with it. I just thought, you know what,
if I leave the industry or something. I'm so ingrained
and so involved in technical education for manufacturing, it would
be such a waste if I didn't do something with it.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
But forty thousand words of Terry does not a book make.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I ended up interviewing friends, acquaintances, relatives, some in manufacturing
and some not even in manufacturing.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
That book was about careers in manufacturing, and it was a guide to figure out if that path was right fora young person. It was addressed to kids and their parents. He finally published the book in 2018 and letCHAMPION Now! simmer on the back burner. In the meantime, he continued pushing Iverson &Company onward. You ran the business for 45 years, right, I mean, a long time. And then you decidedyou were ready to retire, right?
Speaker 1 (11:18):
My dad, he was very adamant and he actually wanted me to close the business for about 10 yearsbecause the business model had changed so dramatically, but I'm not going to close the business.There's people that I'd like to get to retirement age. They're 40-year employees. And we had a reallygood profit sharing program that he had started. Eventually, I'll try to sell the company, but I will notclose the company.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I assume at that point you didn't have your own
children who wanted to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
We had three children, all of them tried at different
points to work at the company. But ultimately the market
had changed and the business model had changed so it
really wasn't the perfect opportunity based on what it used
to be.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
After a lot of soul-searching, Terry sold the company to a private party. No longer the Iverson of Iverson& Company, Terry could focus all of his efforts on the future and on the future of manufacturing in America. All right, Kathleen, what did you think of Terry?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You know, it reminded me of the fairy tale version
of Succession? Have you ever seen Succession?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The show?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I watched like three episodes and by the end, I
was like, these are just the worst people.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
He's the exact opposite. He's the most earnest, kind person,
just trying to carry the company flag.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
That was the first multi generational guest we had. Who
runs a true multi generational family business. We haven't had
one before. It's a different dynamic.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
It's rare.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
There's also that old adage, "The first generation starts it, the second generation grows it, and the third generation ruins it." I mean, I mean he didn't clearly he
completely bucked that trend. But there's an old adage about.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That law of diminishing returns, right, kicks in, I heard
something to the family business like fifty percent of people
actually don't want to give it to their kids.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the increasing issue we see in some of the
succession work we have done is that the kids don't
want it. Ah, yeah, Right. Particularly because yeah, you can sell it, but a lot of times the kids don't want it. They want tochart their own path, and there are so many more options available to people today. You could tell thelegacy and the background was important to him. We meet some people who are emotional about thebusiness they built because it's their baby. He was emotional about the business because it was his grandfather's baby.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah, And what a commitment to to feel like you
need to get everyone over the line of retirement as
well because they had profit sharing. That was making me
well up a little bit. But you don't hear that
every day. To your point, usually people are in it
for themselves, mainly not their employees.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I thought it was pretty interesting also when he talked about selling the business. The fact that hisfather, who had been a longtime steward of the business said, "Close it up." And he said, "Nope, notgoing to do that."
Speaker 3 (14:03):
There's this interesting movement that I've been observing where people
are seeking to buy the mom and pop, laundry mat
or window cleaner. How do you think about that? If
you're looking to potentially go in and acquire someone else's business,
how do you counsel someone on that.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I do think the most important piece is how you
structure the transaction in terms of the handoff of the business.
Because most of the businesses that we're talking about that
people look to buy, it would be very difficult to
come in cold and just be like, I'm a smart person,
I'll figure it out. Oh okay, not that you can't,
but by the time you do, a lot of things
(14:41):
can go wrong. And so I think structuring something where
the seller has an incentive to pass it off to
you in the right way, has some trailing interest in
the business for at least a time, so that they
have every incentive to hand you their relationships, or hand
you their knowhow, or make sure that they haven't just
lock the door and left you the wrong key. All
(15:03):
that stuff matters a ton, And we do lend to
customers who are buying businesses, and I will tell you
that the first twelve to eighteen months is where it's
make or break. Okay, they either have that knowledge transfer
or they don't, and it's a good fit or it's not.
If you get those two things right, nothing's guaranteed, but
your odds go up a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, I'm hearing it's a little bit more complicated than
I think what's being pushed down the media right now. Like,
you come in, you get this business that's in the green,
you've got great branding skills, you repackage it, right, it's
this unsexy business, you make it cool and swaggy, and
then you get an operating partner to run the operations
(15:42):
of the business.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I think anybody who says, oh, yeah, well someone will
just take care of the operations, run screaming.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Run like the house is on fire.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yes, Like, oh it's a house cleaning business. Well, you know,
everybody will just show up and clean the houses. That'll
be fine. It's all about the sexy branding you put
onto that is insane because the first time someone doesn't
show up, or they break something, they knock the piece
of art off the wall that was worth a lot
of money, or you pick it.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
This is what half the internet's talking about right now. Correct,
So okay, correct, okay, you heard it here. People.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Step one to any good business is running a solid
operation and you should know this better than I do.
You're a branding expert. But like, a brand is not
how you tell other people what you do. A brand
is a megaphone for telling people what you already do.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Well.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
You can't say like, I'm a mediocre house cleaning company,
but if I tell everyone I'm a great housekeeping company,
then I'm a great out. No, you can tell everyone
you're a great housekeeping company when you are one.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Right, Steve Jobs would even say the brand has to
be so good because you're already doing what you say
you're going to do to the point where someone else
wants to tell someone else about what it is that
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Correct, So I think the Internet is wrong about that.
But we have a crisis of succession in small business
in this country, given what Terry talked about with the
retirement of the baby boom, the number of businesses that
are projected to turn over. And I encourage our clients
who are thinking about selling, decide when you are emotionally
ready and accept what it emotionally means to sell. Yes,
you should do it in a way that trains your
(17:09):
buyer to run it well, but that doesn't mean to
do what you would do, and they might take it
in a different direction, and they might turn around and
sell it again. They might decide you had a premium product,
but I see more market opportunity in the cheap and
cheerful sector, and I'm going to take it down market.
And if you're going to let that hurt your heart,
don't sell.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Do you see a lot of people doing what his
dad just said to do, which is let's just close
up shop. The legacy is what it is. We had
a really good run. Or is that a financial mistake
because you're sitting on all this equity that you're essentially.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Not totally depends on the business, Okay, And.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
If someone thinks they are a candidate for selling the business,
what would be their first step.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You need your network of advisors when you're a small business. Yes, your bank and your banker is apiece of that, but so is your accountant, so is your attorney, so is your insurance agent. You need a rangeof people who are giving you advice. And typically if you think about selling, I would get advice from acombination of people like that. There are business brokers who will help sell businesses.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I get emails from them all the time. I get
like ten a day.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, and those are the more traditional ones. There are
new school ones that are like web based marketplaces for
the same thing. Those certainly exist. As you get more
into the middle market, then you'll get into investment banking.
You'll hire someone who will come on and will actively
market your business, whether it's to private equity or to
other private sellers. That's when you get to be as
slightly larger business, although not necessarily as gargantuan as you
would think. So there's a pretty wide range of things.
(18:31):
It depends what you're selling for and what's important. We've
had clients who said I wanted to sell the business,
but all I cared about was that you took care
of my employees. I didn't care how much you paid
me for it, like i'd save for my own retirement. Yeah,
a little extra money was nice, but I wasn't trying
to get rich. I was trying to protect the employees
who worked for me all those years. And then you
meet others who are like, no, no, this is my retirement,
and you bet I care how much I sell this
(18:51):
for and I'm going to sell it to the highest bidder.
And there's nothing wrong with either of those things, and
in fact, on season two we dedicated an entire episode
to succession plan, so I encouraged all the listeners to
check it out. We'll drop it in the feed for
easy access.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
That's so helpful. It can change over time. But you
want to have an exit strategy in mind of where
you're headed.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And I think what sits behind that, Kathleen is just
like I tell people, before you think about starting a business,
have a Y. Before you think about selling a business,
have a why, because selling a business is just as
big a decision of starting a business, and so really
think about that. Okay, let's go back to Terry. After
selling Iverson & Company, Terry put all of his energy
into growing Champion Now and inspiring young people to get
(19:32):
excited about manufacturing. He had the idea in two thousand
and nine and incorporated it into a 501(c)(3) in 2012,
A huge source of inspiration for him was someone named
Harry Moser.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Reshoring was developed by Harry Moser. In the 1980s, when I first got involved in manufacturing,everybody was offshoring. Apprenticeships were being closed down, vocational and shop class wasbeing closed down and taken out of high schools. And you're talking about an economic powerhousethat the US even today is the eighth-largest economy in the world, just the manufacturing sector.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Reshoring is the process of moving manufacturing facilities and jobs back to the US. Many economistscredit America's golden age of manufacturing and its creation of good jobs with good wages, withbuilding the middle class in this country.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
For reshoring, the impact it would have on our country is that we would have way more people involvedin careers that can't be replicated or can't be taken over necessarily by AI. And there's a lot of peoplethat either have jobs that they're not satisfied with or that doesn't pay adequately. And as time goes onand the skill level that we need in our industry, which is very automated, very computerized, as a rule oras a consequence, the pay is increasing, especially for those that are most skilled.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Terry had already been doing a lot of speaking at
the time at colleges and technical schools, but reaching young
adults felt too late to make a significant impact.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I was committed to helping young people, and this just
seemed a really good marriage between my drive to mentor
young people and help young people in my career that
I was already in.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
After a while, he realized that he had to ignite
the passion earlier in someone's life to see real change.
This is where he took a few unorthodox steps. He's
written several books for kids and parents. He's gone to
tons of conferences. But the thing that he's most excited
about is Camp Champ.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
A lot of people are very jazzed, to use the term, about the camp we started called Camp Champ. Thatwas focused on middle school participants. And what we do is we have six different stations, and weteach them about manufacturing. But one of the keys, Ben, is we use high school students as mentorsfor the middle school students.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I'm super interested in this. I've been reading a lot about the reshoring movement, a lot of the advancedmanufacturing that's now coming out of Silicon Valley, where the nature of what you do, there's goingto be plenty of manufacturing jobs, but they're going to be very different. And training that workforce ofthe future, if we're going to bring a lot of stuff back onshore is not a small task.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
No no, no no. And what happens is as you
automate and as you advance in advanced manufacturing, you computerize,
and we haven't figured out quite yet how AI is
going to impact it. But what ends up happening is
in some ways you're more efficient and more productive, and
you still have a lot of needs for the workforce,
(22:37):
but the skill set just keeps going further up, and
it's a real struggle when we don't have enough people
in manufacturing. Right now, I think we have about twelve
million in the workforce, and there's currently half a million
or thereabouts positions open around the country, and there's projections
of three point eight to four million manufacturing positions by
(23:00):
twenty thirty three.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
This is something that always amazes me. Even on the
scale of the United States, those are huge numbers. But
as I talk to small business clients around the country,
both in manufacturing and other areas, I'm constantly just amazed
at the structural gap in employment that exists between the
jobs that people need and the jobs that people are
applying for and want to do. Even when sometimes those
(23:25):
jobs pay pretty well.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
They pay very well. I'm a big advocate in my
writing and my speaking of young people not going into
student debt, And I'm also a big advocate of, "If you are going to college, that's fine. Just make sure you know whatyou're going to college for and that's what you want to do, and make sure that you're not going intodebt for it." But if manufacturing is on the table and rarely is it on the table, so we need to solve that,right? Many times manufacturers, employers will pay for your upskilling for you as part of their package,so to speak. And manufacturers have been doing that for decades.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, it's amazing. I'm with people all the time. You say, oh,
I've got jobs, I just can't find people who either
can do them or want to do them. Yep, This is something that really resonates with us here at JPMorganChase. To help us serve ourcommunities and the businesses we work with, we invest in programs that help people prepare for goodpaying jobs in things like manufacturing and skilled trades, and we do that through training anddevelopment opportunities.Kathleen, I'm just fascinated by that not-for-profit he's running. I mean, it's so different than what hewas doing before. And this whole thing is a running theme for me, because I talk to clients all over thecountry. You have your own clients, I'm sure you hear some of this. In a world where on the one handwe hear, like, "Oh, jobs are tough for college graduates or jobs are tough in this sector." I far more oftenmeet clients who cannot find people with the skills they need than I do find people who say, "Myproblem is I have too many employees. I need to do layoffs." I just don't hear it that often.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yeah, both my hands are up, both hands. But I
think that is something people need to think about. And
he was speaking to that too, like, if you're going
to invest in college, it's a huge investment. You should
have a tangible, transferable skill coming out of that if
you're going to do it. And I think we're getting
to a point at least what I'm seeing is a
(25:22):
lot of these soft skills that are very like generic.
You're a jack or a Jacqueline of all trades and
you don't have something that is specific that runs deep
in terms of a skill set.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
There's something fundamental that's changed about college. Well, there are
many things that have changed about college, but one of
them is we are graduating a lot more people from college.
So it used to be that when you looked at
the percent of the population that went to college, it
was very small. So it could be this very high
minded academic because there were more jobs than people in
that space anyway, and.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
We're teaching you how to think than anything.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
And that was all fine. And now that doesn't really work anymore. There aren't enough of those sort ofesoteric, academic-y jobs around. That doesn't mean there aren't jobs, they're just different jobs. We've told people, "You have to go to college," but it depends for what. For what I saw on X earlier this week,
someone said, should we put colleges on the hook for
the first ten or twenty percent of college debt, would
(26:15):
they think differently about what they teach kids? And I
was like, oh, that's kind of smart.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I was like, oh, yeah, that they would think differently.
But I do think that there is a massive gap
in first of all, the range of education that's available
to get the skills they need. I think about our
community colleges in this country totally under leveraged in terms
of the capabilities they have, which are tremendous. But also, we spent the last 30 years telling people you couldn't do well if you didn't go to college, andthat's just not true. Now, I went to college. I have a kid in college. I'm not bemoaning a four-yearuniversity education for many people who want to go down that path. And Terry and I also talked a lotabout college. We've had some programs here at JPMorganChase, where we try to help people withwork-based learning opportunities, and apprenticeships, and other ways to connect with work thatdon't involve going to college.I mean, college is great, don't get me wrong, but for many careers it's not necessary. And so it reallyresonated with me that he thinks it's important that people only go to college when it's right for themand that they only take on debt if they're heading toward a career where that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
We have a lot of clients who are plumbers who
didn't go to college, who apprenticed as a plumber and
started their own plumbing or electoral contracting business or whatever,
who make an awful lot of money and an awful
lot of more than my kids' friends who went to college.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, to that point, do you think we're going to see,
especially with what's happening in tech. Do you think we're
going to see You talked a little bit about reshoring
and moving manufacturing back to the States, a bit more
things that you can do with your physical hands, your
actual physical labor. Is that going to be in higher
demand and more pursuit with AI and everything that's coming.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yes, although I would expand it a little bit. It is both things you can do with your hands and technicalexpertise in equipment that does stuff. A lot of the new manufacturing lines that are built areautomated manufacturing lines, but someone needs to run them and repair them, or be able todiagnose what's going wrong with them. So they say the most advanced manufacturing lines, and I thinkthis is particularly true in China, they don't even have lights in parts of them, because there's no peoplethere, but machines don't run 24 hours a day without help. I think about that. I think about the massiveinfrastructure build out that's going on to support AI.So yeah, sure, maybe college grads are going to be writing the new LLM model that comes out, butsomebody's got to go build the data center and the power plant that's going to support that data center.And all that physical infrastructure is massive and I think it's a huge opportunity for the next generationcoming up.I think this episode and Terry's story is a great bridge between so many things going on right now. WhenI think about reshoring technical expertise, manufacturing, when I think about buying and sellingbusinesses, this trend toward the younger generation wanting to be their own boss, I think there's aconfluence of events here that Terry's story speaks to multiple angles of. And it's not the story of 2025,it's a story of the past, but I think it tees up a lot of the things that I think Gen Z is starting to think aboutas they come into their prime working years.Terry, this has been fascinating. Two things. Well, first, I'd like to end with a question that I ask to all ofour guests, which is if you had one piece of advice for a business owner, an aspiring business owner, anaspiring entrepreneur, I'm sure you could probably write another book about that, but if you had onepiece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Different generations have different standards and different priorities. I'm a baby boomer and we'reretiring or passing in droves, leaving the workforce. But we probably didn't have the best work-lifebalance. Many of us could have done better, I'll include myself in that. And so future generations, that'sa big priority for them. And that may mean being an owner is not a good thing. And so make sure youknow what you're signing up for, because I've had people younger than me that went into ownership ofthe company and when they realized what it really was, they weren't so enthralled.I try to tell younger people that I would hire for management positions or very difficult positions, "Makesure your family is signing up for what you're signing up for, because they're going to be makingsacrifices and you may not be okay with having them make those sacrifices, but you need permission forthem, that you're not going to be at home as much as you thought you were going to be."
Speaker 2 (30:36):
It's fantastic, Terry, thank you for being here on the show.
It's been great having you.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Thank you, Ben. I'm honored to have the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
Next episode, we'll hear from a CEO who took an
unorthodox approach to well being a CEO.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And so I spent a lot of my own money
buying a position in.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
A healthcare startup, which is what Breath Diagnostics was at
that time.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase
for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you
back here soon.
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Every story has a hero. Some of them are very clearly heroes visibly, the muscles, magichammer/lightsaber/chainsaw, but sometimes they're unlikely heroes pulled into trials kicking andscreaming. Either way, what makes a hero is the willingness to stare down the challenge and thecourage to take it on, even if they have no idea how they're going to survive. Terry Iverson was staringdown a major challenge in 2009 when a client Iverson & Company had had for 80 years severed ties.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I don't know if we can make our way out
of this. It's easily seventy percent of what we did
at the time.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
This was a company founded in nineteen thirty one. It
had survived the ups and downs of the depression, wars,
shifting politics, social trade winds, huge financial losses, and more
over its eighty year history. It had survived it all,
first under Terry's grandfather, then Terry's dad, then Terry and.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
My dad was very adamant he wanted me to close
the business because the business model had changed so dramatically.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Terry's dad loomed large in his life, he had operated
Iverson & company under his own exacting standards, but this
time was different. Terry was in charge and he was
willing to stare that challenge down and take it head on.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I'm not going to close the business, I said, there's
people that I'd like to get to retirement age, and
so my goal was to double down and make sure
the company survived. But at the same time, I had
to also plan for after the company, because I wasn't
sure when that was, and forming CHAMPION Now was part of that.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And today's story is more than just the company surviving.
Terry is on a quest to save his entire industry.
Welcome to the Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Study for iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
(02:05):
There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on America.
They don't just drive our economy, they define our communities,
create opportunities, and inspire the next generation of dreamers and builders.
On the Unshakeables, we are sharing the daring moments of
business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories
(02:25):
of how they got through it. As always, Kathleen is here.
Kathleen welcome.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Glad to be back with you.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
This episode is super interesting to me because we've touched on this issue before. Labor, andspecifically the shortage of labor for manufacturing is an issue here in the US. Our guest today is notonly a huge champion for fixing that challenge, but he's also the third generation owner of a USmanufacturing company. On today's episode, Iverson & Company and CHAMPION Now! from Chicago,Illinois.As I mentioned at the top, Iverson & Company was founded in 1931. As it approaches 100 years ofbusiness, I was excited to talk to Terry. I've been doing a lot of research myself on manufacturing andreshoring, so it's a treat to talk to someone living it every day. Terry, welcome to The Unshakeables. It isgreat to have you here on a sunny afternoon.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Thank you, Ben. I appreciate the time and I appreciate
the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
I understand you're not only a small business owner, but
you're also a third generation business owner.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Iverson & Company was our family business that started in 1931 by my grandfather. My grandfather wasfrom about 1931 to probably sometime in the '60s. My dad started in 1958 and was active through themid '90s. And I started in 1980 and was active up until earlier this year.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Three generations of Iversons have led the company through historic moments and very differenteconomies. But one thing that never changes is that no matter how or where the business is, it will facean Unshakeables moment. Terry's grandfather pushed Iverson through the Great Depression and aworld war. Terry's father faced a huge threat to the company. It was a moment that could have shutdown the whole operation when Terry was in high school.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
He had had about a quarter million dollars embezzled, unbeknownst to him.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
If this was in the early '70s, that's like $2 million today. I mean, that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It was a lot of money then, it's a lot
of money now.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Terry's grandfather passed suddenly, leaving his father the company. He
had to get up to speed quickly, and he started
with the books.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
He understood numbers inside and out, and so he's going
through the financial it's like something's not right.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So Terry's dad went to visit the accountants and together
they looked at everything.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
They started going through and initially it was one hundred
and fifty grand and two hundred grand, and I think
they quit counting after two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
The office manager in the nineteen seventies was tasked paying
the bills. Instead of paying each bill each month, she
wrote out checks to herself a little at a time,
year over year. Terry's father could have gone to the police. Instead,
he set up a meeting with the employee.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
He said, "I don't know how much you've stolen from the company, but I know it's sizable. And you havea choice, either to go to jail or figure out a way to pay it back." He set up a payment plan. It wasn't aboutjustice from the standpoint of sending her to jail, which would've been devastating for her and itwouldn't be any better for him, because he wouldn't get any money back. I think somewhere I evenhave the file that I saved all these years. Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Over the next decade, as this payment plan ticked down,
Terry grew up. He went to college, got married, and
started a family. He was working in manufacturing, just not
for the family company. Even though his father had asked
a few times.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I almost immediately turned him down.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
You see, Terry's father had high standards, and Terry wasn't
sure he wanted to take on that level of pressure.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And it was really my wife that said, get over yourself.
Why don't you give it a shot? And I'm like, Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The first few years they weren't easy, and his father's
demands got more and more exacting. Then everything changed. Terry's
dad was diagnosed with colon cancer.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
So metaphorically and physically, I think I was twenty six
years old at the time. He handed me the keys
to the shop and he said, you're more than capable.
I'll mentor you, I'll answer your questions, but going forward,
even if I do survive, this is your gig to handle.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Terry managed to steer the company well, taking on new
lines of business that held steady until two thousand and
nine when Iverson & Company's longest most stable client, suddenly cut ties.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
So in 2009, Hardinge decided to restructure their distribution platform.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Okay, which was your largest supplier.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Right correct? And because my grandfather was so close to
the original founding entity. We had quite a bit of
stock in the family.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I know I've said that diversification is key, but then again,
they'd been in business together for almost one hundred years.
Through any ups and downs, the relationship had held.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I didn't think that it would involve us at all.
Over the years, there have been so many different changes,
and of course up and down the ladder, we were
immune to almost all the changes that would come about
because essentially we were family.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
But this time not close enough.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
It was dramatic. It's easily seventy percent of what we
did at the time. I think if the decision was
up to my dad, he would have signed off probably
that day and said, okay, yeah, we're done.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Terry chose to keep the business open with one caveat
his wife had to come on board.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So I said, if you can come to work with
me and helped me, then I'll go forward together.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
They expanded the business again. This time, rather than chase
new lines of machinery and distribution, they focused on rebuilding equipment.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
We expanded the service end of it, so we redefine ourselves.
And that's one thing that I'll say that my dad,
he was really good at adaptation and changes. The word
today is pivot. Now. I don't think that word was
used before. But he adapted really, really well. So I
learned Terry figure it out.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Terry figured this one out, but companies were having to come up with novel solutions across thecountry. By the 2010s, more and more companies were offshoring, moving their manufacturing facilitiesand jobs to lower wage countries. We'll come back to that later. But in 2009, as Terry pushed ahead withIverson and Sons, he started thinking about a bigger issue. Yes, he wanted to solidify his business'future, but he started thinking about how to save manufacturing in America.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I had this idea of changing perceptions. I had spoken to high school, and college, and technical collegeyouth about the importance of manufacturing, and so I'm trying to sit down and put thoughts together.And so I started doing initials, Change How Manufacturing, Change How Manufacturing Perceived,Change How American Manufacturing's Perceived. Oh, cool. CHAMP
Speaker 2 (09:25):
The acronym CHAMP quickly expanded to be CHAMPION, Changing How American Manufacturing isPerceived in Our Nation, and Terry wanted things to change now. So the idea was called CHAMPION Now!.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
In the very beginning, Champion Now was a concept, and
I knew what I wanted to do, but I hadn't
really figured it all out, And to be quite honest,
more times often than I could tell you, I kept
trying to push away from the table.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Terry was busy wrapped up in the day to day
operations of Iverson & Company, spending time with his grandkids
and coaching soccer. But the pull of Champion Now was
so strong Terry didn't have a choice but to answer
the call.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I kept meeting people that kept getting me to the
next level of either focus or elevation for the concept.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
On a thirteen hour flight to Taiwan, Terry finally spelled
everything out.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
At the end of the trip, I had about forty
thousand words. It would be such a waste if I
didn't do something with it. I just thought, you know what,
if I leave the industry or something. I'm so ingrained
and so involved in technical education for manufacturing, it would
be such a waste if I didn't do something with it.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
But forty thousand words of Terry does not a book make.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I ended up interviewing friends, acquaintances, relatives, some in manufacturing
and some not even in manufacturing.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
That book was about careers in manufacturing, and it was a guide to figure out if that path was right fora young person. It was addressed to kids and their parents. He finally published the book in 2018 and letCHAMPION Now! simmer on the back burner. In the meantime, he continued pushing Iverson &Company onward. You ran the business for 45 years, right, I mean, a long time. And then you decidedyou were ready to retire, right?
Speaker 1 (11:18):
My dad, he was very adamant and he actually wanted me to close the business for about 10 yearsbecause the business model had changed so dramatically, but I'm not going to close the business.There's people that I'd like to get to retirement age. They're 40-year employees. And we had a reallygood profit sharing program that he had started. Eventually, I'll try to sell the company, but I will notclose the company.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I assume at that point you didn't have your own
children who wanted to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
We had three children, all of them tried at different
points to work at the company. But ultimately the market
had changed and the business model had changed so it
really wasn't the perfect opportunity based on what it used
to be.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
After a lot of soul-searching, Terry sold the company to a private party. No longer the Iverson of Iverson& Company, Terry could focus all of his efforts on the future and on the future of manufacturing in America. All right, Kathleen, what did you think of Terry?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You know, it reminded me of the fairy tale version
of Succession? Have you ever seen Succession?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The show?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I watched like three episodes and by the end, I
was like, these are just the worst people.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
He's the exact opposite. He's the most earnest, kind person,
just trying to carry the company flag.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
That was the first multi generational guest we had. Who
runs a true multi generational family business. We haven't had
one before. It's a different dynamic.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
It's rare.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
There's also that old adage, "The first generation starts it, the second generation grows it, and the third generation ruins it." I mean, I mean he didn't clearly he
completely bucked that trend. But there's an old adage about.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That law of diminishing returns, right, kicks in, I heard
something to the family business like fifty percent of people
actually don't want to give it to their kids.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the increasing issue we see in some of the
succession work we have done is that the kids don't
want it. Ah, yeah, Right. Particularly because yeah, you can sell it, but a lot of times the kids don't want it. They want tochart their own path, and there are so many more options available to people today. You could tell thelegacy and the background was important to him. We meet some people who are emotional about thebusiness they built because it's their baby. He was emotional about the business because it was his grandfather's baby.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah, And what a commitment to to feel like you
need to get everyone over the line of retirement as
well because they had profit sharing. That was making me
well up a little bit. But you don't hear that
every day. To your point, usually people are in it
for themselves, mainly not their employees.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I thought it was pretty interesting also when he talked about selling the business. The fact that hisfather, who had been a longtime steward of the business said, "Close it up." And he said, "Nope, notgoing to do that."
Speaker 3 (14:03):
There's this interesting movement that I've been observing where people
are seeking to buy the mom and pop, laundry mat
or window cleaner. How do you think about that? If
you're looking to potentially go in and acquire someone else's business,
how do you counsel someone on that.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I do think the most important piece is how you
structure the transaction in terms of the handoff of the business.
Because most of the businesses that we're talking about that
people look to buy, it would be very difficult to
come in cold and just be like, I'm a smart person,
I'll figure it out. Oh okay, not that you can't,
but by the time you do, a lot of things
(14:41):
can go wrong. And so I think structuring something where
the seller has an incentive to pass it off to
you in the right way, has some trailing interest in
the business for at least a time, so that they
have every incentive to hand you their relationships, or hand
you their knowhow, or make sure that they haven't just
lock the door and left you the wrong key. All
(15:03):
that stuff matters a ton, And we do lend to
customers who are buying businesses, and I will tell you
that the first twelve to eighteen months is where it's
make or break. Okay, they either have that knowledge transfer
or they don't, and it's a good fit or it's not.
If you get those two things right, nothing's guaranteed, but
your odds go up a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, I'm hearing it's a little bit more complicated than
I think what's being pushed down the media right now. Like,
you come in, you get this business that's in the green,
you've got great branding skills, you repackage it, right, it's
this unsexy business, you make it cool and swaggy, and
then you get an operating partner to run the operations
(15:42):
of the business.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I think anybody who says, oh, yeah, well someone will
just take care of the operations, run screaming.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Run like the house is on fire.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yes, Like, oh it's a house cleaning business. Well, you know,
everybody will just show up and clean the houses. That'll
be fine. It's all about the sexy branding you put
onto that is insane because the first time someone doesn't
show up, or they break something, they knock the piece
of art off the wall that was worth a lot
of money, or you pick it.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
This is what half the internet's talking about right now. Correct,
So okay, correct, okay, you heard it here. People.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Step one to any good business is running a solid
operation and you should know this better than I do.
You're a branding expert. But like, a brand is not
how you tell other people what you do. A brand
is a megaphone for telling people what you already do.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Well.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
You can't say like, I'm a mediocre house cleaning company,
but if I tell everyone I'm a great housekeeping company,
then I'm a great out. No, you can tell everyone
you're a great housekeeping company when you are one.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Right, Steve Jobs would even say the brand has to
be so good because you're already doing what you say
you're going to do to the point where someone else
wants to tell someone else about what it is that
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Correct, So I think the Internet is wrong about that.
But we have a crisis of succession in small business
in this country, given what Terry talked about with the
retirement of the baby boom, the number of businesses that
are projected to turn over. And I encourage our clients
who are thinking about selling, decide when you are emotionally
ready and accept what it emotionally means to sell. Yes,
you should do it in a way that trains your
(17:09):
buyer to run it well, but that doesn't mean to
do what you would do, and they might take it
in a different direction, and they might turn around and
sell it again. They might decide you had a premium product,
but I see more market opportunity in the cheap and
cheerful sector, and I'm going to take it down market.
And if you're going to let that hurt your heart,
don't sell.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Do you see a lot of people doing what his
dad just said to do, which is let's just close
up shop. The legacy is what it is. We had
a really good run. Or is that a financial mistake
because you're sitting on all this equity that you're essentially.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Not totally depends on the business, Okay, And.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
If someone thinks they are a candidate for selling the business,
what would be their first step.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
You need your network of advisors when you're a small business. Yes, your bank and your banker is apiece of that, but so is your accountant, so is your attorney, so is your insurance agent. You need a rangeof people who are giving you advice. And typically if you think about selling, I would get advice from acombination of people like that. There are business brokers who will help sell businesses.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I get emails from them all the time. I get
like ten a day.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, and those are the more traditional ones. There are
new school ones that are like web based marketplaces for
the same thing. Those certainly exist. As you get more
into the middle market, then you'll get into investment banking.
You'll hire someone who will come on and will actively
market your business, whether it's to private equity or to
other private sellers. That's when you get to be as
slightly larger business, although not necessarily as gargantuan as you
would think. So there's a pretty wide range of things.
(18:31):
It depends what you're selling for and what's important. We've
had clients who said I wanted to sell the business,
but all I cared about was that you took care
of my employees. I didn't care how much you paid
me for it, like i'd save for my own retirement. Yeah,
a little extra money was nice, but I wasn't trying
to get rich. I was trying to protect the employees
who worked for me all those years. And then you
meet others who are like, no, no, this is my retirement,
and you bet I care how much I sell this
(18:51):
for and I'm going to sell it to the highest bidder.
And there's nothing wrong with either of those things, and
in fact, on season two we dedicated an entire episode
to succession plan, so I encouraged all the listeners to
check it out. We'll drop it in the feed for
easy access.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
That's so helpful. It can change over time. But you
want to have an exit strategy in mind of where
you're headed.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And I think what sits behind that, Kathleen is just
like I tell people, before you think about starting a business,
have a Y. Before you think about selling a business,
have a why, because selling a business is just as
big a decision of starting a business, and so really
think about that. Okay, let's go back to Terry. After
selling Iverson & Company, Terry put all of his energy
into growing Champion Now and inspiring young people to get
(19:32):
excited about manufacturing. He had the idea in two thousand
and nine and incorporated it into a 501(c)(3) in 2012,
A huge source of inspiration for him was someone named
Harry Moser.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Reshoring was developed by Harry Moser. In the 1980s, when I first got involved in manufacturing,everybody was offshoring. Apprenticeships were being closed down, vocational and shop class wasbeing closed down and taken out of high schools. And you're talking about an economic powerhousethat the US even today is the eighth-largest economy in the world, just the manufacturing sector.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Reshoring is the process of moving manufacturing facilities and jobs back to the US. Many economistscredit America's golden age of manufacturing and its creation of good jobs with good wages, withbuilding the middle class in this country.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
For reshoring, the impact it would have on our country is that we would have way more people involvedin careers that can't be replicated or can't be taken over necessarily by AI. And there's a lot of peoplethat either have jobs that they're not satisfied with or that doesn't pay adequately. And as time goes onand the skill level that we need in our industry, which is very automated, very computerized, as a rule oras a consequence, the pay is increasing, especially for those that are most skilled.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Terry had already been doing a lot of speaking at
the time at colleges and technical schools, but reaching young
adults felt too late to make a significant impact.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I was committed to helping young people, and this just
seemed a really good marriage between my drive to mentor
young people and help young people in my career that
I was already in.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
After a while, he realized that he had to ignite
the passion earlier in someone's life to see real change.
This is where he took a few unorthodox steps. He's
written several books for kids and parents. He's gone to
tons of conferences. But the thing that he's most excited
about is Camp Champ.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
A lot of people are very jazzed, to use the term, about the camp we started called Camp Champ. Thatwas focused on middle school participants. And what we do is we have six different stations, and weteach them about manufacturing. But one of the keys, Ben, is we use high school students as mentorsfor the middle school students.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I'm super interested in this. I've been reading a lot about the reshoring movement, a lot of the advancedmanufacturing that's now coming out of Silicon Valley, where the nature of what you do, there's goingto be plenty of manufacturing jobs, but they're going to be very different. And training that workforce ofthe future, if we're going to bring a lot of stuff back onshore is not a small task.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
No no, no no. And what happens is as you
automate and as you advance in advanced manufacturing, you computerize,
and we haven't figured out quite yet how AI is
going to impact it. But what ends up happening is
in some ways you're more efficient and more productive, and
you still have a lot of needs for the workforce,
(22:37):
but the skill set just keeps going further up, and
it's a real struggle when we don't have enough people
in manufacturing. Right now, I think we have about twelve
million in the workforce, and there's currently half a million
or thereabouts positions open around the country, and there's projections
of three point eight to four million manufacturing positions by
(23:00):
twenty thirty three.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
This is something that always amazes me. Even on the
scale of the United States, those are huge numbers. But
as I talk to small business clients around the country,
both in manufacturing and other areas, I'm constantly just amazed
at the structural gap in employment that exists between the
jobs that people need and the jobs that people are
applying for and want to do. Even when sometimes those
(23:25):
jobs pay pretty well.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
They pay very well. I'm a big advocate in my
writing and my speaking of young people not going into
student debt, And I'm also a big advocate of, "If you are going to college, that's fine. Just make sure you know whatyou're going to college for and that's what you want to do, and make sure that you're not going intodebt for it." But if manufacturing is on the table and rarely is it on the table, so we need to solve that,right? Many times manufacturers, employers will pay for your upskilling for you as part of their package,so to speak. And manufacturers have been doing that for decades.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, it's amazing. I'm with people all the time. You say, oh,
I've got jobs, I just can't find people who either
can do them or want to do them. Yep, This is something that really resonates with us here at JPMorganChase. To help us serve ourcommunities and the businesses we work with, we invest in programs that help people prepare for goodpaying jobs in things like manufacturing and skilled trades, and we do that through training anddevelopment opportunities.Kathleen, I'm just fascinated by that not-for-profit he's running. I mean, it's so different than what hewas doing before. And this whole thing is a running theme for me, because I talk to clients all over thecountry. You have your own clients, I'm sure you hear some of this. In a world where on the one handwe hear, like, "Oh, jobs are tough for college graduates or jobs are tough in this sector." I far more oftenmeet clients who cannot find people with the skills they need than I do find people who say, "Myproblem is I have too many employees. I need to do layoffs." I just don't hear it that often.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yeah, both my hands are up, both hands. But I
think that is something people need to think about. And
he was speaking to that too, like, if you're going
to invest in college, it's a huge investment. You should
have a tangible, transferable skill coming out of that if
you're going to do it. And I think we're getting
to a point at least what I'm seeing is a
(25:22):
lot of these soft skills that are very like generic.
You're a jack or a Jacqueline of all trades and
you don't have something that is specific that runs deep
in terms of a skill set.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
There's something fundamental that's changed about college. Well, there are
many things that have changed about college, but one of
them is we are graduating a lot more people from college.
So it used to be that when you looked at
the percent of the population that went to college, it
was very small. So it could be this very high
minded academic because there were more jobs than people in
that space anyway, and.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
We're teaching you how to think than anything.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
And that was all fine. And now that doesn't really work anymore. There aren't enough of those sort ofesoteric, academic-y jobs around. That doesn't mean there aren't jobs, they're just different jobs. We've told people, "You have to go to college," but it depends for what. For what I saw on X earlier this week,
someone said, should we put colleges on the hook for
the first ten or twenty percent of college debt, would
(26:15):
they think differently about what they teach kids? And I
was like, oh, that's kind of smart.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I was like, oh, yeah, that they would think differently.
But I do think that there is a massive gap
in first of all, the range of education that's available
to get the skills they need. I think about our
community colleges in this country totally under leveraged in terms
of the capabilities they have, which are tremendous. But also, we spent the last 30 years telling people you couldn't do well if you didn't go to college, andthat's just not true. Now, I went to college. I have a kid in college. I'm not bemoaning a four-yearuniversity education for many people who want to go down that path. And Terry and I also talked a lotabout college. We've had some programs here at JPMorganChase, where we try to help people withwork-based learning opportunities, and apprenticeships, and other ways to connect with work thatdon't involve going to college.I mean, college is great, don't get me wrong, but for many careers it's not necessary. And so it reallyresonated with me that he thinks it's important that people only go to college when it's right for themand that they only take on debt if they're heading toward a career where that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
We have a lot of clients who are plumbers who
didn't go to college, who apprenticed as a plumber and
started their own plumbing or electoral contracting business or whatever,
who make an awful lot of money and an awful
lot of more than my kids' friends who went to college.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, to that point, do you think we're going to see,
especially with what's happening in tech. Do you think we're
going to see You talked a little bit about reshoring
and moving manufacturing back to the States, a bit more
things that you can do with your physical hands, your
actual physical labor. Is that going to be in higher
demand and more pursuit with AI and everything that's coming.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yes, although I would expand it a little bit. It is both things you can do with your hands and technicalexpertise in equipment that does stuff. A lot of the new manufacturing lines that are built areautomated manufacturing lines, but someone needs to run them and repair them, or be able todiagnose what's going wrong with them. So they say the most advanced manufacturing lines, and I thinkthis is particularly true in China, they don't even have lights in parts of them, because there's no peoplethere, but machines don't run 24 hours a day without help. I think about that. I think about the massiveinfrastructure build out that's going on to support AI.So yeah, sure, maybe college grads are going to be writing the new LLM model that comes out, butsomebody's got to go build the data center and the power plant that's going to support that data center.And all that physical infrastructure is massive and I think it's a huge opportunity for the next generationcoming up.I think this episode and Terry's story is a great bridge between so many things going on right now. WhenI think about reshoring technical expertise, manufacturing, when I think about buying and sellingbusinesses, this trend toward the younger generation wanting to be their own boss, I think there's aconfluence of events here that Terry's story speaks to multiple angles of. And it's not the story of 2025,it's a story of the past, but I think it tees up a lot of the things that I think Gen Z is starting to think aboutas they come into their prime working years.Terry, this has been fascinating. Two things. Well, first, I'd like to end with a question that I ask to all ofour guests, which is if you had one piece of advice for a business owner, an aspiring business owner, anaspiring entrepreneur, I'm sure you could probably write another book about that, but if you had onepiece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Different generations have different standards and different priorities. I'm a baby boomer and we'reretiring or passing in droves, leaving the workforce. But we probably didn't have the best work-lifebalance. Many of us could have done better, I'll include myself in that. And so future generations, that'sa big priority for them. And that may mean being an owner is not a good thing. And so make sure youknow what you're signing up for, because I've had people younger than me that went into ownership ofthe company and when they realized what it really was, they weren't so enthralled.I try to tell younger people that I would hire for management positions or very difficult positions, "Makesure your family is signing up for what you're signing up for, because they're going to be makingsacrifices and you may not be okay with having them make those sacrifices, but you need permission forthem, that you're not going to be at home as much as you thought you were going to be."
Speaker 2 (30:36):
It's fantastic, Terry, thank you for being here on the show.
It's been great having you.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Thank you, Ben. I'm honored to have the opportunity.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
Next episode, we'll hear from a CEO who took an
unorthodox approach to well being a CEO.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And so I spent a lot of my own money
buying a position in.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
A healthcare startup, which is what Breath Diagnostics was at
that time.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase
for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you
back here soon.
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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