March 24, 2026 • 31 mins
Nubia Perez had a plan for her life — marry abroad, raise trilingual kids and build something global. But when her father fell ill, Gretna Machine Shop needed her more than her plans did. The family business was suddenly without direction, and Nubia stepped in to put out fires. But the business didn’t need a firefighter — it needed a leader. For a decade, both Nubia and the company muddled through what she calls the "dark ages," until one day, a children's movie gave her the answer she'd been looking for.
Join Ben Walter and Kathleen Griffith as they talk to Nubia about stepping up unexpectedly, building an oil and gas business in Houston (it’s a good place for it!), and why flat leadership doesn’t mean leaderless. These are The Unshakeables.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ruby .
Small business stories are so often defined by the path
of their CEOs, but in the case of Gretna Machine
Shop from Houston, Texas, a good chunk of their last
ten years was defined by not having a CEO. Nubia Perez,
daughter of the founder, called that time period the dark
(00:25):
years of Gretna's history.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It was a good ten years, and it wasn't that
the company was not successful, but I call it the
dark years because of the image of us not truly
knowing what was happening.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Her father died in twenty twelve. He left the company
to Nubia, her mother and her sister, who was in
charge then, your mom?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
That was part of the problem. There was no clear leadership.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No one that whole time, or just the three of
you were running the company.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
My mom was president, my sister and I vice president,
but there's no clear functions for those titles. At the time,
we didn't have strong policies and procedures, and so it
really just started crumbling.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Until the company reached one of those inflection points that
changes everything. Nubia knew if Gretna was going to survive,
they needed to find a leader, and she had a
sinking feeling that that leader might be her.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It literally was an epiphany. It became very parent that
there's no one else who was meant for this role.
Then me, I just had to convince everyone else I
was the one.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Welcome to The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
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.
(01:58):
On the Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring moments of business
owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of
how they got through it. Kathleen is here and we've
got a really interesting story today. It's the story of
a CEO. For a lot of small businesses, the CEO
is the business, which is definitely true for Gretna. That
(02:19):
also means that the stress of the CEO is the
stress of the business and vice versa.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, I'm really excited to dive into this one.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Then let's get into it. On today's episode, Gretna Machine
Shop from Houston, Texas. Fun Fact Gretna Machine shop is
named after Gretna, Louisiana. I know, I just said it
was in Houston and it's always been there, but the
Perez family who started and runs Gretna wasn't always in town.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Gretna was started in 1980 by my mother and my father. So my dad was a machinist in Colombia, whichis where my family is originally from. And in the late '60s he came over to the United States. It wasduring the Vietnam War, so they were giving visas and opening up the doors to welders and machinists.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
We could still use a few more of those, yes.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And he came over in his early 20s looking for an adventure. The one friend he had was in NewOrleans, so he ended up in New Orleans. And then went back, married my mom. He was working for Baker Oil Tools in Louisiana. And Baker asked my dad to move to Houston to work for the company, buthe decided to open up his own shop and just do Baker Machine Components. And in Gretna, Louisiana iswhere my sister and I were born, so that's why the company's called Gretna Machine Shop.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
As it turns out, Houston was a great spot to
start a company that manufactured precision components for the oil
and gas industry. If you think of Texas, you may
think of football, but you probably also think of oil,
and that association has been built by small businesses over time.
Big oil is the star of the show, but it's
the small businesses in oil and gas that make the
whole production possible.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Pretty much, from nineteen eighty until we started diversifying into
other industries only about fifteen years ago, it was one
hundred percent oil and gas. And that's how we started.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And what do you remember about those early years.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
My dad was a manual machinist, so I have very vivid memories of him smoking a cigarette while he's ona manual mill, which of course would not be allowed nowadays.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It was just normal. It was normal.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I was four or five years old, and back then
everything was paper checks, so my mom would give me
a check to give to the machinist and I would
run out to the shop floor, hand it to them
and come back and get another paper check. Having a
four or five year old running around in a machine
shop with metal shavings probably not allowed. Anymore. The strongest
(04:51):
memories just the scent and the smell of the machine oil.
It's a mixture of coolant and oil, and they say,
you're scent is one of your strongest memories.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Nubia and her sister Nancy got to know that smell
very well. Growing up. They spent their summers at the shop.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
And it was like either stay home or you come
work for us at the shop with my mom helping
with the accounting or the filing. And this was before
computer so it was a lot of handwriting and I
found it to be dreadfully boring and I hated it.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So when Nubia considered her own future, she knew Houston
was the perfect place to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, and that's a big no. The dream at this
point was to get as far away as possible from Houston.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She'd grown up going to visit family in Colombia.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Traveling and being in different cultures and being in that
environment was always very compelling to me.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
She made it a point to stay as far away
from Houston as possible. She majored in international studies and
got a master's in sustainable international development.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I was convinced that I was going to go work
for Greenpeace or go work for the un. Mary Brazilian
live in London, have our children in different countries.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Eventually her job did bring her back to Houston and she lived downtown traveling for business andpleasure. When you're young, before you have kids and you're single. Yeah it was great. But then you didn't. So what happened?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
There was some writing on the wall that there was going to be some layoffs at the company I wasworking for, and my dad started getting sick. He had already, at that point, had two valve replacementsand a pacemaker put in. So combination of those two things. I knew deep down that my calling was tocome back to the company. It was what my dad had expressed to me privately that he had alwayswanted. But I fought it.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
It, really deeply fought it. I mean, even considered changing
a career she loved just to avoid Gretna.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I had looked at pharmaceutical sales. I had looked at teaching,
I'd looked at anything under the sun except coming back
to Gretna. I really really did not want to come back.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
There was only one thing that could change Nubia's mind,
and it wasn't her parents. It wasn't her sister. In fact,
it took some divine inspiration.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
We're Catholic, and I ended up going to mass that Sunday. And the priest says, "I'm going to tell y'all astory about how I had the calling to become a priest." And he starts telling the story of how he did notwant to be a priest, and he tried to negotiate and say, "Hey, how about this? I'll have six sons and I'llmake them all be priests, but I don't want to. I have a family." So I left that day. I was like, "Oh. I get it. Iget it. Okay. I'm going to do this." It's not what I wanted to do, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Although Nubia was ready to accept her fate, she had
a condition for her return. She took her parents out
to dinner and made her pitch.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
If Gretna can support me getting my MBA, then I'll
come work in the family business for two years. That
was May first, twenty twelve. I started my MBA at
Rice University in August, and my father passed away in September.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
The death of her father marks the end of what
Nubia refers to as the golden years of Gretna.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I call it the golden years from nineteen eighty to
twenty twelve for a couple of reasons. The company withstood
the ups and downs of oil and gas.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, which is not easy.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Which is not easy, and that is an impressive milestone
and something to be very proud of, just to withstand.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
The late eighties were tough, after the first bust. eighties
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And then again the nineties, so just that cyclical nature
of the business. Because we were one hundred percent oil
and gas.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Through all those cycles, Gretna seemed fine.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You just know that your parents will take care of things. And I didn't really truly understand all the nutsand bolts of what was happening within the company. Then comes what I call the dark years between2012 up until probably 2023.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's quite a long.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
It was good ten years, a good ten years, and
what I know now at that time there was no
clear leadership or no clear direction. Because Gretna had always
been fine, we just assumed that things were just continue the.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Way they are, and for a while things did. The
company stayed relatively stable, They had their oil and gas
contracts and Nubia had branched out into aerospace more on
that in a moment, and they had their biggest gear
ever in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
But I call it the dark years because of the
image of us not truly knowing what was happening. From
a cultural standpoint.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Who was in charge then your mom, So that was part.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Of the problem. There was no clear leadership. There were
employees at the time, but it was very fragmented.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And what were you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Oh, I'm a fire extinguisher. I remember coming into work
run to the problem, literally not knowing what my day
was going to be like. And I remember being very proud of that atthe time of, "Oh, I just go where the problem is." Whether it's people not wearing the right uniforms towe have to get a new insurance or we need to revamp our handbook, so all over the place. Because afreshly minted MBAer, I thought I knew it all. I was not involved at all in customer facing, acquiring newcustomers, talking to customers. There was just other things going on. And we just always assumedGretna would continue the way it's going.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That's not to say Nubia wasn't making strategic decisions. She was,
in fact, diversifying from oil and gas into aerospace and
federal contracts was an initiative she had led.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
In order to participate in the aerospace industry you have to have certain certifications, not just ISO, buta quality certification called AS9100, which is very rigid. So we revamped our quality managementsystem during this time in order to be able to participate in the aerospace industry.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And so all this time what you called the dark ages.
Who was in charge? No one that whole time, loosely.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
In charge was my mom's president, my sister, and I
vice president. And I know no one can see you,
but in quotation works because there's no clear roles or
functions for those titles.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
At the time, just the three of you were running
the company.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It was a time where I thought leadership by consensus
was a way to go. We were just doing what
we needed to do to survive.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Okay, Kathleen, this seems like a great time to talk
a little more about Gretna and Nubia's story. What'd you
think of the story, what'd you think of her business?
Speaker 3 (11:34):
For me, this wasn't a story about growth or hype
This was a story about someone who stayed when it
was easier to walk away.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Oh that's an interesting observation.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Say more, she's not someone who is like bullishly hard
charging into being the leader of this company, and her
life could have looked so much different going into international
sustainable development.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
For me, this was less a story about the business,
although it's fascinating, and more a story about the business's
CEO and how the business's CEO's journey evolved along with
that business.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I could not agree more.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Can we talk a little bit about leadership and just
how the business was structured too, because I'm curious to
know what you think on that score. Coming out of
like the dark ages, right, she talked about a decade
of darkness where there was no leadership and no one
was in charge. Leadership in general like flat structures, and
that's getting a lot of heat right now in the market.
(12:31):
As a small company, normally you have one person who's
in charge, and that shows that you've got a level
of decisiveness as a company, and then you have people
who are experts at what they do. She didn't have
that for a while, and then they moved to that
sort of model. So I'm curious to know what you think.
What is the inflection point where someone actually really does
(12:52):
need to build out middle management or senior leadership team,
like separate from this business.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, there's no right answer to that. There's always there's
an inflection point when you go from zero to one,
and there's an inflection point when you go from one
to two, and then there's another one when you get
to about twenty five because everyone can't sit in a
room together and have a conversation, and somewhere between that
and two hundred is when it changes, because at two
hundred you can't know everyone, and that means you need
a leadership team.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
I think that thing to punctuate for people is early days,
it really just is you as a founder. And a
lot of the founders I speak to are like, well,
if I had a senior leadership team in place, and
if I had a GM or COO, then we'd be
in a radically different place. And it takes a while
to get there.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah. But the more amazing part for me was not how many people are how flat or how tiered, it washow long they went with no one in charge. I kept asking about it because I kept thinking, "How does thatwork? Who decides? What happens when people disagree?" And I know they're family and it soundslike they're very close and that's beautiful. And by the way, I should add, the reason I kept pushing on itis because it's not uncommon in family owned businesses to have these ill-defined roles where peopledo what they want when they want. Everyone just gravitates toward what they like or what they'regood at. And I think that does a disservice to the business. It's not that it can't work for a while, but asshe found out, it can't work forever. And so, I think it is pretty common among these family businesses,partially because people don't want to face into it because it means making choices. And choices aboutpeople, the same people who sit around the Thanksgiving dinner table together, and that's hard. Butlet's get back to Nubia.Gretna was certainly established in the right spot, but like anything else, that's not enough to totallyisolate it from global patterns, and especially global pandemics.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
COVID exposed the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
A friend of mine used to say, when the tide
goes out, you find out who's not wearing a bathing
suit exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
We went from twenty nineteen being our highest grossing year
to just plummeting. And because we didn't have a strong framework,
strong vision, strong policies, it really just started crumbling. And
the biggest outcome of that, You've asked it now several times,
who was in charge and can't help it?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Well?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I couldn't answer.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
That, And once again, divine inspiration led Nubia to her
next step.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
It was December twenty twenty two, is during the holidays,
and with little kids and nieces and nephews Frozen. It
was the rave.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's the movie Frozen the Juggernaut that introduced sisters Elsa
and Anna to the Disney canon. While half watching the
movie with her kids, Nubia was busy studying Gretna's new ORG.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Chart, like who's going to lead this company? And in
Frozen two one, Elsa goes down to the cave and
she's looking for the fifth Spirit. And then she goes
into this cave and she realized I'm the fifth Spirit.
It literally was an epiphany as I'm sitting on my
couch and I'm looking at the ORG chart. It became
very apparent that there was no one else who was
(15:46):
quote unquote meant for this role then me. I am
one of the owners. I grew up in the family business,
I have my MBA, and I wanted it as much
as deep down I probably didn't want to admit that
I take leadership very seriously, and I knew that it
was time for me to truly take the reins of
this company.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Nubia went to talk to her mother and sister shortly
after her epiphany.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
My mom was one hundred percent supportive. She said, this
is actually what your dad had always wanted. My sister
was supportive as well.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
With her mother and sister backing her, she went back
to work after the holidays to address the company.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I gave a big speech, and I said, all right,
it's time. It was more for me than for everyone else,
but I was basically laying my qualifications as to why
I should be the person to be in charge of
the company.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And what did you do when you took the reins.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
The first six months, I sat on our shop floor
and I did what I call an internship in the company.
So I just sat and watched and learned more on
the operational side of the company and I would talk
to the guys at the time to say, Nubia, it's
so good to see on the shop floor, it's good
to have you here, and I think that's what they need.
They just needed some more leadership and a true vision
(17:04):
of where the company was going to go.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Nubia also enlisted the help of a professional organization called
Vistage and got an executive coach.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
She was the one who first called me CEO and
really helped me talk things out and really make sense
of what my role was. But more importantly is through Vistage,
I was introduced to EOS, which is entrepreneur operating system.
It creates a framework for us to take our vision
(17:36):
and bring it down to an accountability chart with very
specific roles and responsibilities, making sure that all the right
people are on the right seats, all based on our values,
and creating a very strong culture.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
She got off to a strong start, but she still
had to face into the realities of running a small business.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
The manufacturing business is tough, whether it was cash flow
or whether it was having to let someone go who'd
been here for twenty five years. It was having to
have hard conversations with my sister. Whatever those moments were,
I call it the crying in the shower moment, when
you're just I can't, I can't do this. I start crying.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So she asked for help from the one person who
knew the company like she did, the former CEO.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I remember going to my dad to the cemetery. Literally getting on my knees and be like, "I don't want todo this. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to move to London and raise my international kids." AndI was looking up and I remember saying, "Just give me a sign. Give me a sign, please." And the treeswere swaying and the branches would just go back and forth, back and forth, and I took as a sign of,"Just got to keep going. Just keep going." I joke that my dad has helped the company more from heaventhan when he was here, because there's so many random just, "Okay, well that was so weird." Wewould have an inspector leave and I would get a phone call a couple hours later saying, "I just saw youguys on a website and I'm a QC inspector, just wondering if you have any openings." Trying to meetpayroll some weeks, and there would be moments where we would just get this random check for acouple thousand dollars because of a customer that forgot to pay three years ago.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And Nubia is leading with bravery and intention. She doesn't
hide from the struggles and has found more creative ways
to move Gretna into their next chapter.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So having those very hard conversations with our vendors of hey,
I know we owe you this, are you okay with
this month's this week and our promise by next week?
And we all do it. Maybe a lot of companies
won't admit it, but that's part of the solution is not hiding and having those conversationswith your vendors. The other aspect of it is the elimination of operational waste. My guys get excitedabout getting a tool that will help reduce the time from 40 minutes to five minutes or whatever the casemay be. So I'll push them sometimes like, "Yeah, but the material sat there for five days before it evengot to the machine. So let's try shaving off weeks and days." The non-sexy part of it is oftentimes on theoperational side, the flow from the material, to the machine, to inspection, back to the machine, toshipping and receiving, sitting there getting... All of that process, there's ways to save costs when itcomes to that. It's a little more nuanced, so it can be very frustrating, but it's equally as important asgetting that check.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
The biggest thing Nubia did was to remove all the
knowledge from one central person. Unlike her father before, she
wanted to spread knowledge and expertise out among a team
and finding leaders who can do that. That's really hard.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I twenty twenty three, and now I counted the other day.
I think I had seventeen different people sale my leadership team.
So initially it was, oh, this person's been with us
for twenty plus years, clearly they should be part of
the leadership team. So sometimes it was those people I
would put in. It would be, oh, this person's really technical,
(21:20):
maybe they should be on the team. And then do
they fit the values in the culture of the company
first and foremost, and do they have the expertise and
the experience for the role that I'm asking them or
the department I'm asking them to lead? And it sounds
so simple, but a lot of times with family run
businesses or small businesses, it's hey, you're really good with people,
(21:42):
you should head our HR department.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
What works emotionally may not work strategically.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I had to remember that my role was not only
to work in the business, but also on the business
and take that time to step away and seeing where
are we going with all of this, And the way
that you do that is through a strong leadership team,
which I did not have initially. So now I am
optimistic and excited and confident in the direction of the company,
(22:12):
primarily because of the leadership team that I have now.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
But it took her a while to get there. In fact,
the four people who are now leading it are brand new.
They joined just in the last few months.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
As a team, we really all started working together and
gelling like the last month and a half.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
But making those strategic decisions, it's become much easier.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
With an accountability chart with very specific roles and responsibilities,
making sure that all the right people are on the
right seats, all based on our values, and creating a
very strong culture. So it makes decisions of who stays
and who goes extremely easy because at the end of
the day, are you on the bus.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Are you off the bus?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Do you believe in these values? Do you exemplify these values?
Are you okay with accountability? If you're a leader, are
you going to lead? Are you going to manage? Are
you going to hold accountable your team? One of my
roles is to promote the company's culture, and I'm very
proud of our culture.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Now, do you feel like you've hit your stride as
a CEO?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I definitely feel that I'm starting to have fun.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Okay, Kathleen, do you have a question.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
It's been such a rich conversation. I'm just curious, given
your early interest in sustainable development and international, has that
found its way into the business strategy at all?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yes, it has. We want to be leaders in mindful manufacturing,
So mindful manufacturing the way we're defining it is to
be very intentional in not just our employees and our customers,
but finding ways to implement more of a sustainability throughout
as much as we can on our shop floor and
(24:00):
in our offices. But from an international perspective, it's understanding
how manufacturing is on a global scale. It's still being defined,
but because of the sustainability background of mind I'm trying
to figure out ways how to bring it more and
more into our company.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
It feels like it was a sliding doors moment for
you where you picked a path and there was another path,
And so I'm just curious if you feel like it
was worth it.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I do. I do feel that it's worth it. At
the end of the day, we all want to be seen,
we all want to be heard, we all want to
be valued. I feel that I've been able to drive
that culture of empathy that you don't often see in
a machine shop. I'm proud of positioning Gretna as a company,
a leader or a participant when it comes to workforce development.
(24:50):
Very passionate about the conversations around on shoring and really
making manufacturing sexy again and getting young people excited about manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And what about the network do you mentor other business
owners have they mentored you? Is there an ecosystem of that.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yes, a very strong one. So because there's such a
renaissance in manufacturing. I'm a board member of the Greater
Houston Manufacturing Association, and you're definitely seeing this new generation
of manufacturers throughout the United States that are supporting one another.
It used to be an industry that was very private
where you didn't talk about what machines were getting or
(25:28):
anything like that. But it's much more open now. There
is enough work out there, and the more we support
each other then it just helps the whole industry.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So you and I share something in common, which as
we both grew up in Houston, I would have said
on my own that Houston has a special entrepreneurial culture.
But talk to people about the environment in Texas. In
Houston that makes it such a good place to build
a business.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Houston is extremely diverse. And when you look at the international makeup of Houston, is animmigrant city. People leave their countries to find something better. So that spirit I think is definitelyone of the cornerstones of Houston because it's such an international city, that is embedded definitelyin the work ethic of the city. It's also because you have the oil and gas industry, the medical industry,you have our proximity to NASA, so there is some very strong industries that are also in Houston. Andwe have great restaurants, so it makes business dinners really fun.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
The food is very good. I'd say, whenever I go back,
I like to eat.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
It's not the most beautiful city, but people who go there,
they go to work, and it's a great place to
start a company, raise a family, and you can fly
direct to literally anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Kathleen, I know you enjoyed this conversation with Nubia as
much as I did. I'm thrilled to see the interest
in manufacturing resurface across the country. It's awesome and it's
amazing to hear about her growth as a leader. Clear
of the companies in great hands, but it could so
easily not have been if she hadn't stepped up and
taken the CEO role. And I know we'll talk about
it a little more later on, but it's a fascinating evolution.
(27:09):
And of course I have an affinity for this story
because they're based in Houston, and that's my hometown.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, you both are Houstonians, and it does sound like
it's a really special community that she was able to
plug into.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Texas is an amazing place to grow companies, big companies,
small companies, doesn't matter. There's the energy sector, there's a
tech sector, there's a financial sector, and we've spent a
lot of today's episode showcasing that. But the whole state
is set up to make growing a business easy. There's
a low tax, high innovation, pro growth ethos that really
enables growth. The big lesson is that you need to
put your business in a place where there's a supportive ecosystem.
(27:43):
If you want to serve the auto industry, be in Detroit.
If you want to be in entertainment, how about the
West Coast. And for energy, it's Texas.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Can we talk about that because there's been this I
think it's a misnomer, like this idea that you can
move to the middle of nowhere to Peka, Kansas and
be out of an ecosystem, but the cost of living
is less and so you'll have more runway as a
small business owner. Like, what do you make of that?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I think it depends what you're doing. I think it's
really hard. Yeah, there are certain small businesses that you
can you know, if you are serving that local community, sure,
and maybe if you're an established entrepreneur in that business
you've done it before, I'm going to do it again.
But when you're coming up, it's tough because I can't
overstate how important it is to have mentors, a supply
of employees, a deep list of suppliers, a deep list
(28:28):
of customers. When you live in a city that has
a critical mess in any industry, you just run into people. Yeah,
because you have friends, and your friends have friends and
they work in things, and you see them at a
party and you learn a new connection and they can help.
It's quite hard, not impossible, but hard. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
New York Finance, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
For entertainment, Austin's an emergency.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, you want to be an automotive you should probably
have a few people in Detroit. They kind of know
something about cars there and it might not be everything,
Like there's a geothermal company that actually spun out of them,
but they've got a lot of stuff done in Houston.
Cause if you want to drill into the ground, there's
people there who know how to do that. So you're
going to have to go where the talent bases.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I always tell small business owners who are just starting
out to think about really tapping into the local community.
Everyone is so focused on their national footprint and what
does your local chamber of commerce look like? Local universities
for interns. Go to your library, find the local newspaper,
find farmers' markets. There's just so much richness in the
(29:30):
local community when you can tap into that.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
The other thing you're going to find in your local
community is either adjacent businesses or sometimes even competitors who
want to help you succeed because they want their community
to succeed. If you live in Chicago, you care that
other people in Chicago succeed. It's the nature of a
community and wanting to uplift a community. It doesn't mean
you won't have relationships across the country. I mean, manufacturing
is a distributed industry overall, but I think having some
(29:55):
kind of critical mass somewhere, having a center of gravity
or a magnet, is pretty helpful, particularly in the early days.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Last question we ask every one of our guests if
you had one piece of advice for an aspiring or
current small business owner, what would it be.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
It would be to be open, but to stay humble.
If you allow yourself and allow the universe to really
guide you, and you're open to it, then there are
people who will help you along the way, even if
it is your parents.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Nubia. This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for
coming and joining us today.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Oh, thank you for having me it's been super fun.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
And next time, we're getting into the AI conversation, but
not the hype dub version. I'll be joined by Kathleen
and special guest Oz Woloshyn, host of the hugely popular
podcasts Tech Stuff and Sleepwalkers. Live from South By Southwest
(30:56):
in Austin, Texas. We'll be digging into what small business
owns really need to know to leverage AI, and we'll
hear how some of them are actually using it right
now to work smarter, move faster, and scale more effectively.
I'm Ben Walter, and this is The Unshakeables from Chase
for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you
(31:16):
back here soon
Ruby .
Small business stories are so often defined by the path
of their CEOs, but in the case of Gretna Machine
Shop from Houston, Texas, a good chunk of their last
ten years was defined by not having a CEO. Nubia Perez,
daughter of the founder, called that time period the dark
(00:25):
years of Gretna's history.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It was a good ten years, and it wasn't that
the company was not successful, but I call it the
dark years because of the image of us not truly
knowing what was happening.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Her father died in twenty twelve. He left the company
to Nubia, her mother and her sister, who was in
charge then, your mom?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
That was part of the problem. There was no clear leadership.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No one that whole time, or just the three of
you were running the company.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
My mom was president, my sister and I vice president,
but there's no clear functions for those titles. At the time,
we didn't have strong policies and procedures, and so it
really just started crumbling.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Until the company reached one of those inflection points that
changes everything. Nubia knew if Gretna was going to survive,
they needed to find a leader, and she had a
sinking feeling that that leader might be her.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It literally was an epiphany. It became very parent that
there's no one else who was meant for this role.
Then me, I just had to convince everyone else I
was the one.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Welcome to The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
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.
(01:58):
On the Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring moments of business
owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of
how they got through it. Kathleen is here and we've
got a really interesting story today. It's the story of
a CEO. For a lot of small businesses, the CEO
is the business, which is definitely true for Gretna. That
(02:19):
also means that the stress of the CEO is the
stress of the business and vice versa.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, I'm really excited to dive into this one.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Then let's get into it. On today's episode, Gretna Machine
Shop from Houston, Texas. Fun Fact Gretna Machine shop is
named after Gretna, Louisiana. I know, I just said it
was in Houston and it's always been there, but the
Perez family who started and runs Gretna wasn't always in town.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Gretna was started in 1980 by my mother and my father. So my dad was a machinist in Colombia, whichis where my family is originally from. And in the late '60s he came over to the United States. It wasduring the Vietnam War, so they were giving visas and opening up the doors to welders and machinists.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
We could still use a few more of those, yes.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And he came over in his early 20s looking for an adventure. The one friend he had was in NewOrleans, so he ended up in New Orleans. And then went back, married my mom. He was working for Baker Oil Tools in Louisiana. And Baker asked my dad to move to Houston to work for the company, buthe decided to open up his own shop and just do Baker Machine Components. And in Gretna, Louisiana iswhere my sister and I were born, so that's why the company's called Gretna Machine Shop.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
As it turns out, Houston was a great spot to
start a company that manufactured precision components for the oil
and gas industry. If you think of Texas, you may
think of football, but you probably also think of oil,
and that association has been built by small businesses over time.
Big oil is the star of the show, but it's
the small businesses in oil and gas that make the
whole production possible.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Pretty much, from nineteen eighty until we started diversifying into
other industries only about fifteen years ago, it was one
hundred percent oil and gas. And that's how we started.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And what do you remember about those early years.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
My dad was a manual machinist, so I have very vivid memories of him smoking a cigarette while he's ona manual mill, which of course would not be allowed nowadays.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It was just normal. It was normal.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I was four or five years old, and back then
everything was paper checks, so my mom would give me
a check to give to the machinist and I would
run out to the shop floor, hand it to them
and come back and get another paper check. Having a
four or five year old running around in a machine
shop with metal shavings probably not allowed. Anymore. The strongest
(04:51):
memories just the scent and the smell of the machine oil.
It's a mixture of coolant and oil, and they say,
you're scent is one of your strongest memories.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Nubia and her sister Nancy got to know that smell
very well. Growing up. They spent their summers at the shop.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
And it was like either stay home or you come
work for us at the shop with my mom helping
with the accounting or the filing. And this was before
computer so it was a lot of handwriting and I
found it to be dreadfully boring and I hated it.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So when Nubia considered her own future, she knew Houston
was the perfect place to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, and that's a big no. The dream at this
point was to get as far away as possible from Houston.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She'd grown up going to visit family in Colombia.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Traveling and being in different cultures and being in that
environment was always very compelling to me.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
She made it a point to stay as far away
from Houston as possible. She majored in international studies and
got a master's in sustainable international development.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I was convinced that I was going to go work
for Greenpeace or go work for the un. Mary Brazilian
live in London, have our children in different countries.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Eventually her job did bring her back to Houston and she lived downtown traveling for business andpleasure. When you're young, before you have kids and you're single. Yeah it was great. But then you didn't. So what happened?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
There was some writing on the wall that there was going to be some layoffs at the company I wasworking for, and my dad started getting sick. He had already, at that point, had two valve replacementsand a pacemaker put in. So combination of those two things. I knew deep down that my calling was tocome back to the company. It was what my dad had expressed to me privately that he had alwayswanted. But I fought it.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
It, really deeply fought it. I mean, even considered changing
a career she loved just to avoid Gretna.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I had looked at pharmaceutical sales. I had looked at teaching,
I'd looked at anything under the sun except coming back
to Gretna. I really really did not want to come back.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
There was only one thing that could change Nubia's mind,
and it wasn't her parents. It wasn't her sister. In fact,
it took some divine inspiration.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
We're Catholic, and I ended up going to mass that Sunday. And the priest says, "I'm going to tell y'all astory about how I had the calling to become a priest." And he starts telling the story of how he did notwant to be a priest, and he tried to negotiate and say, "Hey, how about this? I'll have six sons and I'llmake them all be priests, but I don't want to. I have a family." So I left that day. I was like, "Oh. I get it. Iget it. Okay. I'm going to do this." It's not what I wanted to do, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Although Nubia was ready to accept her fate, she had
a condition for her return. She took her parents out
to dinner and made her pitch.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
If Gretna can support me getting my MBA, then I'll
come work in the family business for two years. That
was May first, twenty twelve. I started my MBA at
Rice University in August, and my father passed away in September.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
The death of her father marks the end of what
Nubia refers to as the golden years of Gretna.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I call it the golden years from nineteen eighty to
twenty twelve for a couple of reasons. The company withstood
the ups and downs of oil and gas.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, which is not easy.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Which is not easy, and that is an impressive milestone
and something to be very proud of, just to withstand.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
The late eighties were tough, after the first bust. eighties
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And then again the nineties, so just that cyclical nature
of the business. Because we were one hundred percent oil
and gas.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Through all those cycles, Gretna seemed fine.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You just know that your parents will take care of things. And I didn't really truly understand all the nutsand bolts of what was happening within the company. Then comes what I call the dark years between2012 up until probably 2023.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
It's quite a long.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
It was good ten years, a good ten years, and
what I know now at that time there was no
clear leadership or no clear direction. Because Gretna had always
been fine, we just assumed that things were just continue the.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Way they are, and for a while things did. The
company stayed relatively stable, They had their oil and gas
contracts and Nubia had branched out into aerospace more on
that in a moment, and they had their biggest gear
ever in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
But I call it the dark years because of the
image of us not truly knowing what was happening. From
a cultural standpoint.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Who was in charge then your mom, So that was part.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Of the problem. There was no clear leadership. There were
employees at the time, but it was very fragmented.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And what were you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Oh, I'm a fire extinguisher. I remember coming into work
run to the problem, literally not knowing what my day
was going to be like. And I remember being very proud of that atthe time of, "Oh, I just go where the problem is." Whether it's people not wearing the right uniforms towe have to get a new insurance or we need to revamp our handbook, so all over the place. Because afreshly minted MBAer, I thought I knew it all. I was not involved at all in customer facing, acquiring newcustomers, talking to customers. There was just other things going on. And we just always assumedGretna would continue the way it's going.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That's not to say Nubia wasn't making strategic decisions. She was,
in fact, diversifying from oil and gas into aerospace and
federal contracts was an initiative she had led.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
In order to participate in the aerospace industry you have to have certain certifications, not just ISO, buta quality certification called AS9100, which is very rigid. So we revamped our quality managementsystem during this time in order to be able to participate in the aerospace industry.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And so all this time what you called the dark ages.
Who was in charge? No one that whole time, loosely.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
In charge was my mom's president, my sister, and I
vice president. And I know no one can see you,
but in quotation works because there's no clear roles or
functions for those titles.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
At the time, just the three of you were running
the company.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It was a time where I thought leadership by consensus
was a way to go. We were just doing what
we needed to do to survive.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Okay, Kathleen, this seems like a great time to talk
a little more about Gretna and Nubia's story. What'd you
think of the story, what'd you think of her business?
Speaker 3 (11:34):
For me, this wasn't a story about growth or hype
This was a story about someone who stayed when it
was easier to walk away.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Oh that's an interesting observation.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Say more, she's not someone who is like bullishly hard
charging into being the leader of this company, and her
life could have looked so much different going into international
sustainable development.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
For me, this was less a story about the business,
although it's fascinating, and more a story about the business's
CEO and how the business's CEO's journey evolved along with
that business.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I could not agree more.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Can we talk a little bit about leadership and just
how the business was structured too, because I'm curious to
know what you think on that score. Coming out of
like the dark ages, right, she talked about a decade
of darkness where there was no leadership and no one
was in charge. Leadership in general like flat structures, and
that's getting a lot of heat right now in the market.
(12:31):
As a small company, normally you have one person who's
in charge, and that shows that you've got a level
of decisiveness as a company, and then you have people
who are experts at what they do. She didn't have
that for a while, and then they moved to that
sort of model. So I'm curious to know what you think.
What is the inflection point where someone actually really does
(12:52):
need to build out middle management or senior leadership team,
like separate from this business.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, there's no right answer to that. There's always there's
an inflection point when you go from zero to one,
and there's an inflection point when you go from one
to two, and then there's another one when you get
to about twenty five because everyone can't sit in a
room together and have a conversation, and somewhere between that
and two hundred is when it changes, because at two
hundred you can't know everyone, and that means you need
a leadership team.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
I think that thing to punctuate for people is early days,
it really just is you as a founder. And a
lot of the founders I speak to are like, well,
if I had a senior leadership team in place, and
if I had a GM or COO, then we'd be
in a radically different place. And it takes a while
to get there.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah. But the more amazing part for me was not how many people are how flat or how tiered, it washow long they went with no one in charge. I kept asking about it because I kept thinking, "How does thatwork? Who decides? What happens when people disagree?" And I know they're family and it soundslike they're very close and that's beautiful. And by the way, I should add, the reason I kept pushing on itis because it's not uncommon in family owned businesses to have these ill-defined roles where peopledo what they want when they want. Everyone just gravitates toward what they like or what they'regood at. And I think that does a disservice to the business. It's not that it can't work for a while, but asshe found out, it can't work forever. And so, I think it is pretty common among these family businesses,partially because people don't want to face into it because it means making choices. And choices aboutpeople, the same people who sit around the Thanksgiving dinner table together, and that's hard. Butlet's get back to Nubia.Gretna was certainly established in the right spot, but like anything else, that's not enough to totallyisolate it from global patterns, and especially global pandemics.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
COVID exposed the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
A friend of mine used to say, when the tide
goes out, you find out who's not wearing a bathing
suit exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
We went from twenty nineteen being our highest grossing year
to just plummeting. And because we didn't have a strong framework,
strong vision, strong policies, it really just started crumbling. And
the biggest outcome of that, You've asked it now several times,
who was in charge and can't help it?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Well?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I couldn't answer.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
That, And once again, divine inspiration led Nubia to her
next step.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
It was December twenty twenty two, is during the holidays,
and with little kids and nieces and nephews Frozen. It
was the rave.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
That's the movie Frozen the Juggernaut that introduced sisters Elsa
and Anna to the Disney canon. While half watching the
movie with her kids, Nubia was busy studying Gretna's new ORG.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Chart, like who's going to lead this company? And in
Frozen two one, Elsa goes down to the cave and
she's looking for the fifth Spirit. And then she goes
into this cave and she realized I'm the fifth Spirit.
It literally was an epiphany as I'm sitting on my
couch and I'm looking at the ORG chart. It became
very apparent that there was no one else who was
(15:46):
quote unquote meant for this role then me. I am
one of the owners. I grew up in the family business,
I have my MBA, and I wanted it as much
as deep down I probably didn't want to admit that
I take leadership very seriously, and I knew that it
was time for me to truly take the reins of
this company.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Nubia went to talk to her mother and sister shortly
after her epiphany.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
My mom was one hundred percent supportive. She said, this
is actually what your dad had always wanted. My sister
was supportive as well.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
With her mother and sister backing her, she went back
to work after the holidays to address the company.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I gave a big speech, and I said, all right,
it's time. It was more for me than for everyone else,
but I was basically laying my qualifications as to why
I should be the person to be in charge of
the company.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And what did you do when you took the reins.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
The first six months, I sat on our shop floor
and I did what I call an internship in the company.
So I just sat and watched and learned more on
the operational side of the company and I would talk
to the guys at the time to say, Nubia, it's
so good to see on the shop floor, it's good
to have you here, and I think that's what they need.
They just needed some more leadership and a true vision
(17:04):
of where the company was going to go.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Nubia also enlisted the help of a professional organization called
Vistage and got an executive coach.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
She was the one who first called me CEO and
really helped me talk things out and really make sense
of what my role was. But more importantly is through Vistage,
I was introduced to EOS, which is entrepreneur operating system.
It creates a framework for us to take our vision
(17:36):
and bring it down to an accountability chart with very
specific roles and responsibilities, making sure that all the right
people are on the right seats, all based on our values,
and creating a very strong culture.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
She got off to a strong start, but she still
had to face into the realities of running a small business.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
The manufacturing business is tough, whether it was cash flow
or whether it was having to let someone go who'd
been here for twenty five years. It was having to
have hard conversations with my sister. Whatever those moments were,
I call it the crying in the shower moment, when
you're just I can't, I can't do this. I start crying.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So she asked for help from the one person who
knew the company like she did, the former CEO.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I remember going to my dad to the cemetery. Literally getting on my knees and be like, "I don't want todo this. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to move to London and raise my international kids." AndI was looking up and I remember saying, "Just give me a sign. Give me a sign, please." And the treeswere swaying and the branches would just go back and forth, back and forth, and I took as a sign of,"Just got to keep going. Just keep going." I joke that my dad has helped the company more from heaventhan when he was here, because there's so many random just, "Okay, well that was so weird." Wewould have an inspector leave and I would get a phone call a couple hours later saying, "I just saw youguys on a website and I'm a QC inspector, just wondering if you have any openings." Trying to meetpayroll some weeks, and there would be moments where we would just get this random check for acouple thousand dollars because of a customer that forgot to pay three years ago.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And Nubia is leading with bravery and intention. She doesn't
hide from the struggles and has found more creative ways
to move Gretna into their next chapter.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So having those very hard conversations with our vendors of hey,
I know we owe you this, are you okay with
this month's this week and our promise by next week?
And we all do it. Maybe a lot of companies
won't admit it, but that's part of the solution is not hiding and having those conversationswith your vendors. The other aspect of it is the elimination of operational waste. My guys get excitedabout getting a tool that will help reduce the time from 40 minutes to five minutes or whatever the casemay be. So I'll push them sometimes like, "Yeah, but the material sat there for five days before it evengot to the machine. So let's try shaving off weeks and days." The non-sexy part of it is oftentimes on theoperational side, the flow from the material, to the machine, to inspection, back to the machine, toshipping and receiving, sitting there getting... All of that process, there's ways to save costs when itcomes to that. It's a little more nuanced, so it can be very frustrating, but it's equally as important asgetting that check.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
The biggest thing Nubia did was to remove all the
knowledge from one central person. Unlike her father before, she
wanted to spread knowledge and expertise out among a team
and finding leaders who can do that. That's really hard.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I twenty twenty three, and now I counted the other day.
I think I had seventeen different people sale my leadership team.
So initially it was, oh, this person's been with us
for twenty plus years, clearly they should be part of
the leadership team. So sometimes it was those people I
would put in. It would be, oh, this person's really technical,
(21:20):
maybe they should be on the team. And then do
they fit the values in the culture of the company
first and foremost, and do they have the expertise and
the experience for the role that I'm asking them or
the department I'm asking them to lead? And it sounds
so simple, but a lot of times with family run
businesses or small businesses, it's hey, you're really good with people,
(21:42):
you should head our HR department.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
What works emotionally may not work strategically.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I had to remember that my role was not only
to work in the business, but also on the business
and take that time to step away and seeing where
are we going with all of this, And the way
that you do that is through a strong leadership team,
which I did not have initially. So now I am
optimistic and excited and confident in the direction of the company,
(22:12):
primarily because of the leadership team that I have now.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
But it took her a while to get there. In fact,
the four people who are now leading it are brand new.
They joined just in the last few months.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
As a team, we really all started working together and
gelling like the last month and a half.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
But making those strategic decisions, it's become much easier.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
With an accountability chart with very specific roles and responsibilities,
making sure that all the right people are on the
right seats, all based on our values, and creating a
very strong culture. So it makes decisions of who stays
and who goes extremely easy because at the end of
the day, are you on the bus.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Are you off the bus?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Do you believe in these values? Do you exemplify these values?
Are you okay with accountability? If you're a leader, are
you going to lead? Are you going to manage? Are
you going to hold accountable your team? One of my
roles is to promote the company's culture, and I'm very
proud of our culture.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Now, do you feel like you've hit your stride as
a CEO?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I definitely feel that I'm starting to have fun.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Okay, Kathleen, do you have a question.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
It's been such a rich conversation. I'm just curious, given
your early interest in sustainable development and international, has that
found its way into the business strategy at all?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yes, it has. We want to be leaders in mindful manufacturing,
So mindful manufacturing the way we're defining it is to
be very intentional in not just our employees and our customers,
but finding ways to implement more of a sustainability throughout
as much as we can on our shop floor and
(24:00):
in our offices. But from an international perspective, it's understanding
how manufacturing is on a global scale. It's still being defined,
but because of the sustainability background of mind I'm trying
to figure out ways how to bring it more and
more into our company.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
It feels like it was a sliding doors moment for
you where you picked a path and there was another path,
And so I'm just curious if you feel like it
was worth it.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I do. I do feel that it's worth it. At
the end of the day, we all want to be seen,
we all want to be heard, we all want to
be valued. I feel that I've been able to drive
that culture of empathy that you don't often see in
a machine shop. I'm proud of positioning Gretna as a company,
a leader or a participant when it comes to workforce development.
(24:50):
Very passionate about the conversations around on shoring and really
making manufacturing sexy again and getting young people excited about manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And what about the network do you mentor other business
owners have they mentored you? Is there an ecosystem of that.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yes, a very strong one. So because there's such a
renaissance in manufacturing. I'm a board member of the Greater
Houston Manufacturing Association, and you're definitely seeing this new generation
of manufacturers throughout the United States that are supporting one another.
It used to be an industry that was very private
where you didn't talk about what machines were getting or
(25:28):
anything like that. But it's much more open now. There
is enough work out there, and the more we support
each other then it just helps the whole industry.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So you and I share something in common, which as
we both grew up in Houston, I would have said
on my own that Houston has a special entrepreneurial culture.
But talk to people about the environment in Texas. In
Houston that makes it such a good place to build
a business.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Houston is extremely diverse. And when you look at the international makeup of Houston, is animmigrant city. People leave their countries to find something better. So that spirit I think is definitelyone of the cornerstones of Houston because it's such an international city, that is embedded definitelyin the work ethic of the city. It's also because you have the oil and gas industry, the medical industry,you have our proximity to NASA, so there is some very strong industries that are also in Houston. Andwe have great restaurants, so it makes business dinners really fun.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
The food is very good. I'd say, whenever I go back,
I like to eat.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
It's not the most beautiful city, but people who go there,
they go to work, and it's a great place to
start a company, raise a family, and you can fly
direct to literally anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Kathleen, I know you enjoyed this conversation with Nubia as
much as I did. I'm thrilled to see the interest
in manufacturing resurface across the country. It's awesome and it's
amazing to hear about her growth as a leader. Clear
of the companies in great hands, but it could so
easily not have been if she hadn't stepped up and
taken the CEO role. And I know we'll talk about
it a little more later on, but it's a fascinating evolution.
(27:09):
And of course I have an affinity for this story
because they're based in Houston, and that's my hometown.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, you both are Houstonians, and it does sound like
it's a really special community that she was able to
plug into.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Texas is an amazing place to grow companies, big companies,
small companies, doesn't matter. There's the energy sector, there's a
tech sector, there's a financial sector, and we've spent a
lot of today's episode showcasing that. But the whole state
is set up to make growing a business easy. There's
a low tax, high innovation, pro growth ethos that really
enables growth. The big lesson is that you need to
put your business in a place where there's a supportive ecosystem.
(27:43):
If you want to serve the auto industry, be in Detroit.
If you want to be in entertainment, how about the
West Coast. And for energy, it's Texas.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Can we talk about that because there's been this I
think it's a misnomer, like this idea that you can
move to the middle of nowhere to Peka, Kansas and
be out of an ecosystem, but the cost of living
is less and so you'll have more runway as a
small business owner. Like, what do you make of that?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I think it depends what you're doing. I think it's
really hard. Yeah, there are certain small businesses that you
can you know, if you are serving that local community, sure,
and maybe if you're an established entrepreneur in that business
you've done it before, I'm going to do it again.
But when you're coming up, it's tough because I can't
overstate how important it is to have mentors, a supply
of employees, a deep list of suppliers, a deep list
(28:28):
of customers. When you live in a city that has
a critical mess in any industry, you just run into people. Yeah,
because you have friends, and your friends have friends and
they work in things, and you see them at a
party and you learn a new connection and they can help.
It's quite hard, not impossible, but hard. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
New York Finance, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
For entertainment, Austin's an emergency.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, you want to be an automotive you should probably
have a few people in Detroit. They kind of know
something about cars there and it might not be everything,
Like there's a geothermal company that actually spun out of them,
but they've got a lot of stuff done in Houston.
Cause if you want to drill into the ground, there's
people there who know how to do that. So you're
going to have to go where the talent bases.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I always tell small business owners who are just starting
out to think about really tapping into the local community.
Everyone is so focused on their national footprint and what
does your local chamber of commerce look like? Local universities
for interns. Go to your library, find the local newspaper,
find farmers' markets. There's just so much richness in the
(29:30):
local community when you can tap into that.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
The other thing you're going to find in your local
community is either adjacent businesses or sometimes even competitors who
want to help you succeed because they want their community
to succeed. If you live in Chicago, you care that
other people in Chicago succeed. It's the nature of a
community and wanting to uplift a community. It doesn't mean
you won't have relationships across the country. I mean, manufacturing
is a distributed industry overall, but I think having some
(29:55):
kind of critical mass somewhere, having a center of gravity
or a magnet, is pretty helpful, particularly in the early days.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Last question we ask every one of our guests if
you had one piece of advice for an aspiring or
current small business owner, what would it be.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
It would be to be open, but to stay humble.
If you allow yourself and allow the universe to really
guide you, and you're open to it, then there are
people who will help you along the way, even if
it is your parents.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Nubia. This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for
coming and joining us today.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Oh, thank you for having me it's been super fun.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
And next time, we're getting into the AI conversation, but
not the hype dub version. I'll be joined by Kathleen
and special guest Oz Woloshyn, host of the hugely popular
podcasts Tech Stuff and Sleepwalkers. Live from South By Southwest
(30:56):
in Austin, Texas. We'll be digging into what small business
owns really need to know to leverage AI, and we'll
hear how some of them are actually using it right
now to work smarter, move faster, and scale more effectively.
I'm Ben Walter, and this is The Unshakeables from Chase
for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you
(31:16):
back here soon
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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