From Passion to Purpose, Navigating Through Career Changes & Growth w/Alex Pool

What if passion, resilience, and community could lead you to unexpected heights in a career?

Join us along with Alex Pool from Masked Owl Technologies as we discuss how achievements, setbacks, fervor, and maintaining strong industry connections can pave the way for long-term personal and career success.

We delve into the complexities of transitioning from technical roles to management and the significance of safety, both physical and emotional, in ensuring a balanced work-life dynamic in an ever-evolving industry. 


Huge thank you to Masked Owl Technologies for sponsoring this episode!

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Co-Hosts are Alicia Gilpin Director of Engineering at Process and Controls Engineering LLC, Nikki Gonzales Director of Business Development at Weintek USA, and Courtney Fernandez Robot Master at FAST One Solutions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Automation
Ladies.
I am one of your hosts, nikkiGonzalez.
I feel weird introducing myselfevery time, but I realized that
my favorite creators do that inevery video.
Like, I guess, just in caseit's somebody's first time
watching and I shouldn't be fullof myself and think everybody
knows who we are.
So, yeah, I'll say that my nameis Nikki and thank you for

(00:21):
joining us today, and my co-host, allie G, is here with me.
Allie, you want to say hi, higuys Great week?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Actually it's not.
There's not enough sun, Seattlesucks.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Otherwise great week, I'm assuming, also great week
work-wise and lots of otherthings.
I got a little bit of sun thismorning here in Houston.
I'll be grateful for that.
And then we have our guesttoday is Alex Poole from Mast
Owl Technologies.
Alex, welcome to AutomationLadies.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Thank you, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Absolutely.
We're very stoked to have youon.
We had a minute to chat beforewe got on air and we have a lot
of sort of connections in commonand have been in some of the
same circles over the lastcouple of years but haven't
actually met before.
So this is exciting.
We get to know Alex on the showand I will give a shout out to

(01:14):
Michael Weta, who is with Mastowthat came to OT Skatecon and a
longtime supporter of the show,as well as our mutual friend Sam
Janes.
Shout out to sam, if you listen, uh it's a fun music that gets
us pumped up for every episode.
That's sam.
So yeah, uh, alex, this hasbeen a little time coming.

(01:37):
I appreciate you guys uh,reaching out after ot skater con
and we are just kind of gettingback to recording now for
season five.
So we're super stoked to haveyou here, and I guess I'll just
start with our first standardquestion Can you tell us your
story?
How the heck did you get to behere with Masked Owl
Technologies?

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Thank you.
Yeah, that's a good questionand I definitely appreciate Mike
and the work he does for us andwhat he did kind of moving this
forward.
So Mike and I have known eachother for a couple of years now.
I hired him over at Gray and hecame to follow me here.
So my story how I got intoindustrial automation I was
talking to Ali a minute ago.

(02:17):
I grew up in southwesternMichigan.
I got into programming young.
I hated winter, I hated cold,and so getting inside and being
able to do something to keep mybrain stimulated with
programming was kind of whatstarted my programming journey.
Now, back then we didn't havecomputer science majors.
They weren't necessarily asprevalent as they are now.

(02:38):
So I got a degree in electricalengineering.
As part of that I worked in anautomotive industrial
manufacturer.
We made interior parts for cars.
So I had this industrialmanufacturing background with an
electrical engineering degreebut a love for programming.
And that's really what led meinto industrial automation was
combining all those things.
I knew I wasn't going to gowork at Microsoft or Google and

(03:00):
sit in a cubicle and write codefor hours.
That wasn't me.
The industrial manufacturingpiece was a huge draw for me.
So being able to combine thosethings is what got me into
industrial automation a longtime ago.
Spent the first half of mycareer in automotive, moving
around michigan.
Got to tennessee for a littlebit um, doing industrial

(03:22):
industrial manufacturing forautomotive paint assembly, body
weld, just whatever happens tomake a car.
That was my first half of mycareer.
I got into material handlingwhen I worked for Domatic.
Got into food when I went outto FMC Food Tech in California.
Started my own company oncebefore that's what got me to
Central Kentucky, started BlueStar Automation back in the late

(03:45):
2000s, 2008, 2009 and uh,that's what got me to central
kentucky, where I am now, andthat that company closed.
We couldn't quite make it andgot into a project here
destroying chemical weapons,which was pretty interesting.
Yeah, it was.
There's some talk about safetyrequirements, right.

(04:05):
So that project was closing.
It was a 15, 20 year projectand they were about done.
They destroyed all the weaponshere in central Kentucky, but my
wife and I wanted to stay.
That's when I went to work forGray Ray Solutions, worked there
for a little while and thendecided that it was time for me
to move out on my own, went backto some of the same investors
we had used when I started upthe first time.

(04:26):
They had been a little moresuccessful, pockets were a
little deeper and we've got MOTrolling.
So yeah, I guess that's thehighlights, the quick version of
how I got where I am.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, very cool.
I love the fact that A you wentout on your own and then you
know, situations change,companies don't always make it.
Even if they make it, sometimesthey continue.
Or you know, circumstanceschange or people's uh priorities
change.
We just saw a post this morningfrom one of our ot skater con
attendees.
He, you know, had bought a kitand all these things and and

(05:00):
then he just said, hey, I needto sell this kit, I'm selling my
house.
Change of priorities.
So I don't know what thesituation in there is, but life
is complicated and you neverknow what business life right.
And I love hearing the factthat you kind of did that.
You went and worked for Grayand then now you're doing it

(05:20):
again and some of those samerelationships they carry right.
I think if you carry yourselfwith integrity, success doesn't
necessarily mean, oh, yousucceeded at that one thing and
became a millionaire or whatever.
That goal is that people see assuccess being able to go back
to the same group of people andwork with them again.
To me personally, that's a hugesign of success.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Whatever?
other things people want tomeasure the contacts I've made
over the years, and we talkedabout Mike, we talked about Sam,
but you know I've made a lot ofgood, not just friends but
professional contacts just togreat solutions.
There's some great engineersthat are great people to work
with there, but this investmentteam that I'm working with here

(06:05):
I've known one of these guys,for I met him in my first job
out of college and so it's it'sbeen 30 years In fact.
His daughter, who I've knownhim longer than his daughter has
known him, works for us now.
So you know, it's, it's kind ofcool how that kind of stuff all

(06:25):
goes.
Like I remember when she wasborn and now she's leading my
marketing department.
So it's kind of cool, that kindof stuff's cool.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
That's really cool.
We actually met also SarahLarson.
She works at Rockwell, but wemet her last year when she was
at Eplan.
She's an engineer that grew upto be a marketer, if I can put
it that way, but she also one ofthe marketing folks over at
Gray.
She remembers from when youknow she was a little girl and

(06:57):
it's a small world and in a way,right within automation in
particular and the systemsintegrators community, if I can
call it that right, we now have,like you have, industry
associations, um, and youmentioned a little bit before
the recording started that youknow, one of the things that
you've seen change maybe in thelast five to ten years is sort

(07:17):
of that networking within theintegrator community.
Yeah, um, you want to tell us alittle bit more about that.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
I think that's forced it's forced I think that's
forced by the boomers retire.
We have no choice.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
The boomers are gone do you think it's by choice, or
by force, or what?
What's your take on it, alex?

Speaker 3 (07:35):
I think that it's.
I think it's a little both, andI'm not hedging that answer
because I think the technologyexpands so fast.
There's so much new stuff outthere.
You can't keep up, so you haveto.
You're forced to talk to othersand lean on others, because you
know, what I might be good atisn't necessarily what somebody

(07:56):
else is good at obviously right.
And so we have to talk to eachother and I think the need for
automation is so great that itcuts down that competitive wall
Like nobody's losing.
Yeah, we might bid against eachother on certain projects, but
you know and we talked aboutthis with the conversation with
Walker a little bit Tomorrow wecould be bidding together on
something Right.
We could go into a project.
When I was at Dramatic, we bid aproject with the US government

(08:19):
that they wanted to award.
It was two sites and basicallythey needed one company's
conveyor experience and our ASRSexperience.
So they had.
We took the lead on one projectand subbed the conveyor to the
other company, and then on theother project they took the lead
and subbed the ASRS to us.
And that was 20 years ago.
But that was so unheard of andit was so difficult because we

(08:42):
were competitors.
We only thought of the otherteam as a competitor.
And now that's all gone away,or a lot of it's gone away.
You still run into it, but Ithink the fact that there's so
much work out there, even in aslow time, like some might say
right now, is that it eliminatesthat real, real, hard-fought
bitterness that I think we usedto see.

(09:04):
So I think it's forced becauseyou have to.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
there's so much to learn and so much to know that
it's really hard to to know itall and To be the best at every
single thing.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, you, you can't, you can't cyber security versus
.
And then you get into some umdifferent communication
protocols or you get into, yeah,some instrumentation that
there's one person that's theexpert on it and you kind of got
to work with that guy you don'thave to, but working with him
is going to be the mostprofitable way forward.

(09:39):
Like you can go ahead and likestruggle it on your own, but
you're not going to make themoney that you could right, you
just just hand it to him, haveit done, give up a little bit of
the short-term profit or alittle bit of the, but you're
out of there faster and you'reon to the next thing faster.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Customers, happier things like that yeah, and
you're moving more projectsthrough.
You're you're getting moregoals hit with the customer,
which probably means more jobswith that customer on both sides
of the aisle, right, dependingon it just looks better, yeah.
So, allie, you've been doing alittle bit of Happy customers.
You've had a couple of likefull.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
No, I've been doing it entirely Like my company.
I wouldn't say I would say mycompany does more than half of
the work outsourced.
We can't do it.
We have a lot of it, but Ican't afford.
We can't do it.
Uh, we have a lot of it, uh,but I can't afford.
Um, I can't afford 20 people ona W2 because of the payroll,
taxes and the everything else Ineed.
So do I need 20 people to dowhat I'm doing right now?

(10:35):
Yes, I do.
My company does need 20different people to be doing,
cause we have a lot of projectsand, uh, it's government work, a
state government work, um, andyeah, so, as much as I want,
people come to me and they'relike you know, you're, you could
be making more money, and I'mlike I know, I know, but like I
also like it's not as simple asthat, and so we were trying to

(11:01):
do a game plan so that over time, you know when it makes sense,
we can start adding those otherpeople.
But I only have two employees.
I'm an employee of PCE and Ihave two other employees that
are engineers and that's it Allof my finance stuff, accounting,
hr, even the subject matterexperts that are helping my
engineers are outsourced, so,and then there's other engineers

(11:22):
that are outsourced.
Sometimes I'll just giveanother company an entire work
order and just say go ahead andwork this um, and then we just
make some money on it, but theyneed to close it out, um, and so
I like that more because that'sfaster.
But at the same time, I want todevelop my people, so I do a
little bit of halfsies, whereI'll pay someone to mentor them

(11:42):
on their work, so like they'lldo the bulk of the work, but
I'll give some subject matterexpert some bulk of hours to
make sure that what they producedoesn't suck not that they suck
or anything, but uh, it's justyeah, uh.
So you can't be good.
Sometimes, um, I can afford tohave help.
Yeah, sometimes I can affordsomeone to help me, and

(12:02):
sometimes I just have I'll helpthem myself.
But if I want to, you know Iwant to not do engineering as
much as I need to be doing, andso in order to do that, yeah, I
need to have like help fromeverywhere and like I don't have
super experienced engineers,but I have really good help to
build them up over time and theneventually add like those key

(12:23):
players that I need because Ican't afford the cream of the
crop, right?
Uh, controls, people are notcheap.
Uh, good ones, good ones aren't,um, and then, yeah, you're
gonna have to spend money to getthem to be better over time.
Um, so that's kind of yeah,I've been, I've been struggling
there, but yeah, I've been usingthe, the.
Since conception of pce, wehave been been almost entirely

(12:45):
subbing it out.
Yes, contract work has been amassive part of us getting
anything done for the last twoyears and probably for the next
couple of years it's going to bethe same until we're all
internal, which I don't foreseethat for a while, more than five
years before, all of the peoplethat work for PCE actually work
for PCE and not contractors.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
So, alex, having done this a couple times now, is the
work that you're doing nowsimilar to your past company or
is it like completely different?
What are you guys focusing onnow?
What's Mast Owl?
If I were to ask kind of like,what's your calling card for?

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Well, that's a great question.
So, to tack on a little bit ofwhat Allie was saying, I mean
that was one of the challengeswith the first time we did this
was we couldn't afford to hirewhat we needed.
The industry wasn't, as I mean,the tools didn't exist to share
information as well.
The internet was there, but itwasn't what it is, you know, 15
years later, like SharePoint,yeah, or LinkedIn or you know

(13:48):
just any way to reach out forhelp, and so being able to build
out a team was one challenge.
Now, so, to answer thatquestion, what I tried to do the
first time around and what I'mreally trying to do here, is
lean into the fact that we'regood at automation now and a lot

(14:10):
of systems integrators we wantto talk about.
We do distillery, we do petfood, we do material handling,
we do cosmetics, whatever.
What industry, what vertical?
Like my marketing team, it tooka lot for me to finally get to
understand.
I don't want to talk aboutverticals, because what we do is
write code, design panels,build panels, install panels,

(14:31):
commission code.
That's what we do.
The model for this started wayback when I was in Tennessee.
One of the first jobs they gaveme was to take this.
It was a front bumper for aChevy van that they've been
making forever.
It's just this gray, simpleutilitarian van, utilitarian
fascia, not the bumper, thefascia and this guy had been
hand painting it for 20 yearsand they wanted to put a robot

(14:54):
in the painting.
I said okay.
So I went and grabbed him.
I said, hey, you got to show me, you got to help me.
He's like I don't know anythingabout painting.
Let's work together and figurethis out.
And we did.
We got through it very quickly.
We got a good program and nowthat guy's still at a job.
We didn't eliminate his job, hejust had to push a button now
and said stand all day, breatheand paint.
So that model is what I try todo.

(15:15):
Going forward, we've built out ateam we call it our solution
success team, and their job isso go interview them and
understand how they do, whatthey do, translate that into
words that my poor engineers canunderstand, and then we'll go

(15:36):
design a panel, whatever we gotto do to to emulate that process
.
Um, that's, that's why thatquestion is it makes me laugh a
little bit because it's such along answer to a verse it's not
food and beverage like.
It's not the two-word answerthat most people expect when
they ask me that question, butwe're programmed.
It's what we are, it's what wedo, it's where our we're.

(15:57):
We most of us have spent a lotof time in plants.
We know how to walk through aplant, we know how to identify
where we can help with theprocess, but what we don't know
is how the specifics of theirprocess, the details of their
process.
So we built a team to help usand we've seen every factory.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
We go to the same hardware.
Yeah yeah we see the samecontrollers, the same crap
inside of it.
We're like that's why, that'swhy verticals don't make sense,
and like I've never liked thatquestion, cause they're like
what's your niche, though?
Like what are you good at?
And I'm like, uh, plcs.
And they're like no, but likewhat industry?
And I'm like I don't know, likesix different industries, it

(16:33):
doesn't matter, they're exactlythe same.
Like the way that I do the work,that I do like take, take a IO
list and turn it into a controlpanel and turn it into
commissioning.
That doesn't change fromindustry to industry at all, and
so it's just like a lot of plugand play.
So it's like why are you makingme tell you what my niche is?
It's an old school way ofthinking, I think.

(16:55):
And I think that there's yeah,at least for our industry, just
because of the nature of so muchoverlap, because every industry
didn't doesn't have its ownAlan Bradley.
Alan Bradley, is it for all theindustries?
Um, yeah, or maybe in somecases they use a little more or
little less of something, butlike across the board, they

(17:16):
don't care where the powersupply comes from.
There isn't a power supply forfood and bed.
That's different from a 24 voltDC power supply for any other
possible.
It's all the same crap.
So when I started seeing it Iwas like, oh my god, I will food
and bed.
That's different from a 24 voltDC power supply for any other
possible.
It's all the same crap.
So when I started seeing it, Iwas like, oh my God, I will have
a job forever.
Once I started seeing the samethings in the panels in
different places, I was like, ohmy God, I'm so good, like cause

(17:39):
, I could just see things that Iwas like, okay, I know, I've
seen this stuff before.
I know what that is, I knowwhat the terminal blocks are, I
know what relays are, I knowwhat contactors are, um, and all
that crap is used all acrossthe board.
The only time that that's nottrue is like uh, intrinsically
safe or explosion proof shit.
Or like burner controls.
Like yeah, there's some placeswhere you you don't use a, a, a

(18:02):
safety burner controller, inoutside of, if you don't use a,
a safety burner controller inoutside of, if you don't have a
burner, so you may have neverseen that and so maybe you've
never seen that type ofcontroller before outside of
that.
Like they're just hooking upplcs and io it's the same, io
it's the same.
Controllers all acrosseverything like yeah, even, yeah
everything.
Everything in the panel andeven in the field, the sensors

(18:25):
themselves are the same and themotors.
All of that crap is just sprayit all across every single
manufacturer and not justmanufacturing uh, infrastructure
utilities and municipaleverything, all of that uses all
the same crap.
So we have jobs forever, whichis a faller well, it's, it's.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
I use this a lot.
My valve doesn't know what'sgoing through it like in general
.
As a general statement, I'mopening, closing a valve.
I don't know if it's dog food,coffee, fluid water.
I don't know, I don't, I don't,I don't know dust, right, do
you just tell me when you wantthat valve open, when you ask
this question a lot too what'sit doing that when we're

(19:03):
troubleshooting, what's it doingthat it's not supposed to?
What's it not doing that it'ssupposed to?
That's really what you have toanswer.
I don't, I don't.
You know well, the, the xyzisn't getting where I.
What's it doing that's notsupposed to?
What's it doing and it's notsupposed like we can fix it?
It's the same question everytime.
And I'm not to say that everyprocess is the same, not to say.
But when you break it down tothe finite elements that you

(19:25):
have to to get into automation,you get right down to it.
I used to say this a lot to thepoor process.
Engineers at Gray Solutionsdidn't like this.
But I can't program TBD Likewhen we're writing code.
There has to be an answer toevery question.
Well, I don't know what thattimer needs to be.
Well, me neither.
So you're the process guy.
Tell me, give me a number.
You can fix it in the field.
But I can't leave it blank now.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Pick something.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Pick something, or I'll put 10 million in there
because I don't know.
And when you get down to thatlevel of finding it's 10 seconds
right.
Right, when you get to thatlevel of finding detail, or 10
hours, 10 million, but yeah,when you get to that level of
financial detail a lot of thebig picture stuff goes away,

(20:09):
like a lot of the big picturestuff, which is what 90 of the
plant is worried about, 95 theautomation engineers.
We're down in that level going.
Look, I just I need to knowwhen and how to open and close
this valve.
That's what I need you know.
I know you need to know whenthis photo I turns on what you
want me to do with it, when youbreak it down.
That simple it does mean youcan fit into almost any industry

(20:31):
.
You just really have to knowhow to do the interview and get
the information out of theprocess.
Experts, like you're sayingthere's a job.
My team, half the team thatworks at MassHouse Technology,
did not come from industrialautomation.
I half the team that works atMass Outlook Technology did not
come from industrial automation.
I did that on purpose and whenI tell them it's on track to
become a $400 billion industry,they're like that's huge.

(20:51):
I'm like right, I just want one, four hundredth of it and we're
good.
And that's what I mean.
There's so much work.
It's like throw a dart, go 10miles around and you can find
plenty of work.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
To your point it's just everywhere and it's just
going to get bigger.
Yeah, it continues to surpriseme when people kind of carry
that scarcity mindset in the inthe industry that there isn't
enough work and of course it iscyclical and there are, you know
, invest there's moreinvestments in some cycles than
others.
But I don't know what setsapart those that just see all
the work all around them and arewilling to go after it versus

(21:26):
those that think, oh, you know,if I don't get this contract
there's not going to be anotherjob, or if you get this contract
I'm not going to get a job.
You know that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Well.
So I struggle with a behaviorin the in the business
development side of what I callorder takers.
If and it.
If you're in the businessdevelopment side of what I call
order takers and it starts withmarketing.
But the second phase isbusiness development.
If your B&E team just wants tosit around and answer the phone
and take orders, then they'regoing to feel there's a scarcity
Because 90% of the people thatreally need automation help are

(21:56):
so busy they don't have time tosit at the desk and start
calling.
So if you're and I'm not sayingeverybody that's seeing a
downturn in the market or sayingthat there's a downturn in the
market is this way.
But if you want your phone toring and you're just going to
sit here and answer the phoneand then think you've got work,
yeah, your phone might stopringing, but if you're out,

(22:20):
there looking for work.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
You're out there.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
The first person I heard Asking everybody yeah, and
the first person I heard atmass teletechnology was
marketing.
The second person I heard wasbd, for for a handful reason.
One, I'm the engineer, so I wascomfortable doing engineering.
But and I'm not a salesperson,I'm not marketing.
But also because the firstthing I do is go find the work.
Because you're not looking tofind it, then you're right, you
won't see it in that 10 mileradius.
You won't see that there's a,there's a manufacturer right

(22:44):
there, on point Adam, that I'msure has automation in their
house.
Now we haven't even gone andknocked on their door yet
because we're targeting otherareas, but it doesn't mean you
can't and it doesn't mean it'snot there.
So that's, that was, that's myopinion, and why I think people
view the market different isthey're not willing to find it.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
It's there, it's out there yeah, but you bring up a
good point, though.
You do have to have a sales andmarketing function if you don't
want to be just at the mercy ofwhatever projects are brought
to you.
And I think some people, ifthey start their business based
on existing demand from pastcustomers or connections, they
don't have that muscle to go outthere and market themselves or

(23:21):
to sell, and then it can betricky if you don't think that
your company needs that as aninvestment.
I have seen or feel like in theindustry, some companies they
don't really see marketing asthe function that it should be.
They often have a head of salesand marketing and they really
overload that person with waytoo much, or those couple people

(23:43):
they expect them to go to, likeyou know tons of trade shows
every year and also be able toeffectively you know, market
themselves.
And I mean trade shows aregreat and it's part of you know
both the marketing and thenetworking side.
I think even today, even more sothan just marketing yourself,
it's all about kind ofstrengthening those industry

(24:03):
connections, both from marketingyourself as an employer, right,
marketing yourself as apotential partner to other
companies.
But I love to see that onesales and marketing person at a
company that I know should havethe budget to pay for actually
to actually be marketingthemselves, not just you know?
Oh, here's our latest whitepaper, or data sheet.

(24:24):
Um, so is that something?
Have you always had thatmindset, or is that something
that changed with your secondtime around, that you thought
that that was important to doearly on?

Speaker 3 (24:34):
so one of my best friends growing up.
He went into industrialautomation.
He went out on his own and hewas a one-man show and he didn't
.
He wasn't doing what you weredoing, ali, with subbing out
work because this was back.
But when it was a little harderto do that again competition I
was in junk about.
But he came to me one time hesaid here's the biggest problem
I have, alex.
I'll do a project, I'll be onthe site for three months and

(24:56):
then that's done, and next thingnow I gotta put on my marketing
sales hat and go find more work.
So that started the spark of.
I'm like, oh, if to really dothis at scale, you've got to
have focused marketing and bdpeople so the engineers can go
out and do the work.
And then and you don't havethat lull when we were, when we
did it the first time around, um, a good friend of mine, there

(25:19):
were three of us and I was theengineering arm and so the guy
was doing the marketing andsales arm and he admits freely,
he wasn't very good at.
Unfortunately, we realized thisand hired a very good
salesperson as we ran out ofmoney and we just started
getting some traction.

(25:39):
In fact I remember the call.
We had an opportunity to dothis one project, but we were so
upside down.
Our concern was, if we took thedown payment from that guy, we
were going to use it to finishother projects and we would be
what I would consider being veryclose to fraud.
We were getting very close totaking people's month down
payment to work on otherprojects, knowing we couldn't

(26:00):
finish the original projectright I've had that happen to me
on a contractor, uh, businesslike residentially uh, and it is
, yeah, a good call I guess.
And we couldn't do that.
Yeah, I said we couldn't dothat.
Yeah, I said we can't do that,we can't.
And but what we realized therewas the strength of a good sales
team.
What a good.
So that's why we've done whatwe did, and that was that.

(26:25):
That partner of mine then isone of the major investors now
and that's what I told him.
I said look, finances, we gotto go at this different and
we've got our largest budgetright now because of the size of
us is our marketing budget.
Um, we're targeting a lot ofshows.
We go to a lot of shows.
We we have two booths that wefly around and put a different
shows around the country.

(26:46):
Like we are heavily invested inmarketing.
Part of us get our name out,like people need to recognize
our name.
I tell marketing soften theground.
When our BD team starts calling, I want people to say, oh,
we've heard you, we've seen thatname before.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
It can make a huge difference and that does take a
little bit of time.
So you can't expect that, youknow, your first time around.
People immediately are going toyou know, send you a PO, right.
But all of that work it buildsup to A both people thinking of
you next time they have aproject because they remember
you, and or when you do callright because you want to be
pushing, you want to be, youknow, in front of people's uh,

(27:23):
have some mind share right whenthese projects come along, then
having that name recognition uhcan be really, really helpful
and I think that's somethingthat ali's done a really good
job of.
Um, way more people have heardof PCE, or Process and Controls
Engineering, or herself than Iwould say.
You know most companies hersize, especially because she's

(27:44):
not you know the industry thatshe's in.
That sort of thing like thatcould be completely quiet, like
and that's a tricky thing thatwe have in our industry as well
right, not being able to talkabout our customers.
We have ndas with a lot ofprojects that we work on.
So even if you have all thosewonderful case studies in your,
you know, in your toolbox, a lotof times they don't pack as

(28:06):
much of a punch when you have toredact half the information
right we have that.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
We have a customer that we're talking to right now
and he wants references and I'mlike, well, I'll see what I can
do.
But you know, part of it isthere's some NDA there.
Or you know, one of the otherchallenges big picture with
engineering is, once you solvethe problem, it doesn't seem
like it was that big of aproblem.
So you have this wonderful casestudy that the person came to
you with a problem and you'relike, oh man, think about all

(28:34):
the work we did to solve thatproblem.
Then, when you'd explain thesolution, I'm like, oh, that
seems like it was pretty easy.
And so again back to losing thatpunch.
Not having that punch oh no,this was a phenomenal thing my
team did.
But it, once it solves, itseems easier.
Right when, when you'rebuilding the hoover dam, there's
this huge thing at the end thateverybody looks at and goes

(28:55):
look at how much it worked thatway.
When you're writing code, youdon't really get into the
details of that microseconddecision that has to be made
consistently every time in orderfor this facility to run right.
Yeah, it just lacks the punchsometimes, but that's part of
the job.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, I mean that's kind of like the the hell the
sausage is made.
I found that I found this outthe hard way, with podcasting
too.
I thought this would be easy.
Uh, it's definitely not andthere's a lot that goes on
behind the scenes that I neverknew about.
And now when we talk to peopleabout you know, they want us to
come out.
They're like, hey, can you comedo something with us?

(29:34):
And we're like, yes, okay,here's everything that's going
to be involved.
People are surprised becausethey say, oh well, you make it
look easy or it just, isn't itsimple.
You just show up and you recordsomething and it's like, no,
all the work that went into thatbehind the scenes, you, you
don't really know because it youknow you're not talking about
that in the, in the finalcontent, but that's what enables
it to get done it's anybodythat starts their own, anything,

(30:00):
podcast, business, anything.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Again, having gone through it, I've been through a
handful of startups outside ofthe two that I was directly
primary on.
There's a lot, yeah, andthere's just a lot I know, know
that.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
But like so I've worked, for I started out
working for my dad in his smallbusiness.
So I saw that from like theinside and from the family of
the founder side and I really amsurprised I didn't turn myself
off from the wholeentrepreneurship thing
altogether, because I know it'snot easy and sometimes it's not

(30:34):
successful.
Sometimes you don't end upwalking away with some sort of
big success, right?
Sometimes your success is beingable to get out from under it
intact or, you know, not tomention the impacts it can have
on your family, on your health.
But I also I guess I have thattrait that makes me also
perpetually be able to beoptimistic about being able to
be optimistic about being ableto do things, because I think

(30:57):
also that if you can't do that,if you can't gloss over a little
bit, that it's going to bereally hard.
You probably won't do a lot ofthose hard things.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
I think so.
Recently I brought on a guy tolead our business development
team and I made a point to himat one point when we were
interviewing somebody.
I said look, it's a differentbeast to interview somebody to
come into a startup because it'sstartup and some people love it
and some people hate it, somepeople don't have an opinion,

(31:25):
but when you tell them it's hard, I think what goes through
their head is oh well, I've donehard things before, but it's
hard in a very different wayBecause to that it's the mental
piece, it's the you had a badday.
That doesn't mean you're goingto fail and being able to walk
through that and get to theother side of it and not have it
affect your outlook, not spiral.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah Right, I'm going to say this.
You know, my wife and I weremarried the first time I started
business and she's the hardestpart was closing it.
It was, it was devastating toclose that business.
And when I came to her and saidI was going to do it again, she
was a hundred percent of alllike there was no, there was no
walking, there was no.

(32:07):
Are you sure?
It was like okay, whateveryou're going to do, let's do
this.
And I think that's a huge piecethat entrepreneurs specifically
miss.
Is you talk about family?
It's hard on the family, it's abig deal to the family and
you've got to have that support.
You can't, like I can't walkout of this room frustrated and
have everyone.
I told you so I knew it wasgoing to be hard.

(32:28):
What do you like?
That's just.
That's what leads to realsuccess.
You talked about success ismeasured in a lot of different
ways.
That's what leads to realsuccess.
You talked about success ismeasured in a lot of different
ways, but that part of it is Idon't know.
I don't know how anybody doesit.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
That's mental torture .
If your family's telling youthat you yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
I don't know how you do it Right.
It's hard in ways you neverthought it was going to be hard.
I'll say that Like it's.
Just when we closed that firstone, I went and worked at this
project here in Richmond,kentucky, destroying chemical
weapons and I told everybody itwas semi-retirement.
It had some challenges, but Iwas not initially, even at the

(33:08):
end.
I wasn't primary on anything.
I led a small team.
I was responsible for some very, very life altering decisions,
but compared to running abusiness, it wasn't hard and I
spent.
That was the longest job I'veever had, cause it took me that
long to get my head back intojumping in and doing leadership

(33:31):
again.
Like it, it, it, it it was.
It was pretty, pretty hard, butI'm back at it again, so
whatever that means, aboutresilience.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Have you, have you taken some steps, um, or is
there anything that's differentin your life now about, like you
said, taking on a leadershipposition?
Is there anything that you feellike you've learned as a leader
that you could either give tipsto other people or just from a
perspective of like, do you domore leadership training or, you
know, is there anything that,yeah, changes your perspective

(34:03):
on being a leader now versusback then, the first time around
?

Speaker 3 (34:06):
yeah, I mean.
So, simon Sinek, he's got a lotof stuff on YouTube and he
talks about finding your why.
And honestly, when I, when Istarted MOT this buddy of mine
that I've known forever, heasked me why.
He's like, why, why are youdoing?
Because he knew I didn't wantto.
He knew for 15 years.
I said I'm not doing that.
I told Walker Walker asked meone time you want my job?

(34:27):
I said no.
So you know this guy's like whythen, if you've saved her
forever, you're never doing itagain.
Why are we talking about this?
I think that's a big one,because there's a book out there
called turn the ship around andit talks about middle
management.
I started reading it when I wasa gray to help with some of the
struggles I was having with mysupervisor, and one of the
things that calls out in thereis as a leader, you're going to

(34:50):
pour your heart and soul intopeople and they're going to hate
you for it.
And it goes back to that's the.
You know.
Still, find your why.
And again, not to overquote,simon, but if you, if you're not
doing it for the reward ofwhatever, if you do, if you know
why you're doing it, just keeprunning into that, keep grabbing

(35:12):
that.
I'm not doing this because Iwant so-and-so to think I'm a
great boss.
I'm not doing this for themoney.
I'm not.
Anybody that's come to me inthe last five years and said
they want it Cause we promoted alot of people to managers when
I was at Gray Solutions.
We grew so fast I had to buildmanagers and I always asked them
why?
And I always like why do youwant to do this?
Because if it's well, I thinkit's just next to my career.
That's not going to get youthrough.

(35:33):
If it's well, I want more money.
That's not going to get youthrough.
And so that would be my firstand kind of core piece of advice
is know why you're doing it andkeep leaning into that, and if
you're doing it for the wrongreasons, it's just not going to
happen Like you're not going tobe.
It's not going to be what youwant.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah it's something that, as I've matured in my
career and gotten to know moreabout myself, I've started to
you can be more clear on yourwhy and really realistic about
whether something really fitsyour why or not.
I think early on in your career, like you said, you're kind of
conditioned to just that's thenext step, that's the next thing
I should be doing.
That's what you know.

(36:12):
Everybody and my parents andyou know think that I should do
next, like for me it was peoplemanagement.
I've had so many people tell meover there oh, you'd make so
much more money if you're amanager, like, why aren't you
managing people yet?
You know, it's like I'm in mylate 30s now and I've held those
positions and I just didn'tfeel like I was.
It wasn't what I wanted at thetime.
I wasn't ready, I was still.

(36:33):
I felt this.
I feel this pull to be anindividual contributor, like I
just want to do my thing andlike add my value.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
But that's because we're not bossy people.
We don't want to tell everybodywhat to do, we just want them
to do it.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Right, well, there's that, that's.
I tell people this too.
The biggest transition frommoving from programming to human
beings is when I find a bug insoftware.
It's done Fixed 85% of the time.
Once I find the bug, I can fixit.
Sometimes it takes a little bitof tweaking to make sure, but
with human beings, once youfigure out the problem, you just
get started.
Now it's constant coaching andreinforcement and adjustment.

(37:10):
I told you not to do thatanymore, but it's a different
challenge.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
It's not like giving the machine instructions and
then the machine changes on yourinstruction.
There's a new support group forus.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
There was something else that came up in that
conversation.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
I would join a support group with you.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Leadership support groups.
Yeah Well, one of the thingsagain, Walker did a lot of good
things, great solutions.
I know we talked a little bitabout this but and I've, I've
kind of we started this there.
I don't know where they've gonewith it, but I've done it in
MOT, a version of it, and it'sthat there is a development path
after a certain point thatleads into people management or

(37:51):
IC, individual contributor, andthe salary ranges are equivalent
.
Because what I really wantpeople to realize is there's
value in being an individualcontributor, there's value in
moving up and becoming an SMEand being an expert in your
field and bringing that to thecompany.
And I want to reduce thatstigma of, well, that must be
the next step.
Right, you don't have to managepeople if it's not where you're

(38:14):
drawn to, if that's not your,why, if that doesn't fulfill
you're not how?
It's not beneficial for thecompany for people to be in a
position that don't like it.
So, um, I want to give creditwhere credit is due is a
conversation I had with walker.
I know he started down thatpath.
I don't know where that endedat gray solutions, because I
left before that happened, but Itook a version of that and
built it out at MOT.
And you know, again people cameto me and were like why are we

(38:37):
doing it?
We're four people.
Why are we worrying about this?
And I said because it's goingto be important.
One of the people weinterviewed said what's my
progression, what's my path?
Look like here.
And we had it all built out andwe were able to display it.
So I think Nikki mentionedindividual contribution.
I think it's important that,especially when you're dealing
with engineers like engineersdon't want to think they have to

(38:59):
manage people.
Some of them aren't very goodat managing people and it's okay
to be an SME.
Managing people is hard.
It's a hard thing.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
I like people, but that's part of the problem.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
I think that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Because I want people to like me.
My wife corrects me me, but Isay this a lot I don't like
people and and I think I'mdecent at managing people
because again, they can hate me.
I've said this, I've used thisas motivation.
I'm like you all have to getalong with each other.
You, if the only thing you bondon is that I'm a jerk, then
bond on that, like if the onlything you guys have in common is
that I'm a pain in the butt towork for the great.

(39:36):
Have that in common, bond on itand get to be a team and go get
the job done.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
But yeah, I don't worry too much about people
liking me because that's mybiggest problem is like I want
them to and like I need to letthat go completely.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Um, yeah, I'm working on it yeah, it's harder yeah,
and I would recommend that bookturn the ship around.
It gets a little flow in theback half.
But he's right, you know yourjob is to care about everybody
that works for you.
I had a.
I had a someone in a leadershiprole at a specific company one

(40:09):
time.
Say to me he said on aleadership meeting Paul, he goes
, yeah, we have to act like wecare about those people.
And I was like no, no, no, no,we have to act like we care
about those people.
And I was like no, no, no, no,no, we have to care about these
people.
Like there's a differencebetween acting like we care
about them and caring about them.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
They're going to know you don't actually?
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
And it led to some problems.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
So what is your why with MOT now?

Speaker 3 (40:31):
This sounds all fluffy, but I will answer it.
So I think that there's a lotof really really smart good and
by good I mean morally strong,morally correct people in the
industrial automation space.
I think there's some goodsalespeople.
I think there's goodoperational people.
I think there's good HR peopleand I want to build a place

(40:51):
where they can come, do a verygood job and be comfortable
doing.
That's why I'm doing this andfollow their values.
Yeah, we have a set of what Icall foundational tenants at
MassTowel and every time I sendout any type of direction, it
starts with you will follow thetenants first.
Anything else that we do fromthere is based I say this two in

(41:16):
the morning you're trying toget a machine running.
If you follow the tenants, youdon't get fired.
We may talk about a better wayto do it tomorrow, but if you
have to make a decision in themiddle of the night and you
can't get advice, follow thetenants, you'll be fine.
They will put you in a positionand I was tired of seeing stuff

(41:38):
in the industry where it waswork 100 hours.
Here's your $200 bonus and beglad you have a job.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
I don't think that industrial automation needs to
run that way.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
I could be wrong, but I'm probably not so if you're
wrong, we're wrong, we'll all bewrong, but I'm probably not so
if you're wrong, we're wrong,we'll all be wrong.
Together we can uh, there yougo in the wrong together club.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
I mean, we've heard this right take care of the
people.
They'll take care of thecustomers.
That people, it's been said,it's it's people build companies
on it.
Heck, great construction, theoriginal great company was built
on that.
Those that great families verymuch fans of, take care of
people in their core values.
They don't talk about profit,they talk about taking care of

(42:23):
each other.
And I said we can build that,we can do that.
So that's why that's why I do,that's why I, every morning, no
matter how frustrated in fact,90 of the times I'm frustrated
is because I'm like look, I'mtrying to help you get past this
Like you're looking at thisproblem right here.
But if you look past it, you'llsee that there's a future,

(42:44):
there's a solution that's bigger.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
I think that's a hallmark of some good leadership
, because, yeah, you know,people bring a lot of baggage
with them if they've been arounda while.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Whether that's organizational culture they've
gotten used to elsewhere or waysof working.
I think also before we were allconnected, like you were saying
earlier on in the in.
You know, there there justweren't all the tools to network
with other integrators and findout who's good at what and, you
know, reach out real quick tosee who has availability and all
those sorts of things.
Like you would have had to kindof be local or part of some

(43:18):
sort of chamber.
You know network back then andnow you can do that on LinkedIn
or you can do that through CSIAor you can do that through.
You know there's a number ofdifferent, whether it's industry
associations or you know we'vegot SMEs that you know we can
reach by Teams or Slack orWhatsApp or whatever.
For us, otcatacon is one ofthose communities that has.

(43:40):
You know we've been able topull resources from and vice
versa, and I had actually anoutsider.
But we were a little bitsurprised that people not that
we should have been, but thatpeople that didn't know us at
all bought tickets to this thing.
But that people that didn'tknow us at all bought tickets to
this thing, and one of them Ihad a meeting with him
afterwards and he said, yeah, itwas really good, but I kind of

(44:01):
noticed that it seemed and heused this word incestuous.
He's like like all the speakers, they all do business together
all of the time already.
And I was like, well, to apoint, that is true, all the
speakers were part of ournetwork somehow, but most of
them actually didn't know eachother at all, except for, I'd
say, like Josh and Caleb, acouple people had worked

(44:22):
together in the past.
But what did happen is we putthem together in a group chat,
like maybe three or four monthsbefore the event, and they did
business together on their ownahead of time before ever
meeting.
They did business together ontheir own ahead of time before
ever meeting, because one ofthose things again, it was an
avenue where they got tointroduce themselves to other
systems integrators.
They're still doing it.
They're still.

(44:42):
They're still doing it.
Yeah, they found out who doeswhat.
And you know, hey, I have thisproject, I I can't take it or I
don't want it or I don't havethe expertise, do you?
And we sort of sort of saw thatunfold in in real time, um, and
I, I think that that's, uh,really cool, but those have
changed.
So do you find that it's, youknow, maybe mindsets that you're

(45:04):
having to change from, justlike the industry used to be?
Or is that more yeah, nowanything?

Speaker 3 (45:12):
we call it unlearning .
We talk about about thatspecifically, the more
experienced.
Like we're interviewing aperson right now and I talked to
the hiring manager.
I said, hey, the thing I'mworried about is this person
walking in the door and thinkingwe're going to do things the
way we've always done.
And the thing is, you know, youtalk to people, you interview
them.
Well, mike White is a greatexample and you know, I talked

(45:32):
to him before I had himinterview with the rest of the
team to come on board and I said, mike, we're doing things a
little bit differently here.
We're structuring things alittle bit.
There's stuff that istraditionally in the automation
engineer scope that we're movinginto a different department.
He said, great, I love it.
I agree there's a problem there, but when you're in the meet,
when you're there, it's stillhard to remember.
Oh, that's somebody else's job.

(45:53):
I need to go talk to thatperson.
I've got a bigger team, I'vegot to lean on and so, yeah,
it's a constant.
Again, the word term unlearningis what we use, but it's, and
it doesn't matter if it's theautomation engineer, the
marketing team, the BD team, theHR team I'm talking to Sydney
I'm like, hey, yeah, that's nothow we're going to do this and

(46:14):
she's like okay, okay, and she'sopen to learning, but it takes
some conscious, focused.
One of our foundational tenantsbe intentional.
It takes being intentionalabout your decisions every day.
What are you doing?
Why are you doing it?
And just because we've alwaysdone it that way isn't an answer
.
And uh, yeah, it's, it's athing, it's, it's something we

(46:38):
have to focus on every day.
Um, but that's okay, like that,we're going to embrace that,
we're going to accept it, we'regoing to do it.
Um, we're not going to run awayfrom it.
We're going to say this isworth the ask, it's the juice is
worth the squeezy, whatever youwant to call it.
It's worth working hard to doit this way.
So that's what we're going todo.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
You mentioned the tenants and I really like this.
We're kind of as we scale or asPCE scales, and I say we
because I'm on the board.
You got to get some process andyou got to start to get that
message, those core values, outto the employees right, or the
contractors, basically anybodythat comes in touch with the
company to understand the why,to be able to steer the ship

(47:18):
together in the same direction.
You kind of got to understandthat.
Um, can you tell us what this,what your tenants are, and where
did you come up with that ideais?
Is it like a specific frameworkthat you use, or operating
system, or that one's a little.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
That's a little harder.
The how or the where it came up, so I'll first I'll tell you
what they are.
They start with be safe.
You know that's.
Be safe is the one thateverybody.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Thank you like uh, I don't know why that's a surprise
, but good job, thank you,that's oh and.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
But when we talk about is it's not just hey, hey,
you got to wear your PPE.
Yeah, it's emotional safety.
One of the things we do as wedo one-on-one check-ins with the
team is when's your lastvacation, when's your next
vacation?
Just simple things of because,again, I don't want you working.
There is going to be days whereI have to tell people they have
to work an 80-hour week.
It's going to happen.
You go to a job site, you site.

(48:11):
You're not going home thatnight anyway.
You might as well work and getthe project.
I get it.
Automation engineers work a lotof hours, but that doesn't mean
that that's the expectationevery day of your life.
It might be the expectationperiodically, but the flip side
of that is true.
I also embrace the idea thatwe're souring, which means you
get paid for 40 hours, whetheryou work 40 hours, 30 hours or
50 hours.
So I'm okay with people takingoff.

(48:33):
I'm way sidetracking.
But part of this be safe isyou're not allowed to take a
half day vacation.
If you need a half day, justdon't come to work for that
period, like you don't have totake vacation.
When I first people, what doyou mean?
I can't take a half day.
Don't take vacation your salary.
If you need to take off at noon, take off at noon.
I don't Did your work get done.
Yes, I promise you there willcome a day where you make up

(48:56):
those hours.
There will come a day in theautomation industry where you
have to work 44 hours in a week,like it's going to happen, so
take off, I don't care.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
That's all part of being safe, make this even
longer.
That was one of the thingsabout my first job that really
turned me off was it didn'tmatter if I was there until
midnight the night before and onthe weekend, if I was one
minute late on the Mondaymorning for that 7 30 start time
.
That's what came up on myperformance review.
Yeah, and it just well we don'thave.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
We don't do performance reviews either, but
we have ways of giving feedback.
The challenge I have is becauseyou probably got talked to
about it that day and then italso came up on your performance
review.
I'm like, wait a minute, theyonly messed up once.
Why are we talking about ittwice?
So we have some things in placeto have that conversation now.
If you do something good, I'mokay with talking about it.
You did a good job, well doneand then we'll bring it up in

(49:51):
front of the company later andtalk about the good job you did
too.
I'm okay with that.
But we don't need to beatpeople up.
But we'll come to that becausethat's part of a tenant.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
Okay, so be safe is more than physical safety, and
it also is part of how we dodesign.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
Our designs have to be safe.
Again, it's a simple thing, bute-stop rules, intrinsic safety.
These are things that have tobe part of the design.
They have to be.
So let's be safe, Be respectfulAgain, it falls into safety.
But it's be on time formeetings communicating if you're

(50:25):
not going to be in meetings,you know what.
Another thing that people reallystruggle with when we talk
about unlearning Disagreement isrespectful.
If I trust you and I respectyou, I can tell you when I think
you're wrong and we're going tobe fine.
We respect each other enough toknow that it's okay to disagree
.
There's depth to each of these.
It expands, but that's berespectful and it's everything

(50:46):
from no-transcript.
We don't have a bereavementpolicy because if you tell me
that your great, greatgrandmother passed away and you
need to take time off, but Ionly say it's got to be
immediate family, who am I toget into with that relationship?

(51:08):
If I trust you to run a $10million project, I can trust you
to manage when you need to takebereavement, like these are all
levels of respect.
These are all things where, nowagain, if there's repeated
problems, if it's, you've got14,000 relatives that all pass
away and you have to take a weekoff.
Every time you gotta have aconversation, but that person's

(51:31):
probably got problems in otherareas of their performance.
Like there's other things youhave to do, and that's my
problem with we're one of thethings we're struggling as mass
doll scales is.
We want people are tending towant to write policies and
procedures for the lowest commondenominator and I'm like no,
the lowest common denominatorcan't work here.

(51:52):
Let's write a like just becausea person is doing something, we
talk to them with correctivebehavior.
If they continue to do it, theydon't work here.
We don't have to write abereavement policy that says
it's got to be X, y and Z person.
Will that work when we're 5,000people?
I don't know.
But that's where we're starting.
So be respectful, be intentional.

(52:12):
I mentioned that one.
This was the one I was calledthe quiet tenant, because you
can't be safe if you're notintentional.
You can't be respectful ifyou're not intentional.
If you walk into a meeting toprovide correction and you
aren't intentional about it,you're going to lose your time.
I will lose my time.
Be intentional.
It supports the other tenantsand it's again, it allows you to

(52:34):
do your job.
The last one, the fourth one, isthe one that's pretty
interesting and it's be bold.
It follows up with you'reallowed to make mistakes, try
something new.
The only wrong decision is tonot make one.
I say that a lot Doing thewrong thing is way better than
doing nothing, being in controleven if it's wrong, because we

(52:56):
can fix that.
We can fix a mistake Also if weembrace it, if we talk about it
, if we allow you to makemistakes, then you raise your
hand and you go.
I screwed that up.
I need help, rather than sweepit under the rug.
Six weeks later we find outsomething was broken.
Then you fix whatever it is.
And be bold is not reckless.

(53:18):
That's where, again,intentionality falls into it.
If you have a plan, if youthink about the risks, if you
accept the risks and mitigatethe risks, own the risk, but
you're intentional about howyou're being bold.
So that's what we built that.
Those are our four foundationaltenets safety, respectfulness,
intentionality and and boldness.
It's what our and that's whatbuilt our company.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Man, you're making me want to come work for you.
So you said this may not workwith 5,000 people.
What is your goal in terms ofand you've said scale as well
before, which I think isimportant to note that not
everybody wants to scale and bea large company.
We work some of the SMEs thatwe work with at PCE and some of

(54:05):
the companies like partners thatI partner with at QuoteBeam.
They intentionally want to staysmall because they have a
certain lifestyle that theirfamily you know.
They're not in thatentrepreneurial journey, the
same way that some people wantto grow a billion dollar
business.
What does success look like forMasked Owl and where are you at

(54:27):
now in terms of, you know, sizeand things like that?

Speaker 3 (54:31):
So I don't have a number for how big I want to be,
from number of people or sales,dollars, revenue, whatever all
those things.
I really the whole notherconversation we'd have is my
problem with the word revenue.
But I want to build a companywhere good people could come
work and be challenged and havefun and be safe and do what they

(54:55):
want to do, whatever size.
That is what size it is.
I believe that means we'regoing to continually grow,
because I don't think that thepeople that will come work here
will be attracted to MOT, willbe happy in a steady state.
Yeah, yeah, always going to trysomething new.
We have our vision statement.

(55:15):
Part of it includes innovationand I have a department called
emerging technologies.
Their job, one of her kpis, isa new product every year doesn't
mean we have taken a market wewant right now, with the size we
are, I want a new idea ofsomething and like one that
she's running down that we justbriefly talked about today is

(55:38):
more of an internal.
I call it a product, but itwould be an internal tool that
we could use to help our projectmanagement team, but something
like we're always got to betrying to find a new, whatever
it is, we've stood up an ai team.
We right now it's two people,but ai is something that's out
there, that's coming, it's goingto affect industrial automation
.
So let's be there, let's seewhat it is, let's understand it.

(56:00):
Even if it's nothing, we needto be in front of it.
I don't want to be the systemsintegrator.
I don't, like, I don't knowthat we fit in that squarely,
but I don't want to be systemsintegrator.
That's 10 years behind on AI,like, and my investors don't
either.
We were talking about it.
My investors yeah, go hire whatyou need, stand that team up.
So we've got this young ladyfrom.

(56:22):
She lives in Boston, I think.
She went to Boston Universitymaster's in AI and she's
brilliant.
So we're working with her.
We've stood up.
She's got an engineer, aproduct manager counterpart to
help keep the scientist and thebrilliant mind a little grounded

(56:43):
.
Yeah, but that's what I mean.
But I don't know what we'regoing to look like.
I don't know how big is big, Idon't know when done is, I don't
know what success is.
A group of people that areworking really hard and are
happy, and I don't know whatthat looks like 10 years from
now.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
I love listening to your answers because it just
sounds like me talking.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
I'm like I must be doing shit right.
Well, you know that's.
I don't have a.
I don't have a self-confidenceproblem very often.
But there are days, back to theownership piece, where I'm like
, man, this is not the world Igrew up in.
Am I doing this right?
So I'm glad to hear that I'mnot the only person thinking
like no, it really won't.
I love it.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
I'm like don't make me answer things like I don't
know how big pce is going to be.
It's going to be as big as it'sgoing to be, like you know, and
we're going to keep growing itand we're not going to do it too
fast because I don't want tokill it, um.
But yeah, there is no I don'tknow greed ulterior motive, like
I need to make a billiondollars, um, and that's probably
why you actually will make abillion dollars I hope so, um

(57:45):
not for me, but again I'mrooting for you yeah, there's a
woman downstairs who deserveswhatever reward we can give her
because she puts up with.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
I have a.
I have a 12 year old son who isidentical to me.
Like I started program veryyoung.
He started programming at six.
Like he's, he's pushing bugfixes to reddit, no discord.
He's talking to discord.
He's like, oh, hey, here Ifound a bug.
He's pushing.
But so this kid, and it's funny.

(58:17):
He's like, well, well, I takeover mot.
I'm like, oh no, I have no onebecause he has worse people
skills than me at some point.
He's got it often.
But she puts up with it.
Like she chose to marry me.
She did not choose to haveanother one.
Like she chose that other child, but not one.
Just like so that she's a saint.
But so financially, they'd begreat to be able to reward

(58:42):
people affected by thesedecisions in my life.
But yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
I yeah definitely yes , and we would probably have a
whole nother episode about this,because you you kind of touched
on that.
Revenue isn't everything rightand you can have an extremely
profitable but relatively smallcompany that is technically more
successful than a hugemulti-hundred person company.
That has revenue.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
You know a lot of revenue, massive revenue, yeah
we touched on the merger thatGrace Solutions went through and
I don't want to go too far intothat.
But I remember a very explicitconversation where you take a
privately held company who isworried about cash flow and
merge it with a company who isheld by a larger entity Gray

(59:28):
Solutions, owned by Gray Inc andtheir concern is more about
return on investment.
Right Gray Inc puts money intoGray Solutions and expects a
certain number to come back.
Right gray puts money into graysolutions and expects a certain
number to come back.
Those are very differentfinancial conversations yeah
cash flow versus your return oninvestment.
Neither of them really areworried about how much money you

(59:48):
made, like your revenue.
Um, this was an area walker andI talked about a little bit.
At one point he sold a job.
It was three million dollarsbut it was at a 10 margin.
It was all.
It was all equipment.
It was a bunch of servers thatwe were buying and selling to
curie pepper.
It was just easier for them togo through us.
I'm like but, walker, our targetis higher than 10 for revenue.

(01:00:09):
Or our roi, our margin washigher than 10, so you brought
our margin down because 10% islower than the target.
So now we have to sell morework higher than that to hit
that target.
And that's why, when you reallystart thinking about, like, I
tell everybody, I don't carewhat you sell it for, I care how
much money we're going to make,how much money goes in the bank

(01:00:31):
, that's what matters.
Again, this BD guy we broughtin on learning he was very much
wanted to set up sales targetsfor a sales team on revenue I
said no, no, no, I'm not goingto incentivize people to send a
10 sell a 10 million dollarproject with 9.8 million worth
of buyout.
That doesn't help me and infact it makes it worse, because

(01:00:51):
I got to go borrow 9.8 milliondollars worth of cash somewhere
to float that or work outfavorable terms with the vendor,
whatever.
So again, we could have a wholeconversation on my my opinions
on revenue and how specificallyprivately held companies fall
down a trap by looking at that.
But back to your question.

(01:01:12):
We have 18 people right now.
Um, we are at 18 people.
Um, like I said, we investedheavily in bd and marketing,
yeah, um, and then our emergingtech group that's over half the
company is bd.
Marketing and emerging tech.
Engineering is not very big a,we could afford it, but kind of
the point ali was making, if youbring them in and you got pam

(01:01:33):
and b one of the areas we'relagging look, we don't have the
sales dollars I want, we don'thave the sales volume I would
like to see, and so we can keepthe engineering team we have
busy, yep, but if I brought intoo many more, they'd start
getting bored and highperformance Don't want to be
bored.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Nope, so they do not.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
Yeah, it's, and and I think we alluded to this
earlier we've got some prettyexciting large projects out in
mid-phase.
People are, for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
They're waiting for next year.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
They're waiting for?
Well, one of them.
I don't know what he's waitingfor.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
You're making decisions by not doing anything
Lack of is also action.
Well, this is about our time,and not because I wouldn't want
to continue.
We do long episodes sometimes,but my laptop is literally about
to shut down here in a fewminutes, so I think it's time

(01:02:30):
for our wrap-up question, whichis what should we see, if
there's anything that we shouldbe looking forward to seeing
from mass doll technologies?
Uh, and where can people followyou and or reach out to you
guys if a they're interested inmaybe working for you or
collaborate on projects, or ifthey're a potential customer?
Uh, where should people go tofind all things alex pool and

(01:02:52):
mass doll technologies?

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
well, obviously the first one is I will come back to
answer the first part of thatquestion last.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Sorry, I ask a lot of compound questions
wwwmasthowelltechnologiescom.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
That's our website, One of the things you can be
looking for.
We are doing a revamp on thewebsite.
We rolled that out.
The existing one's fine, nohard burn with it, but we're
rolling out a new one, hopefullythe end of the year, maybe
early next year.
Markets have been workingreally hard slightly modifying
our messaging a little bit.
That's the first place.

(01:03:26):
Linkedin's an easy place tofind us.
Massdial Technologies, AlexPoole.
No, E-P-O-O-L.
Reach me there.
That's the easy places to reachme.
We do have booths at a lot ofshows, but they're not the
automation shows.
Typically, we're doing a boothat food and beverage right now.
That's the vertical.
We just talked about why Idon't like vertical, but we are

(01:03:48):
targeting Marketing needs someplace to focus, Fortunately, you
can't be in all the places allat the same time, so pick one,
yeah, yeah.
So we will have some boosts atsome food and beverage shows in
2025.
In fact, I think the target isone a month.
All right, now the excitingthings that are coming.
We do have some products, someways for recurring revenue,

(01:04:11):
which is a problem with mostproduct-based businesses.
Yeah, businesses.
So yeah, and I don't want totalk too much about them yet
because but the target is for abeta by the end of this year and
then early next year, emergingtech will be rolling out some
products, a specific productrelated to ai and how it can
help the industrial automationspace.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
that's really exciting um, I would love to
potentially have your ai experton sometime, either as a
standalone episode or maybe partof a panel, because I think you
might be time for us to.
That's really exciting.
I would love to potentiallyhave your AI expert on sometime,
either as a standalone episodeor maybe part of a panel,
because I think it might be timefor us to do a panel on AI.
It's not, you know, I didn'twant to do.
I don't like to talk about hypestuff, things that don't have
real applications, things thatpeople aren't really doing.
But Brandon Peters fromShockwave Automation has also

(01:04:55):
been working on something withone of his customers AI
application so we can probablypull now enough people from our
network that have realexperiences, real stories to
share that we'd love to dosomething like that.
So we will definitely be payingattention to your updates.
We'd love to do an update withyou guys.
Yeah, and yeah, just I'm a bigfan of MassDoll and everything

(01:05:19):
that you've said today, soreally appreciate you spending
the time with us.
I think our audience is goingto love this.
A lot of great tidbits as well.
Um, we do have a lot of kind ofsmall business owners or people
that are, you know, havethought about going out on their
own and I I love to get themthe real kind of war stories and
, you know, not just the shiny,but it is for some people it's

(01:05:40):
kind of inevitable and, and itreally is what you know, kind of
keeps your curiosity going and,and you know, can answer that,
why for you, uh, but like you've, you know, shown us there's
also seasons to that right, itdoesn't mean it has to be right
now.
Yeah, so, uh, that is all Ihave to say, ali, any parting
words or questions.

(01:06:01):
No, it's great to meet you niceto meet you yeah, thank you so
much for being a part of ourcommunity and we look forward to
seeing you around more oftenawesome.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
I appreciate.
It was a great time.
It was a.
I really enjoyed this last time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
So thank you very much.
All right, thanks everyone.
See you next time.
Bye.