.png)
Josh Schultz will be joining John for today’s podcast. Josh has a background in fields such as supply chain and finance but has ventured into the world of foundries. In fall of 2021 he connected with Reg Zeller and now works as president of Canekast. Canekast is a company acquiring US based non-ferrous foundries and is revolutionizing the foundry industry overall. He’ll discuss their partnership dynamics and explain how he executes on Reg’s visions as well as the operational aspects and details of the business. You’ll also learn about the importance of problem solving, long term thinking, and autonomy throughout the company.
Episode Host: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on Twitter
Looking to scale your home service business? Service Scalers is a digital marketing agency that drives success in PPC and LSA.
Discover more growth strategies by visiting Service Scalers: https://www.servicescalers.com
More Ways To Connect
The Owned and Operated Weekly Insights Newsletter
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
https://www.wilsonplumbingandheating.com
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
https://rapidhvactn.com
Get Owned and Operated on YouTube, on Twitter, or our weekly newsletter.
Brandon Niro: Welcome back to owned and operated where we dive deep into the businesses. We own the businesses we are acquiring, and we also bring on guests to talk about their operating struggles. If you like what you hear today, follow John and Brandon on Twitter. That's John at Wilson companies in Brandon at Brandon Nairo.
Brandon Niro: Also check out our weekly newsletter where we teach you how to be an effective operator. You can sign up by clicking the link in the description of this podcast. Or by visiting owned and operated. com that's owned and operated. com. Check it out.
Announcer: Josh Schultz will be joining John for today's podcast. Josh has a background in fields such as supply chain and finance, but has ventured into the world of boundaries. In fall of 2021, he connected with Reg Seller and now works as President of Pain Cast. Pain Cast is a company acquiring us based non farish foundries, and is revolutionizing the foundry industry overall.
Announcer: He'll discuss their partnership dynamics and explain how he executes on reg's, visions, as well as the operational aspects and details of the business. You'll also learn about the importance of problem solving, long term thinking, and autonomy throughout the company. We hope you enjoy the show. It's
John Wilson: no secret that Brandon and I have cleaned up a lot of poop in our career. Unfortunately, we don't clean up crappy bookkeeping. That's where today's sponsor comes in. Appletree Business Services handles bookkeeping, payroll, and taxes for small businesses. Appletree Business Services is the go to choice for growing service companies so they can manage cashflow, know their numbers, and save on taxes.
John Wilson: The U. S. based team has taken care of small business bookkeeping and taxes since 2005. Find them online at appletreebusiness. com or email patrick at appletreebusiness. com. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today we have Josh Schultz on the show. Welcome Josh. Hey, thanks for having me on here, John. Yeah, this will be a lot of fun.
John Wilson: Did you and Rich just start a podcast?
Josh Schultz: Yeah. Yeah, we did. So it's like back and forth part me just ask people how they operate their business. So less about your history, Hey, how'd you get here? And all that more about the nuts and bolts of how you're actually operating more just because I have a lot of questions I want to learn.
Josh Schultz: And then rich, every other one is me and rich kind of recording. We talk about twice a week, just recording one of those conversations. And if there's anything in there, grabbing it out.
John Wilson: Yeah. What's it called?
Josh Schultz: So it's SMB op show is the main one. And then in between we do a ops talk, which is just, again, Rich and I having a conversation.
Josh Schultz: They were actually going to have one with guest work on there soon to talk about like async meetings and stuff. So
John Wilson: yeah,
Josh Schultz: probably ask you at some point to do some ops talk with us.
John Wilson: Yeah, that'd be dope. Might be better if you had Brandon on though, he'd be better than I would.
Josh Schultz: If he's the one running, then yeah, let's take him.
Josh Schultz: Yeah,
John Wilson: that's pretty interesting. Alright, so Josh, I think a lot of people are familiar with you from Twitter. You've been pretty prolific in your sharing over the years, but much more recently, you're now working with Reg Zeller over at Kinkast. Can you give us a little bit of a background, talk about where you've been and what you're up to now?
Josh Schultz: Yeah, sure. So I spent about 10, 12 years in supply chain, a little finance before that, but the majority of my working career and what I learned was in a supply chain company. Started one similar to my father's kind of piggybacked off of him, merged them together, moved down to Mexico, did the same thing down there.
Josh Schultz: And then sold all of that together and to end of 2019, I worked with the acquiring company, which is a PE backed platform firm for a while. So holdco probably very large and what was too big for me, I just didn't do well. It was everything moved too slow and everything needed approval from too many people.
Josh Schultz: And so backed out of that. And when that's when I got really active on Twitter, I just figured I'd start sharing some stuff that I had learned. Didn't think anybody would care, but a couple of people did. And then eventually started talking to Reg pretty seriously. We were the only two people in our SMB community that were manufacturing focused specific.
Josh Schultz: And so that naturally led to more conversations and visits and ended up deciding we wanted to build something together.
John Wilson: That's pretty dope. So when was the sale?
Josh Schultz: 2019 December. It was actually about 18 months of due diligence. So about probably started in 2018. I think I got the original call. I was actually spending about two or three months, my summer down Mexico, when I got the call that this was our sixth interested company in the last couple of years and ended up basically saying, Hey, we're interested.
Josh Schultz: And from then on, they actually put forth the best offer that we had so far. And so did 18 months of diligence and sold December, 2019.
John Wilson: How'd you decide that was the right time? I'm always curious by that when people. Decide to do that, especially with you were with your father's company, right?
Josh Schultz: Yeah. Yep.
John Wilson: So instead of a, sort of a generational transition, you exited the outside party. There's just some dynamics there.
Josh Schultz: Yeah. So now I just had this conversation a couple of days ago with someone. I've learned a lot from SMB. Twitter as well. Like I, I share a lot, but I'm also learning a ton.
Josh Schultz: And one of the areas I've learned in is this whole SBA purchasing, buying businesses. I wasn't familiar with that. I was a finance guy, so I got it from a large level, but not from a small business, actually tactical level. I always say, if I knew then what I have learned on Twitter now, I probably would have bought it from him at the time I tried to do just a bank finance deal.
Josh Schultz: I couldn't raise enough and they wanted all cash. The only way that they could get all of their cash upfront was basically to find an all cash buyer. And so I got some advice from some M& A guys in corporate that I had known, basically ran the whole thing myself. Like I said, took probably two and a half years.
Josh Schultz: And the main reason again, it was all cash. Second, they wanted a certain amount of money, which, every owner does. And the first couple offers did not come in anywhere close. So my dad and I were down in Mexico and I said, dad, you're asking for more money than it's worth. Nobody's going to give it to you.
Josh Schultz: We need to turn the business into the kind of business that achieves this number. And so we worked backwards and decided what kind of company that would be spent two years building it and got it basically in 2018.
John Wilson: Yeah. That's pretty dope. What's your dad doing now?
Josh Schultz: He still works for him a couple hours a week.
Josh Schultz: Basically, he does like some sourcing, but yeah, he's definitely still got a lot of energy. He's a pretty young guy, so he's got a lot of energy. He'll be sure doing something soon.
John Wilson: All right. So in between that and working with Reg, that's a, almost a three year gap because you just started working with Reg.
John Wilson: And
Josh Schultz: Yeah, it's not as long as it seems because we sold in 2019, December, I stayed with the platform company, basically on the leadership team and help them run. Did that until April of 2021 and knew I was going to quit in December. Just again, I was really frustrated. I was very up front with the CEO. I'm very frustrated.
Josh Schultz: We're not moving enough. He asked me to wait and then they got recapitalized in April, which basically means the platform got big enough to be sold to a PE firm that does larger platform companies. Basically it was the end of the vintage. I think the fund itself, it was hitting about seven years. It was time to roll it over.
Josh Schultz: And so recap, I was going to get a little bit of equity, very small piece to be part of the next round. And so I told the CEO, Hey, listen, I know I'm leaving soon. It's not fair for me to like you to spend the next two months rebuilding the leadership team, placing me in new positions, giving me equity when I know that I'm out of here.
Josh Schultz: I just didn't feel that was fair, even though I wasn't quite ready to leave yet. And so decided because of all the work he was about to do. That was a good point for me to step out. So I stepped out in April of 2021, did consulting for about six months, hated it, built some tech platforms for an aerospace company, didn't really enjoy my days and then eventually connected with reg in the fall of 2021.
John Wilson: I remember that actually. Reg was in town in Akron and we were out to dinner. He was like, Hey, you guys heard of Josh Schultz? And we're like, yeah, pretty sure he's the Twitter guy, right? Yeah. He was all pumped up, but I'm pumped out that it worked. I remember he
Josh Schultz: said, he's I was talking to John and Kelsey about you and they had nothing but good things to say.
Josh Schultz: I go, John and Kelsey, I go, all they know is that I know how to tweet. I go, how do they know how well I can run a business?
John Wilson: No, that's all it takes.
Josh Schultz: I guess so. It's the wrong resume right there.
John Wilson: Yeah, strong. But what's his tweeting like? Yeah, so you came in and you got into sort of the other side of it, which is the buying side.
John Wilson: I want to grab a sentence that you said earlier, which is they move too slow and too much stuff took approval, which resonates at the moment with me, because that's we're still a very small company, 120 people or so. But that's the story of the people that we buy, which is fun. We're not the billion dollar PE backed thing.
John Wilson: We're still a very small company with, subscale really by most measurements. When we go in and buy a company, we have the same exact issues. So do you feel like you've been able to go in and decentralize authority or help people not run into that same problem?
Josh Schultz: We're working on it. I can say, I think probably the biggest thing that we're working on right now is the culture change where we're basically pushing things back down.
Josh Schultz: When you're in a rush, when things are Building and they're growing and they're breaking, which is all the time. And the bigger company is, the bigger those breakages are. The natural, easy thing to do is to, for the small amount of capable individuals to gather it, say, I'm going to get it done and to do it.
Josh Schultz: And that has the side effect of basically. As by its nature centralizing. So it's really hard to fight. And I think you really have to purposefully fight it. And so that is what my talks with my leadership team are constantly about. Now at Caincast, it's when I do all hands meetings, the plants it's, I mentioned it over and over.
Josh Schultz: I be sure to bring up examples. And then the last part is being careful how I take care of problems. So we had something break and, instead of being like, let me take it. We actually let it go longer, bad. So that it could be handled. Properly. And that takes, some pain, but I believe it's building a long term culture, which is to me more important.
Josh Schultz: So we'll take some pain that month, but we got the point across to, Hey, this really is in your hands. You don't need to wait on me to fix it. If you have an idea, execute on it. Cause even with me, you're going to be waiting.
John Wilson: Yeah. Aside from just repeating it. Are there other ways you're really instilling that?
John Wilson: Cause that's
Josh Schultz: yeah, so we're using this framework. We're using what's called, we're calling Papa teams PA, and this is set up through a number of mechanisms. Everything from how we're writing. We wrote, we rewrote all of our job responsibilities and. To have specific bullets that have to do with this.
Josh Schultz: And so here's the pop of team. First thing is you give everybody a purpose. The company has a macro purpose. And then there's fractals of that where different people contribute to that purpose. And they used to basically say, Hey, this is the one thing you care about. So for some of my molders, all they care about are mold counts, right?
Josh Schultz: That's all I want you to care about is mold count. Anything that gets in the way of you producing less molds or more molds, you let us know, we'll do it. Not your responsibility. We have a sand responsibility somewhere else. And so we give them the purpose and then we tell them the next a autonomy within that purpose.
Josh Schultz: You have the ability to make any decisions you feel are necessary to accomplish that. So that kind of puts like some borders and some guide rails or some bumpers on them. You say, Hey, you have autonomy, not free autonomy, but autonomy in regards to your purpose. And so the way I always tell the guys is, Hey, you guys have been molding and in foundries longer than I have, obviously I didn't come here to tell you how to do your job.
Josh Schultz: Yeah. Came here to help you do it better. So part of that is this autonomy. This third part, the next P is we give them principles. So ideas on how to make their decisions better. So when I'm talking to plant managers, a plant manager wants everything perfect. We need to do this. We need a new machine.
Josh Schultz: We need a new bucket. We need a new shell. Everything needs to be new right away. Obviously not possible. So I give them some principles. Okay. When we're making a decision, we can spend as much money as we want. We have to have an ROI that ROI can come from higher mold count can come from reduced labor.
Josh Schultz: And I walk them through. So I give them some principles. Here's how you make these kinds of decisions. And then the last day is accountability. So I'll share accountability with the whole team and say, okay, You had this autonomy, you made these decisions. Here's all the plants, molds counts, which I share with all the managers.
Josh Schultz: And here's all the profit numbers, which I share with all the leadership. And so there is not an overt, you did something wrong, but there is Oh, it's going to be known, which is just enough to make sure that, keeps everything in line. So if you have the autonomy with the accountability, you give them the purpose and the principles.
Josh Schultz: That's the system we're using to. Push all of these decisions back down to build these decentralized plants across the U S
John Wilson: I want to jump into the equipment side of it. So they need any piece of equipment. I don't know. Let's say it's 100 grand. Is there a hurdle ROI that they have to cross or a hurdle savings that like, yes, I'm going to add this to the balance sheet.
John Wilson: And then what does it look like approval wise? Who controls the balance sheet?
Josh Schultz: Yep. So there's not really a hurdle ROI right now in the foundry. Okay. And this is different from other CapEx projects I've ran before. There's a very real risk of the whole thing shutting down all the time. And so it's almost a lot of our CapEx spend is to prevent a down day, which is a total loss of revenue, which is really bad versus an increase in efficiency.
Josh Schultz: And so They either have to prove, Hey, we're probably going to have this many down days for this long over the next month. Or, we repair this one full day a week, like eight hours we spend repairing. So in that case, you're basically increasing uptime, but as long as it's positive, a positive ROI.
Josh Schultz: We also think that there's an unmeasured preventive risk that we're getting rid of too. So we assume it's a lot higher. And then as far as we create like an approval matrix too. So I don't want to hear about every little thing. So we basically have, if it's above this amount, you got to talk to the director of ops.
Josh Schultz: But so this amount, you got to talk to the president. And so between the president, the director of ops, they pretty much have balance sheet control through CapEx.
John Wilson: How much cash are you willing to deploy into CapEx every year? And is it a set amount, or is it just we'll deploy any amount if we can prove that this is a good investment?
Josh Schultz: Yeah, I wouldn't say it's any amount. It's definitely capped. I'm still honestly finding that Range with cane casts, right? So I'm new there. I have historicals, but I've also changed how we're doing a lot of GLS to make them more helpful. And so backtracking those isn't as useful right now. One of the places I want to get to, and we have, we don't have it dialed in yet.
Josh Schultz: Is mandating some type of CapEx investment because, if you put everybody on gross margin incentive, then nobody wants to spend anything. And then all of a sudden, everything's breaking down. So I want to mandate some spend right now. We're looking at between 5 and 10%. But on the flip side, We've also decided at a strategic level that this year is the year.
Josh Schultz: We're going to basically fix a lot of major operational things. So me, Reg, Eric, Nikki have all agreed this year. You are going to overspend way more than we normally would on projects that should not need to be touched again for five to seven years. And a number of these new plants so that when we push the gas on sales next year, we're not breaking down and stressing workers out.
Josh Schultz: So I'd say five to 10%. It's going to be probably our target, roughly, again, that could change. I'm still learning, but this year we're probably going to be closer to, I don't even know, 30 or 40 percent based on some of the big changes that we're making.
John Wilson: No, that's huge. That's huge. Are you guys tracking when you're looking at CapEx projects?
John Wilson: I always wonder how people look at this. So is it only cash? Hey, we want to cut quarter of a million dollar total in CapEx or, and not count the debt. Or is it total investment? We're going to do a million regardless of where on the balance sheet it hits.
Josh Schultz: I'm looking at spend. So I'm looking at two different ways.
Josh Schultz: Spend we have today versus obviously cash. So cash out, which would be what I have to spend today versus cash in after tax. That goes, whether I'm doing like a buy or lease, which is what we're doing right now with our Bobcat. We've always bought and I'm looking at leasing because they pretty much are not usable after two years in a foundry.
Josh Schultz: And then the other thing that we have, which is separate is we keep track of total debt to cash, it's like a coverage ratio basically. And I have certain metrics at Caincastle. We're not going to go over so that recession hits, something hits. We have plenty of cushion to be able to withstand it. So I'm basically trying to not over leverage, but I don't care how we buy it as long as we don't over leverage.
John Wilson: What does over leverage look like?
Josh Schultz: Ideally it's probably 20%. We want to keep that below 20 percent of monthly cash. That was almost impossible last year. Cash was severely depressed. Reg bought new foundry as of this year. I think we hit it. So we did it by expanding our margins to something more sustainable.
Josh Schultz: And we've also cut a little bit of debt. Not much. And so now with that cushion, I'm basically telling the team, we're not going to extend too much. For example, we've got a big project about 50 K that we probably need to do at our Mac. It would put us over and we're already doing another project. I talked to the PM there, the manager, and we found a way where we can spend three grand and buy ourselves two years by basically buying a lot of bearings that we know are going to get burned out faster than normal.
Josh Schultz: But at least we have them all in hand. We can do quick swap outs. It'll buy us a few years to replace the whole system needs to be done.
John Wilson: Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. We're in a similar year. We're calling it our stabilization year. And just working through, right now, working through the same thing, working through CapEx and working through, okay, do we limp along what you're describing or do we go ahead and invest in whatever?
John Wilson: And then what are the guidelines that we're going to use to invest? So far, it's mainly just been need there's not much of a choice, but most of the equipment's inexpensive. Right now, there's something on the table for tomorrow for 50 grand in, for five different pieces of equipment, so 10 grand apiece.
John Wilson: Good investment, going to have to do it. And then we're thinking through, okay, if that makes sense, then what does it, does a new dump truck make sense? That's a hundred grand or a new septic trunk. That's a quarter of a million. So we're like working on that framework now and building it out.
Josh Schultz: Yeah, I think.
Josh Schultz: So my 20 percent is very conservative, just having been not, they're all going to be this way, but having been through 2008 in my previous business, we had industry recessions. So for example, we dealt with the firearm industry a lot. And based on who was getting elected, you would either have an explosion of firearm sales or no firearm sales all of a sudden.
Josh Schultz: So we had ones where basically we had open orders out for six, seven months, just all of a sudden all canceled by major companies. And so that's like a recession when you're going through it. And just seeing how volatile that can be, I tend to be more like on risk averse. My goal is let's survive the long run.
Josh Schultz: We'll probably give up on some growth and profits in the short run. So because of that, my 20 percent I know is conservative. I've ran larger corporations where it's 70%. Those corporations also have an ability to get cash and borrow more really quickly if they need to in a downturn, because we're smaller in our, bill, it would probably be harder for us to get bridge loans or lines of credit.
Josh Schultz: And so again, I'm trying to Take that into consideration and say at 20 percent we can drop our sales 50 still keep paying everybody not have to lay anybody off survive the recession pay all of our bills build good standing with our creditors not have to put any more debt on the sheet and come out of it.
Josh Schultz: If my rough off the back of the envelope guess. Because of that, we're probably giving up on she's 15 to 30 percent on the upside, more growth, but we're already, we're cranking pretty good growth right now. And I feel very comfortable and I can sleep at night with the 20 percent number. I
John Wilson: think 20 percent makes sense.
John Wilson: We've always aimed for a one to four. Slightly more aggressive, but not much more. I don't even know that we're going to hit that this year because we're in the year that you described. Cane cast being in last year where we just did a bunch of deals. We expanded a ton. We're like, we're stabilizing balance sheet.
John Wilson: We're stabilizing PNLs. So it might be we're projecting June to August somewhere in there to actually hit our debt to cashflow ratios.
Josh Schultz: Yeah. That's great. If you can handle a half cut in business, which is, I would say recessions feel really bad on the consumer side, business side.
Josh Schultz: You usually only see about 30 percent down, it's not quite as pronounced as it feels like to consumers, but still, if you can withstand a 50 percent down and keep moving, that's to me, that's amazing. That's the long term approach right there.
John Wilson: Yeah. So are you guys recession planning right now?
John Wilson: We're obviously a lot of uncertainty. How are you guys handling this?
Josh Schultz: Yeah, we're in the middle of we've started. I can't say we finished it yet. Coming up with 3 different scenarios for basically different projections. So the way we're looking at is we have different customer groups that have different exposures and we're lowering each of them and then saying, what if they all over together?
Josh Schultz: What if they lower separately? And then we're coming up for each of those 2 different. Drops. So the drops 20, it drops 50%. What are we going to do? How are we going to reorganize? What are we going to focus on? What are we going to let go? Basically in terms of balance sheet, in terms of labor, in terms of plants, in terms of plans, we're basically writing out those scenarios.
Josh Schultz: Now I'd say we've had two meetings on it, probably going to need two or three more and start to flesh out the specifics of, and it's important, not just what you're going to do, but when you're going to do it, I've seen companies create these and then it gets bad and you don't really know when to start.
Josh Schultz: It's it could turn around next month. I don't want to. Fire all these people or lay them off or reduce paychecks to keep everybody until I know we saw that in COVID. Actually, you saw people afraid to execute until it was four months in that already burned probably 20 percent of their cash reserves.
Josh Schultz: And if they had just immediately went to that plan and stuck to it. So we're coming up with not only the what, but what is the trigger that we just. Objectively system wise turn on this plan.
John Wilson: We did what you're describing for COVID and it was huge. So we set the plan and most importantly, when, and then we communicated with everyone, basically in leadership.
John Wilson: That way it wasn't a surprise because a couple of years prior, we had to enact the same thing. And my. Problem at the time was leadership didn't understand like the steps I was taking and why I was taking them So then when I went to do it, it was like tons of pushback and rightfully so like I was cutting benefits I was laying people off yeah, I would have given pushback too But having the team on the same page and definitely the triggers is what we call them and then we tiered it out So our current one is tiered out in four tiers.
John Wilson: Like the first year we're actually in tier one right now,
Josh Schultz: like severity, tiers of severity,
John Wilson: tiers of severity. Yeah. So we're in the first tier right now, just jumped there about two weeks ago. And then first year is like hardly anything. It's no dead overtime. That's like stuff we should probably be doing anyways.
John Wilson: And no like fixed cost investments basically. And then with tier four is Hey, hell's breaking loose. The world shut down. It's April, 2020.
Josh Schultz: So in doing that, do you look at each business unit separately or do you do that for the whole company? The whole co is one.
John Wilson: We do it both. Okay. Yeah, it's.
John Wilson: Percentage of sales drop over projected weekly used to be monthly, but we shortened it up because we found again, back to COVID, like we were so nimble and we were able to exit. Like the shutdown profitable we were literally net profitable during the shutdown not because of ppp But operationally which was awesome because we were able to act so fast And we acted so fast because we it was daily numbers It was daily talks.
John Wilson: It was daily everything. So we're getting we're now in that same thing. We have a daily What were numbers? What was phone call? What was customer demand? What do we have to focus on? Cause we're already feeling slow down.
Josh Schultz: Economic. I was going to ask, do you think you're feeling it early being connected to consumer and housing?
John Wilson: We're feeling it on the construction side, not consumer and housing yet. But by like division of our business, we're feeling it on our larger projects that are more impacted by interest rates.
Josh Schultz: Okay. So you're seeing less spend.
John Wilson: So some of our companies will do 100, 000 remodels and like our portion of it is 100, 000.
John Wilson: So maybe the whole portion is a 5 million remodel of a luxury home. So those projects are getting reduced in scope or they are getting Delayed. Gotcha. Okay. Or canceled. So that's what we're currently seeing a lot of is the big stuff that's really impacted by interest rates is starting to slow down. So our lead time in the past three months went from five weeks out to two, which that's a big drop.
Josh Schultz: Sure is. It's a big backlog. And I know a little bit talking to other home services that backlog is a huge sign of health. Like it's basically your security into the short term.
John Wilson: Yeah. Depending on the projects. Yeah. For for home service, we have 20 guys that probably have barely anything on the schedule for tomorrow and that's acceptable.
John Wilson: That's fine. It'll fill up, but on the install side, yeah. Depending on the division, you need a week or two weeks. How do you guys think about it? I know Red just said your backlog is six months.
Josh Schultz: Yeah, it's some places, so at our top foundry, yes, six months. And I'd say it's a healthy six months.
Josh Schultz: It's six months. Cause it should be, we have another plant that is in the Northeast that is six months and it's because they can't produce, like they're producing at one quarter of what they should be. So basically we should be quadrupling sales and have a backlog of about a month and a half. That's that's literally one of my biggest problems that I'm trying to solve right now.
John Wilson: Is that a newer plant or no,
Josh Schultz: No. No, it's just fell off a cliff. It was being run anywhere between improperly and fraudulently before we took it over. Nice. I'm not sure where on the spectrum it fell, but honestly, we cleaned it up and it completed a lot of things to customers, and of course it's horrible when you buy a company and then you call customers and say we can't really do this.
Josh Schultz: And before we really can't anymore, the way it was being handled. So how do you solve for this plant that's behind on production? So the first thing that we just finished about two weeks ago was what should it be doing? Realistically, not based off of stuff that was happening before, based off of, so the three things I look at are square footage at the facility.
Josh Schultz: How many people, how many machines, what should it be doing? We have those metrics now at other plants that we can tell how healthy they are. I would say EIRMC is like 105 percent of what it should be doing. I know when our Ohio plants probably doing about 50 percent of what should be doing. So I can basically take those numbers.
Josh Schultz: Like I said, I use mold count. That's my main production number, mold count to employee, mold comp to square foot and mold count to machine, and then project those up to the poor plant. And basically say, Hey, I read the plant we have is basically able to do this. You are at one quarter of that. Let's start figuring out why.
Josh Schultz: And then what we do is we have a weekly bottleneck meeting where all the plants get on one call. We do it really quick, but it's running down those three things. So square foot is really your facility. Equipment is obviously your equipment. And then per person is going to be your labor force. And those are the four areas where we're are the three areas that we really are going to have problems.
Josh Schultz: And so we just ask each manager. What's the number one thing in each of these areas? Stopping you from achieving what we think is possible. And you get all kinds of interesting things that come up. We can't melt metal fast enough. We don't have enough sand. The sand is not a good quality. We have to throw away half the molds we make.
Josh Schultz: And so you're giving them this goal that they feel is impossible. And as they complain about it, you get exactly what you want, which is, Oh, there's our next investment. We need a better furnace or we need to change how they melt or, and basically that's the whole purpose is to get them to tell us stuff they would never tell us.
Josh Schultz: Cause if we didn't tell them that they should meet a certain goal, they would just Do 7 a day and never say anything. Go home. This force is like, Hey, I can't get the 40 and why not? And then you get these plant managers saying what they need.
John Wilson: Yeah, do they all carry mostly the same product lines?
Josh Schultz: 3 or 4 do.
Josh Schultz: So it's all nonferrous. 3 of them are pretty much all aluminum, different versions of the same machines. Some have automated, some have don't, some have a mix. And then the fourth one is a slightly different type of metal. So it uses brass and bronze, which is the same and everything accepts a little bit of different sand.
Josh Schultz: It's a little heavier. Gotcha.
John Wilson: That's interesting. You really have you can directly compare.
Josh Schultz: Yes, it makes some small modifications for the other plant, but it's mostly just in pricing because bronze is priced differently. But as far as how the plant operates, each is a little different. For example, one of them has large crucibles and you ladle it and then you walk and you pour it into their mold.
Josh Schultz: Another one has large crucible, and then you move into a smaller crucible and move it along like a ceiling. Another one, you can actually move the ceiling hoist to the crucible, pick it up and move that. So small modifications, but none that would suggest that you should only get seven instead of 40 pours a day.
Josh Schultz: That's fascinating.
John Wilson: When we originally decided on our strategy for growth, I wanted to stay within driving distance. So I just didn't want to travel a lot for work, but the disadvantage is there's only so many plumbing companies to buy. In Northeast Ohio, right? This is always the part that we lacked, is being able to say, Hey X plumbing company, this is the ideal metrics, the four other plumbing companies are hitting it, this one plumbing company's not, why not?
John Wilson: Whereas we run, Five brands right now. And each of them has a little bit of nuance to it because usually, because it's a different trade from the other ones, like there's an electric company that thing runs totally different than the septic company, which runs totally different from the plumbing company.
Josh Schultz: So
John Wilson: that's a real advantage.
Josh Schultz: There's a lot of things we're doing. So Reg and I had, the talk we were joking about earlier and that he was frustrated with performance in 2021. He's I felt we had it dialed in and then it fell apart and something that we can do, like we're having a problem, but I think it's a good problem because somebody like you, I don't think could quite do is that I said, you figured out how to run a foundry.
Josh Schultz: You spent three years and figured out how to optimize a foundry, but you didn't figure out how to run multiple. That's like the problem I'm trying to solve now. But when you solve it, instead of running four different companies, which is what we're doing now, you're running one company four times. And so that's really what we're trying to do is get rid of the nuance as much as possible and just say, this is our template for running a foundry.
Josh Schultz: These are the systems. These are the metrics. These are the pay grades. This is what works. And so we're building that playbook. Like when I say building the playbook, that's what I mean. And so that is Every week, what we're trying to figure out is, and you ask some questions, what's our debt cap, like all this stuff we want the entire playbook done so that when we buy these, it's just plug and play.
Josh Schultz: And we're just running the same foundry and time is really our only limiter on the scale. That is something cool that we can do, where if he started branching out too much, we wouldn't, because then, he's looked at foundry equipment and all these other things where it's that would totally blow it apart.
Josh Schultz: And if you buy that and it's. Five to 10 percent of your EBITDA cool. It's a cool add on. We're going to utilize it. But if you buy it and it's 50 percent of your post hold co EBITDA, now you've just broken all the systems you're going to need to rehire, rethink. And now you don't have time because we're trying to grow the original.
Josh Schultz: So I beg him for more foundries and I beg him for only more foundries right now.
John Wilson: Yeah. One of your businesses has like a Marina.
Josh Schultz: Yeah. RDS. So I've actually raised prices on that to try and slow it down, but it didn't. So it's actually pretty profitable without even trying. I'd like to hone that in, but that's that kind of thing where basically I need to find.
Josh Schultz: Oh, like an e com person who really wants to take that and grow it and make it their own. I've started to do the preliminary, move it off to fulfillment center or call center, just all the things where it runs on its own without us having a foundry person packing up shipping and all that. So that is on a small scale presenting that problem, but it's about 10 percent of our total EBITDA.
Josh Schultz: So it's small. It's not. Breaking the system, it's an annoyance, which I think that's a good, I like rules of thumb, but Hey, if it's 10 percent of the EBITDA, that's a different business model. Throw it in there. It'll make it stronger. But if it's 50 or more, you're probably going to break some serious things and get ready for some all nighters.
John Wilson: Yeah. That's probably a good rule of thumb. How do you take that same rule of thumb? And maybe that isn't like just 10%. But I know for us, I'm sure for reg, I think you to like exploration is important and experimenting is important. So how do you say? Yeah, you can experiment. But up to this, because what if there's a model that might work better that you just haven't messed with yet?
Josh Schultz: Like a playbook or a different kind of business mixed in
John Wilson: like a different kind of business. I'm specifically thinking of like I do this, which can be good and bad. So how do you allow for continued experimentation with different business models? So for me, and this is probably bad at times, but like I'll add a new model cause I'm curious.
John Wilson: I tend to, all my curiosities, sometimes it's acquisitions, but sometimes it's launching stuff. So what do you think
Josh Schultz: I'm all for experimentation, but maybe there's some benefits, but is the juice worth the squeeze? Is it worth, maybe I'm making this number up. Let's say one out of 10 is helpful.
Josh Schultz: That means nine out of 10 are going to be hurtful. Is it worth looking for that one and having the nine bumps? I'm sure there are plenty of instances we're adding to your business. Other businesses is helpful, but I'm not sure I'm good enough to go find them. I know that one area that I've. Thought about a lot and even have looked into buying and adding to cane cast into our, our portfolio of targets is adjacent markets.
Josh Schultz: And so we probably will be doing this. We've been building it ourselves, but things, the same customers are buying related to what we're selling from other customers. Similar to home service, same customers are probably buying electrician and plumbing because then your lines of communication with the customer are the same.
Josh Schultz: You're building off the same reputation. You're not really building a whole nother brand. It's not like a diversified conglomerate. It's basically we all have services. Yeah. So that I am on board with, I still would like it to be less than 50%. Just. Cause there's going to be some changes, like you said, electric and plumbing for me, it'd be value add services and production.
Josh Schultz: So people that buy castings are also using screws and bolts and machined parts. And, they're building something with that casting. Why can't we get all the bolts and send it with the casting and all that kind of stuff. But now we're assembling, we are kidding. We're doing a lot of other things, different skillset.
Josh Schultz: I'd love to build that, but not until that is, a much lower percentage of our EBITDA than what it is now. We're, like I said, we're already starting to build that, like that is a three years out. That will be its own entity under Kaincast, but we're basically laying the seeds now, knowing what we're trying to do.
Josh Schultz: And for some of the stuff we already have we're moving it over to a different entity. I think too much, a shipping company and a event company, it's too much of a headache. You're just, you're literally just running two businesses. Yeah,
John Wilson: I agree. I think we're right in the middle. One plus one equals four for us when we tack on a new trade, same customers, huge captive market, same like lead gen source so we can take the list.
John Wilson: Yeah, it's just crazy. Like it totally works, but it is a different business and it totally makes a mess.
Josh Schultz: I think part of it too is personality. Admittedly, I'm not good at, I'm good at doing one thing and going really deep on it. I'm not good at doing a lot of different things. So in Kinkast, I'm all over the place, but it's always about basically how do we increase production and how do we lower the overhead?
Josh Schultz: Everything is really just centered on that for me and building the systems that enable everybody else to keep doing that over and over into perpetuity. So that's my one focus. That's my maniacal focus. And. To be, this is the way I word it when I'm talking to reg, like to be on a run and be thinking about a casting company and then also some printing company.
Josh Schultz: And then also like maybe a plumbing company. I just, it would be too much for me. It burns me out faster. And some people can't, I've seen some people be able to just jump all around and I'm just not that person. So for me, it works better when it's like. Mold count and overhead costs, year over year growth, just keep paying the stride and building the systems and ops and tools that allow everybody else to do their job.
Josh Schultz: And, one 10th of the time we'll get there.
John Wilson: I think Bill, I don't think he's the one that came up with this, but he basically said the same thing and called it the shower idea, like what's the epiphany that you're going to have in the shower. Cause he had people working on multiple brands and that was still the same business model, but multiple brands and they lacked that shower epiphany.
Josh Schultz: Yeah.
John Wilson: Totally different project. Pre Cane cast you and Rich were working on like a mastermind thing.
Josh Schultz: Yeah. Like an ops course. Yep. Yeah, how'd that go? Yep, so we created kind of a sketch outline and I gave it to some students that I know from Syracuse University, to test it and from that got a lot of good feedback, basically took all the questions they asked and said, okay, these are the gaps in what we need to do, gave a second version of it to Some veterans and another program I was involved in and helping veterans start businesses and basically said, once you start operating, this is what you're going to need to know.
Josh Schultz: It went extremely well, really good feedback. They've asked me to do a lot more of them. And so I've done these two kind of test iterations. Now I have this and I want to go to a third, like live, actual open release. Just haven't done it yet. Cane cast. It took up my time. So when I first started cane cast, it was a deep dive in basically how foundries work for me.
Josh Schultz: And it was a lot of new learning. And like I just told you, I can't handle more than one thing at a time. So I spent about three months talking to experts, reading literally casting books, working the different foundries myself, talking to all the guys. And I'd say only as of February, have I come up for air, started tweeting even a little bit again.
Josh Schultz: But yeah, so my goal is. Once a couple of the key systems, I've got, I think, five more major systems we need to implement to keep things at least a little more stabilized at the op level. I'd love to release that for a public, entry and anybody who wants to take it. I know I'm doing a bunch more private ones with the veteran community.
John Wilson: I'd love to see it. Yeah. Our team. I know we're really working on what that looks like to,
Josh Schultz: groom our operators. Yeah. One of the things we put together, I'll share with you. I'd like your feedback. Maybe you got some stuff to add is I started this back when I was running chess group because you get somebody who has a question on something and there's a lot of materials out there, but they either don't cover it well, or it's a lot of scammy.
Josh Schultz: Like the more popular the framework, the more scam and auto SEO bots there are out there creating it. So I started trying to find what's the one best video or the one best blog post on this topic. Yeah. So everything from how to read an income statement to, what is a good weekly meeting format, all that kind of stuff.
Josh Schultz: How do I get employees to respect me, whatever it is. And so I've got this database of stuff that's not well organized, but it is all tagged at least and why I think it's
John Wilson: important.
Josh Schultz: Almost to build an outsourced curriculum that goes along with what you're teaching them like takeaways that they could look at.
Josh Schultz: And yeah, I'll share that out with you after no problem.
John Wilson: Yeah, that sounds dope. I don't know if you're the only person on the show usually we end up with, if we're going off of EOS, we usually end up with the visionary role on the show. There's not many folks who are in a business at scale in the integrator seat.
John Wilson: What's it like working in between Reg and the rest of the company? And I ask Brandon the same question all the time because he's that for me.
Josh Schultz: Yeah. For me, there's nothing better. I can honestly say that Reg and I talk about it every time I go to Minneapolis. What an amazing partnership this is.
Josh Schultz: We've talked about why we think it works. One of the things I think is it's really hard for somebody to say, I'm not a great number one. And for years I wanted to be run my own business. And, but the more that I looked at myself, I just realized. I can run a business, but there is a small aspect I'm missing.
Josh Schultz: And so for me, my dad played that role previously, me and him, when we partnered, he played a, I don't really want to say strategic and talking about the big picture, there's just a limit I have to what I think is possible. You know what I mean? I just have this limit of I pretty much say the same, but more and better run.
Josh Schultz: So this, but 10 times bigger and better run where somebody else will come in and say, or just totally shatter that glass and be like, or rebuild this instead. I don't have that in me. If somebody gives it to me, I can work backwards from it and make it happen. And so my dad would do that, Hey dad, we're going to reoptimize supply chain.
Josh Schultz: We're going to be able to automate this. We're going to get to our customers five times faster. We can lower price, we can grow by using machines, whatever. And then he'd throw in, what if we all of a sudden started doing business with India? It was like, Whoa, okay. Yeah, I'll figure that out.
Josh Schultz: Actually, that would be really cool. And so for me, that's reg where he's got the real vision of what we can build. And he shares it with me and then I can execute on it. But I have a limit there. So for me, I'll always do better paired with someone who can constantly break the glass that I think is stopping me.
Josh Schultz: And on the flip side, people like that aren't good at breaking it down. And so even online, a couple of times, just read, just shared an idea. And then I've. Followed up with a 10 step approach to accomplishing it. And that's just a realistic view of how we work day to day. Like I say, I love it because he shatters the glass and then he gets out of the way.
Josh Schultz: Like I, he literally won't hear from him for weeks unless I bring him into something and he comes in just when I need them to just totally break the mold that I've built. Like I said, I honestly love it. I feel like I'm going to do way better long term working with reg than I would buy myself.
John Wilson: Yeah. I think.
John Wilson: Brandon's basically said the same thing with not as much praise towards me. But he's basically said the same thing where like coming in, someone has to be the one to break what's possible. I thought about this. I'm thinking about doing a thread on this. I'm not totally sure how to do it, but like the difference between linear and exponential and like it's a choice.
John Wilson: Which I don't think people see them as a choice. I think, oh, you grow 8 percent a year and that's just what you do and it's linear and that's how it works. But it's no, actually you could double every year for the rest of time. Or you could triple every year for the rest of time. There's, sacrifice and ramifications to that.
John Wilson: But yeah. What does the information grab? You said he's not great at breaking things down. Like how do you grab that and disperse it to the rest of the organization to make it functional?
Josh Schultz: Yeah, I don't know. It to me just happens. Like I just, the second you tell me a point, I can picture a path there.
Josh Schultz: Probably just pattern recognition from past screw ups and whatever minor success I've had. So he'll talk about what's possible at plant. And once he says it's possible, all I got to do is move the puzzle pieces until. We hit that I'm moving the puzzle pieces, knowing I'm targeting something where if I was just me, I would stop moving them after I got so much let's say just mentally I based myself at a 20 percent improvement.
Josh Schultz: I would move puzzle pieces at the Ohio plant until I got 30%. I'd be like, wow, I overdid my 20. And then Reg, might come in and say, we should be doing two to three times that I'm like, why? And then he says because X, Y, and Z now I've got X, Y, and Z and my pattern recognition, I've improved what I can do in the future.
Josh Schultz: Yeah. But I didn't come up with that X, Y, Z originally. I basically added it to my list of tricks and luckily I've worked with enough of visionaries where I've got a long list of tricks that makes me sound smart, but I'm really more a tactical guy who's been pushed strategically by a lot of experiences and have a long list of those things.
Josh Schultz: But I need a reg to come in and keep giving me new things on that list. And for some reason he just never runs out of them. Yeah, he's unbelievable. He's a ball of energy. Yeah, he is. I always tell him if he was in the company every day, I really think he'd break it. But being in it once in a while is perfect because it breaks a couple of things.
Josh Schultz: And then just like you're working out, you break the muscle down and rebuild it. It's stronger. And so yeah, it's really good. So what's next for me? More cane cast. Like I said, we're going to, so man, I was talking about this yesterday. I'm really excited for what we're doing. We've turned a corner in profitability.
Josh Schultz: We've turned a corner and how our customers view us. We've just changed very simple service metrics and internal SLAs that we have. And with that momentum now, it's starting to get more exciting to think about like, how can we now use our reputation, which is small, but growing and our cash. To make people's lives better.
Josh Schultz: And there's a couple of different groups. There's the workers, first of all. So we just implemented a new incentive program across the board, which is really cool because now every plant as it does better, every single employee gets a part of it and not just a allocation of profits, but actually we found a way to link everybody's direct output work to the profitability of the firm.
Josh Schultz: And so You know, if you're on the squeezer and squeezers have a really good period, you're going to get a higher bonus than normal. Like it's mathematically linked. So that's really exciting. Everybody feels in the upside.
John Wilson: That's awesome. Yeah. I
Josh Schultz: told them, yeah, the first talk I gave told every single plant, every single person, we're not sitting up top to take money out of this plant.
Josh Schultz: We're going to get it back to you in two ways. We're going to get you better equipment. So your jobs are easier. You don't go home as tired and we're going to get you more money in your paycheck. So the harder you work, I promise you're going to see all the money first. And that's really cool because a lot of these.
Josh Schultz: Guys don't have the ability to do what you or I are doing. They just haven't had the opportunities to them. It's just what life brought their way was not quite as generous as what it's brought you and I. And so to be able to give them, we got some guys that are making more than I ever made a chess group and they're molding.
Josh Schultz: I think that's unbelievable. I tell Reg, we drive in our parking lot and I see Range Rovers. I get excited. I'm like, I love this. These guys are, making sand molds and driving nicer cars than I am. Like this just makes me ecstatic. And the second thing is. People that have experienced, have skills and don't know how to work anymore, or haven't had an opportunity, haven't been able to get a job.
Josh Schultz: We basically will hire anybody. So we're so desperate for labor that we've been pulling in people and able to show them a couple of things. And we've got one guy who started a year ago. He already might be the manager of one of our plants in the next six months. We're working on training them just because he applied himself.
Josh Schultz: And, we don't require degrees. We don't require anything except for you care about the company and the employees. And I think we can do so much more. Like I said, I think we can build some ways for other people to invest and make money. We can build other companies to hire more people. We're doing some cool stuff in Mexico.
Josh Schultz: I just see all the people getting helped and upended just helped and upped across my whole network. And it makes me excited that's more than happened a year ago, even. Yeah. Over the weekend when the girl in our Mexico team went on this awesome vacation, she was able to afford because a cane cast and took her whole family paid for a cabin and basically had a massive Easter, five day break.
Josh Schultz: She had pictures on our Slack and it was just really cool seeing that she could do that because one cane cast is in a real time, 24 seven company. And two, because she's clearing enough money to make that happen.
John Wilson: Yeah, that is incredible. I don't know that it sunk in how much of a part of people's lives we really become.
John Wilson: And we had someone struggling just inflationary pressures, like a few weeks ago, which is the opposite of what you're describing, right? It's Oh my God. We have people who aren't thriving and we can say whatever we want, but that's me, that's on me for not creating an environment for them to thrive just as much as I'm pumped up when somebody rolls up in a hundred thousand dollar pickup.
Josh Schultz: Yeah.
John Wilson: But yeah, there's a way to responsibility there. That's awesome though, that your team is thriving so well.
Josh Schultz: Yeah we're having the same problems. You said that. I know I called the reg in February or maybe it was early March, by the way, this is another reason I love reg because these calls, he's just yep.
Josh Schultz: I'll let you know, reg. I don't know. I know our guys aren't exactly. Top income earners, when you look across the U S obviously by nature of our industry, I said, but I keep seeing these inflation numbers at 5%, 7%. You go, I'm doing well, but even I notice it in my paycheck. And if I notice it, it's gotta be crushing them.
Josh Schultz: And I was like, we have got to do something for them. And they had all just had year end raises and bonuses paid out. It's it wasn't an easy ask, but I was like, we need to do something for them just to make sure. That they're good, that they're happy, that they know that we got their back. That was a big part of it.
Josh Schultz: We probably, this incentive program, we probably weren't going to do until about a year from now, because we don't just didn't have the data to do it. We basically found a way to back into it and tested it. And it's not great, but it's good enough. And basically we lowered the threshold to get it. To what they were already producing by 10%.
Josh Schultz: So basically just by keeping up the same levels of contribution to the firm, they were already past the threshold that weren't acquiring growth. And that was like part of the raise. And now that they got it, they're doing even more. And so that's given them even more of a raise. Yeah, I just told him like, I don't have it figured out yet, but I feel like we need to give them something in the next two weeks.
Josh Schultz: And he's a hundred percent on board. He goes make it happen. And I just love having somebody that's like that instead of are the margins up? Did they earn it? Do they deserve it? It's they're coming in every day and, we're not going to give them, can't give them so much.
Josh Schultz: We go out of business, but we got to give them enough where it's helping them. And they feel like we got their back because every day they got our back. Like when I look at the balance sheet or the income statement, it's a lot of numbers and it's fun to look at it, increase, but the reality is.
Josh Schultz: That's on their back. Like they're the ones making that happen every day. They're the ones doing all the work. And I've done a few days in the different foundry. That's a lot of work to make those numbers show up on the income statement. That's not just an automated machine somewhere. So I feel like they got my back.
Josh Schultz: I really got to make sure that we all got theirs.
John Wilson: I agree. What's your single biggest challenge right now?
Josh Schultz: Culture. Different way of thinking. Sometimes it's because of a new acquisition. Sometimes it's just the way it was ran previously. This industry, people think that you're stupid. They assume you're stupid.
Josh Schultz: And so they just don't let you make any decisions. And my experience is most people are actually not stupid. They've been trained to act like it, but they're not. And so the three big areas I'd say that we're working on are helping people get back into a state of problem solving, which you do automatically when you're home and your car breaks down.
Josh Schultz: You don't just bring it to the shop. If you're a guy, you look into it. Something I can fix. Is it a new part? Is it obvious, right? You at least try to take a look at it. Problem solve, figure out the best garage. Like everybody's naturally problem solving at their house or wherever. Then they come into work and if it's wrong, they get in trouble.
Josh Schultz: They might get fired. It's too much pressure. They just stop. They've been trained not to problem solve. So problem solving long term thinking is another big one. So I probably say this 20 times a day, what we need to do for the, 20 year Cain cast, and then we'll go forward because all the decisions are made to get us out of a jam right now.
Josh Schultz: And those pretty much just get you into a new jam in two days. And so constantly with leadership, with managers, and with even when workers on the floor, the right way to handle this for the 20 year Cain cast is they're probably getting sick of me saying it, but I want them always thinking about make the decision that builds our 20 year vision.
Josh Schultz: Don't spend 10 grand on a new piece of equipment. That's going to go bad in two years. Let's spend 15, 20 grand on the equipment. That's going to be around for 10 years. That thinking just isn't here. It's always I'm in a jam, do whatever the quick fixes so that I can get back up because it's always production, right?
Josh Schultz: People want production today. So I keep saying to like the managers, don't It's okay to back off production 5%. If it gives you more time to do some preventative maintenance, to do some safety checks, to prevent OSHA, prevent workers comp, prevent downtime, prevent new machines, take the gas off production.
Josh Schultz: It's okay. I'm not going to yell. I'd rather us have more time for this stuff and then autonomy, which is just. Again, problem solving, doing on the spot, not needing permission, knowing what you're in charge of and what you have full autonomy over. These are all very new concepts for a lot of these workers in this work class.
Josh Schultz: So really trying to get them to understand. Again, long term thinking, problem solving and autonomy and. It's been head against the brick wall from January until probably December until mid March starting to have breakthroughs across all the plants. Really cool to see people just making decisions and saying, this is what I did.
Josh Schultz: Just letting you know, I'm like, finally, like you just made the decision. I don't know. It's agree with it. I'll let them know that, but I'm like, Hey, it was your call and I'll give you my advice, but I've told you this is your area and you're accountable. So it's starting to see some pay off. Finally.
John Wilson: Yeah, that's awesome.
John Wilson: And that's a huge shift, especially distributed. That adds so much complexity. I agree and have all the same issues that you have, but they're all within 10 minutes or 20 minutes, but you're like in what five states. Yup. Yeah. That's a challenge. That's a real challenge.
Josh Schultz: It's nice. Sometimes when I hear from guys and I got to start reaching out, I've actually went the other way.
Josh Schultz: I was hearing from everybody every day. So we just dealt with it and it pushed that back so much that there's some people I don't hear from now for weeks. And so I just last week started setting up some one on ones just to check it with them. I'll just talk to him like, Oh yeah, we had this and we'd solved it.
Josh Schultz: We called this guy, he came in and fixed it. We just expensed it. And I'm like, yeah, that's okay. Fantastic. And our goal is to build not just a hold co of companies, but a network of foundries. And so what that means is basically. Information is flowing in real time, allowing everybody to be agile and autonomous and basically like nodes in a network that can shift capacity, they can make decisions on their own.
Josh Schultz: Each plant manager knows each other and can ask stuff. So now I'm seeing, I've seen one plant that didn't do very well on a part, send it to another plant and say, can you make it? Yep, we'll fit it in. And I just, I see a lot of cross 45 days. It's been as far as. The culture and the platform that we're building.
Josh Schultz: It's been a really good momentum in the last 45 days. That's awesome, man. Yeah, that's awesome
John Wilson: This was great. I appreciate you coming on today and I definitely appreciate this was pre this recording But you got thrown into an sm besties conversation. I appreciate your good humor
Josh Schultz: Yeah, of course.
Josh Schultz: No, no problem if people want to connect with you Where can they find you probably twitter is the best joshua m schultz is my handle perfect. All right, josh. This was awesome Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate
it
.png)
.png)
