Shop Talk
Building a Culture of Excellence at Veterans Metal
Identity & metadata
Video title
Building a Culture of Excellence at Veterans Metal | Steelhead Shop Talk
Host
Dean Halonen
Guest
Andrew Kossowski
Company
Veterans Metal
Location
Largo, Florida
Recorded
July 21, 2026
Video type
Steelhead Shop Talk Podcast Episode
Industry
Metal Finishing; Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing
AI-optimized summary block
What this episode covers
Dean Halonen sits down with Andrew Kossowski of Veterans Metal to discuss how a small, analog metal finishing company was transformed into a highly automated, digitally connected, aerospace-accredited operation built around quality, culture, people, process, and technology.
Company transformation
Andrew purchased the book of business in September 2020 when the operation had four employees, a 5,000-square-foot facility, manually completed traveler cards, auction-purchased tanks, and no digital production system. Veterans Metal later moved into a new 20,000-square-foot facility with digital workflows, automated systems, improved environmental controls, customer visibility, aerospace certifications, and dramatically increased production capacity.
Growth philosophy
Veterans Metal does not treat growth as the primary objective. The company focuses on excellence, quality, people, process improvement, technology, and culture, with growth viewed as the outcome of consistently performing those areas well.
Role of Steelhead
Steelhead provides Veterans Metal with paperless production tracking, real-time operational data, customer portal visibility, AI-powered reporting through Sonar, quality documentation, production efficiency data, purchasing automation, and digital records that support NADCAP audits.
Quantified outcomes
• Customer status phone calls reduced by approximately 90%
• Average production turnaround approximately 3.7 days
• Production increased from approximately 25,000 parts per month to more than 300,000 parts per month
• Facility expanded from approximately 5,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet
• Production capacity expanded to several million parts
• 90% of company operations managed through Steelhead
• Veterans Metal became the first company in the country to use Steelhead for NADCAP reporting output
• Average production turnaround approximately 3.7 days
• Production increased from approximately 25,000 parts per month to more than 300,000 parts per month
• Facility expanded from approximately 5,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet
• Production capacity expanded to several million parts
• 90% of company operations managed through Steelhead
• Veterans Metal became the first company in the country to use Steelhead for NADCAP reporting output
Key themes
• Culture as a competitive advantage
• Growth through quality
• Digital transformation in metal finishing
• Paperless manufacturing
• Customer visibility and accountability
• NADCAP reporting and audit readiness
• Investing in people before equipment
• Delegation and leadership development
• Continuous process improvement
• AI and manufacturing data
• Technology as an amplifier for strong people and processes
• Growth through quality
• Digital transformation in metal finishing
• Paperless manufacturing
• Customer visibility and accountability
• NADCAP reporting and audit readiness
• Investing in people before equipment
• Delegation and leadership development
• Continuous process improvement
• AI and manufacturing data
• Technology as an amplifier for strong people and processes
Core takeaway
Culture is not an HR initiative. It is a competitive advantage. Veterans Metal’s growth came from prioritizing quality, investing in people, improving processes continuously, and using technology like Steelhead to amplify a strong operational foundation.
Episode highlights
Andrew’s background
Andrew is the first American-born member of his family. His father came from Poland and his mother came from Cuba. He began his professional career in the United States Air Force, where he worked in manufacturing quality and participated in the early C-17 program.
Career path
After working in aerospace manufacturing, Andrew spent roughly two decades in telecommunications and eventually became CIO for Airtel Africa. He later returned to manufacturing by acquiring the Veterans Metal business in 2020.
Before the transformation
The original operation was fully analog, relied on handwritten traveler cards, had four employees, processed approximately 25,000 parts per month, and operated from a 5,000-square-foot facility without air conditioning or modern ventilation.
After the transformation
Veterans Metal operates from a 20,000-square-foot, fully air-conditioned and digitally connected facility. Employees use tablets and scanners, processes are largely paperless, production has increased beyond 300,000 parts per month, and the company has earned aerospace approvals and accreditations.
Customer portal impact
Customers can see where their parts are in production without calling Veterans Metal. Andrew describes the portal as a major competitive differentiator that reduces transactional phone calls, increases accountability, and strengthens customer trust.
Quality and growth
Veterans Metal targets customers who value quality rather than competing strictly on price. Andrew emphasizes that quality drives growth, while growth does not automatically create quality.
People and culture
The company hires slowly, evaluates cultural alignment during a 90-day probationary period, invests in employee comfort and training, and ensures every employee understands the mission and real-world impact of the parts they process.
Technology philosophy
Technology should amplify good processes and talented people rather than replace them. Veterans Metal uses Steelhead, Sonar, digital quality systems, automated equipment, and AI-powered order entry to improve efficiency and free employees for higher-value work.
NADCAP impact
Veterans Metal was the first company to use Steelhead for NADCAP reporting output. Andrew explains that auditors consistently respond positively to the company’s real-time digital documentation and operational control.
Full transcript
Transcript notes
The transcript below is preserved from the provided source, including repeated words, informal phrasing, transcription errors, and incomplete sentences.
Transcript
[00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:03]
My transactional cost in answering phone calls has dropped 90%, right? Because the main phone call is what's the status of my part? Right? And so, you know, having that as a competitive as a, as a pitch to when customers come and we give them the tour of the plan, of course, the tour sales, the, the veterans medal all the time is that customer portal.
[00:00:22:03 - 00:00:41:10]
They all say the same thing, really, I, I can see where my parts are and it's great and it holds us accountable. We
[00:00:41:12 - 00:01:12:08]
All right. Well thanks everybody for joining the Shop Talk podcast here with Andrew. So here we have this. This show is for those that have dedicated their livelihood to the craft of manufacturing. And today we have on Andrew from Veterans Metal down in down in Florida. And Andrew just started off here with On Your Side. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in the metal finishing industry.
[00:01:12:10 - 00:01:38:23]
Thanks for having me. So I don't know if you know this because we know each other for a while now. I'm the first American born in my family. So my father saw Poland and my mother Cuba, and they came to this country with a suitcase in their hand and, and provided their two children an education, which, of course, later led me to have my first adult job in the United States Air Force.
[00:01:39:04 - 00:01:56:11]
Oh, wow. Where I focused mainly on manufacturing quality. That was my focus area. I was part of the initial team for the C-17 program. I actually got to see the first six C-17s built from the first rivet through the first flight, which is a great experience. And back then it was called McDonnell Douglas before Boeing bought him out.
[00:01:56:13 - 00:02:19:24]
So I after that, you know, something in the late 90s, something called Y2K was coming out and and people were worried about it and I thought I was going to stay in aerospace. But then I got hired in telco and that started another two decade career intelligent mutations, where I eventually became the CIO for the third largest telco in the world, in Airtel Africa.
[00:02:19:24 - 00:02:34:24]
And after that, you know, I could have retired or not retired. Well, I was still in my late mid to late 50s and I said, you know, I don't want to retire yet. I got too much energy still, but I want to go back to manufacturing, right. I love manufacturer, I love what I did when I was in the Air Force and quality everything else.
[00:02:34:24 - 00:02:58:08]
So I started the hunting for a manufacturing company in Florida because that's where I wanted to retire. And there was a companies vetted and did some due diligence. And I found this coding company been around for 27 years, and they had a great, loyal following, but they were lacking a few things like quality and certifications, and they were completely analog, completely manual.
[00:02:58:08 - 00:03:19:24]
And so I said, I see an opportunity there for a project, right? For something for me to to sing my teeth into. And so that's what got me into metal finishing. I learned a lot about it, especially when I was doing the Joint Stars program with Corrosion Control, because we had bought 707 cattle haulers from Kuwait, and so we had to retrofit them and they were just totally corroded.
[00:03:20:00 - 00:03:40:12]
And so I learned about corrosion control and things like that in the Air Force. So I wanted to go back to because I was passionate about it. I loved manufacturing, and so I ended up doing this book of business purchase back in September of 2020. Wow. Real quick, Andrew, I did not know that your parents were immigrated here.
[00:03:40:15 - 00:04:06:08]
That's amazing. I feel like that's a that's a common story for like entrepreneurs is to have a, you know, their first gen or second gen. But real quick, what is the is there any big difference from the McDonnell Douglas days to manufacturing today, from your perspective in terms of, you know, back in the Y2K era versus here in 2026?
[00:04:06:09 - 00:04:28:10]
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, we didn't have AI, we didn't have digital systems. I mean, it was it was 100% paper. I remember I had an office in the McDonnell Douglas plant and there were papers stacked, stealing like everywhere, traveler cards everywhere. I mean, they had a great system and it worked. But it would take, you know, a long time to manufacture one aircraft.
[00:04:28:10 - 00:04:52:22]
But they had a great production line going on. But it was paper intensive, right? Very digital intensive. And I would do the quality reviews for the contractual reviews for the Air Force form and function reviews. And many times, you know, despite their endless processes that they had, I would always find mistakes, right? Errors and design errors and engineering errors and installation errors and functionality or the human factor.
[00:04:52:23 - 00:05:16:20]
Part of it was not known as well. So, you know, it was very paper driven. So I think that was the biggest difference between then and now. Wow. Amazing. Now give us a little bit more on the story behind veterans Metal and and where the company is standing today, because I know you started in 2020. So when, when I, when they when I got the company 5000ft².
[00:05:16:21 - 00:05:46:05]
It was a hole in the wall facility. No air conditioning, no ventilation, all 54 tanks for different sizes. They were all bought from auction. Oh, wow. Nice. It was all electric heaters. Everything was analog, right? Everything was analog. There was nothing connected. And of course, the funny part about it was at the end of the day and there was only four employees, by the way, in this, in this, in this business at the time, at the end of the days when they would fill out their traveler cards.
[00:05:46:05 - 00:06:03:16]
So, so you can imagine, you know, they're doing their processes and then they would fill in the cards. Oh, yeah, I remember what I did. No, that's not how it really works. And they were doing about 25,000 parts a month. So their revenue was, you know, low six figures, not much, but it was enough to make the owner happy.
[00:06:03:16 - 00:06:26:15]
And that was great. But I saw a big opportunity. And fast forward, you know I bought in 2020. And then I immediately initiated what I call the digital transformation plan. And so now we're in a as of September of 20th August of 23, we're in a 20,000 square foot brand new building, fully air conditioned, fully digital. We only print one thing.
[00:06:26:16 - 00:06:47:12]
You are codes. That's all we print. And everybody's got an iPad, or there's a scanner on the production lines. And it's environmentally perfect for the employees air ventilation systems. Very wonderful place to actually come to work. And at the end of the day, when you go home, you're not exhausted, right? Because we have automated systems, lift systems.
[00:06:47:12 - 00:07:14:20]
And of course, in the new facility we have all these we have merit certifications. We didn't have that my prior my sister didn't have that. We have all these aerospace accreditations, you know, certified Lockheed, Sikorsky, L-3 Harris, Raytheon. You know, we keep getting those right. So none of those things existed. And so we didn't just change equipment. What we did is we changed a mindset.
[00:07:14:21 - 00:07:43:12]
Right. And that mindset still exists today. And many of my fellow competitors because changes are hard. But unfortunately, if you want to keep up, you've got to be able to embrace change. Yeah. So the mindset, it seems like the culture of of veterans metal. That's one thing. I was talking to a customer of ours in a lot of metal, finishing sometimes competes locally because the cost of freight it can be pretty high.
[00:07:43:14 - 00:08:05:06]
So there's like local little markets. And one thing a different customer of our said here and here in Minnesota is like, hey, they can copy our process and they can copy our specs, but they can never copy our culture. Like like they can never write like, that is like one thing that is like built over time. I've invited my competitors to my plant.
[00:08:05:06 - 00:08:30:02]
I've given them tours of the plan. Oh, wow. You know, if they can win business, great. Then we can figure out what are they doing that we're not doing right. It's just. There's just. And I think I told you this before, that there is so much work available. There's just not enough companies to fulfill the demand. I mean, when you hear about lead times, some of my competitors, you know, that are 8 to 12 week lead times.
[00:08:30:03 - 00:08:51:10]
You know, compared to us, our time is like I think 3.7 days or something. Like really? Yeah, 3.7 days. Everything turns. Yeah. Everything turns. And so that's the average. And of course we do two dozen different processes here somewhere longer than the others, like the ones that are multiple process. You know, we have masking chem film or powder coating or paintings like that.
[00:08:51:11 - 00:09:08:17]
You know, multiprocessing type jobs may take a little longer, but the doc time even for those are super, super short, right. And it all has to do with, you know, the technology and the equipment you're using. But also the people are the people in tune with what are the expectations. And that's an important part of that, that formula.
[00:09:08:19 - 00:09:29:02]
Yeah. So the people are huge part of that. And so there's the equipment. There is the goes down to the hack, there's the technology, there's the people. I think I've heard a story. You flying in employees from out of state just to just to interview them. So I guess the culture that it seems like is that your moat.
[00:09:29:04 - 00:09:57:14]
What do you say in terms of like, your most defensible tool to scale veterans? Metal is like, hey, it's it's our culture first and so on. The so a lot of people on growth focus on sales. Right. But sales for me growth is a byproduct of other levers. So one of those levers has to do with quality. So we don't focus on customers that are price conscious, right, that are only focused about the price.
[00:09:57:14 - 00:10:25:00]
We focus on attracting customers that are focused on quality and and they understand that quality has a price. And so we may be a little more expensive than our competitors. But in that bundling of what you get in that price is a lot more than what you get in my competition. So quality is a lever for growth. Another lead for growth is people, you know, you were talking about when we brought people from out of state, you know, I, I have brought people from out of state, hired people hire slowly fire fast.
[00:10:25:01 - 00:10:48:02]
Right. It's the old saying. And so, you know, we've been in business since 2020 and 47 people did not make the cut. So they we have a 90 day probationary period. We immediately evaluate on day one going through the process. And either they're part of the culture or they're not. Right. And so we go ahead and focus on that period.
[00:10:48:02 - 00:11:05:10]
Because if you're not going to have that mindset of veterans, I'll get to that a little bit later, then you're not going to make the cut, right? The other thing is process, right. And then we focus on constantly. There isn't a weak thing that doesn't go back to go doesn't go by that there isn't some sort of a process improvement every week.
[00:11:05:10 - 00:11:26:00]
That's at least one. All right. And many times it's 3 or 4 in a week. Right. And also that contribution is by all the employees, not just the leadership team or myself or my production manager or GM. Everybody contributes to improvement. And so because they understand what the mindset is, is to be efficient, is to provide that service, that value added services to our customer.
[00:11:26:00 - 00:11:47:15]
So process compounds daily and then technology of course. And you know, one of the things that we use of force is steelhead. You know my old my predecessor was using these traveler cards, which is just just and I look back and I laugh at thinking what an entailed to fill up those traveler cards and how much they all look the same.
[00:11:47:17 - 00:12:14:00]
Right? And so and so. Now we use a digital system that captures real information, right? It's not made up information. And it also helps us monitor quality control. So something is out of spec. You know we use steelhead to produce our reports. For example you know I'll use sonar, which is the AI component in steelhead, to ask questions about, you know, how do we do on anodizing or paint or chem film?
[00:12:14:01 - 00:12:38:03]
And it'll answer those questions right for me. And it gives me the data about, you know, who ran that part? How long did it take? Why did it not fill parameters. And then we focus on the training. So technology having this paperless process provides real time visibility. Right. And and I'll give you an example as from a technology perspective as a competitive differentiator also related to steelhead, we use some other software.
[00:12:38:04 - 00:13:02:17]
You know, we use something different for chemical titrations, and then we use something different for other things. But specifically overall arching 90% of what we do is we use steelhead for our ERP system is the customer portal. And I remember talking to steelhead in 2021 and saying, hey, I need a Pizza Hut application for my customers. I want them to know where their part is in the in the baking process.
[00:13:02:19 - 00:13:33:16]
You know where it is. In my plan, my competitors dread the idea of disclosing that information, but they don't realize that the customers love it. My transactional cost in answering phone calls has dropped 90%, right? Because the main phone call is what's the status of my part? Right? And so, you know, having that as a competitive as a, as a pitch to when customers come and we give them the tour of the plan, of course, the tour sales, the, the veterans medal all the time is that customer portal.
[00:13:33:16 - 00:13:53:01]
They all say the same thing, really, I, I can see where my parts are and it's great and it holds us accountable. We had one little part name that was on the in the, in the shelving unit that came in, and it was a small box, but it was behind one of the the shelves and we kind of didn't see it was like, why is my parts still in the receiving?
[00:13:53:01 - 00:14:10:12]
And then we realized we didn't see it. It was still there on the shelf because it was it was like one by one inch box. I mean, it was really but it holds us accountable as well. Right? And so I love the fact. So technology is another lever. But then culture is, is all four of those together. Right.
[00:14:10:13 - 00:14:35:04]
So growth wasn't our goal. Excellence was our goal. Right. And so growth was a byproduct of that excellence. And that's what's allowed us to be successful over, over the last five years. Wow. That's a that's amazing. And one thing I say with the with the customer portal is like manufacturing. It's a team game, right? If you're building 737, it's not just Boeing.
[00:14:35:05 - 00:14:53:01]
Right. There's like a there's an army of companies behind Boeing. And they all need each other to, to perform perform on time. It's good quality. And I think the portal is one thing of like it's like, hey veterans metal. We're not just a transactional business. Like we're going to bring you in and be partners because the reality is you need your customers to be successful.
[00:14:53:01 - 00:15:12:24]
So you keep sending more work. They need you to be successful so you can deliver on time of quality. And the portal is like, hey, you know, it's like, I'm going to share with you where our parts are. I trust you guys. You guys trust us. And then I think that helps. Like in my in my opinion, I've seen a lot of shops and Joe on many levels of the supply chain.
[00:15:12:24 - 00:15:26:17]
And a lot of times people don't know people don't know where the parts are in their own plant. No they don't. So it's like if they can outsource it, veterans metal and they actually like, oh, I know exactly where it is that veterans, but I don't even know where it is when it's here. Right. So now it's like veterans metal.
[00:15:26:17 - 00:15:49:20]
It's like, you know, a cut above even their own operations. And now that should even just boost more and more of your, your business. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean it's comparison. You know, my predecessor had a had a table that contained both incoming and outgoing parts of the same table. And you know, right away, you know, that's a that's going to be a problem.
[00:15:49:23 - 00:16:18:00]
How many times Bartz got picked up, they were never even touched or got picked up. They belong to other customers. I mean, it was just crazy. And having technology support your culture is your environment is critically important. And that's where we really leverage to steal hit and and speaking of building cultures, you know, and I was mentioning this in the beginning, every team member knows why we exist.
[00:16:18:01 - 00:16:35:06]
Right. So we actually have Dean, I don't think I've told you this, but we have three subcultures here to actually compliment the overall culture. Why do we exist? We exist to add value to the end customer. So a lot of the parts we do is for the military. I have a photograph of my son. That's my son up here.
[00:16:35:08 - 00:16:57:09]
He's in the army, and we actually have a picture of him holding a part that we anodized. Right. Which is really cool. Right? But it brings it home. So people understand that we are doing this for a purpose. There's a mission driven purpose. So we want those military parts to succeed. Right. And so that's really important. We also frequently go to fabrication shops.
[00:16:57:10 - 00:17:16:09]
You know our customer shops. And we see them put the components together, the parts that we coded and see the end product and see it function. Right. And so they know why we exist. There is a purpose, a very important purpose, very important. But it could also be not military. So we'll do motorcycle parts and we'll see them put the motorcycle parts together.
[00:17:16:09 - 00:17:36:13]
And what happens that company is generating revenue. They're hiring people. They're contributing to the community there in the economy. So again, every team member knows why we exist. So that's at a team level. Then we have a leadership team culture as well. And what do we what do we have in that culture? Well, we focus on metrics. We focus on measuring things right.
[00:17:36:14 - 00:18:01:09]
We focus on efficiency, cost. We focus on hitting targets, productivity rates. There's a slew of things that the leadership team is responsible titrations chemical you know our testing that we do. So all these things are part of the leadership team culture. And they were collaborative together to achieve those targets. And then we have what I call the C-suite or executive team culture.
[00:18:01:09 - 00:18:22:18]
And we actually have you know, I'm the CEO, we have a CFO as well, and we have a chief administration officer. And then the GM is part of that team as well. We have an actual financial governance committee. So we focus on two things in that committee. We focus on hiring and spending. Right. So when I say hiring, I don't mean we do the interviews stuff.
[00:18:22:18 - 00:18:41:22]
We let the leadership team do the interviews, but we focus on the costs that's added to hiring. Are we going is that going to provide growth to the company if we hire this person? Right. And then there's the CapEx or OpEx expenditures, right. So these sometimes are unforeseen things that could come up, or it could be a value added item.
[00:18:41:22 - 00:19:16:13]
We just not too long ago bought a new remote programable unit for for rectifiers. So now we can do really high tolerant parts, especially in hydraulic systems, because they deal with 3 to 4000 psi. You want really tight tolerances there. So with that programable unit it controls the ramp rates. It controls the duration, the ramp down. It really tightly controls things, because a manual controller for the rectifier is not as efficient or as tolerant dependent as a programable unit.
[00:19:16:13 - 00:19:40:15]
So those are examples. So we have three different cultures that all complement each other in the overarching culture and then the employees. Lastly, you know we want to also focus on the value we see in our employee. So we have a beautiful clean facility. Every one thing the customer always walk in. Wow, this is so clean. You know, they look around said, wow, I don't smell anything right.
[00:19:40:18 - 00:19:59:04]
Oh wow. It's it's it's 95 outside here in Florida, but it's 75 here inside the plant, you know. So again why do we do that. We we want the employees to know we're investing in their comfort and their facility. So when they come to work, they're not leaving exhausted at the end of the day. Because what is exhaustion breed.
[00:19:59:05 - 00:20:23:15]
It breeds errors. Right. And so we want them to feel comfortable so they know that we're investing in them as well. In return. They're providing that yeah, we're going to get it done mindset. And that's and that's how we build that culture here. So it's a combination of things that built the overarching culture as well. Wow. And now so you mentioned you have the quality of the people, the process of technology.
[00:20:23:15 - 00:20:49:16]
The excellence is the overarching goal. And now what has and the company has scaled. And I think you mentioned like, you know, low six figures in 2020 or 2023. Yeah. And they were doing 25,000 parts a month. We're doing over 300,000 parts a month now. Wow. And we have the capacity to do a few million. So, so and we don't we're not and we don't stop growing.
[00:20:49:17 - 00:21:14:02]
I mean, we're growing every month. Every month is what we call best month ever, right? And so, so because it's just every month compounds on the previous month. And we have we've been growing we haven't had a down month since we started. So it's been a growth month. The the rate of that growth sometimes changes. So I think election year 2020 was a late 2024.
[00:21:14:03 - 00:21:37:08]
Yeah. So that just late 2024 early 2025 things slow down. But we're still growing. But then it just it's popped back up again. So for the last six months we've been just exponentially growing double digit growth by the way. And so which is fantastic. Wow. And now as this company has seen this growth, what is what have been the challenges that have come with scaling the business.
[00:21:37:10 - 00:22:06:10]
So the it's in two parts. So first of all, you know, when I kicked off the transformation project, you know, the first 2 to 3 years I was doing a lot of everything right as an owner. Right. But I didn't do that because I wanted to micromanage or I had some pride of ownership issues. I did that because I wanted to master everything in my business, and that way if a problem came up, I was able to contribute to a solution, right?
[00:22:06:11 - 00:22:26:09]
And so but I knew there'd be a time where I'd have to let go. And let go is probably one of the biggest challenges for an owner to delegate. Right. And so and then, of course, building the leadership team, you know, that's a challenge as well. You want to have a leadership team. And in my case, you know, we have a general manager.
[00:22:26:09 - 00:22:47:15]
We have a chemical engineer. We have a production manager, we have an office manager. They all have their own lanes, their own specialty. And then, you know, building their their experience and training them in their lanes where they still grow themselves but complement each other is a bit of a challenge as well, right? And you want to find the right person with the right frame of mind.
[00:22:47:16 - 00:23:10:09]
You know, a lot of, you know, a lot of companies, you know, employees, they see all these products coming in and they think, oh, wow, they're making so much money. But they don't realize that the balance sheet has two sides, right? Right. It's income and expenses. Right. And so but we ensure that the employees understand that. Right. And the employees realize that you got to spend money to make the money.
[00:23:10:09 - 00:23:31:08]
And so it's not all about making money. We have to spend. And so and they realize that and we spend it on them as well. We invest in them. We invest in their training. We invest in other activities, you know, supporting local nonprofit organizations or them going to events annually. We go every year to a hockey game here in Tampa Bay.
[00:23:31:10 - 00:23:50:23]
Oh, wow. You know, we the whole team gets to go, but I don't go, I let them I do that so they don't feel uncomfortable with the owner being there. Right. So so that so those are the kind of things that scaling challenges, you know, has to be probably just delegation and letting go. And then keeping the culture consistent is probably the number one challenge.
[00:23:50:23 - 00:24:17:02]
So the biggest risk isn't growing too fast. The biggest risk is if your culture is not keeping up with your growth. Right. Because your growth creates inflection points. And inflection points could mean your consumption rates suddenly go up because you're doing more work. And so that culture about, okay, we have to we used to do purchase orders for sulfuric acid, you know, once every X number of days.
[00:24:17:02 - 00:24:35:21]
Now we have to adjust for that. Right? So people need to understand that as we grow, our culture needs to grow. Our mindset needs to grow. Quality is important. Just because we have more work doesn't mean we have to inspect less, right? We have to actually inspect more. So and then also the other mindset that people forget it says, oh, you know, we have an error rate.
[00:24:35:22 - 00:24:58:10]
You know, let's say it's just one out of a thousand parts are bad. If you suddenly are doing 2000 parts and you have two errors, it didn't mean your errors went up 100%. You're still maintaining the same rate, right. And so understanding that growth, you're going to have this perception that, oh, I'm making more mistakes. But you really need to measure is what is that rate proportional to the growth.
[00:24:58:11 - 00:25:17:16]
Right. So then you can take it. Oh wait a minute I can take a deep breath. It's I'm not doing as bad as I thought. Right. So you want to make sure that as you're growing your culture, your mindset is also in pace with your growth. Agree. I've seen that firsthand here at stela two. We've grown a little bit over the last 4 or 5 years as well.
[00:25:17:18 - 00:25:43:14]
Yeah, and maintaining that culture is a, I'd say existential to our to our success long term. Now, how do you say on the steel side, how is steelhead helped support your team's growth in your day to day operations? Yeah, I would say that before steelhead information chased people, now people are chasing information, right. Because why that information is there.
[00:25:43:15 - 00:26:10:01]
Right. And then they're acting on that information. So you know before on a paper pure paper side equation, you know, you had you would chase you would you know, the information was there, but then you had a consolidated try to figure it out into some sort of a rate, you know, transfer it to an Excel spreadsheet, you know, all this crazy, time consuming things that provided usually real little value.
[00:26:10:01 - 00:26:31:01]
And now we're chasing information because that information we know exist. And and I really like the fact that we're able to use sonar, for example, you know, I used to write, you know, SQL statements to generate reports. The fact I don't have to do that is phenomenal, and that my team also are able to do that as well without my intervention.
[00:26:31:02 - 00:26:52:03]
I have a master's in computer science. So, you know, I could write these blindfolded, but I don't want to have to do that. I want to focus on growth. Right. That's my that's my focus on how to how to build relationships and not write reports. And so the team can do that. So, you know, we love the fact that we have this digital technology.
[00:26:52:03 - 00:27:11:04]
The other thing is we were the first in the country. And I know you know this to use steelhead for our Nat cap reporting output. Right. So for the first three to use steal it. Number one pioneers the pioneers. And it was great because you know when the auditor came he looked at it and he was like okay he didn't know what to do.
[00:27:11:05 - 00:27:31:21]
Right. Because because he was there. Right. It showed the parameters, what our specs were, what the real time results were, and the fact that we were capturing this information. I mean, it just blew away, right? And every auditor that we've been doing, I think this is our our third audit with our with steelhead says the same thing. It says, man, you guys really have your act together, right?
[00:27:31:22 - 00:27:52:08]
And they love this digital output. So it's but it didn't make us I just want to make clear steelhead didn't make us a better company. It allowed us to become the company we want it to be. Right. That's how I view the utilization of steelhead. Right. And so we want to be a certain type of company. We want to excel in everything.
[00:27:52:08 - 00:28:15:20]
We can excel it. And steelhead gives us that ability to do that. I would agree that's a extremely well said. And on the auditors saying you guys have your act together, I'm assuming your customers are also saying the same thing when they see it, like, wow, this is this is yeah, it's pretty cool. You know, we we do both nightcap required work and non net cap as well.
[00:28:15:20 - 00:28:33:23]
So but we apply the digital system to everything. It doesn't matter what it is whether it's an app or not. It doesn't matter because we do. You know we're not required to do this. But we do titrations multiple times a day. Right. So it's not required. But we do it and we use steelhead to support that function. Right.
[00:28:33:24 - 00:28:59:07]
And so we we are able to monitor our temperatures and our rates and our throughput. You know, why is it that, you know, Tommy is taking, you know, x number of minutes to run a certain job where Billy can do it in half the time? You know, we get that information from steelhead, right? It's all about efficiency. So, you know, this the fact that we're able to do that, technology needs to be leveraged.
[00:28:59:07 - 00:29:17:02]
And you have to realize that, you know, technology, some people are afraid of it, but you shouldn't be afraid. You should embrace it. You don't have to do big bang. You can do a little piece at a time. And if that's your concern. But my, you know, my suggestion would be to embrace technology, because if you're not going to do it, you're going to be left behind.
[00:29:17:03 - 00:29:44:13]
I mean, that's just a fact. It's going to happen. Yeah. Now and this has been pretty amazing. Now imagine you could go back in time, Andrew. And I think there's a lot of people out there right now, especially in, in the world and in America that really wanted to, you know, almost pursue the American dream and start a factory and start building parts and, you know, and and because manufacturing is having I would say, like you mentioned, there's way more work out there than, than people imagine.
[00:29:44:13 - 00:30:08:11]
And with the data centers, with the military defense, there's like a it's it feels unbounded. But so you could go back and to your 2020 Andrew or to, you know, some young entrepreneur looking to start a plan to start a shop. What would your advice be to to someone when it comes to building a strong culture and building a manufacturing business today?
[00:30:08:13 - 00:30:28:17]
Yeah, I think there's a few things here. So you don't want to just arbitrarily copy somebody else's culture. You know, decide what your mission is going to be, right, and then build your culture for that mission. Right. There's a lot of little things that we just discussed here earlier that could help in that process, but decide what your mission is going to be and then build your culture on the mission.
[00:30:28:18 - 00:30:55:13]
The other thing is you want to invest in people before equipment, all right. People are as important if your team members are not aligned with your vision as what you want your company to be. So I want my company to be quality growth and actually is growth through quality, right? That's our mantra. And so focusing on quality is critically important because the end customer, it could be something mission critical.
[00:30:55:13 - 00:31:17:13]
And in our case, you know many of our military parts. So so we've invested in the people before equipment. And then having them understand that this is the expectations. This is the culture we live in. This is the training that you need to have and then the equipment we're going to provide that to you so you can succeed right, as an employee and then never compromise on quality for growth.
[00:31:17:15 - 00:31:41:10]
Right. It's the other way around. Right. So your focus is on quality. The growth will come right. You have to be patient. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. But don't compromise quality for growth. So if you get a customer the sweet little purchase order and you know you and you're looking at, oh man, I could do this for the end of the month, don't, don't, don't change your processes as a result of revenue.
[00:31:41:11 - 00:32:13:06]
Right. Focus on that quality because reputation is everything you it's it's extremely far to regain a bad reputation. Right. To do to to reverse it. Right. If you get a bad reputation, man, it takes a long time to reverse it. A good reputation takes work daily, work every day. On focusing on that quality and years down on that one, every you know, the other thing, Dean, is that, you know, every decision actually strengthens your culture.
[00:32:13:06 - 00:32:32:16]
It doesn't weaken it. So it's not a really when you're making decisions, they're not neutral. So when you make a decision as an owner or as a member of the leadership team or even a team member, realize that whatever you're deciding has an impact, right? And so recognizing that responsibilities are important. That's why I was telling you before that it's a mindset.
[00:32:32:17 - 00:33:01:06]
If you don't understand that what you're doing has an impact, then you're not part of veterans metal. And that's a key, a key attribute in all our employees here. And we have the same thing here. So we do have strong company values that we hire against and promote against. And you know, in some cases terminate against the the people that don't fall with, you know, our values because we believe that there going to help us and our customers reach their combined goals.
[00:33:01:07 - 00:33:21:07]
Yes. Now, Andrew, just to wrap up here, I know we're at time. What are 2 or 3 takeaways from this conversation for listeners? Do you want to share just to kind of put a nice little bow tie on the conversation? Yeah, I think that it's important to realize that culture is a competitive advantage. It's not an HR initiative.
[00:33:21:08 - 00:33:44:11]
Right. And and so recognizing that it's a differentiator between you and your competition is critically important. I can tell you when a customer comes through the door, they love us. They love talking to us. We know their names. We know their kids names. We know that they just were on vacation. They know they just had surgery. So there is a culture of relationships with our customers that they love coming here.
[00:33:44:11 - 00:33:58:02]
They enjoy coming. They love visiting here. They love when we when they arrive, we have some new piece of equipment. Hey, you want to see this new gear that we just got? And we show that to them because we're proud of it and they love that. So culture is a competitive advantage. It's it's not an HR industry number one.
[00:33:58:03 - 00:34:20:10]
Number two quality drives growth. Wroth does not create quality okay. And so you have to accept that fact that without quality growth is very hard. You know a lot of my competitions you know they've been doing you know they may have been around for 50 or 60 years. So they have this steady flow of work. The problem is it can change at any moment.
[00:34:20:11 - 00:34:43:04]
You know, your end customer could decide, hey, I'm done. And then suddenly it's not there anymore, right? So the default of oh man, it's endless work. It's a poor mentality to have. You have to focus on the quality that's going to drive growth and not the other way around. And the third thing is technology should amplify good processes and great people and not replace them.
[00:34:43:07 - 00:35:09:15]
Okay. So the technology we use today is all about amplifying their strengths. I'll give you one example. Just talking to my office manager yesterday and the office supervisor saying, you know what? What feedback do we have for steelhead on APL. Right. So we have purchase orders that are automatically being filled by AI. Right? And because we used to enter that manually.
[00:35:09:15 - 00:35:39:02]
And so again, it's that mentality of that it amplifies what my people do and what my process exists do, but not replacing anybody. It's a matter of being more efficient and utilizing their talents. Amazing. Well, Andrew, thanks. Thanks for your time here. And I'll say thank you from inside of the steelhead walls. You're somewhat of a hero to us in terms of you were the first Nat cap shop on steelhead.
[00:35:39:03 - 00:36:00:13]
I think we appreciate all the work you're doing with the SBA and with an ad cap organizations and moving those pretty big organizations forward in there, or help sharing your perspective with them to hopefully move them, move those groups forward as well. So thanks for everything, Andrew, and we appreciate you as a customer and as a friend and a partner.
[00:36:00:16 - 00:36:05:20]
All my best to the steelhead family. Awesome. Thanks, Nigel. Take care. Take care. Bye bye. See ya.
My transactional cost in answering phone calls has dropped 90%, right? Because the main phone call is what's the status of my part? Right? And so, you know, having that as a competitive as a, as a pitch to when customers come and we give them the tour of the plan, of course, the tour sales, the, the veterans medal all the time is that customer portal.
[00:00:22:03 - 00:00:41:10]
They all say the same thing, really, I, I can see where my parts are and it's great and it holds us accountable. We
[00:00:41:12 - 00:01:12:08]
All right. Well thanks everybody for joining the Shop Talk podcast here with Andrew. So here we have this. This show is for those that have dedicated their livelihood to the craft of manufacturing. And today we have on Andrew from Veterans Metal down in down in Florida. And Andrew just started off here with On Your Side. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in the metal finishing industry.
[00:01:12:10 - 00:01:38:23]
Thanks for having me. So I don't know if you know this because we know each other for a while now. I'm the first American born in my family. So my father saw Poland and my mother Cuba, and they came to this country with a suitcase in their hand and, and provided their two children an education, which, of course, later led me to have my first adult job in the United States Air Force.
[00:01:39:04 - 00:01:56:11]
Oh, wow. Where I focused mainly on manufacturing quality. That was my focus area. I was part of the initial team for the C-17 program. I actually got to see the first six C-17s built from the first rivet through the first flight, which is a great experience. And back then it was called McDonnell Douglas before Boeing bought him out.
[00:01:56:13 - 00:02:19:24]
So I after that, you know, something in the late 90s, something called Y2K was coming out and and people were worried about it and I thought I was going to stay in aerospace. But then I got hired in telco and that started another two decade career intelligent mutations, where I eventually became the CIO for the third largest telco in the world, in Airtel Africa.
[00:02:19:24 - 00:02:34:24]
And after that, you know, I could have retired or not retired. Well, I was still in my late mid to late 50s and I said, you know, I don't want to retire yet. I got too much energy still, but I want to go back to manufacturing, right. I love manufacturer, I love what I did when I was in the Air Force and quality everything else.
[00:02:34:24 - 00:02:58:08]
So I started the hunting for a manufacturing company in Florida because that's where I wanted to retire. And there was a companies vetted and did some due diligence. And I found this coding company been around for 27 years, and they had a great, loyal following, but they were lacking a few things like quality and certifications, and they were completely analog, completely manual.
[00:02:58:08 - 00:03:19:24]
And so I said, I see an opportunity there for a project, right? For something for me to to sing my teeth into. And so that's what got me into metal finishing. I learned a lot about it, especially when I was doing the Joint Stars program with Corrosion Control, because we had bought 707 cattle haulers from Kuwait, and so we had to retrofit them and they were just totally corroded.
[00:03:20:00 - 00:03:40:12]
And so I learned about corrosion control and things like that in the Air Force. So I wanted to go back to because I was passionate about it. I loved manufacturing, and so I ended up doing this book of business purchase back in September of 2020. Wow. Real quick, Andrew, I did not know that your parents were immigrated here.
[00:03:40:15 - 00:04:06:08]
That's amazing. I feel like that's a that's a common story for like entrepreneurs is to have a, you know, their first gen or second gen. But real quick, what is the is there any big difference from the McDonnell Douglas days to manufacturing today, from your perspective in terms of, you know, back in the Y2K era versus here in 2026?
[00:04:06:09 - 00:04:28:10]
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, we didn't have AI, we didn't have digital systems. I mean, it was it was 100% paper. I remember I had an office in the McDonnell Douglas plant and there were papers stacked, stealing like everywhere, traveler cards everywhere. I mean, they had a great system and it worked. But it would take, you know, a long time to manufacture one aircraft.
[00:04:28:10 - 00:04:52:22]
But they had a great production line going on. But it was paper intensive, right? Very digital intensive. And I would do the quality reviews for the contractual reviews for the Air Force form and function reviews. And many times, you know, despite their endless processes that they had, I would always find mistakes, right? Errors and design errors and engineering errors and installation errors and functionality or the human factor.
[00:04:52:23 - 00:05:16:20]
Part of it was not known as well. So, you know, it was very paper driven. So I think that was the biggest difference between then and now. Wow. Amazing. Now give us a little bit more on the story behind veterans Metal and and where the company is standing today, because I know you started in 2020. So when, when I, when they when I got the company 5000ft².
[00:05:16:21 - 00:05:46:05]
It was a hole in the wall facility. No air conditioning, no ventilation, all 54 tanks for different sizes. They were all bought from auction. Oh, wow. Nice. It was all electric heaters. Everything was analog, right? Everything was analog. There was nothing connected. And of course, the funny part about it was at the end of the day and there was only four employees, by the way, in this, in this, in this business at the time, at the end of the days when they would fill out their traveler cards.
[00:05:46:05 - 00:06:03:16]
So, so you can imagine, you know, they're doing their processes and then they would fill in the cards. Oh, yeah, I remember what I did. No, that's not how it really works. And they were doing about 25,000 parts a month. So their revenue was, you know, low six figures, not much, but it was enough to make the owner happy.
[00:06:03:16 - 00:06:26:15]
And that was great. But I saw a big opportunity. And fast forward, you know I bought in 2020. And then I immediately initiated what I call the digital transformation plan. And so now we're in a as of September of 20th August of 23, we're in a 20,000 square foot brand new building, fully air conditioned, fully digital. We only print one thing.
[00:06:26:16 - 00:06:47:12]
You are codes. That's all we print. And everybody's got an iPad, or there's a scanner on the production lines. And it's environmentally perfect for the employees air ventilation systems. Very wonderful place to actually come to work. And at the end of the day, when you go home, you're not exhausted, right? Because we have automated systems, lift systems.
[00:06:47:12 - 00:07:14:20]
And of course, in the new facility we have all these we have merit certifications. We didn't have that my prior my sister didn't have that. We have all these aerospace accreditations, you know, certified Lockheed, Sikorsky, L-3 Harris, Raytheon. You know, we keep getting those right. So none of those things existed. And so we didn't just change equipment. What we did is we changed a mindset.
[00:07:14:21 - 00:07:43:12]
Right. And that mindset still exists today. And many of my fellow competitors because changes are hard. But unfortunately, if you want to keep up, you've got to be able to embrace change. Yeah. So the mindset, it seems like the culture of of veterans metal. That's one thing. I was talking to a customer of ours in a lot of metal, finishing sometimes competes locally because the cost of freight it can be pretty high.
[00:07:43:14 - 00:08:05:06]
So there's like local little markets. And one thing a different customer of our said here and here in Minnesota is like, hey, they can copy our process and they can copy our specs, but they can never copy our culture. Like like they can never write like, that is like one thing that is like built over time. I've invited my competitors to my plant.
[00:08:05:06 - 00:08:30:02]
I've given them tours of the plan. Oh, wow. You know, if they can win business, great. Then we can figure out what are they doing that we're not doing right. It's just. There's just. And I think I told you this before, that there is so much work available. There's just not enough companies to fulfill the demand. I mean, when you hear about lead times, some of my competitors, you know, that are 8 to 12 week lead times.
[00:08:30:03 - 00:08:51:10]
You know, compared to us, our time is like I think 3.7 days or something. Like really? Yeah, 3.7 days. Everything turns. Yeah. Everything turns. And so that's the average. And of course we do two dozen different processes here somewhere longer than the others, like the ones that are multiple process. You know, we have masking chem film or powder coating or paintings like that.
[00:08:51:11 - 00:09:08:17]
You know, multiprocessing type jobs may take a little longer, but the doc time even for those are super, super short, right. And it all has to do with, you know, the technology and the equipment you're using. But also the people are the people in tune with what are the expectations. And that's an important part of that, that formula.
[00:09:08:19 - 00:09:29:02]
Yeah. So the people are huge part of that. And so there's the equipment. There is the goes down to the hack, there's the technology, there's the people. I think I've heard a story. You flying in employees from out of state just to just to interview them. So I guess the culture that it seems like is that your moat.
[00:09:29:04 - 00:09:57:14]
What do you say in terms of like, your most defensible tool to scale veterans? Metal is like, hey, it's it's our culture first and so on. The so a lot of people on growth focus on sales. Right. But sales for me growth is a byproduct of other levers. So one of those levers has to do with quality. So we don't focus on customers that are price conscious, right, that are only focused about the price.
[00:09:57:14 - 00:10:25:00]
We focus on attracting customers that are focused on quality and and they understand that quality has a price. And so we may be a little more expensive than our competitors. But in that bundling of what you get in that price is a lot more than what you get in my competition. So quality is a lever for growth. Another lead for growth is people, you know, you were talking about when we brought people from out of state, you know, I, I have brought people from out of state, hired people hire slowly fire fast.
[00:10:25:01 - 00:10:48:02]
Right. It's the old saying. And so, you know, we've been in business since 2020 and 47 people did not make the cut. So they we have a 90 day probationary period. We immediately evaluate on day one going through the process. And either they're part of the culture or they're not. Right. And so we go ahead and focus on that period.
[00:10:48:02 - 00:11:05:10]
Because if you're not going to have that mindset of veterans, I'll get to that a little bit later, then you're not going to make the cut, right? The other thing is process, right. And then we focus on constantly. There isn't a weak thing that doesn't go back to go doesn't go by that there isn't some sort of a process improvement every week.
[00:11:05:10 - 00:11:26:00]
That's at least one. All right. And many times it's 3 or 4 in a week. Right. And also that contribution is by all the employees, not just the leadership team or myself or my production manager or GM. Everybody contributes to improvement. And so because they understand what the mindset is, is to be efficient, is to provide that service, that value added services to our customer.
[00:11:26:00 - 00:11:47:15]
So process compounds daily and then technology of course. And you know, one of the things that we use of force is steelhead. You know my old my predecessor was using these traveler cards, which is just just and I look back and I laugh at thinking what an entailed to fill up those traveler cards and how much they all look the same.
[00:11:47:17 - 00:12:14:00]
Right? And so and so. Now we use a digital system that captures real information, right? It's not made up information. And it also helps us monitor quality control. So something is out of spec. You know we use steelhead to produce our reports. For example you know I'll use sonar, which is the AI component in steelhead, to ask questions about, you know, how do we do on anodizing or paint or chem film?
[00:12:14:01 - 00:12:38:03]
And it'll answer those questions right for me. And it gives me the data about, you know, who ran that part? How long did it take? Why did it not fill parameters. And then we focus on the training. So technology having this paperless process provides real time visibility. Right. And and I'll give you an example as from a technology perspective as a competitive differentiator also related to steelhead, we use some other software.
[00:12:38:04 - 00:13:02:17]
You know, we use something different for chemical titrations, and then we use something different for other things. But specifically overall arching 90% of what we do is we use steelhead for our ERP system is the customer portal. And I remember talking to steelhead in 2021 and saying, hey, I need a Pizza Hut application for my customers. I want them to know where their part is in the in the baking process.
[00:13:02:19 - 00:13:33:16]
You know where it is. In my plan, my competitors dread the idea of disclosing that information, but they don't realize that the customers love it. My transactional cost in answering phone calls has dropped 90%, right? Because the main phone call is what's the status of my part? Right? And so, you know, having that as a competitive as a, as a pitch to when customers come and we give them the tour of the plan, of course, the tour sales, the, the veterans medal all the time is that customer portal.
[00:13:33:16 - 00:13:53:01]
They all say the same thing, really, I, I can see where my parts are and it's great and it holds us accountable. We had one little part name that was on the in the, in the shelving unit that came in, and it was a small box, but it was behind one of the the shelves and we kind of didn't see it was like, why is my parts still in the receiving?
[00:13:53:01 - 00:14:10:12]
And then we realized we didn't see it. It was still there on the shelf because it was it was like one by one inch box. I mean, it was really but it holds us accountable as well. Right? And so I love the fact. So technology is another lever. But then culture is, is all four of those together. Right.
[00:14:10:13 - 00:14:35:04]
So growth wasn't our goal. Excellence was our goal. Right. And so growth was a byproduct of that excellence. And that's what's allowed us to be successful over, over the last five years. Wow. That's a that's amazing. And one thing I say with the with the customer portal is like manufacturing. It's a team game, right? If you're building 737, it's not just Boeing.
[00:14:35:05 - 00:14:53:01]
Right. There's like a there's an army of companies behind Boeing. And they all need each other to, to perform perform on time. It's good quality. And I think the portal is one thing of like it's like, hey veterans metal. We're not just a transactional business. Like we're going to bring you in and be partners because the reality is you need your customers to be successful.
[00:14:53:01 - 00:15:12:24]
So you keep sending more work. They need you to be successful so you can deliver on time of quality. And the portal is like, hey, you know, it's like, I'm going to share with you where our parts are. I trust you guys. You guys trust us. And then I think that helps. Like in my in my opinion, I've seen a lot of shops and Joe on many levels of the supply chain.
[00:15:12:24 - 00:15:26:17]
And a lot of times people don't know people don't know where the parts are in their own plant. No they don't. So it's like if they can outsource it, veterans metal and they actually like, oh, I know exactly where it is that veterans, but I don't even know where it is when it's here. Right. So now it's like veterans metal.
[00:15:26:17 - 00:15:49:20]
It's like, you know, a cut above even their own operations. And now that should even just boost more and more of your, your business. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean it's comparison. You know, my predecessor had a had a table that contained both incoming and outgoing parts of the same table. And you know, right away, you know, that's a that's going to be a problem.
[00:15:49:23 - 00:16:18:00]
How many times Bartz got picked up, they were never even touched or got picked up. They belong to other customers. I mean, it was just crazy. And having technology support your culture is your environment is critically important. And that's where we really leverage to steal hit and and speaking of building cultures, you know, and I was mentioning this in the beginning, every team member knows why we exist.
[00:16:18:01 - 00:16:35:06]
Right. So we actually have Dean, I don't think I've told you this, but we have three subcultures here to actually compliment the overall culture. Why do we exist? We exist to add value to the end customer. So a lot of the parts we do is for the military. I have a photograph of my son. That's my son up here.
[00:16:35:08 - 00:16:57:09]
He's in the army, and we actually have a picture of him holding a part that we anodized. Right. Which is really cool. Right? But it brings it home. So people understand that we are doing this for a purpose. There's a mission driven purpose. So we want those military parts to succeed. Right. And so that's really important. We also frequently go to fabrication shops.
[00:16:57:10 - 00:17:16:09]
You know our customer shops. And we see them put the components together, the parts that we coded and see the end product and see it function. Right. And so they know why we exist. There is a purpose, a very important purpose, very important. But it could also be not military. So we'll do motorcycle parts and we'll see them put the motorcycle parts together.
[00:17:16:09 - 00:17:36:13]
And what happens that company is generating revenue. They're hiring people. They're contributing to the community there in the economy. So again, every team member knows why we exist. So that's at a team level. Then we have a leadership team culture as well. And what do we what do we have in that culture? Well, we focus on metrics. We focus on measuring things right.
[00:17:36:14 - 00:18:01:09]
We focus on efficiency, cost. We focus on hitting targets, productivity rates. There's a slew of things that the leadership team is responsible titrations chemical you know our testing that we do. So all these things are part of the leadership team culture. And they were collaborative together to achieve those targets. And then we have what I call the C-suite or executive team culture.
[00:18:01:09 - 00:18:22:18]
And we actually have you know, I'm the CEO, we have a CFO as well, and we have a chief administration officer. And then the GM is part of that team as well. We have an actual financial governance committee. So we focus on two things in that committee. We focus on hiring and spending. Right. So when I say hiring, I don't mean we do the interviews stuff.
[00:18:22:18 - 00:18:41:22]
We let the leadership team do the interviews, but we focus on the costs that's added to hiring. Are we going is that going to provide growth to the company if we hire this person? Right. And then there's the CapEx or OpEx expenditures, right. So these sometimes are unforeseen things that could come up, or it could be a value added item.
[00:18:41:22 - 00:19:16:13]
We just not too long ago bought a new remote programable unit for for rectifiers. So now we can do really high tolerant parts, especially in hydraulic systems, because they deal with 3 to 4000 psi. You want really tight tolerances there. So with that programable unit it controls the ramp rates. It controls the duration, the ramp down. It really tightly controls things, because a manual controller for the rectifier is not as efficient or as tolerant dependent as a programable unit.
[00:19:16:13 - 00:19:40:15]
So those are examples. So we have three different cultures that all complement each other in the overarching culture and then the employees. Lastly, you know we want to also focus on the value we see in our employee. So we have a beautiful clean facility. Every one thing the customer always walk in. Wow, this is so clean. You know, they look around said, wow, I don't smell anything right.
[00:19:40:18 - 00:19:59:04]
Oh wow. It's it's it's 95 outside here in Florida, but it's 75 here inside the plant, you know. So again why do we do that. We we want the employees to know we're investing in their comfort and their facility. So when they come to work, they're not leaving exhausted at the end of the day. Because what is exhaustion breed.
[00:19:59:05 - 00:20:23:15]
It breeds errors. Right. And so we want them to feel comfortable so they know that we're investing in them as well. In return. They're providing that yeah, we're going to get it done mindset. And that's and that's how we build that culture here. So it's a combination of things that built the overarching culture as well. Wow. And now so you mentioned you have the quality of the people, the process of technology.
[00:20:23:15 - 00:20:49:16]
The excellence is the overarching goal. And now what has and the company has scaled. And I think you mentioned like, you know, low six figures in 2020 or 2023. Yeah. And they were doing 25,000 parts a month. We're doing over 300,000 parts a month now. Wow. And we have the capacity to do a few million. So, so and we don't we're not and we don't stop growing.
[00:20:49:17 - 00:21:14:02]
I mean, we're growing every month. Every month is what we call best month ever, right? And so, so because it's just every month compounds on the previous month. And we have we've been growing we haven't had a down month since we started. So it's been a growth month. The the rate of that growth sometimes changes. So I think election year 2020 was a late 2024.
[00:21:14:03 - 00:21:37:08]
Yeah. So that just late 2024 early 2025 things slow down. But we're still growing. But then it just it's popped back up again. So for the last six months we've been just exponentially growing double digit growth by the way. And so which is fantastic. Wow. And now as this company has seen this growth, what is what have been the challenges that have come with scaling the business.
[00:21:37:10 - 00:22:06:10]
So the it's in two parts. So first of all, you know, when I kicked off the transformation project, you know, the first 2 to 3 years I was doing a lot of everything right as an owner. Right. But I didn't do that because I wanted to micromanage or I had some pride of ownership issues. I did that because I wanted to master everything in my business, and that way if a problem came up, I was able to contribute to a solution, right?
[00:22:06:11 - 00:22:26:09]
And so but I knew there'd be a time where I'd have to let go. And let go is probably one of the biggest challenges for an owner to delegate. Right. And so and then, of course, building the leadership team, you know, that's a challenge as well. You want to have a leadership team. And in my case, you know, we have a general manager.
[00:22:26:09 - 00:22:47:15]
We have a chemical engineer. We have a production manager, we have an office manager. They all have their own lanes, their own specialty. And then, you know, building their their experience and training them in their lanes where they still grow themselves but complement each other is a bit of a challenge as well, right? And you want to find the right person with the right frame of mind.
[00:22:47:16 - 00:23:10:09]
You know, a lot of, you know, a lot of companies, you know, employees, they see all these products coming in and they think, oh, wow, they're making so much money. But they don't realize that the balance sheet has two sides, right? Right. It's income and expenses. Right. And so but we ensure that the employees understand that. Right. And the employees realize that you got to spend money to make the money.
[00:23:10:09 - 00:23:31:08]
And so it's not all about making money. We have to spend. And so and they realize that and we spend it on them as well. We invest in them. We invest in their training. We invest in other activities, you know, supporting local nonprofit organizations or them going to events annually. We go every year to a hockey game here in Tampa Bay.
[00:23:31:10 - 00:23:50:23]
Oh, wow. You know, we the whole team gets to go, but I don't go, I let them I do that so they don't feel uncomfortable with the owner being there. Right. So so that so those are the kind of things that scaling challenges, you know, has to be probably just delegation and letting go. And then keeping the culture consistent is probably the number one challenge.
[00:23:50:23 - 00:24:17:02]
So the biggest risk isn't growing too fast. The biggest risk is if your culture is not keeping up with your growth. Right. Because your growth creates inflection points. And inflection points could mean your consumption rates suddenly go up because you're doing more work. And so that culture about, okay, we have to we used to do purchase orders for sulfuric acid, you know, once every X number of days.
[00:24:17:02 - 00:24:35:21]
Now we have to adjust for that. Right? So people need to understand that as we grow, our culture needs to grow. Our mindset needs to grow. Quality is important. Just because we have more work doesn't mean we have to inspect less, right? We have to actually inspect more. So and then also the other mindset that people forget it says, oh, you know, we have an error rate.
[00:24:35:22 - 00:24:58:10]
You know, let's say it's just one out of a thousand parts are bad. If you suddenly are doing 2000 parts and you have two errors, it didn't mean your errors went up 100%. You're still maintaining the same rate, right. And so understanding that growth, you're going to have this perception that, oh, I'm making more mistakes. But you really need to measure is what is that rate proportional to the growth.
[00:24:58:11 - 00:25:17:16]
Right. So then you can take it. Oh wait a minute I can take a deep breath. It's I'm not doing as bad as I thought. Right. So you want to make sure that as you're growing your culture, your mindset is also in pace with your growth. Agree. I've seen that firsthand here at stela two. We've grown a little bit over the last 4 or 5 years as well.
[00:25:17:18 - 00:25:43:14]
Yeah, and maintaining that culture is a, I'd say existential to our to our success long term. Now, how do you say on the steel side, how is steelhead helped support your team's growth in your day to day operations? Yeah, I would say that before steelhead information chased people, now people are chasing information, right. Because why that information is there.
[00:25:43:15 - 00:26:10:01]
Right. And then they're acting on that information. So you know before on a paper pure paper side equation, you know, you had you would chase you would you know, the information was there, but then you had a consolidated try to figure it out into some sort of a rate, you know, transfer it to an Excel spreadsheet, you know, all this crazy, time consuming things that provided usually real little value.
[00:26:10:01 - 00:26:31:01]
And now we're chasing information because that information we know exist. And and I really like the fact that we're able to use sonar, for example, you know, I used to write, you know, SQL statements to generate reports. The fact I don't have to do that is phenomenal, and that my team also are able to do that as well without my intervention.
[00:26:31:02 - 00:26:52:03]
I have a master's in computer science. So, you know, I could write these blindfolded, but I don't want to have to do that. I want to focus on growth. Right. That's my that's my focus on how to how to build relationships and not write reports. And so the team can do that. So, you know, we love the fact that we have this digital technology.
[00:26:52:03 - 00:27:11:04]
The other thing is we were the first in the country. And I know you know this to use steelhead for our Nat cap reporting output. Right. So for the first three to use steal it. Number one pioneers the pioneers. And it was great because you know when the auditor came he looked at it and he was like okay he didn't know what to do.
[00:27:11:05 - 00:27:31:21]
Right. Because because he was there. Right. It showed the parameters, what our specs were, what the real time results were, and the fact that we were capturing this information. I mean, it just blew away, right? And every auditor that we've been doing, I think this is our our third audit with our with steelhead says the same thing. It says, man, you guys really have your act together, right?
[00:27:31:22 - 00:27:52:08]
And they love this digital output. So it's but it didn't make us I just want to make clear steelhead didn't make us a better company. It allowed us to become the company we want it to be. Right. That's how I view the utilization of steelhead. Right. And so we want to be a certain type of company. We want to excel in everything.
[00:27:52:08 - 00:28:15:20]
We can excel it. And steelhead gives us that ability to do that. I would agree that's a extremely well said. And on the auditors saying you guys have your act together, I'm assuming your customers are also saying the same thing when they see it, like, wow, this is this is yeah, it's pretty cool. You know, we we do both nightcap required work and non net cap as well.
[00:28:15:20 - 00:28:33:23]
So but we apply the digital system to everything. It doesn't matter what it is whether it's an app or not. It doesn't matter because we do. You know we're not required to do this. But we do titrations multiple times a day. Right. So it's not required. But we do it and we use steelhead to support that function. Right.
[00:28:33:24 - 00:28:59:07]
And so we we are able to monitor our temperatures and our rates and our throughput. You know, why is it that, you know, Tommy is taking, you know, x number of minutes to run a certain job where Billy can do it in half the time? You know, we get that information from steelhead, right? It's all about efficiency. So, you know, this the fact that we're able to do that, technology needs to be leveraged.
[00:28:59:07 - 00:29:17:02]
And you have to realize that, you know, technology, some people are afraid of it, but you shouldn't be afraid. You should embrace it. You don't have to do big bang. You can do a little piece at a time. And if that's your concern. But my, you know, my suggestion would be to embrace technology, because if you're not going to do it, you're going to be left behind.
[00:29:17:03 - 00:29:44:13]
I mean, that's just a fact. It's going to happen. Yeah. Now and this has been pretty amazing. Now imagine you could go back in time, Andrew. And I think there's a lot of people out there right now, especially in, in the world and in America that really wanted to, you know, almost pursue the American dream and start a factory and start building parts and, you know, and and because manufacturing is having I would say, like you mentioned, there's way more work out there than, than people imagine.
[00:29:44:13 - 00:30:08:11]
And with the data centers, with the military defense, there's like a it's it feels unbounded. But so you could go back and to your 2020 Andrew or to, you know, some young entrepreneur looking to start a plan to start a shop. What would your advice be to to someone when it comes to building a strong culture and building a manufacturing business today?
[00:30:08:13 - 00:30:28:17]
Yeah, I think there's a few things here. So you don't want to just arbitrarily copy somebody else's culture. You know, decide what your mission is going to be, right, and then build your culture for that mission. Right. There's a lot of little things that we just discussed here earlier that could help in that process, but decide what your mission is going to be and then build your culture on the mission.
[00:30:28:18 - 00:30:55:13]
The other thing is you want to invest in people before equipment, all right. People are as important if your team members are not aligned with your vision as what you want your company to be. So I want my company to be quality growth and actually is growth through quality, right? That's our mantra. And so focusing on quality is critically important because the end customer, it could be something mission critical.
[00:30:55:13 - 00:31:17:13]
And in our case, you know many of our military parts. So so we've invested in the people before equipment. And then having them understand that this is the expectations. This is the culture we live in. This is the training that you need to have and then the equipment we're going to provide that to you so you can succeed right, as an employee and then never compromise on quality for growth.
[00:31:17:15 - 00:31:41:10]
Right. It's the other way around. Right. So your focus is on quality. The growth will come right. You have to be patient. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. But don't compromise quality for growth. So if you get a customer the sweet little purchase order and you know you and you're looking at, oh man, I could do this for the end of the month, don't, don't, don't change your processes as a result of revenue.
[00:31:41:11 - 00:32:13:06]
Right. Focus on that quality because reputation is everything you it's it's extremely far to regain a bad reputation. Right. To do to to reverse it. Right. If you get a bad reputation, man, it takes a long time to reverse it. A good reputation takes work daily, work every day. On focusing on that quality and years down on that one, every you know, the other thing, Dean, is that, you know, every decision actually strengthens your culture.
[00:32:13:06 - 00:32:32:16]
It doesn't weaken it. So it's not a really when you're making decisions, they're not neutral. So when you make a decision as an owner or as a member of the leadership team or even a team member, realize that whatever you're deciding has an impact, right? And so recognizing that responsibilities are important. That's why I was telling you before that it's a mindset.
[00:32:32:17 - 00:33:01:06]
If you don't understand that what you're doing has an impact, then you're not part of veterans metal. And that's a key, a key attribute in all our employees here. And we have the same thing here. So we do have strong company values that we hire against and promote against. And you know, in some cases terminate against the the people that don't fall with, you know, our values because we believe that there going to help us and our customers reach their combined goals.
[00:33:01:07 - 00:33:21:07]
Yes. Now, Andrew, just to wrap up here, I know we're at time. What are 2 or 3 takeaways from this conversation for listeners? Do you want to share just to kind of put a nice little bow tie on the conversation? Yeah, I think that it's important to realize that culture is a competitive advantage. It's not an HR initiative.
[00:33:21:08 - 00:33:44:11]
Right. And and so recognizing that it's a differentiator between you and your competition is critically important. I can tell you when a customer comes through the door, they love us. They love talking to us. We know their names. We know their kids names. We know that they just were on vacation. They know they just had surgery. So there is a culture of relationships with our customers that they love coming here.
[00:33:44:11 - 00:33:58:02]
They enjoy coming. They love visiting here. They love when we when they arrive, we have some new piece of equipment. Hey, you want to see this new gear that we just got? And we show that to them because we're proud of it and they love that. So culture is a competitive advantage. It's it's not an HR industry number one.
[00:33:58:03 - 00:34:20:10]
Number two quality drives growth. Wroth does not create quality okay. And so you have to accept that fact that without quality growth is very hard. You know a lot of my competitions you know they've been doing you know they may have been around for 50 or 60 years. So they have this steady flow of work. The problem is it can change at any moment.
[00:34:20:11 - 00:34:43:04]
You know, your end customer could decide, hey, I'm done. And then suddenly it's not there anymore, right? So the default of oh man, it's endless work. It's a poor mentality to have. You have to focus on the quality that's going to drive growth and not the other way around. And the third thing is technology should amplify good processes and great people and not replace them.
[00:34:43:07 - 00:35:09:15]
Okay. So the technology we use today is all about amplifying their strengths. I'll give you one example. Just talking to my office manager yesterday and the office supervisor saying, you know what? What feedback do we have for steelhead on APL. Right. So we have purchase orders that are automatically being filled by AI. Right? And because we used to enter that manually.
[00:35:09:15 - 00:35:39:02]
And so again, it's that mentality of that it amplifies what my people do and what my process exists do, but not replacing anybody. It's a matter of being more efficient and utilizing their talents. Amazing. Well, Andrew, thanks. Thanks for your time here. And I'll say thank you from inside of the steelhead walls. You're somewhat of a hero to us in terms of you were the first Nat cap shop on steelhead.
[00:35:39:03 - 00:36:00:13]
I think we appreciate all the work you're doing with the SBA and with an ad cap organizations and moving those pretty big organizations forward in there, or help sharing your perspective with them to hopefully move them, move those groups forward as well. So thanks for everything, Andrew, and we appreciate you as a customer and as a friend and a partner.
[00:36:00:16 - 00:36:05:20]
All my best to the steelhead family. Awesome. Thanks, Nigel. Take care. Take care. Bye bye. See ya.
Taxonomy tags
Industry
Metal Finishing; Anodizing; Chem Film; Powder Coating; Aerospace; Defense Manufacturing
Feature/module
Customer Portal; Sonar; Production Tracking; Quality Management; Reporting; AI Order Entry; Purchasing; Digital Travelers
Workflow category
Leadership; Quality; Production; Customer Service; Auditing; Reporting; Purchasing; Continuous Improvement
Use case
Digital transformation; NADCAP compliance; customer visibility; paperless production; culture development; scaling operations; quality management; AI-powered reporting
Theme
Culture; Quality; Growth; Technology; Leadership; Manufacturing Excellence; Accountability; Customer Relationships
Stage of journey
Advocacy