Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today I'm joined by Derrick Costello from Instrument Calibration Solutions. Derrick, thank you for joining us today.
Derrick: Thank you, Bill. Honored to be here.
Bill: Great, thank you. Currently, you're working with ICS. Here as part of the Brechbuhler family of businesses. And you have other experiences with Brechbuhler. But before we get into that, I'm going to rewind a little bit and how we got here. So maybe start, you don't have to start back where you were born, but maybe some of your educational and professional experiences, if you could talk us through that. So we get to know you a little better and then, give us some reference points for the rest of the discussion.
Derrick: Sure. I started off I went to a small school in the mountains of West Virginia and, studied sports and business management. I use the business side during my career, sports as a hobby. So, I took took that. Ran with it. Thought I was going to work with the sports world forever. landed a position in a new company that was almost a startup. And got to be involved in every single thing that could possibly do at that business because of a three to four man show turning into something. Quickly learned that operations was probably where I should be. I like to get my hands in all that I can, come across people, building relationships kind of thing. Spent some years with the, couple of different industries building materials recently, prior to Brechbuhler as well as classic extrusion. So manufacturing in a sense. So how I became to be a part of the team at Brechbuhler is, I took a phone call one afternoon, an unknown number. Usually you don’t just answer that phone for no reason. I answered it, fate be told, and it was a nice lady on the other line asking them would I like to talk about a position. Did not know the company did not know the role, but I heard her out. She liked what I said, and the next call was with our our, current president. Dennis Thomas. I like to tell a story where I felt like it was about 12 different interviews before I was offered the role was probably a lot more like three. Looking back while he was interviewing me, I didn't realize at the time I was also interviewing him. And the vision and the company itself at Brechbuhler. Because I just wasn’t familiar. Joined almost four years ago as branch manager for one of the Brechbuhler locations in Canton, where the headquarters is. And about a year and a half ago, added a challenge of ICS to my, work portfolio.
Bill: Great.
Derrick: So days are busy. Travel is busy. But I signed up for a challenge, and I've been awarded one.
Bill: Dennis has delivered, right?
Derrick: He has delivered.
Bill: So I think I can relate. I've known Dennis for a number of years, and when we look at can, three conversations with Dennis feel like 12 and I think unanimously around the company everybody. Yeah, I have to take some shots at Dennis because he's taken wild shots at me throughout the whole process. We might cut that. We might not. We’ll see what happens. But anyway it's all good. So I think, when we look at your experiences, Derrick and so 50 Marketing is an agency that focuses on manufacturing and B2B marketing. And when we look at those to segments, the reason we do largely is because the buyer is the same. W whether they're buying a manufactured product or they're buying a B2B service, it's the same buyer, the same type of communication channels. When you transitioned from the plastics and, the building products manufacturing to ICS and Brechbuhler, I was more of a pivot towards services business, maintenance, repair, calibration as opposed to pure manufacturing. What did you learn from, like, maybe that difference of experience, in your professional journey?
Derrick: The experience is certainly different because you're you're in a bit of a niche industry with service, especially if you if you compare that to manufacturing. Manufacturing is often behind the scenes. You're still producing a product. It's having an impact on somebody somewhere, somehow service is the same way. The one similarity that I've learned a lesson that I've learned is no matter where you go, you're working with people. Thankfully, I enjoy that part of the job. So building relationships no matter what industry you're in. If you trust yourself, if you're a leader of people, if you're asked to be a supervisor, manager, whatever it may be. Trust your decision-making. Knowing that you're probably going to fail at some point. So let's say if you have a team that’s looking up to you. But if you work as a team and you trust yourself, learn from mistakes. You roll with it and it just gets a little easier and easier each time you you go about it. I imagine similar to podcasting.
Bill: Yeah. We'll see how many cuts this takes. How many mistakes we make. That’s true. One of the things. So the Missing Half podcast, we're trying to discover what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. So that could be anything from like. If you look back in the history of your career and the prior experiences and what you saw was missing, at those companies, and not that you have to name them, but just different things that, you know, and certainly in our careers, we've seen a dramatic transformation from the traditional old school to the, you know, we can still remember when there wasn’t Facebook and the internet as widely, available as it is today. When you think about that, are there any things that's like just kind of stick out in your mind of what was missing that's been replaced or is still missing that, like our viewers and we can kind of learn together to identify to to build a better future in marketing.
Derrick: Sure. Knowing that the way marketing approaches change, adapt to the times, especially the electronic digital world or whatever the now, what it comes down to, it might be of sales as well. You are trying to provide a solution for a customer, whether it's manufacturing a part or, a service you provide. If you can relate to a customer or get out of them, the problem that you're going to solve for them, you're going to nail that bargaining, that sales push, build a relationship along the lines and get them in. So it is a different approach in terms of, whether it's behind the scenes of you're making something that's going into another device or ironically on this side of it for Brechbuhler and ICS really are pushing marketing towards what we do best and calibrate and troubleshooting, repairing scales, devices, test units. The same items that go in to promoting quality on the manufacturing side. So the impact is still there. All businesses had some type of problem or a way that they will improve their control methods. So you still have to get that Q and A out of that, that customer. If you can market a solution to them, you have a much better chance of kind of connecting with them and executing the job contracts, whatever it may be.
Bill: Those are some really good points I want to unpack that a little bit. One of the things I think you really hit on there, is the it used to be 15, 20 years ago, the salespeople went out and listened to the customers and then came back and told management, marketing, etc. It feels like today that marketing needs to have that ear to the rail, needs to be listening to the customer, because we can't just do about us marketing, it can't be features and benefits and who we are and what we do, and that's amazing. I mean, we still need that, but that's not what's going to make it happen. And we need to be listening with more customer interviews so that whatever we provide is solutions focused is opportunity focused because we have a saying at 50 Marketing, where no one cares about who you are or what you do or your company until they recognize that you understand their problem or opportunity and solve it. Right. So I think that customer interview has the need for that has moved primarily from the sales function to more of the marketing function. Do you see that interplay?
Derrick: I do, and the difficulty is now with the swiping society we have, it has to be now. If you cannot help a problem or provide a solution right now, they've already swiped on onto two other competitors that can. So getting that information from them, which is not easy, but building that relationship starts with marketing. If the marketing team, or department, whatever you want to call it, sets that toe and sets that angle of opportunity for the sales folks to come in. The hard part is done. Now they can work their magic with their gadgets or whatever that may be. And close the deail right. And but the hard part is getting the right questions and the right answers to in front of that customer that you need to get with.
Bill: I also think one of the interesting things we're trying to do, specifically with all of our clients, and I think as an industry, we need to do better, is break down the silos between sales and marketing because we need that consistent feedback loop from the sales team. If there's a new question that arises consistently, not the one-offs, because we don't want to chase every shiny object, but if they see some consistenty in the question set that, then if we can feed that back in the marketing and have that collaborative, you know, preparation of the information, whether it's, you know, attraction content the whole way down into the sales enablement content that's going to allow them to work the magic and close the sale. That that's an important part of the process. Going back to the other, things you mentioned there and looking at the whole process, we have, you know, questions, Q&A. Right. And I think one of the most important things you said there is they want it now, the buyer's journey. We have a lot of data we look at as an industry that says 86% of the buyer's journey happens online before they contact the company. And buyers want that information now, how they want it, when they want it, where they want it, on whatever device or platform they want. And that is a tremendous challenge to be everywhere, simultaneously, right and consistently so I know we're working on that with ICS. We've got an initiative we're working on, and we'll talk a little bit about that a little bit more later. But, that's an exciting, I think, to recognize those, challenges. And, what's missing right in what we're doing.
Bill: So when we think about ICS, ICS is in and of itself, a niche company within metrology. If I said that correctly. Okay. Great.
Derrick: At least from what I heard.
Bill: Okay. Great. So as long as we're both consistent and nobody comes in and says we're wrong, we're good, we're good. So when we look at ICS and Instrument Calibration Solutions in the metrology field, it's a very niche company. So maybe, for our viewers who aren't familiar with what metrology is and even what like ICS does, maybe just take a minute and kind of give that, elevator pitch, an introduction. That would be great.
Derrick: And, certainly add to an elevator pitch, because I'm certainly not one of the experts in the field. We have a team behind us that does this kind of work, and it is truly niche. We strongly believe that we can calibrate as a company any machine out there, you know, and Brechbuhler has been successful 90 plus years in calibrating scales, repairing anything to do with a scale. ICS can handle scales, it's not their forte, because all the other devices that people try to stay away from is something that has become the niche. Whether it's an oven or a freezer or a pull tester, a tape measure, something so simple as make sure it's calibrated to follow the standards of automotive or whatever it may be, they can take any type of device, large or small, put their numbers to it, put the accreditation behind it, provide the council approval, and not only peace of mind, but that piece of paper holds true to the certifications required for them to have quality standards in place for whatever they're manufacturing. As you can imagine, in a lot of the different industries we’re in, the quality standards are very, very extreme, and detriment to failure and safety, whatever it may be, that particular item they're calibrating or need to calibrate or needing to test, if this is not accurate, it has an effect down the line in multiple other manufacturing processes. Whether it's automotive or oil and gas packaging, it doesn't matter what it is. It starts with a test unit or a device that is providing accurate information, which then allows those customers to do what they need to do.
Bill: Well we certainly need to, double down on quality in this world especially when it seems to be what we have the technology now to measure to such high standards. And then we hear, what I would say product failure disasters that could possibly. And I'm not a quality engineer, so but like, it seems to me that from a theoretical construct, the more we double down on quality and measuring and managing quality, the less variability we're going to have in outcomes and whether those outcomes are keeping plane doors on planes or keeping bridges from collapsing or, apartment buildings in Florida from collapsing or whatever these product design, whatever they are, failures are, that's a world I want to live in. But no, that's an interesting, approach that ICS takes to that. When you think about ICS’s marking program and maybe what led us here. What did you see that was missing from, Instrument Calibration Solutions’ marketing program? That really led us to these initiatives that we're working on today.
Derrick: In all honesty, it’d be fair to say, all of it. And that is not a bad thing by any means. Many, many successful years of doing the work, doing the hard work that needs to be done in order to reap these quality standards that we just discussed. Work was coming in. Work was going out. Marketing was not in the forefront because we could only keep afloat with what we were working with. Now we have expanded our businesses and team members and technicians and whatever it may be. We are prepared to market the company, promote the brand awareness, become the name on the block that we just haven’t had the need for in the past. But the team, the leadership team behind ICS as well as at Brechbuhler, we have some very lofty goals with this company. We have a one, three and a ten year plan. In order to make any of those milestones we have to get our name out there. We have to go after things that we wanted to in the past. The resources just weren't there yet. All that started to be put in place. And marketing is one of the first areas that we realized it's the best time to do this. Knowing that we couldn't handle it on our own internally, we brought yourself and your team at 50 Marketing to do so.
Bill: Great well and I think one of the things we really narrowed down on early on was that branding conversation, because ICS, while it may be a household name in some parts of Pittsburgh where it was originally based, certainly, and we’re going to talk about this, certainly the expansion into Dayton and those type of things, it probably wasn't known at all. You know, any new businesses. And even if you have some familiarity with the Brechbuhler name, it’s still its own theoretically independent service, because a lot of ICS will be going after customers that Brechbuhler would never service with the large scales. So, you know, branding, I think was a key initiative. We looked at there, set some brand standard, got a style guide together, really kind of, laid the foundation to launch everything. The other thing, the second thing I think that we we could mention here, when you talk about top down, so you gave me the license to kind of go through what I wanted to go through because you’re like, what I would love to see mentioned because you said top down, content, which is what our current initiative is, is to really, the content was thin that the company had and we're trying to get as detailed as we need to be to attract and develop that brand authority in the market. So maybe talk a little bit about that approach that we're taking with content.
Derrick: Sure. Selfishly speaking, it has helped me learn some of the finer details of the business. I knew I had experts to go to, but for me to do what I need to do to help this team and be in a position to to do what we want to do with these goals. Learning this has certainly helped. I think we were just scratching the surface. We're just a gold mine of content. And we realized that what we do, how we speak the language internally and even to some of our longstanding customers and make sense to them, and us. But if you go outside of that group, which is a niche industry, again, folks don't really know what we’re talking about. State of the art facility, for example, we had a state-of-the-art facility in Dayton and one in Pittsburgh areas. What does that mean to anybody that is not involved in calibration? It's the finer details that we can take. Something that seems so simple to us and content that we talk about every day spinning it and now getting that out to the world. And state of the art facility may have a couple of buzzwords. But the calibration unit inside that, that particular name alone sparks interest to a whole crowd that we haven't even touched yet. So just taking that content from an internal, I don’t think I would refer to it as common knowledge, but it kind of is and then and making the rest of the world aware. Now, I’m not saying we’re trying to conquer the world. We got to do it one location at a time.
Bill: Sure. One calibration at a time, right?
Derrick: Yeah, exactly. It builds. So it's getting the awareness of what we do to everybody else that we run into and those that we haven't met yet that we're striving to get.
Bill: When we look at our clients; communication journey. And I think this is, inherent in our industry, when you have a company that's kind of a late adopter into digital marketing and this marketing communication approach, they always start with that tribal conversation, that internal communication that has worked well for them and their core customer base, that has grown up with them for years and years and years. Two issues we see with that, one, that generation of the folks that have that knowledge are retiring. Moving on. But obviously you have a younger generation that is used to looking here and saying oh, I'm going to find out everything I can before I talk to somebody or whatever and become knowledgeable in changing that language to focused on them as opposed to focused on us is probably, I think, the most encouraging thing I've seen your leadership bring to the team, because and I think your lack of expert knowledge because you just haven't been involved with ICS for 30 years like some of the other folks. Is actually one of your greatest assets because you're asking questions, not just, oh, we've always called it that. Oh, wait, explain what that means. You guys have this acronym or these, initials for this. What does that mean? And taking that approach, I believe, is the right approach. And I don't care whether that's instrument calibration or or building aircraft carriers or whatever it is that needs to be our approach as marketers is don't make any assumptions. Start at the beginning with that top of the funnel attraction and, you know, explanation, education, build authority down to conversion type of funnel. So I think that's that's a great thing that you guys have really figured out early and are doing a great job with.
Derrick: Appreciate that. There are some folks that probably get a bit annoyed by some of our questions, but that it’s for that reason, they have spoke that language for 10 to 20 years. And anybody who's not been in that little circle is brand new. So learning curve. And if you ask questions that generates some ideas, some thoughts in those who have been in it and it's not hard and it doesn’t take long to realize, well, yeah, they don't really know what a comparator is. They’ve never even heard the word before. And we talk about it everyday.
Bill: Sure and then there's some words like that that are like part of that tribal knowledge, some of them that are industry standards that even if they're part of the industry standards, I always try to, encourage our clients to think like this. Assume that there's someone in the C-suite who just got a summer intern from college or from a trade school, and they come in and they say, hey, go and find us someone who can do a thing or who can solve a problem. They don't know anybody they haven’t been to the trade shows, they haven't been out to dinner. They don't. There's no good old boy like there's none of that. It's just they're going to ask Siri or yeah, you know, I have a Google phone here so I’m not going to say ask Google because on my phone will probably fire up and start saying, what would you like? But, you know, it's that notion. And they're looking for that information. One of the other things, I think that's key, that we really tried to hit on with ICS recently in our initiatives is differentiation. Really making sure we extract from these experts and these folks on our team that really know well what makes them different because they know it, they experience it every day, even talking with someone yesterday in the other session, we, we learned about some different things that they take for granted that are so critical to be communicated. So, maybe comment a little bit about our differentiation or just how important you see differentiating as part of this marketing initiative.
Derrick: It's huge. It's getting information getting it out to the newer folks who have joined our team. And let alone the new customers. And we have to approach this strategically in more than one way if we're going to achieve the goals that I alluded to earlier. Whether that is diversifying our marketing approach, our customer base, our relationships with vendors and suppliers, distributors, whatever it may be. A diverse company has a much better chance of prospering and growing and expanding for long-term purposes. Over so long, it's going to take, even though, we are considered niche, take this avenue and just roll with it and everything else sits aside. In the world of calibration that cannot happen. And because there are so many different items, so many types of customers that are kind of come at you, it kind of forces the fact that you need to you need to have utility men per se, and that's not just technically speaking. But expertise, leadership, management the way that you approach your customer base, your marketing program, touching more people, getting out there, building relationships, networking, diversifying, differentiating. However you want to say it, getting that out there is to me is the best model.
Bill: Excellent. So when we look at Instrument Calibration Solutions and we look at like the unique value proposition of the business, one of the things I've learned that’s just been fascinating, is how impactful it can be in the quality lab. But maybe even more importantly is when you're you're integrating these systems on a continuous process, and it can shut a production line down if what's coming out the end of the the plant or down the line doesn't meet spec and man we really don't want that to happen because the calibration machine is out of the spec, not the thousands of items that are coming down the line and the millions of dollars of expense are doing it right and our calibration machine or situation is doing it wrong. So maybe talk a little bit about how valuable not only maybe about the quality lab, but then also about the continuous process, how that is so, so important.
Derrick: It is and it's easy for me to speak about because of my experience in the plastic extrusion world. I lived this.
Bill: Okay, great.
Derrick: For several years. Extrusion is continuous material flowing. We had optical comparators at each line, we had at measuring systems and just because you're providing a less-than-quality extrusion part, it's not going to stop unless you stop it. You're not going to know it’s bad unless you measure it. You. I, visually take a look at it. I, I unfortunately, I have seen where thousands of thousands of dollars have fell in the trash while adjustments were made that wouldn’t have been caught without that unit. So if that unit goes down, thousands turned into hundreds of thousands. The size, depending on the size of the company could be millions.
Bill: And value, the raw materials. All those. It could just spin up really quickly.
Derrick: All that labor. And it does not take long. It is something that's very valuable to us as well because we are not only a calibration company, we provide servicing on these units as well. So in the case of a, comparator, for instance, that’s going down. That’s used to check these parts of an extruder we get a phone call, panic mode is setting in, it’s an emergency. We’re losing money every second. How fast can you get here and service this thing to get us back up? Our quality is dependent on this. We have to switch gears and we're no longer looking to calibrate this unit. We got to get this thing service repaired back into order. And of course, we'll calibrate afterwards before we leave. But that's the value that we can add to our customer during any type of in-line processing and manufacturing. On the flip side with a quality lab is where a lot of these units are housed and our main purposes, quality checks that may happen periodically in a slower environment where some extrusion … continuously spinning at you. But it’s so important because they will do checks at pulls and torque and whatever may be down the road, not just during the process, but it may be something that is every three hours or every day, every week. There are so many detections of units to measure or take a look at what quality is required for this process. It could be anything, like I saw on a freezer or an oven. There are manufacturing places that have to let materials cure for 24 hours. That oven has to be spot on with its range of temperature, or then they’re going to lose a whole series of product. So it is twofold, service during the inline emergency process, service can be obviously in the quality lab as well. It may not be as much of an emergency, but the calibration is there regardless through both styles.
Bill: So we're talking about reduce down reducing downtime increasing quality keep, you know uptime efficiency and supporting those people who are making sure that's happening on a consistent basis, whether it's in the quality lab which is more sounds like a sampling. And then the continuous process situation where every one that goes out the end of the the road. I remember I toured the BMW car factory in, South Carolina and the, the way they tested the paint on these cars fascinated me. And I didn't understand it all, but they basically passed some type of visual comparator or laser over the entire frame once it was painted. And if there was one, anything wrong with it, they said they yanked it.
Derrick: That’s wild. It’s real.
Bill: But it’s the same concept. And they have thousands of cars going through there a day. And I don’t have any idea how much money goes to that plant. It's huge. A lot. But I mean, you guys are servicing maybe just talk about that for a second. You guys are servicing a wide range of clients at Instrument Calibration Solutions, and you're everything from, you know, one of the things that was funny about Brechbuhler yeah, they'll do the meat counter, to weigh your lunch meat, but they're also doing rail scales and truck scales and Instrument Calibration Solutions we're doing small quality control lab calibrations. But we're also doing some stuff on huge lines with very large automotive, aerospace, oil and gas companies. Maybe talk a little bit about like the breadth of the economy that you're touching.
Derrick: Variation is enormous. And that is, a tribute to our technicians that are able to work on such a wide array of products. It's not easy to be a technician, calibration technician. There's a lot of wording, years for some of these disciplines and we touch so many markets as you, as you, alluded to, it's tough to find a technician that can do them all. Well, we strive to make that happen. You will have specialists, but you also have to be versatile. You may be working on a force calibration system today. Have to switch gears to optical tomorrow. Two disciplines two of the numerous that we offer. It makes for an interesting day. Our, our managers and schedulers have a lot of moving pieces when they're putting this to play because of the diversification of our customers, which is what we're after. We don't want to tie ourself into just one industry. If there is a unit that can be calibrated, we are going to go after it. And entertain that to try to get a solution to that customer. It’s easy to say the word solution. It’s our aim. And that’s what we’re here to do. Provide solutions to a problem that the marketing team found for us.
Bill: It works its way through.
Derrick: If we can help somebody out, make them happy.
Bill: Instrument Calibration Solutions expanded to the Dayton area here in the past 24 months, I believe, was kind of the time frame for that. Or you can correct me on that. But what was what was part of that decision-making process? It was based in Pittsburgh, right outside of Aliquippa. And now you have a branch and a dedicated building, staff, the whole nine yards in Dayton. What was really the driver for that expansion, and maybe just talk a little bit about that.
Derrick: There's actually a weird connection between Brechbuhler and ICS that I guess you could say it initiated this relationship. Brechbuhler had a few person team in Dayton that worked doing force measurement because it’s just a hotbed for that type of business. Metrology … It’s a very good area for that, which is how that kind of began. When ICS and Brechbuhler joined forces, we immediately took that small portion of Brechbuhler that we weren’t the best at, except for the folks that were in that particular unit, matched that up with our ICS side, and ran the business out of a suite in a plaza for for a couple years. It was not set up for the business, but it was something we had to pitch in order to keep this thing going while we're growing and just rapidly expanding. Quickly saw the need for a much larger space, a more functional space. So last June, we moved into what we refer to as a true state-of-the-art facility, a lab in Dayton that is on the same grounds as our, Brechbuhler office and shop there. We now have 9 or 10 individuals working out of this lab. High level equipment, measuring devices. And we have quickly put our stamp on the Dayton area and surrounding area. You know, Dayton is on the west side of Ohio. We're moving into Indiana, we’re going to Michigan, coming this way towards Columbus. It's it is growing quickly. A lot of competition in the area. But to us, it made the best sense to continue to run out of Aliquippia, move to Dayton, share the same processes, visions, we’re all on the team. Leadership team is made up of folks from each location. But we have been able to expand and grow rapidly as a result of that second lab. We joked that it's been open for 11 months, and we already need to expand because of the work and the effort we're putting in, and we're adding people, we’re adding work, building a customer base, and building a footprint on that side of the state.
Bill: Well, our goal is to help you have a bigger problem there. So, on growing. More growth is, we won’t participate in those other decisions. You guys will have to handle those. That's always a good problem to happen. Any business. So ICS, also purchased Inspection Technology Services, recently maybe talk about what that added to the portfolio and why you pursued that acquisition as part of the ICS family.
Derrick: Sure. Inspection Technologies was a distributor of OGP products that is based in New York. They are a producer of what we believe is the top of the line optical vision system, measuring systems that are a global company. We now, as a result of purchasing Inspection Technologies, not only did we buy a small local business with a customer base, customers that we were already working with, but also the ability to sell, repair, and troubleshoot these products and those that OGP produces. These are not new products to our ICS experts, they’ve been working on them for years. We were not able to sell until we purchased this territory if you will. And that has expanded our business portfolio in that way. We do a lot of again pushing our sales products in PA. This allows us to, to start that and hit the ground running. I mean, and build some great relationships. We would like to take this section of business that we have and multiply that across additional states and territories, and that we can do what we're saying we're going to do.
Bill: Awesome. Yeah, it seemed to be that you guys have been supporting, calibrating, servicing, repairing these OGP type units. And in that space at ICS for a number of years, now adding on the ability to represent the whole goods and replace or add new units just really kind of makes you back to the word solution. You're the turnkey solution in the market. So that seems to really match up strategically. And I know in talking with some of the other folks yesterday, in our event here, that there's about a level of excitement, almost I think specifically Darrell is, is almost hysterically excited about this whole opportunity.
Derrick: Yeah, yeah. He’s really passionate.
Bill: This guy, I mean, I think he wakes up and thinks about, like, video comparators and digital comparators and it's great because, I mean, I'm sure you've seen in your career those who are passionate, those who really have enthusiasm, that makes life a lot easier in management when people actually care and want it. And love it. So that that's a great thing.
Derrick: It's contagious, also. You know, Darrell's passionate, passion for this type of item, and industry, this product line has so quickly spread across the rest of our team that everyone else is trying to get a piece of this pie now. And we want that. That that helps. We're all sales people when it comes to the customers, even though some of them are dedicated to that. If we can go out and speak on what we truly believe in, it starts to build our relationship and turns into successes.
Bill: I want to switch gears a little bit here. 50 Marketing's team has adopted some of EOS’s systems, and I know that you and your team are working to implement EOS at Instrument Calibration Solutions, is maybe, it take me through what, and EOS is huge, right? We could sit here and talk about EOS all day. And no I'm not an EOS salesperson or, what do they call it, integrator or whatever, but what have been the biggest things you've learned or think the biggest value of EOS is to your team and to what it's doing to help you kind of build that culture with existing corporate location, new location, and then all of the growth you're experiencing simultaneously.
Derrick: Speaking of passion, I have true passion for EOS. I don't know how or why it started, but when it was first introduced to me, I, I just ran with it. And thankfully, I get to be a part of this with our team and and help push it every day. I do act as the integrator on our team. Meeting facilitator, whatever you want to call it, it truly keeps the team aligned. It is a pathway or guideline of keeping your business tailored towards the goals that you agreed to as a team. We have a leadership team that is between myself here again and a couple of others and folks from Dayton and Pittsburgh. We meet every Monday virtually. It could be an hour or two, depending on what we need to talk about. We have a strict agenda that we go off of.
Bill: A level 10. L10. Yep.
Derrick: Yep. And we have quarterly meetings off site. In a day or two, depending on what's needed. It has it's fair to say that the success that we've had the last year and a half, that we've been practicing EOS, is directly due to the process we put in place. I will be the first to admit we have fell on our faces numerous times, but it allows us to learn from those mistakes. You have to go through some of the pains and aches no matter what your system is. This system allows us to focus as leaders of the company to work on business, not in it every day.
Bill: Correct. Yep.
Derrick: Because if you’re working in it every day, the on, that is not happening or is happening without you knowing it. And it usually goes in the wrong direction. So we have agreed to hold each other accountable to work on the business. We have agreed to a series of goals, whether that's financially based, personnel, whatever it may be we have a lot. It allows us to put together a one year plan, a three year plan, and our ten year plan, which if we hit, we are going to celebrate. Tremendously.
Bill: Dennis, get the checkbook out, because if they hit the ten year plan, this is going to be expensive. I'm just telling you right now.
Derrick: Yeah, it’ll pay itself off. Everything that we achieved.
Bill: Yeah, it’ll pay for itself.
Derrick: Yeah, you know, it has really helped build our team. We've also the relationships between all of us have gotten stronger. We talked a lot about being vulnerable with one another. It forces you to be open. It's transparent. I truly believe in this system. I believe everybody on our team will have the same opinion, whether every day is easy or not. Which it’s not.
Bill: Oh it’s not, no.
Derrick: It is a guideline that keeps us in the straight and narrow. We, if we veer off, someone either tells us, or we quickly call, we're off suit. Let’s go back. Let’s go back to what we’re focusing on. So it’s a system that, EOS has the word entrepreneurial in it. We have those minds in our company. So the training of this that is out there thoughts, the ideas, the things that we're going to do as we grow brings that to the surface and we get to talk about these high-level goals or issues or concerns whatever it might be.
Bill: So, in, we’re in rapid growth mode at 50 Marketing, and we're somewhat entrepreneurial because of how fast we're scaling and one of the things I've really enjoyed about EOS is the accountability chart. And for some of the younger people out there, that may not seem like a whole departure from historic patterns, but the organizational chart where you listed someone's title and then you start jamming responsibilities under that, as opposed to here's a responsibility, here's a seat, and who is going to sit in that so that it becomes its own unit that then can be scaled or, someone else could transfer it and take those responsibilities. But then you also focus on the SOP and really dialing it in so that someone new doesn't have to learn everything from the beginning. They can kind of just swoop in and there's a scorecard and there's just so much structure there. And I've been through a number of these in my career, prior to EOS. What I think is the most important and will encourage your team, hopefully my team, is that the system is important, but what's more important is consistently doing a system. So tomorrow we call it AOS or COS or whatever. The fact that you guys are all bought into it and leaning and failing together and failing forward in that system is much more important than the three letters that I described.
Derrick: Right, call it what you want.
Bill: Yeah, but I like it as well. I think there's a lot of value to it. We're not, strict devotees of EOS, like some of it we’re like, that’s not for us, we're going to do a little bit of this TQM, so. Yeah. But, we really enjoyed that. And I wanted to bring that up because I think it's important for maybe, some people on the 50 Marketing team to hear that, we're not the only ones going through this process. It does work. So that'll probably be a clip we, publish to our, team, but it works for others as well.
Derrick: If I could, Bill, real quick on the accountability chart and the folks in the seats, that was probably the biggest takeaway for us. Up to this point, is folks are good at what they like to do. We need to get them in a seat that they like to do it, because here's what they’re probably going to do a really good job. So we have rearranged some seats. And we’ve moved some folks around based off of what they do best. And if there's something that they do good, they don't necessarily like, chances are there’s somebody else who may enjoy that. Let's shuffle around a little bit, and it allows us to get the most of our people and they get the most out of us. So it's something that we will stand by, and like you say, call it what you want, as a process, as a guideline, it allows us to, to focus on what we're trying to achieve here.
Bill: That GWC like mentality, get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it. I think, that's not revolutionary. It’s sometimes the most basic ideas that we forget, the simple things that we forget because we're moving 10,000 mile an hour. We got to remember, wait a second. This person gets it, but they don't want it. They do have the capacity to do it. Well, how much horsepower and capital am I going to spend on getting that person to want it? And financial incentives aren't always able to overcome those situations, right?
Derrick: That’s how you revert back.
Bill: Yeah, they're just back. So I think when we look at our dynamic as managers, that's so important. And we've really learned a lot about that. And actually sought out as we've gone through the hiring process, hired three people last week, looking for people that fit right away in the GWC, fit the seat, can execute the responsibilities. And then one of the things I want to hear in the interview is are they excited about it? Right. Because beyond wanting it, I want I want them to be like, just really fanatical about it. So, so one of the things we also want to talk about today is like, and we touched on it earlier is brand awareness. And we really feel and are seeing this in our industry of marketing agencies. For B2B and manufacturing companies. An undervaluing of branding companies, a lot of people say, oh branding, that's for the D2C companies, that's for Coca-Cola and Ford and Chevrolet and Apple, where brand awareness is such a critical component in niche markets. And we don't let let's be honest, we don't want to create brand awareness for Instrument Calibration Solutions to the greater world. But in your niche, in that target market audience. We would love everybody in your geography to know who you guys are, what you do, where you do it, why you do it, how you do it, who you do it for and those type of things. Do you see that is something that may be missing, you know, from your career in the past experience you have up to today in manufacturing and B2B marketing, that commitment to and proper valuation of branding as a marketing component?
Derrick: I certainly have seen it missing and part of it is missing with our site and ICS. Still. And as we're working with that, something as simple as customers that we have done business with for, say, five years, they are not aware that we can do many more of their items in-house. We’re only scratching the surface. They may have 100 units we could take care of, calibrate for them. And we’re only calibrating 20. So we just need to get that out, to them, hey our capabilities. And or this, this, and this. And that is part of the awareness. That is something that we're pushing pretty heavily right now. So then as simple as our logo. Every single day our staff has a logo apparel ICS on. Technicians of course do because they’re with our customers all day. And the more somebody sees that the more awareness gets brought out. We encourage them to wear it on weekends and … around the Dayton and Pittsburgh area. Get that thing out there. But it is something that we have plenty of room for improvement. We understand the need for it. And now we're ready to, promote, do more via our social media, news blast, email blast, whatever it may be. It is 100% necessary because the fact that our own customers do not realize how much we can do tells us that that's what we need to go after. And, you know, if we hit it there, we can say we are practicing that awareness now.
Bill: If a potential client or current client is not brand aware and fully brand aware, they will never be solution aware. And we have to build that. Like the brands, the consumer product demands of old had to build. Now the beauty of today's deal with digital marketing is you can do that in those niche target markets without, buying a Super Bowl ad, without having a billboard on route 70 or 77 or 80, right? Like we don't have to do those, you know, mass marketing tools. We can create that little billboard on the phone.
Derrick: Right, get the swipes.
Bill: Yeah. And be there for those buyers right in those buyer personas and dial that in. But I think that brand awareness is so key. And I think we're addressing that for ICS on starting on that journey. Right. That Rome wasn't built in a day and that takes time. But, we've we've identified that for almost all of our clients and just people we talked to and then colleagues I talked to and other agencies who are in the marketing services space that branding is becoming a top of mind conver, like it's a conversation that's happening all the time in B2B and in manufacturing marketing. So we're really trying to make sure we're providing solutions, roadmaps and playbooks to execute that as efficiently as possible. Yeah, that's our, our focus, to, to help our clients with that.
Derrick: It’s a heck of a start, for sure.
Bill: Well, Derrick, one other thing I want to pivot to and just kind of get your feedback on, you're part of the Brechbuhler family and have been prior to your, emphasis on, Instrument Calibration Solutions. There is a movement on these in these buildings, on the property, in the vehicles that are driving off the facilities. And I've been to other facilities. There's a movement that was started called American Grit, and it seems to be taking hold like wildfire. And we've seen it in some of the videos we've produced and just talking to the employees and the swag they're wearing and the, you know, the all the different elements of it. Could you talk to me a little bit about American Grit, what it means to you, and what do you think it's meant to the entire family of companies as you guys go out in the market?
Derrick: Yeah, it's been incredible. I think we're approaching about one year since we pushed this narrative. And the word push is not the correct word. It was so well received by everybody. As an organization, we took a step back, especially over the ways that the world has been over the last few years. A lot changed. We had not changed. We still are very proud of our country. Our flag, which is part of the logos kind of put out there. We're proud of the work that we do, the people that do it. It is not easy work. It's gritty work. It's the word. It's dirty at times. You're in the elements, especially on the, Brechbuhler side. The weather does not care if your scale needs fixed or not. The customer does. So we have gentlemen that are out in negative temps. Outside working on on scales or anything. Maybe calibrating as well in the morning. In the afternoon they’re in a stream house that’s 100, or a steel mill that's 120 degrees. It is a gritty job. The admiration that we have for everybody here whether it's technicians, managers, sales folks that are out there as well, it truly symbolizes the way in which we believe. The way in which we approach our work. It means a ton to each other, in the Brechbuhler family. But it also means a lot to our families at home as well. I don't think there was a single bit of fear of how this marketing approach would take when we started doing it and visiting campuses and, and, other locations, new swag with the American flag. Everyone loves them. The first question is, when can I get new orders, I want to order more. And Dennis and a couple other folks were literally just throwing those things out like a T-shirt. They should’ve taken a cannon. Like at a sporting event.
Bill: Get that put in the budget.
Derrick: Yes, yes. But it has been so well received. I do see that apparel on weekends if I come in contact with anyone around that works as part of our team. It stands out too. Gigantic flag on the back, it’s a distressed flag. We have a lot of merchandise built with all three of our logos, Brechbuhler, B-TEK and ICS, and the entire company is 300 plus employees. That was just taking it and ran with it. It's very cool to see, it has a lot of meaning to us.
Bill: One of the things I think that has made this so successful so rapidly is that this was not created. It was recognized. Dennis talked about it a little bit when I had a conversation with him, that he was around the branches, and everybody kept talking about the culture. And then the leadership team here recognized that culture, and were able to succinctly and maybe label it’s the wrong word, but describe it and encompass it into a, a visual. And then that visual was extrapolated into some core principles. And these were not core principles that you guys hired a consulting firm to come in and tell you what they were. These were, this is who we are at recognizing every day. Is is that a correct recognition of that process and how that occurred?
Derrick: It’s spot on. And, you know, as a fourth generation family owned company. It was no different, one, two, three generations that we had before. And a light bulb went off and it was probably in Dennis’s mind, of this is the stuff that we've always believed in. It's simple. But it's impactful and it means a ton to us. We don't need to follow a narrative that we don't believe in just for the sake of following something. We are a company that’s going to stick to our culture, stick to what got us here, stick to the kind of people that we bring on board and the way that we respect their families and their time off and all that stuff that just falls into the American dream. The word grit that was added to American could not tie those two together any better than it does. I’ve witnessed it myself we all have just around this campus just the stuff that the folks do at this company. It was the perfect way to not lose track of what we believe in, and then allow everyone who may have not been here 20, 30, 40 years ago, because most of us haven’t, of course, but in 1929 when this company started, American Grit is what started it. And nearly 100 years later, it has never left, but it has done such a nice circle of bringing it back to the surface, if you will. It's really neat to be a part of.
Bill: Well and I think when you look at okay, adding ICS and you look at adding a new team in Dayton, certainly you're adding technology, competency, technical ability, training in your core service offering. However, you're also immediately able to communicate the core principles and the values and the momentum of the way we do business in a succinct way, in a in something that you can rally around, which I think that is so critical today because whenever and you see all this stuff on the internet. So I'm sure it's true, these, surveys of these young people, they're not so much complaining about money or hours they're complaining about. I don't feel like I have, influence. I'm not making a difference. Nobody values my opinion. I'm not part of something bigger than my 37 hours and whatever their hour model and all that is. Here you guys are creating a situation where you can be part of something bigger and really contribute to something that's amazing. And you can see a long, like a long pathway for career advancement and development. So I just want to commend you, the entire team, you guys are doing a great job. I came from a family business. We've been in business since 92. Yeah. So I understand it. I mean, I started as a janitor in my dad's, office building cleaning 10,000ft² when I was 14 years old, I get it. And, you know, came up through, and I think it's been downhill since then. A lot of people would say that but that’s beside the point. But I get it because I've lived it. I saw my father build the same type of, value system into our organization. And, so it's very exciting to see other family companies doing the same thing. And I'm hopeful, that we get to four generations and beyond, that I'll get to the third generation. And then it'll be that generation whose responsibility it is to go to four. But, really neat to see those things. Well, Derrick, this has just been a delightful conversation. We really enjoy understanding more about Instrument Calibration Solutions and understanding what you guys do. And, working on your marketing program. But it's also really great to bounce ideas off of a colleague who is, failing forward like we are with EOS and culture, and I mean it's hard. I don't care if it's scales or if it's calibration or if it's video production and marketing automation it’s still people doing stuff. And so it's great to bounce those things back and forth with you. So I just want to thank you for joining us today. And we’ll have to run this back again, somewhere down the road after we've gone through this transformation and we're celebrating that ten year victory.
Derrick: This has been fun I appreciate it Bill.
Bill: Thank you.