00:00
Hello, welcome to Power of the Network. I'm Marla Sparks filling in today as host for Tim Locker. Today we welcome Jake Jones, who's the executive VP of operations for Polywater. We've had the privilege of representing Polywater for many years and are so excited about this conversation today.
00:23
Jake, thank you so much for joining us today again. I know you've got a lot on your plate. We appreciate you taking the time to come and chat and be on our podcast. Again, Tim Locker hates missing this episode because he was so looking forward to the conversation. But I feel fortunate that I'm the one that gets to sit here and talk to you today. It's probably best that Tim and I aren't rambling on.
00:48
So let's start at the beginning as they say, you know. Tell us a little bit about the start of Polywater because quite frankly, I think you're going to be able to remember the guy's name. Yeah. So the company started, the founder of the company was named Nelson Jones, spelled the same way as my name. It was my grandfather. He was an eccentric inventor, let's say, working for a large
01:17
Midwest manufacturing company and didn't like working for a big company. He had 23 US patents over his lifetime. And one of the products that he was working on was an underwater welding flux. In the early 70s, with all the offshore drill rigs that were happening, he was developing underwater welding flux.
01:47
bring out this flux for the divers to do some welding. And he saw these guys struggling to get in and out of wetsuits, funny enough. Well, Ever the Optimist, an eccentric inventor, thought, well, maybe I'll make something to help these guys get into a wetsuit. So he goes back to the lab, makes a water-based lubricant, flies back out with a new version of the welding flux, and
02:15
tells these guys to put lubricant all over their body and slide their wetsuits on so they can dive down and do some welding. And the welders came up and said, your welding flux is terrible, but this lubricant is wonderful. Which was music to an inventor's ears. And ever the optimist thinks he's going to be a billionaire off of wetsuit lubricant, but as you can imagine, it's not a huge market for wetsuit lubricants. I can see that. But it stuck with him.
02:45
And so he started developing a water-based lubricant and found another use for it. And really that's when that was the genesis of American Polywater Corporation making lubricants for pulling cables. And so the business started in the basement in 1973 in a small town of Stillwater, Minnesota. And so you were at that time how old?
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I was not born yet. shortly after, so there are pictures. the company really got its first break in 1977 and I was around then. 1977, there was a large telephone project in Tehran back when Iran was an ally and they purchased 11,000 five gallon pails.
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that had to be manufactured in the basement of a small Rambler in Stillwater, Minnesota. Here's a guy that quit his job that he did not like to manufacture a product with very little of a, you know, not much of a business plan for kids and just went for it. And so it was actually my father would sit down in the basement with some others and mix lubricant with paddles.
04:06
and carry 44 pound pails upstairs and into the cul-de-sac and load it into the trailer. And so that was 11,000 pails of 44 pounds a piece up the stairs and into the cul-de-sac until the police said, we really can't have containers parked in the cul-de-sac anymore and we need to find you a new place. And so they got evicted from producing in the basement.
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took off pretty rapid after that point. But where I came into the story in 1976, in 1977 in Telephony Magazine with being an inventor and not a marketer, he takes a picture of his grandson, me, with some polywater product and has this brilliant ad that says, you'll be happy too if you use polywater to pull your cables. And so there's a picture of me sitting by some polywater packages.
05:06
in 1977, June of 77 issue of Telephony magazine. So I started my career in modeling, you could say, at Polywater. I was not paid for any of that and have not modeled since. You know, really, we really messed up not having that picture here today. You know, Polywater is such a great company in that you're a chemical company.
05:34
I've heard you guys say you're a company full of chemists. Consumables. And so when you tell people you represent a consumables company, think they think, it's just commodity type stuff. And Polywater is so not that. You're very innovative products that...
05:58
I don't know how many times you hear somebody in the field and they've got this problem, they need to seal this or they need to protect this or they need to clean something. And out of those conversations, you guys invent amazing products that the field just loves. I think you make a good point there, Marla, that consumable kind of gets blended with commodity.
06:27
consumable products, what makes a big difference for Polywater is differentiation. If we can't make something better, we're not interested in making it. And to that innovation, we actually have our own lab. We have two buildings right across the parking lot. If I have a question or someone doesn't, I'm impatient and no one answers the phone, which really irritates people when you walk right across. But we can...
06:57
We can talk to the lab and I guess we're much more than a lubricant company these days. Sealants, adhesives, and cleaners, and we even have software for calculating tensions. But these products come from the field. We don't typically sell through distribution, but we don't sell to distribution. We sell to the end user. The end user is our customer.
07:27
It's their voice that we want to hear and specification through engineers. So we were constantly talking to the customer and the way we've become more than a lubricant company is going out into the field, talking to the customer and do you have this problem? Have you seen this in the field? And you often get nos, but sometimes the best time is when they say, no, but I have this problem.
07:55
Well, that's when you get the pen out and you can start writing notes, you start asking questions because the industry is very similar, not just in a small geographical area, but in the whole world. The infrastructure for telecommunications and power utilities are all very similar. So if one person has the problem, someone else usually does. So we start taking notes, we bring it back to the lab.
08:22
And that's the best way to develop a product is with the customer. have their input, their buy-in, that's really been the secret sauce, as you could say, to developing product. It's a fun product to sell. As we've been your rep, looked it up, you looked it up. 23 years. 23 years next month. The CBM has been selling polywater.
08:50
You take the product out, it's a small product, it's a small part of their spend, of their build, but it can be a critical part. I mean, if that fiber's not clean, or if that cable won't go through the duct because of whatever, debris or just too much lag on it, I mean, you're...
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products make the job go so much smoother for the people. And when the contractors and the end users see that, it's like this light bulb moment that for a salesperson is really fun. it's, mean, by nature is lubricant reduces friction, makes things easier. it really are what we live by is we provide solutions.
09:42
That's a little bit of a play on words because have solutions of lubricant, solutions of solvents or whatever it may be. But it's more than that. You say you're not a marketing guy. to that. Well, I've got good coaches. We do more than just the product itself, the chemical it may be. It comes into the packaging. It comes into the towel material, the wipe, how you apply it.
10:10
Because it doesn't matter how good the lubricant is, if they don't like the package it pours out of or how would it get supplied to something, it's not going to get used and you don't get the benefits. So it's kind of a total approach to the product development. When I used to be more out in the field or working with the sales guys, I would tell them, you know, they gave us lots of samples. You give them the first one, it's like a drug dealer. You give them the first one and you get them hooked. they'll look at me like, really Marla?
10:39
But you get them hooked on the product and then the next one's on them. Then they start ordering. Because the people love the products. Love your products and love your stuff. You've got a new product coming out that we're excited about at CBM, I know. again, it meets a real need that's out there. Can you tell us a little bit about your cable repair? Yeah. This really goes back to the story I just told.
11:08
We were out on a sales call and it was with Ryan, our newer salesperson. And this was great for him to see because he gets to understand the process. We were presenting some things and the customer said, do you have something for this? This is a common problem. And I just lit up. mean, this is my favorite part of the sales job is writing down
11:34
writing down what their need was and really the ask was we have problems with branches falling down on aerial fiber and nicking the jackets where it's not damaging the actual glass. The cable's integrity is still okay, it's just the jacket was damaged or squirrel shoes was a problem. Start taking notes. Luckily we had a product already started for another need that I knew we could go to that technology. Came back, developed something.
12:03
And there's some back and forth through that development process. But as we started setting up more trials, we went to another place and they said, well, we don't really have problems with the aerial, the squirrel shoes or branches hitting it. We have problems with locators. When they need to do locates rather than finding a log or something, they will cut the jacket, which just makes me cringe.
12:30
and get down to the armor so they can hook onto that and then they just leave exposed armor to rot later and that's very frustrating obviously to the provider. So now we're finding more and more applications for this product. So the product's called CJR which you you gave us a lot of credit on our marketing before but we're not super original when it comes to product naming.
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But it's easy to remember. And it's a two part solution that comes in a syringe and you basically can squirt it onto a piece of cardboard or something. You can mix this up and slather it onto a piece of damaged cable and it's going to rebuild a cable jacket. It's going to be flexible, water resistant, UV resistant. if it's overhead and again, it
13:26
we provide solutions, we're providing a solution to a problem. that's the fun part of it, is sitting at a trade show and having people come up and say, that saved me. Absolutely. That saved me. Anybody who's been selling your products has heard that over and over over again. It's also fun to get out there and do that. It doesn't take a chemist to do your
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you know, to do your stuff in the field, it goes together easily, it's easily applied, it's fixed. I think it's a fun line for newer salespeople too. It's a good entry, it's kind of an easy win. Your new salesperson can go out and say, PolyWonder's got a 50 year, 50 plus year history, the name is solid, the product's not that complicated.
14:25
Let's go get a win under our belt and build some confidence. So, Polywater and CBM have it in common that we all love Polywater, we all love working together, love the people, but we have something else in common too, in that we're both ESOPs. We talk a lot of in the show about us being an ESOP. Tell us what that means to Polywater, to you, to your management. I mean, you can't understate it. It is...
14:55
It is the fabric of Polywater. You know, it's very cliché to say it's about the people, but when you're in an ESOP, you live it. You don't work for the man. You are the man. You're working for yourself. For me to affect, if I'm going to invest in a company, and let's say I'm going to invest in Apple, I have to buy a lot of Apple phones to affect that investment.
15:24
Well, I'm invested in the stock of American Polywater Corporation. I'm there every day and I can affect the value of those shares in that company. And so when you're incentivizing your employees and they have buy-in and they know that the direct result, and it doesn't matter if you're selling, you're producing the product, you're mixing the product, you're testing it in the lab, you're taking customer service calls, the better you do, the better the company does.
15:54
Well, the better the company does, the better you do. it's just a culture that breeds success. And statistically, ESOP companies do better than non-ESOP companies. It's just that longer employee retention, more productivity, higher profitability, it's just a win-win. So do you think there's a benefit to having your rep be in ESOP?
16:20
Have you seen that? We like to think there is, from your perspective? Absolutely, because you can see the cultural similarities. I've had no surprise when you spend weeks, know, days a week in a car, especially some of the areas in your territory, you got some windshield time. got lot of cornfields. Yeah, you get to know these people very well. You have great, honest conversations and...
16:48
They're very honest and open about their love for the type of company they work for. And that makes a big difference. You know that they're working for a good company. So yeah, we really enjoy working with CBM. I mean, it shows with 23 years of history. And we've expanded. We've expanded our territory with you, and we look forward to lots of good things.
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What's different about CBM? First and foremost, it's our ESOP. Employee owners have more control and more ability to make decisions that are right for our customers and right for our company and right for our manufacturers. We've got the flexibility to put people where they need to be and use our experts wisely. If you need help with a project or need representation from an excellent sales force here in the Midwest, look no further than CBM.
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dot com.
17:52
So, in talking about being an ESAP, we spoke last night about that necessary, you have a lot of long-term employees. You being a long-term employee, I don't think you started when you modeled and continued that, share a little bit about that and your management and... Yeah. So, again, that was one photo, one photo career in modeling.
18:22
I came back in the 90s and worked, so I'll kind go through the different areas that I've worked. Production, batch making, maintenance. I spent some time in the lab working on kind of special product and product development, kind of a liaison between the field and the lab. I don't have a technical background, but I have a technical interest with a personality.
18:48
kind of fearless and ready to try something in the field, setting that expectation that this is a trial. And I'm sure if Tim was here, he would love to tell the story about where we had a packaging malfunction in the field. And maybe I'll let him tell that someday. But from there, then got into the electrical market.
19:13
a regional manager for electrical market. Then I took over the communications division as a general manager. And now the current position is executive vice president of operations. So yes, you're right that we have a lot of tenure. It is very easy to retain good employees at a good company that incentivizes performance. That being said,
19:39
You have to continue, we're growing rapidly, we have to find new talent and we do need to get the next generation and that's why we're looking for the the Ryans and the Adams who have come into the communications division that you work with now. Both are fantastic individuals and really because there was a point.
20:03
I looked at the sales team and I was, at the time, I was the youngest salesperson and I wasn't super young. So we needed the next generation. you know, as we're looking for the next generation of people coming out there, an in an ESOP culture is so important. So we're looking for characteristics and one of them is character. I'm typically looking for character and motor.
20:33
will do the right things when no one's looking and has the energy to take on tasks and a genuine interest in what's going on in the industry and trying to do the right thing. We can teach telecommunications. We can teach the electrical market. We can teach product. But it is a lot harder to teach character and having that energy. It's hard to find people out there right now because it seems like a lot of the
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people that you want are working for somebody else and are very happy. We talked about that last night at dinner, so keep your hands off. Yeah, I won't hire your people, you won't hire my people. Deal. But yeah, it's hard to find those and you've just hired some great people. Maybe you to just help me out there. How is it, because you and I kind of take in the same pathway in going from sales, sales management,
21:32
into more of an operations role. You know, I don't feel like you ever get out of sales because, you know, it's in our blood, but that's hard for me sometimes. It's hard for me to step away from that sales role. And how's it been for you? I've actually been doing pretty well with it. I guess operations, there's plenty to do. So I guess it keeps my mind off of it.
22:02
But I do enjoy it. It's like getting back on the bike and you're like, wow, geez, I can't wait. We just had a situation where someone couldn't be in a place and there was a conversation. We need someone to be here to train the customer on how to do it. And I know the right thing is not to send me down there, but I did raise my hand. I said, if no one else can do it, I'd love to do it because it's a rush. I enjoy getting out in the field.
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And I love working with the customers. I genuinely love doing the sales part of the job. Yeah, once that gets in your blood, it's hard to get. Sometimes it's just nice to leave the insurance and HR and finance and all of that back in the office and go out and play at a trade show or see some customers. Well, I do think it's important that
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especially in a leadership role, you do need to stay connected to the field. You do need to stay connected to the industry, your business partners, your industry partners, the customers. You can't hide out because it's constantly changing. And Marla, I always see you at shows, so I know you're out there, finger on the pulse. I escape quite often.
23:28
is crazy right now. You know, we went through period of time when nobody could get products for jobs. Now, products are on the shelves everywhere and everybody's waiting for bead funding. It's just almost like a hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Talk a little bit about how, first of all, how did all of that crazy time, did it affect you guys? And then
23:58
You know, with BEAT funding, do you see in the other funding programs that are out there? How do you see that, you know, American-made product is important right now? It's a lot of these jobs, you know, how has that affected how you're going forward? Yeah, I would say during the shortages, you know, during COVID and you're not being able to get materials and inflation. We saw it, but
24:28
Again, we have a consumable product which almost everything is coming out of Stillwater, Minnesota. We're healthy company. We have large market share. So was very easy for us to stock enough material. Yes, lead times went up. It was harder to get people. So production was a little bit behind. But it didn't take us long to get back down to our two to three day lead times, which is, you
24:57
wonderful in this industry. As far as what's going on with the bead funding and any of the funding programs, I don't think
25:11
I don't know what's going to happen. don't think anybody does. I mean, the clock has already started. We're darn near halfway through the period that they're supposed to be using this. They haven't spent anything yet. I don't know when they're going to, but I do know that we will get fiber to the home everywhere in the US, whether it's funded by private or government funds. So I'm not losing any sleepover. It's going to happen. So rather than sitting there stressing about
25:41
what the funds are going to be, we'll take it when it comes. And if it's frankly, if it's not a huge spike, and everything goes crazy, and if it's a long swell, I'd rather have that anyway. And I don't think we're going to be that affected by any of the the bead. It's
26:01
The buy American stuff has been complicated and I think it's something I know Dan Lavac was on the podcast a while ago and many of the manufacturers talk about it. It's extremely frustrating and challenging for us. We're pretty insulated from the situation. Almost everything is coming out of the U.S. and produced in Stillwater. So we're not too worried about it. But it has made things inefficient.
26:32
And hopefully, well, I can hope all I want, but I'm not sure the government is going to make something more efficient. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about our relationship, that we've worked together really well. Taking CBM kind of out of that equation, you work with other reps as well, other good reps. What's some, for those manufacturers or reps that might be watching this,
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What's some secret sauce out there that you think is paramount to a good relationship between a manufacturer and a rep? Communication is a big part of it. Polywater not being an enormous company, we're not a Fortune 500 company, we're that small to mid-size company of consumable products. We understand that there's mindshare with the rep agencies.
27:30
12 lines, could have 15 lines, could have 25 lines. It depends on the rep agency. We have to try to get our share of your time. And I think what's most important is we give you the collateral that you need, the videos, samples, a human being to call on. You call Polly, what our human being answers his phone and transfers you to another human being.
28:01
competent, energetic, and talented sales reps, regional managers that know the product, are courteous to the travel etiquette. So making sure that it's just a professional relationship. Because if I'm 5 % of your revenue, I want 7 % of your time.
28:23
How do I get a little bit more of that time? And I think we do that by just being professional. And from the other side, from the website, I can always tell who's working the line by who's calling. you have 15 lines, we don't expect you to know every bit of every single line. If you're talking about the product, questions are going to come up. You're going to be calling us to answer, I showed them this and they asked this, I didn't know.
28:53
So we know who's working in line by who's communicating. And CBM's very good about that. We're in constant communication, we work shows together, I think we're pretty aligned in the type of calls that are made. We're calling on the end users, engineers, rather than just trying to do everything through distribution, as we try to drive that sale back to distribution.
29:23
where I had to pick a product off of the line cards, all the things we represent, and then show which products are synergistic to it. The great thing about Polywater is you can take Polywater anywhere you go. So for a wrap, having a synergistic line like Polywater on the line card is just gold, because you can literally talk about...
29:49
Polywater, leave a sample, leave some information. You can literally do that every sales call. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're talking about cable or pipe. I mean, if you sell pipe, you're probably going to pull cable in it. Well, you should have lubricant. If you're pulling cable in, you're probably going to need to splice it. At the end, you have cleaners. If you have a conduit, you probably should seal it so water isn't getting into the basement of the building or whatever it may be. Pedestals. We've tried to open the...
30:15
build breadth into the line. And you're right, it has synergy with almost any other line that you guys would have. So in your development, in your journey through Polywater, we always ask, try to ask our guests, did you have a mentor? Is there a relationship there that really stands out of somebody that you look up to that gave you good advice? I'll tell you, there's
30:44
There's so many people to pick from and you just try to take the best from each of them. I mean, it would be hard to not mention my grandfather. His optimism, his can-do attitude, I mean, you just couldn't stop the guy. He was good with people, but everything was going to work. And as an inventor, the truth is, not much works. You have to keep trying. You have a lot of failures before you get a win.
31:12
But 23 US patents says that he got a couple wins. But there's other people. I look to a lot of our long-term, John Fee, who came in and was doing the marketing, he was the president for a long time. Great marketing mind. My father, brilliant business mind and business sense on how to run a business.
31:37
Sherry Dalkey in the lab and how she manages and her genuine curiosity about product development. Tom Frederick's a wonderful salesperson, has been with us for 37 years. Tracy Rose, I think on the 11th, and Tracy if you see this, I don't know if it's like 44 years or 43 years, somewhere in that range. We have a lot of tenure. frankly, I'm inspired by the young generation coming in too.
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genuine by saying the entire company, anywhere in the company you can point and I'm inspired by those people because they have the right attitude and fit in. I can't point to a single one. In a perfect world, you get to make all the decisions for the world. Where would you see Polywater in five to 10 years? That's funny. We're going through these exercises right now. We're really trying, we're growing so rapidly and we're a little
32:36
and this is one of the decisions I will have to make is We have open positions at Pollywater and I've got no place to put them. So I need space we are growing rapidly so We are we have done very very well in the US. We've been selling in over a hundred countries for You know twenty-third years
32:59
But global growth is going to be a big part of our business. We have a wholly owned subsidiary in the Netherlands. We have, we're just opening one in Dubai. We have a manufacturing facility in Italy that will support our European business. So I see more growth globally for us. mean, again, we've been doing business there, but I think there's more opportunity there for us.
33:28
We've really never talked about taking CBM globally, but we'll have to talk about Yes, we'll put that on the record. If you need us to be your rep. That works. Someplace exotic across the seas. That'd be great. Well, Jake, as I expected, this was a lot of fun talking. I'm glad that I got to sit in this seat today and have this conversation with you. We value the relationship between CBM and Polywater, love traveling with your people. It's just a good synergy.
33:58
Thank you so much for making the jump down. The feeling's mutual. Thanks Marlon.
34:06
Thanks again to Jake for taking the time to be here. We appreciate it so much. Remember to like, share and subscribe and let us know what you'd like to see on the podcast. Remember if you need representation or you need help with a project, reach out to our sales team at cbmrep.com. We'd be glad to help you out. Thank you again for joining us at Power of the Network.
