Hi, welcome to Power of the Network. I'm your host Tim Locker, Vice President of Broadband, here at CBM. We've got a real special guest for you today, Ms. Nicole Dickey. She's for us, PTMW. They're rapidly growing manufacturer here in Kansas. We're going to talk about their expansion and how her sports background helps her build teams in the industry. When Nicole, thank you so much for joining us today. Great having you in studio with us. Thanks for having me. Let's start off, I guess, for some of our customers that may not know PTMW. Who are you guys and what do you do? Yeah, so we are a metal fabricator located right here in the heart of the country. We've been around since 1983. We got our start in the railroad space, so all those little silver cabins you see along a rail line. A lot of those came from from Little Old speaking Kansas, so from there we've just kind of transitioned inato all sorts of mobility and mission critical type spaces. Basically, if you can put a piece of equipment in a house that you need it in a metal enclosure, we can make that metal enclosure, so it's just been a really easy transition into other spaces from the railroad, but we got our start and that's our kind of standard product line that we run really with our eyes closed at this point since we've been making them for so long. Awesome. Well, first of all, I was doing a little bit of research and looked like a couple of years ago, you guys were doing a very large expansion project. Yeah, we're kind of coming up on the tail end of that. We were purchased a little over five years ago by Ashley Betis. They have been in heavy asphalt, all sorts of different transportation type companies infrastructure. Yeah. And we were a company purchased by them a little over five years ago, and since then we have just seen tremendous growth really on the heels of them investing within PTMW to create that infrastructure for the growth. So it's really we're really starting to see the fruits of that that labor finally kind of after white knuckling it for a couple of years during those growth phases and the expansion projects. So really by the end of the year, we will be finishing up most of those. Okay, that's great because I think it was like a five-year projection, if I remember right. Yeah, yeah. We expanded our own footprint in Topeka, and we also added a new plant in Manhattan. Okay. Really both of those kind of happening simultaneously. Created how many jobs do you think? We're at just around 100 people in Manhattan, and we've added around 200 people in the last two years in Topeka. So we're at for a total company around 700 people now. And I believe when the Betis purchased it, when Ashley purchased it, we were around gosh, like 250 people. So it's been like three times almost. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a heck a couple of years. You know, it really has. We're looking for a little bit of a smoother year next year, just in maybe not so much growth, but yeah. Good luck with that. Yeah. You never get a break. No, not at all. Not if we're doing our jobs correctly, we don't get a break. Yeah. So what new spaces has this taken you into? You know, a lot of the growth has come from the data center markets, but with that data center growth is also power generation, power distribution. You know, when the data centers go up, the next thing that has to happen is the grid infrastructure to yeah, to also change and expand. So we're seeing a lot in those sectors, but it's really important for us to keep our roots and make sure that we can still maintain our, you know, class one railroad customers we've had for 40 plus years. So really keeping those lines separate, keeping those growth areas running kind of in its own facility, own area, and then keeping the rail side very steady. Is there much growth in the rail market with I mean, you know, there isn't. I can't imagine there's probably more maintenance than not as much. You know, how how PTW grew from a really small company to a larger company to when Ashley purchased the company, Ashley, about us purchased the company was the PTC. So positive train control and that went into effect from a federal mandate. All the class ones had to upgrade all of their enclosures to be able to house the new equipment, the new signal really equipment that went in it. So that's how PTW had their large growth, you know, a few years before before we were purchased. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of new construction in the rail. So from the PTC area, obviously that took up a lot of the new technology that came out, you know, in the 2010s basically. And PTW was really outputting a ton of railhouses at that point. But that really once that PTC was online, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of growth. It was mainly just maintenance, you know, a little bit of new capital went into the rail lines, but there's really it's a very just steady market for us at this point. For others, if they're building rail lines and things like that, maybe a little bit more growth, but for the actual enclosure side, it's just really steady, pretty flat. So for us to grow as a company, we had to transition into other sectors basically to be able to not only just keep that side maintained, but grow our employees, keep our employees steady, things like that. So we talked a little bit about the, you know, the metal enclosures that we see. Are you doing huts and buildings and things like that as well, or is it just all metal fabrication? So you're just basically saying enclosures over and over again, huts and buildings and everything. That's all just enclosed. Yeah, yeah, we do anything from small cases you'd see on like a transit line up to just those, you know, six by sixes, eight by eight type houses along a rail line up to our one piece builds for data center and power side are 16 by 60. But we've done anything up to six piece eight piece builds. Okay, the sky is the limit really from us and we have our own engineering staff on hand. So we are a true engineered solution. We're not, you're not just buying a commercial product from us. It's a fully engineered solution. Yeah, so when the customer comes and they need X, Y, and Z and how we're big, our small, exactly right. Yeah, yeah. And it makes it to where we have a very close relationships with the integrator partners we work with because we don't integrate on site. So we don't, that means we don't do the full electronic electrification on site. That's done usually by a third by one of our partners. Yeah. Who works with the end user to create that spec. And then we create the building off of what the needs are. Heat cows, you know, weight loads where it's going as a big deal to hit seismic state and locality type requirements. So yeah, it has to be a has to be a whole unit that works together to get that done. So outside of the rail in the utility space, are you doing a lot of that grid for those? Yeah, a lot of that grid infrastructure upgrades that a lot of people are seeing. We do a lot of substations. Okay. Really anything from the power transmission side, we can do a lot of PDCs power distribution. Okay, interesting. I mean, I assumed you guys were huge with the number of employees that you got, but I'm not super intelligent on what you've done. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not super intelligent on what we've done. You know, for us, where CBM would be related to you all, we're a manufacturer's rep firm, obviously, I don't have several different product lines that we rent, but we work in the utility space. Also, you know, the commercial industrial space and then as well, the broadband communications space. So we do a ton of work with our utility group on, you know, with the local utilities around and so on and so forth. So yeah, it's all kind of all kind of coming together for you know, we do some telecommunication buildings for commercial use also as well as the railroads use telecom buildings, railroads and transit lines. Yeah, I was going to ask so my background is mostly fiber optics. Yeah. And so, you know, I know the rails have done a ton of fiber over the years. Yeah, you get into that a little bit as well. Yeah, yeah. Basically, we just call them telecommunication huts. Okay. So telecommunication buildings is usually part of the railroads signal. They have signal and telecom groups. So we've done it with them, but we also have worked with some of the commercial telecommunication companies to create enclosures. So traditionally from, you know, where I grew up in the calm space, railroads were a challenge. You know, getting permits and doing all that stuff. Yeah. And the rights away are very challenging. Yes. But knowing that the railroads have, you know, the fiber infrastructure that they do. Yeah. Are they getting easier to work with? Are they, are they getting kind of more into like the middle mile? And I mean, you know, they have a huge value in their rights away in their fiber. And I'm wondering if they're like changing that perspective and utilizing that. You know, for us, we really stay out of that part of it. We don't have to do a lot on site with the railroad companies because everything we do is from like a pre-construction type type space. You send it out and they put it in. And that's really across all of our, all of our market sectors is we're really the pre-construction phase. You choose a modular path to cut down time in the field, you know, cut out some of the money that it takes to, to put anybody in the field from our perspective, you know, the insurance to have people site ready and things like that. And site teams, you're just taking away from your manufacturing, from your manufacturing team in that regard. So we try to do as much on the pre-construction side with these groups as humanly possible. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Save time and money. Yeah. That's our selling point right there. Well, and just do what you're good at, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Focus on the manufacturing. So tell me a little bit about more about what your role is as. Yeah. So I started as a salesperson for PTW five years ago. Okay. And since then, I've transitioned into the role of vice president of customer relations. So I'm honored to be on our leadership team to be able to kind of create the path forward for our company. And we are so customer-centric in what we do because we don't make our own products to sell to market. We create an engineered solution with our customers. So really just making sure that all lines of communication are open, our project managers are giving direct feedback to the customer is straight from the production floor, making sure internally that we're working together to create a seamless process for the customer. The little they know about our internal workings, the better, right? Yeah. Which is always challenging during growth periods to make sure that everybody is aligned. But I have a great team, great team of project managers, a great team in customer relations. So it makes my job a lot easier. So customer relations is that then just another word for sales? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, it's got a little better of a review to it than just sales. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about those relations. I mean, obviously being so integrated with the customer. Yeah. You've got to have some incredible relationships. And that's obviously behind. So so you know, it's interesting. We'll say the customer. But a lot of times the end user is so insulated to what we do because we work with our electrical integrators to create the product. So we've got some incredible integrator partners that really these last few years have been a lot of education on how we work, how we have to function internally, whether that be the state certification process because all these modular buildings have to work through the states to be put into service. Yeah. Really, you have to work with the states and localities and where it's going so just making sure that our processes are clear, timelines are clear, project schedules are clear, if dates are missed, what happens? You know, making sure that that's clear with our integrator partners so that way they can keep that on the forefront as they're talking to the end user has helped a lot. We've done a lot of educational type summits. I would I would call them with our integrator partners just to make sure that we all look like a clear you know, cohesive group to the end user. Yeah, seamless. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, really we need them to be a turnkey provider because we want to keep doing what we're good at which is making enclosures and equipment skids and things like that. We can't do that without them. What is the time frame or that your sales cycle? You know, with that much integration, I got to believe it's a little on the longer, longer side. What's your typical project turn around from start to finish? You know, it really depends on the complexity of the project, how many hands are in the pie, things like that where it's going, states are specific so each state can take you know, one state can take two months or two weeks to get through and another state can take 12 weeks to get through. But I mean, if we can start talking about a project, you know, in January, if it needs to happen by the end of the year, we can get there. Just depends on how how much they, I would say our customers come to us with. Yeah. How locked and they are on their design. If we can manufacture it on our on our best equipment, on our fastest equipment, if it's going to be a one off type project, obviously, it can take a little bit longer. It's usually a lot more design in that. If it's a program level project, we try to kick the tires right from the beginning, make sure that all the bugs are out of that program before we run, you know, 100 of the same types of enclosures over and over again. So it really just depends on the complexity of the project. What's that relationship look like with the different manufacturers from you know, the components and stuff that you're putting in? Yeah, you know, do you manage any of that or is that another group? That's a really another group. We have a really wonderful procurement group with NPTMW that that handles a lot of that. But a lot of that is dictated by the end user. What they're expected. Yeah, exactly. And so sometimes it'll come directly from them. We'll do customer-provided material because a lot of the times these larger electrical integrators have, you know, closer relationships with the electrical groups that are produced from the equipment groups that are producing this stuff. Yeah. So depending on what it is and who is for, you'll you'll procure some of this. You bet. Some of it. Yeah. And we're clear on our scope usually of what we're going to do. What are typical from us, you know, we'll call it, we call it hotel electric, basically receptacles, HVAC systems, things like that, making sure the lights turn on. That's really kind of our usually our scope. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Talk a little bit about your team. What is your what is your sales team look like? You know, it is there's two of us actually. It's just myself and a wonderful individual. His name is Tad. He came on board March of 25. So right before I stepped out, solemn maternity leave with my last my last child, my son. And he has just taken to our team, taken to our culture. He's been a wonderful addition. It makes my life a lot easier. So he's one of my favorite people. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, he, it's actually interesting. He's a former athlete as well. Okay. And so just coming in, we seem to speak the same language. And he's not afraid of a challenge and can be kind of my eyes and ears in a room if I can't be there. And especially during these growth periods, you know, you can't be everywhere at once. Yeah. So making sure that I had somebody that was really capable and really had had PTMW's best interest at heart and being able to be in those rooms that I wasn't able to be. And that was that was a huge weight off my shoulders. Yeah. That's great. That's great. You got to be able to trust. You got to be able to trust. Yeah. You got to have the locker room, right? Yeah. Yeah. We always say, you know, and you know, for hiring and firing, you know, you got to keep a bench. Yeah. So you got to have people on the sideline ready to go. And you got to trust your guy when it's the right person. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You mentioned Tad being an athlete. And you were also an athlete in college as well. Yeah. I guess a little bit of basketball. Yep. Yes. Tell me your experience there. And what you learned from, you know, being a college athlete. Yeah. You know, we kind of have a joke that college athletics really set us up to be in a room where we're not liked very well in a business setting. If we're having kind of a contentious conversation, which luckily for us doesn't happen all that often. But, you know, we don't shy away from a challenge. It's you know what you know going into it. You don't try to act like you know more than you know, which is a big deal. Yeah. Because I can really get you into trouble. So, you know, you can get put on the spot real quick. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Right. Prove it right. Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's always nice to know that those contentious business meetings are never the worst thing I've ever heard in my life because I played college athletics. So yes. Yeah. But really work. I mean, gosh, work ethic. You can't have a low work ethic and make it all the way through college athletics. Yeah. It doesn't it doesn't work. Yeah. Exactly. So, not being afraid of hard work is a big deal. And time management is huge, you know, because then you have to manage obviously your sports schedule and also your school schedule in that regard. So, you know, I don't have much issue with that. And now as a as a working parent. Yeah. Yeah. And you obviously, you know, with your honors, you had a whole list of accolades through college. But you obviously put a high standard to yourself as well. That's that comes from within. Talk about, you know, how you keep everything to the highest standard. Yeah. You know, I am lucky enough to be married to someone who also does that. And so we are very much aligned in that way. Um, he always is going to be the hardest worker in every room. And so just trying to keep up with him is a is a big deal. He's a former athlete as well. He didn't much better than me in college as far as that accolades go. But yeah, I'm just I'm truly blessed to be with somebody who also has that in the forefront of their mind. So, um, being able to lead our family, you know, during as we're adding up our fourth child to the mix. And yeah. Thank you. Um, and being working parents, that's that's a that's a big deal. So, um, making sure we're aligned with our, what our children need, what our marriage needs and what our jobs need. So what's the what's the secret to balancing all that? When I figured out, I'll let you know. So, yeah, constant communication, I think. So, um, he's also in in the sales type of space. So, um, it's we we talk for our kids, tell their teachers that we talk for a living. So, um, we if we don't communicate well in our own household, how can we be doing it well in our jobs? So, yeah. Oh, that's great. Do you have to travel a bunch or? Uh, you know, since Tad came on board since, um, I don't have to travel quite as much. I'm able to be kind of a little more steady in the office, which is a big deal. Yeah. Team chemistry is a big a big deal to me. So, being able to be in the office, touch base with our project managers with the rest of my leadership team is is, um, you know, that that's a huge deal of keeping everything cohesive, moving forward. Um, so, Tad does a lot of the picks up a lot of my slack on the travel side. Um, but I try to do as much as really as necessary. There can be too much, obviously. Um, yeah. But making sure that I'm touching our, um, kind of I would rate them superior customers pretty often is a big deal. Yeah, for sure. Um, um, powering the network starts with strong partnerships. At CBM, we connect broadband, utility and commercial industrial customers across the Midwest with best in class, manufacturers, and solutions. As a hundred percent employee owned company, we're invested in every connection and every success. If you need help with a project or looking for a quality rep firm in the Midwest, reach out to us here at cbmrep.com. So, you mentioned chemistry. Talk a little bit about the culture there at PTMW. Yeah, you know, when the Betis family purchased PTMW a little over five years ago, we got a couple of years into that leadership change and realized that we really needed to drill down on, um, on our culture. On those key pieces, our mission statement, things like that that have brought us this far, but really teased us up for growth. And so, um, we do our best to instill that into our employees. What makes PTMW different, right? Anybody can make an enclosure. There's lots of enclosure manufacturers out there. Um, what do we do different? What can we instill in the employees or bringing on to make sure that they understand how important what we do. You know, we're not making, we're not making rockets. Um, but we are providing really mission critical pieces of equipment, um, that make America run, you know, from a railroad side to a data center, what have you. Um, and so just making sure that everybody understood what our quality is, what we do, um, how we got here, um, making sure that they understand the history of PTMW. That was always a big deal. Um, I work for a wonderful man named Fred Gantz who has been with PTMW for a long, long time. Um, and we kind of joke that he's the encyclopedia. So, uh, he does these kind of history lessons. We'll do, uh, we do birthdays and anniversary, um, celebrations, uh, the first Thursday of every month. And so we try to give him about five to ten minutes to give a, a history lesson on, on a product line that has been, you know, if it's a customer we've had for 25 years that we're still experiencing growth with, you know, he gets to talk about that. Yeah. Those things are important. It's very important. Yeah. Uh, especially as, you know, the older a company gets, you start having, you know, new, new employees and, and, you know, bringing them up to speed on what you do is, it's critical. Yeah. And you know, we're rigid in certain processes. Um, but if there's a way to do it better, we don't shy away from that either. So, um, process improvement, we have a whole process improvement group and we actually pay our employees. If there's something that happens that say it's a program level product, we're going to make, you know, a hundred of the same enclosure over and over again. If somebody figures out a way on the production floor, I don't care if it's a, you know, a welder or just a, uh, somebody assembling it that's not a lead or a manager. If they've got a good idea and we can put it into place and it can, um, create value within that program, we're going to pay that employee for that idea. Yeah. That's great. You know, some of our other manufacturers kind of have similar plans in place. I'm, um, you know, thinking about PLP, for example, their facility down in Rogers, Arkansas, and they kind of have a similar program and, you know, they're, uh, manufacturing the managers at the plant, you know, get together and have more meetings and week meetings and all that. But yeah, they really look for the people in the field or right on site to, to look for those. Yeah. And you know, that's, that's the beauty of us having our own engineering team, um, within PTW is they can go directly to the floor, work through. If it's a first of kind, say it's a, it's the first time we're making this product, um, they'll be right on the floor directly with the production staff working through any, uh, you know, if a whole needs to be moved on the floor, if there's a cutout that's in the wrong place, um, if something is drawn, maybe the measurements aren't on the drawing. They're going to walk straight down the production floor, um, and, and deal with it directly, which I think sets PTW part quite a bit. Yeah, that's a huge advantage. You can jump right in and solve problems. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. I just curiosity, I guess I see you had a biochemistry degree. Yeah. To school. Yeah. How's that working out? Yeah. You know, my husband got a general studies degree, which I think is a much smarter path for somebody going into sales than a, I worked way harder than him in college and we do the exact same type of type of thing with our degree. What was hanging on a wall? What was the interest? Uh, yeah, I was a STEM kid coming out of high school. Good at math, good at science. Okay. Uh, just kind of went throughout. Uh, I worked as a philbotomist right as soon as I was done with volleyball, um, my senior year of college and realized that, um, I did not like the red tape and the bureaucratic side of the healthcare industry. Okay. Um, but I liked dealing with people. And so I found a route that took me to, uh, be able to deal with people and do absolutely zero with my biochemistry degree. Yeah. I was good at math, but I was not good at, uh, you know, industry. I just didn't have that interest. It's just, it's just memory. My, it's just remembering things. So I'm getting old now. That's, that's going away as well. Well, it's funny because my husband got the general studies degree and then went back and got his masters in health and human performance. So I, what we, yeah, we don't know. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought, uh, I was lucky enough to graduate without any student loans, um, thanks to my very hardworking parents and, uh, title nine scholarships and, and things that was volleyball in school, um, but thinking about going into debt to do something that I wasn't sure I liked wasn't, uh, super attractive to me. Yeah. Well, my wife and I are personally, you know, Dave Ramsey fans. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we, uh, we actually had our son, we just got our son married off here just in the last month. Yeah. And, uh, you know, he got through school without any debt and, uh, so it's, it's one of the biggest, uh, one of the biggest things that my husband and I contribute to, uh, getting ahead if you, you call it that, but we came from teachers and nurses as parents and, uh, you know, hardworking dads who worked in manufacturing and my dad drove a truck over the road and, uh, we were able to make it through college without, without much in student debt. What a great start. Yeah. What a gift to be that far. Huge. Yeah. And really, you know, when you watch your parents work that hard to do that for you, it pretty much creates that. Yeah. That's a perception that that's how life is. So you, you pretty much have to shut up and get to work. So, yeah. What was your position in volleyball? Uh, I was an outside hitter. Outside hitter. Yeah. Six position. So I'm five foot eight. So obviously I had to also be able to pass to be able to make it on, on the, uh, on the court. Yeah. I'm learning more and more about it. My daughter plays, um, she is a freshman this year. Wonderful. Um, so she, she actually made the varsity team. She doesn't get in much. Congratulations. She's a setter. And I guess the, uh, the varsity setter is a senior. I guess she's like rated number two in the state. She's really, really good. That's great to learn from. Yeah. So, you know, she doesn't get to see a lot of time this year, but she will next year. We call them the quarterbacks of the court. So, yeah. If you don't have a good setter, you don't, you're, you can't run any sort of system. Yeah. I've kind of, you know, as she grows up and you watch volleyball, it's, you know, they beat the ball around. But yeah. Now seeing that there's some strategy to it, you know, it's, it's a lot more fun to watch as I don't do what my dad always did, which is ask, why don't you just hit it every time? You know, that was, well, you spike it every time. I don't understand why you tip it or do anything else. Yeah. But if you can get it over in one, why are you hitting it? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We just say, stick to softball and basketball and football dad and we'll take volleyball. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she's struggled this year a little bit because she's, she's also very good at tennis. And so last year they, the state changed. So our girls tennis is now in the fall. So it overlaps. Okay. volleyball. Yeah. And so she's trying to do both sports. And obviously it's a lot to manage. But then both of the coaches a little bit like have a grudge because like, you know, the volleyball coach says, well, you should, this should be your priority. Right. Tennis coaches, this is your priority. Yeah. So what would your advice be to, you know, a young kid like that that's, you know, it, I think you should try to do everything. Yeah. Don't let me yourself. Yeah. But at some point you have to make a choice. So what is, I mean, I think I believe you made that choice. Yeah. Well, in high school I played softball and I also ran track. So it was just making it clear if you are going to miss practice, if you are going to choose one primary or over the other, which I'm always going to be a team sport kid at heart. I can't help it. That's where my, my heart lies. So choosing softball as the primary was a no, no brainer to me. But making sure that my track companions, my track team, my track coach also saw me putting in the work as well. Yeah. Kind of short up a lot of that back and forth. I kind of just got to earn it on both sides. You do. Yeah. And as a freshman, that's even harder to do. You kind of just want to make sure that everybody is watching you work and make sure that you're present when you can be. If there's, you know, volleyball practice ends early. You get over to tennis and that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So what was your draw to the team sports? Just to camaraderie? Yeah. You know, I have two older brothers. And so watching them be on teams, watching, you know, we were my parents very much made our house, the house that everybody came to. So all my brothers' teammates were always over eating all of our food. So I had to scrounge for scraps as a kid. But I just loved it. They just had such chemistry. They had fun. Doing stuff on your own is great. I mean, if you have, you're the type of person who has expectations for yourself, you're always going to meet them. But when you do it with a team, it just makes it even better. When you're all aligned on what's supposed to happen, how you're supposed to function, what it takes to win. And you can get it done together. I mean, there's absolutely nothing like it, which is funny going into business. You know, I think my husband and I both chased that feeling for a long time until we kind of found places that supported that or helped grow that. I've never seen my husband happier in a business setting than he has been in the past couple of years in his company. And just when you get in places that foster that feeling, when you get the locker room right, when you have that team chemistry and you have people you can trust and that are all going in the same direction, there's just absolutely nothing like that feeling. Yeah, I don't think I could put it any better than that. Clearly it translates right into business. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah. We act like it doesn't, but it 100% does. So in terms of business, to get that locker room right, I mean, what's the trick? That's a great question. You know, it's a lot of it is you have to trust your gut. If you have people within your culture that are not aligned with what you're trying to do, if they're constantly putting up roadblocks, if it's a, you know, that's not how we do it. That's not how we should do it type of mentality. Yeah. They're just their cancers. They are going to drag down your culture. They're going to create instability within departments within your employees. They're going to see that there is obviously a rub because people can see it. No matter what you try to do behind closed doors. Yeah. The perception is there. People can see it. Your team can see it. And so just I think addressing those cancers within your culture are a huge deal. Being able to communicate effectively, which are direct, sometimes very direct communication. That's not always fun, right? Every meeting isn't going to be fun, but as long as you are all going the same direction, you can have confrontation and it still be okay by the end of the day. Sports is a huge, really is a huge teacher of that. You're going to have confrontation on all sorts of level within your teams and within your games. You have everybody handles the confrontation. Correct. Same. I'm kind of like, okay, let's have it out and it will be good. Other people will kind of hang on to it longer and longer. I think you have to get those people out of their comfort zone and they have to communicate. People can hold on to grudges. People can hold on to maybe getting rubbed the wrong way. I think a lot of that is just you have to have direct questions, those people. Are you still feeling that way? What's still bothering you? And if they just continue to do it and they continue to just choose to feel that way and choose to have that kind of pity party on themselves, then it's another conversation. It's another conversation. A little bit more direct of a conversation, I feel like. Talking about that, you know, mentioned people getting out of their comfort zones. I think that relates to sales as well. How do you drive the TAD, for example, to get out of the comfort zone and go tackle a new challenge? Yeah. What's great about creating your own team is seeing what those people have as just intrinsic traits. TAD's a really resilient guy. I don't have to give him a lot of direction that regard. But what our leadership team really talks to our sales staff about and also our project managers about what's the worst they're going to say? What's the worst thing that a customer could say? No? Yeah. Okay. That's, you know, we'll bounce back from a no. It's going to be okay. There's other work out there. We'll figure it out. So being able to just know that that's the worst thing you're going to hear walking into it. I think the fear of rejection is more gets kind of amped up more than it than it really is in reality. What exactly? What it really hurts. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit, you know, women and leadership. You know, as a man in today's day and age, for me, it's kind of a tough topic. It's like, why are we still talking about this, right? Yeah. Everybody's just as capable. But I mean, it is a thing. Yeah. And I mean, it's obviously very important in your organization. So talk about what it, what it means to you. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is being a woman-owned facility, being a woman-owned company. It is a certification we're proud to have. I'm proud to have Ashley Betis as our owner. But it doesn't really matter with what we do. Just because we have a woman in charge doesn't do anything to the product that we're making. It's, you know, we're going to have that level of quality no matter what. Well, that was kind of my point. It's like the topic itself, like I feel like bringing it up almost diminishes something. Correct. Yeah. And I don't mean to mean it that way. No. You can have anybody be in a leadership role. As long as it's the right fit and they have the key traits that it takes to be in that leadership role, it's meritocracy. I don't care if you're a man or a woman. I don't care what color of skin you have. I don't care what your background is. Did you earn it? Are you supposed to be here? I think it becomes clearer once you're in some critical situations. You see who should be in that position, who shouldn't be in that position. Really, it's all merit-based. I don't really care that I'm a woman in this role for a reason. Yeah. I like how you put, and I could see it in your eye, did you earn it? And that means a lot to you more than just... Don't hand it to me. I want to earn it. I mean, you can hand it at this point. I'm about to have four kids at home. But I guess I can see that A, you want to earn it, but then you also expect other people to earn it. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I would drive that respect. Yeah. Yeah. You want to hold yourself at a high level, and I work with the great leaders who also hold themselves to a very high standard. So if I wasn't pulling my weight, it would be very obvious. So I think that's important. So we talked a little bit about the girls in Topeka, but you also got an expansion in Manhattan as well about that. Yeah. So recently in the last couple of years, we added 100,000 square foot of manufacturing space in Topeka. And we also put more into the infrastructure within Topeka. So basically, we invested in new fabrication equipment to try to double our sheet metal output. So parts and pieces because we're a true OEM. We do make all the parts and pieces in house. We process our own structural steel. So we had to put up a new building to create room for a new tub laser. It's be able to process all of our own structural. So instead of waiting for the processing centers to process the structural steel from the mills, we can get raw material in. And during COVID, this was a huge thing because we were able to overstep kind of a 12 week lead time issue and get raw in about a week and process it ourselves. So just basically creating redundancy within our own equipment lines while also being able to get more output out of our facility. It's a big deal. So Topeka is really set up to be an enclosure facility. So an enclosure manufacturing facility. All of our parts and pieces we can make in house there. We have our weld shop with all the heavy cranes. We have our powder coat booths. All of our assembly team is there. And we also have some space for integration for a partner of ours within one of the 100,000 square foot facility. We do have some space where integrator partners can integrate on site. A lot of times that'll cut down the back and forth as far as shipping goes, cuts down kind of the carbon footprint of the project as a whole. So just being able to have that space on site to be able to do that is a big deal. So if since we've set up Topeka to be able to produce more enclosures during this growth period, a big question we had from a lot of our large data center customers were what redundancy do you have? If this gets hit with the tornado, what are you going to do? And that really let us down kind of a rabbit hole of where if we're going to expand where it makes sense. And so looking at all of the places, we needed somewhere that probably was within driving distance of our plant, Topeka. Being able to ship pieces back and forth as we got a plant up and running, being able to ship leadership back and forth, transition them as we grew a whole new employee base was a big deal. So Manhattan, Kansas was really a no-brainer of where we needed to go. They had a lot of welders per capita in the Manhattan area. And obviously what we do, we need a lot of welders for. And so with opening up the plant in Manhattan, we had a large program that we were going to be able to run out of that plant. So we were able to stabilize kind of that product base and get all the machines up and running. You know, get our two blazers set up, get the crane set up, powder coat on site, things like that. That was a really big deal as we decided what we were going to expand and do, what projects we were going to take on. So, you know, kind of our line in the sand is there's equipment skids, those heavier pieces of structural steel, not the enclosed type of parts and pieces that we do in Topeka, but actually having their own line to run the skids out in Manhattan, really created just tons of efficiency. We're able to get a whole new labor pool, which is a big deal. You know, there's so much manufacturing that happens in the Topeka area. We're battling for labor a lot of the times. And so we needed access to a different labor pool to expand in the way that we knew we could with the projects that we had on hand for the next couple of years. So creating that space in Manhattan was a big deal. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. It allows you to really control the flow of everything. Yeah. And you know, a lot of times with what we do, we on the structural, maybe the equipment skid, mechanical skids, those types of products, a lot of times we're going up against competitors who don't quite have maybe the overhead that we have, don't have, you know, the enclosure side that we have. So they can get pretty skinny on quotes. And so we just realized that our competitors were being able to run very efficiently because they were just smaller job shops. So being able to create Manhattan with its own kind of overhead and it's set up to just be that that structural steel processing type of facility. That was also we could create efficiency within that product line because fitting in skids to how we make enclosures, you weren't hitting efficiencies, you know, you had to kind of maneuver those in to a production schedule. So yeah, I've been to some different different places where, you know, they're building the, you know, big buildings for, you know, for the utility aspect in it. Like it takes up a lot of room. That's take up a lot of room. You've got to put this thing together in the warehouse and then take it apart and send it and do all these things. So yeah, yeah, it's it's once that process has started, you're not making a lot of changes to bring in the next little budget. Yeah, and you know, everything we do, we build on mainly what we do from an enclosure side. I'm also equipment skids. We're building on fixtures. So setting up those fixtures, having locked in fixture spacing for certain product lines, that's how you create efficiency through a schedule, especially when we're making lots of different types of things over and over again. Yeah. Just being able to create that and have that stability within that production schedule is a big deal. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. You know, I can't thank you enough for coming in and seeing us today being on the show. It's been great to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you. I learned a lot about you and your organization. And yeah, I think we've probably got a lot of things we could talk about in terms of working together. Wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. It's great to have you. Kitchen W has been a great place to work. So it's pretty easy to talk about. I do it for a living. So obviously, it's a new job job. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, awesome. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. I want to say thanks again Nicole for joining us. It was great having you in studio with us. It was a pleasure to get to meet you and get to know you a little bit more. I think we got some awesome things that we can work together with in the future. Remember, if you need help with a project or looking for representation here in the Midwest, look no further than CBM. You can find us right here at CBMREP.com. Give us a like, comment, subscribe. Let us know what you'd like to see on future episodes. Thanks again for joining us on Power of the Network. And until next time, we'll see you next time.
