Speaker 1: Hi everybody. Welcome to the next episode of engineer your career on the show today. We move a little bit closer to the business side of engineering as we talked to Kevin Woodrow. Kevin is a proud graduate of Michigan Technological University where he received in Ms. In mechanical engineering in 1995, he spent the first 12 years of a career in product development at General Motors in a progression of engineering and management roles during which time he also received an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan motivated by long-term personal goals in his business school experience Kevin Love General Motors in 2007 to join up with an experienced entrepreneur was forming an early-stage entrepreneurial management and investment firm since that time Kevin is operative founder investment manager Anarchy operator in 6 start up companies involving highly engineered products in the mobility Healthcare in energy sector Senate collectively raised over 60 million investment Capital. This is not episode. You want to mix Kevin Balcom TYC.

Speaker 3: Welcome everyone to another episode of the engineer your career podcast on Brennan turmeric. And as always I'm joined with the great trevallyn 3 how you doing

Speaker 1: living in the upper peninsula man. It's so I feel like we got like 3 feet of snow on the ground or finally having more of winter. We can get higher than any snow in January, but we got a ton now so loving it. I got to get to go sledding at enough for winter. You can actually do stuff

Speaker 3: you are so lucky. We have like two melted in on the ground, but you know what, we'll we'll get through. We'll get through down here. So dry you up to anything cool lately PhD stuff kids stuff family

Speaker 1: stuff. Yeah, well I was kind of dog is so that it has a whole lot to wife. So I've been busy but doesn't work and stuff PCS has been good. Just trying to get there to collect. It's it's it's so hard in the peachy life just cuz everything's really ambiguous. But you got to work through it trying to learn some stuff. I hear I think you told me that you're you're doing some new learning. What's what's new

Speaker 3: that I want to find more time in my day to learn some new like skills technical areas that I'm interested in so I have found that time by instead of like snoozing my alarm for like 15-20 minutes the morning. I just got to bed now right at like 5:55 and spend 20 minutes the first 20 minutes my day kind of reading some books and working on some some projects to kind of like having what time my days I'm pretty excited about it cuz it's stuff that I've I want to learn really interested in so try to try to carve out that time in

Speaker 1: my day. Arid, that's so tough, man. That's like I think there's a lot of people that think that like I'm going to do this, but then they tried the first day and it's just like fails miserably, how how did you get past that? Like, how did you do anything? You have to change out the first day or like what? What did you do?

Speaker 3: So I am notoriously bad at getting up when my alarm goes off my wife likes on me all the time. So true. I think I got two things. I had read two books recently, which I highly recommend one is called Ultra learning and the other one is called Atomic habits and they're both kind of based on this idea of like how to kind of structure a learning project and then how to go about I don't know how can you cheat have good habits in your life. And so one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted to get up earlier and like do something productive in my morning's when I can so it was kind of like, all right. I'm right about this. I think I can do it here in 15 minutes of my day, and it was really not good sleep. Anyway, just hitting snooze every 5-10 minutes. So it one day Decide all right. I'm going to get up and do it and for the most part been able to do it for the past three weeks or so except except when I got sick, but you know what?

Speaker 1: That's awesome man.

Speaker 3: What's the alarm codes? No promises in the future once I have kids if that's going to happen as I'm sure you you can understand but for right now I'm going to go with it

Speaker 1: and you plenty busy but on the show today, we have a guy who has no shortage of busyness in his life Kevin which episode is on the line, and I doing excellent. Thank you really really glad that you're here really excited to hear about your your story and maybe we should just start with your origin story. Let's tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today in a little bit of an intro to you in a little bit of additional topping additional content here that I think would be relevant to your topic is this is something when I meet people I have to go to introduce myself. And condense this into a really short blurb. So I'm going to give you a little bit more. I need mid-90s graduated Michigan sack and spent six years up there going through graduate school got a master's degree in mechanical engineering concentrated primarily in the mechanical System Dynamics, arioso structural Dynamics lot of signal processing in system modeling and I went to work at General Motors after that at The Proving Grounds and had the opportunity for the first five or six years of my career to do a lot of Fairly Technical and heavily analytical. I had somewhat creative research type work which was a little bit unusual but it was relevant in the a longer story here because you know, I was able to continue to develop some technical skills that have been relevant in the in my business applications, which will talk about here in a few minutes and I in the process of that I was lucky enough to be identified. Has one of The Highest Potential young Engineers that's a General Motors wanted to develop through the managerial ranks. And as such started moving as is typical for those programs from job to job every couple years or so to get a breadth of experience throughout the company and also had the opportunity during that time to go to business school. And so it's a go get my MBA at Ross down at Michigan University of Michigan Ross and said that was a great experience for me and something that I certainly aspired to do and also had when I entered into business school, I did it with an eye of not necessarily stay in in product development engineering or even with General Motors perhaps for the duration of my career. I was looking to make a script of it at that point. Although obviously my position to General Motors was pretty comfortable and also pretty exciting. So I was in no particular sense of urgency, but it was something that I always wanted to explore And as I went into business school, I I did it with an eye of getting it the analytical finance will taking my engineering training which weekend was heavily heavily Analytical in system modeling paste and applying it to analytical Finance on Wall Street in Chicago Board of options or something along those lines of this was this would have been early 2000s before quantitative trading it is what it is today. So there was no certainly a denarii that was high growth at that particular time and during the course of business school. I learned that that was not really what I wanted to do at a young family didn't want us to move to a financial center. And and there were some other issues that I had with that just in terms of the value would create sand and so I pivoted my focus little bit more towards the entrepreneurial Finance side of things and now you're talkin venture capital investment banking those types of of things and and that's where I focused during my time it be Cuz I got towards the end of my business school. I got out of business school back at General Motors doing the name of the rotational management development things and stayed with that for a while because again, it was exciting and General Motors was a great place to work and they treated me very well, but I got to a point where and I I'm going to stay I was I can tell you exactly the day I was sitting on Memorial Day on my porch the evening of Memorial Day in 2006 and watching the sunset and thought you know, I don't want to go to work tomorrow because I know what the next 30 years of my pre are going to look like and I don't want to look in that mirror and see the Global Automotive executive that had to move the four different countries and take his family in and do all those things. I just didn't want that for me and I think that's great for some people but it wasn't for me and that was to me that the start of my transition into a new career path. It took me about six or eight months of working in my business will networks to find an opportunity to that was suitable for me to to leave because I wasn't in a position where I could just obviously quit a job and figure out what to do next kind of thing. And and that's what I did. So I found a i teamed up with the local entrepreneur out of the Inner Harbor area who was attempting to start a real management firm and raise a early stage Venture Capital fund and I joined up with him. It was a team of two at that point and we said about that about that task now. He was obviously considerably more experienced in the area and a little bit of a track record and a network that's supported that type of activity and so we set out on that path of of raising money and trying to to find places the place Investments and also engage The African burial Management's of of the energy so the model was

Speaker 3: sort of but it wasn't a straight Venture

Speaker 1: Capital model insofar as we we had about a two-million-dollar fun. We were just did that we are able to raise but that's not much of a fun. So we had to focus on a couple small opportunities that were relatively early in the whole model was is that we would like the point at Capital to invest in those opportunities or start them from scratch as the case turned out to be and apply ourselves as the entrepreneurial managers of that business and that attempt to grow its and and expand a business and get it funded if you will. So that's what we did. We started to businesses one of which didn't survive after the first couple years lasted about two and a half years and we have the shut that one down. The other one was just sold about six months ago. And that was the start of of kind of what I'm doing right now, so I've been doing Add in some form or fashion for about 13 years now or 14 years since I left the big Otto going from one of the biggest companies in the world to effectively cold start start up where we would take that model and repeat it time and time again. So I've been involved with the number of of small fun and companies that we've started as a result of that that some of which haven't made it some of which are doing very well and are with us today. Wow, there's so many different elements of your life in a lot of great reflection pieces. I think they're really going to start to work through some of that end in learn from you and learn some of that great experience. I want to walk back to your MBA really more of the time before you got your MBA. Obviously, there's probably some point in time at gym where you realize the NBA was an option and if you think back to yourself in that moment, can you maybe talk a little bit about why you chose to do it? I'm thinking along the lines if there's probably a lot of Engineers out there. That are thinking should I get my MBA? Is that something that's going to be a value to me? Can you maybe talk to you how how you decided to it? And then also your Reflections on getting it? I mean obviously you went down that route, but I'm curious as to your thoughts on that. Absolutely. I get asked that question quite a bit. So first of all time by personal decisions it to go get the NBA was really motivated by my interest in exploring other career paths. So again early on I assume that I personally assumed were planned not to stay in product development engineering for my career. I intended to Pivot somewhere else ended up staying there longer than I did because of the way things progressed for me is General Motors, but my decision to go back to business school is really to leverage it as a learning experience in a career transition point at an opportunity to get into something new. And in fact, I think that's fairly common. I would say you could look up The numbers I don't know what it is today versus when I went but I would say a full third. If not in some cases even more of the NBA class is comprised of Engineers or engineering like scientists type folks. So it's it's a fairly common fact is probably the most significant demographic or at least second maybe to do with your folks that have accounting or other types of background. So it is not uncommon in his is very well regarded in business school because of the analytical nice and so for me personally that was that was 100% my motivation. And when I got to the end of my business school 10-year, I had to that point that's when you want to make it if you do go to business school before I answer the second ask you a question. That is definitely what you want to do. You want to plan on when I get to the end of this if if I'm going to business school with an intent to make a career transition you want to take advantage of your graduation the recruiting and know that Milestone if you will to make that happen and I did not have to do that because again due to the way things worked out where I was at a General Motors at the time that point my my discernment. I I was happy to ride that management developed the track at General Motors and that's what I chose to do. But you definitely want to take advantage of that at the end of business. I will say in terms of who should you go to business school or not? And that's a question again. I get asked quite often. I would say that if if you want to make a career Changing you're committed to doing so like I just outline you should definitely consider it and do it and commit to it and commit to making that change if you are going to business school because your company is sending you because they want to invest in you and they see potential in you obviously, you would take that opportunity that goes without saying if you have any interest in going if you are in an existing job with an existing company and you're going to business school thinking it's going to change your projector your career prospects within that company, I would counsel. Otherwise unless you have data that suggests otherwise because I saw that quite often. In fact, the number of people followed my lead in my network at General Motors and also went to business school and I don't think General Motors cared one bit that they went to business school affect your career trajectory. At least not in the time frame that they would consider to be significant. So I would say approach it cautiously. If you're doing it thinking it's going to get your head within your your current assignment for your current company unless of course, you've had that conversation with management and and in the company indicates that they feel differently if you know it and I think it does make a big difference where you go. If you go to his they told me on my first day at Ross, you're not going to learn anything here that you can't learn at any other school any other college or from a textbook for that matter, but look to your left. Look to your right. Take those people's hands because that's what you're going to get here. You're going to the People You Meet are going to be the value of this experience. And that was that was that was very true for me. In fact, one of the people I turned in my lap and shook hands with today has been both a personal and a professional friend of mine. Since that time is this in this been a very valuable relationship. So

Speaker 3: I think that's a really interesting observation about your last one there about the People You Meet being me more important than the continent education and then your point before that about how if you're doing this to move ahead that that might not necessarily be be the case within your company. I think there's a lot of people who when they consider being a manager think well if I get an MBA that might help put me on that managerial track, which obviously you're saying may may not be the case may be the majority is happening to the case. Yeah, and I think I think that's a good observation in that people need to think about it or or is he said have that conversation with their boss or some within the company to say? Hey is this going to benefit but when thinking about at least the education you did get through that. I'm aside from the networking that you mentioned. What were some of the other benefits may be immediately in Navy how you approach your work and it may be long-term things that were a little less a little less tangible in terms of how you viewed situations weather in business or in Life Arena to take ways that you that you got from the NBA that you still get carry with you today,

Speaker 1: that

Speaker 3: could be a

Speaker 1: degree in and of itself because what I learned in business school has been fundamental and invaluable to to my experience on the business side, and I'd also say Are the same for my engineering experience which is a little unique for my grab. Some of my experiences are a little unique in that regard because my business experience is intended to be fairly technically focused. You know, I'm not doing General business management for example, or consumer products management or marketing or stuff like that. It tends to be analytical Finance oriented and heavy engineering and Technology development company stuff. So we're business. So there's a definitely a fusion between the two but not but I would say my business school experience translated. I would say substantially less into my day-to-day activity of General Motors as opposed to my technical experience General Motors feeding back into my business experience. What I mean by that is is my analytical training in system modeling and experience that I got in those areas was very valuable for me and analytical Financial building in financial models. For example, complex Financial models. Once you understood from your business school training how the financial systems works and I'm not talking the stock market on airline to stalking banking accounting accounting works, you know, how you do financial accounting and and you know how different Finance mechanisms work once you understood that which is within the grasp of think of any is any engineering this is fairly mathematical. My engineering training was actually more valuable on the finance side because it allowed me to really conceptualized things as a related to financial modeling for example on the lips a day-to-day operations of General Motors side the part of the business school training. Probably was most relevant was the Strategic thinking that you you got out of out of business called that but the framework that they would teach you in business school about how to analyze the situation where an opportunity and think about a strategically and put it into a framework that you could organize your thoughts around and more importantly communicate your thoughts about something in the Strategic context. That was a valuable experience some business school that was relevant to buy experience a General Motors. I have my MBA actually as well. I got it actually immediately after my masters in engineering and related to your point is it allowed me to help understand the world around me a lot better so that I could fit in it a lot better and enjoy a couple different ways one in the communication way meaning. I had the language I had the words. Help communicate with the people around me that I understood the situation but also that I could look and see why there was moves happening. I mean in lg4g and maybe be like if you're an engineer there and you see while they're discontinuing this model or they're not doing this and you don't you go what why are they doing that? Why are they making this business decisions? Why are they handling the situation in this way? I think the business school for me allowed me to help kind of contextualize at least put Frameworks around why decisions like that are happening. I can't agree more. That's that's absolutely Align with my experience and also I'll expand upon the ad is it's the the language pieces in excellent point that you made there because when you would hear your business people talk if you will and I'm talking just routine business talk. I'm talking and acquisition stuff from time to time and understanding the finance piece of it and and what those things mean how to look at a p&l and in understand what it tells you for example that stuff that you don't learn in or balance sheet for that matter that stuff. Obviously, we don't train an engineering school by be conversing in the world of business. You have to at least you Converse Simpson understand those things. So if the definitely is important in that regard, I feel like in some ways it was difficult for me while I was in my MBA because what I was taking classes, I felt like they were training me to be a CEO and what I hate about that is like like statistically I wasn't going to become a CEO. But there is Great Value in knowing what a CEO has to know in due and you can be a good team member and a good support to the people at the top by knowing what their life is like and what things that they have to consider and what they're trying to analyze like what do you know if they look at the p&l like what things are important events that you can help as a team member of that team help grow out without having to ask a bunch of questions. I think there's Great Value in that too. That's not necessarily super direct. I mean to your question Brandon, I guess going way back like what are some of the other intangibles are some what are some interesting things like that that were intangible to me. That's like I was just a better team member in some ways. So Kevin, I think you know imagine yourself there. You know, you got your MBA thinking about maybe this group of easy. I think you said right after MBA that you were going to say and in the management track and kind of keep going but at some point you started thinking about a big career moved and I think there's people listening probably now that I was wondering if they should make a career move and wondering how that works. I'm curious if maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that and maybe see what advice you'd have to the people who are thinking about big groomers for everybody else. But for me, it was driven 100% by just personal I say I didn't want to look back like I mentioned earlier. I don't want I didn't want to look back when I was 50 and look in the mirror and see what I knew what I was going to see not that there's anything wrong with that you're going to be very well-compensated. You're going to have some great experiences and You're going to be have success in in every way that most people think of it from her career perspective had the path laid out for me. You know that that I was on obviously it may not have but after I was on was was certainly leading there. But that was not what I wanted to look back at 50 when I was 50 years old and say I made it to where I wanted to because that's not where I wanted to be and that was 100% personal personal preference. I'm up. I'm just thought it was something in me that wanted to be I wanted to be and I knew I wanted to be a builder. I wanted to try to make something happen and build a company or build something from you know from scratch and try to make something out of it. It was more of a personal that's what motivated me at the end of the day. It was not so much a career change. It was just a fact it was a Irresponsible if you will remember the exit of the HR interviewer at General Motors as I was walking out the on your exit interview, if you will you hand over your keys and everything and the woman asked me are you really sure you know what you're doing? And I'm nobody I have never had anybody do this before somebody in your position. She said that to me straight. I've never had somebody in your position at this point in your career straighten up and walk out the door voluntarily. Are you sure you know what you're doing and I wasn't me it was I just didn't want to have any regrets and it had something pretty unique because I wouldn't necessarily Council that to sue anybody all do I know other people have found themselves in the same situation man have done similar things. So I guess it's not that unusual. Or a so back to sue somebody was thinking about her career change. I will say that have a plan. I did not have a plan cuz I was jumping into some very unknown and and highly volatile which I was willing to do because it was the me a risk return calculation. But if you if you unless you're making that same calculation, you got to you got to have a plan. Where do you want to go and why and take some steps to get yourself in a position for those who can afford that next move and make the move where you have a place to land unless of course you're willing to throw caution to the wind and just pick up the tent and moved to places on the mood of Silicon Valley and in and roll the dice, for example.

Speaker 2: I'm just speaking

Speaker 1: in hyperbole, of course, but you can certainly do that. But for most people I think it's wise to have a plan and that's where I get business school. If I'm not not answering your question here. But if that's her business schools a great Catalyst back the business school topic because if you have a plan the island business school gives you an opportunity to lay the groundwork for that plan. And then the the completion of business school is your Catalyst you execute a plan.

Speaker 3: You said that even though has as you know, you were getting walked out there and ask you if you want to do this. Yes, even though if you don't necessarily have a big plan, obviously you had some idea about what you wanted to do. So for someone who may be thinking about this and now that you've gone through and reflecting back on it, what are Some of those things that you either wish you had thought about more or would advise someone to consider when they're when they're making a big change like this one that's leaving something for the unknown going to start your Business and Entrepreneurship. What are some of those things that that you would suggest someone think about

Speaker 1: worship because it has to be distinguished from somebody leaving job acts to go to job why we're even doing the same thing or job X the job. Why do an entirely different thanks. I think that's a difference if it's a little bit different. I'm going to insofar as I'm going to answer your question from the context of of jumping in to be an entrepreneur meaning, you know, you're going to start a business or you're going to join up with something that's get involved with something that's highly volatile in and very risky and entrepreneurial. The somebody was looking to do the ladder something after funeral or or start a business. Like the thing is first of all one understand, what's your Tolerance for risk is our have a real good feel for what's your tolerance for risk is and what's your Line in the Sand and I am willing to ride this until I get to Point X point x I have to pull the the plan B, you know, whatever the plan that says then the following it is what's my plan B, you know, so if I reach Point acts objectively, I had that point after start pivoting to do something different excuse another strategy which might be go back and find the go find another job. Go back to go call the same people. I used to work for and and and see if I can get my old job back or go to school and and try to do something and then give it from there. They can take many forms of you you the advice is have a line in the sand that you draw kind of a milestone. If I don't get to this point, I have to put it in. Plan B and make sure that the people that are important to you your family if that's relevant. That would be the most important one. Obviously, they're on board with that plan. So they so everybody's going into it eyes wide open and you know that it's not just you going in alone. So I think that's really important to look at the idea of making moving having a plan. I think tank and Elsa back to that the NBA the business degree is helping under like framework that like look at. Okay. Well, what is risk what what are my opportunity cost of not having my engineering salary? What are the other important things that I need to evaluate in this decision? But also so that you know financially what you're getting into I think finances are a big part of the decision, but you know, it's also more than that and you know, your stay the same for those listening that are interested maybe this career move like a man talk about to an entrepreneurial jump like having a having a business background. To some extent will be really helpful in that jump as opposed to that jump that you were talking about jumping from company X2 company-wide doing the same thing or a different thing like that. You know an NBA's I can be as valuable. They are trying to jump into an entrepreneurial even if you're jumping into a startup company that has a few members, you know your ability to understand like yeah, they raised $10, but they only have $100,000 in cash is Cash Cash accounting how much cash do they have and how much money are they, you know, did they raise and things like that? But you don't you got to be able to think through some of these things and I think what you're describing there is another great indication of you know, the value of having at least the business Frame Works behind you, but I agree completely clarify that I don't I wouldn't want to make anybody it's listen to this think that's the go out and be an entrepreneur. Do you have to have a business background first to go get it NBA than try to be an entrepreneur. That is definite. Not the case, although it certainly helps and everything you said is absolutely true. It's not a prerequisite because there are people out there that it's all about team in the end. If you get any entrepreneurial mode, if you will you can you can generally get yourself surround yourself with people or get people to work collaborate with you who can bring some of those additional skill sets in Insight if you lacked, so it's not a requirement, but I certainly given the choice you would you would want to have it if you if you If you could do so sure so I guess I'm going back to your younger self, you know, a couple months into the new job or even your many months in a year to what what did you get wrong? What what did you assume it was going to be like this but it was different in like what what what failure in in your Xbox expectations was there I would say no expectations I got I got what I expected other than obvious you would have hoped for different. I'm making of course everybody has the dream of of starting a company and it being the next Google, you know, for example, I knew that wasn't going to be the case and certainly there was no preconceptions at that was going to happen. But my but you obviously you're your you got to have that dream in that drive in that Vision, but also have realistic expectations. So you're not disappointed with that doesn't that doesn't happen. So I wasn't really I would say disappointed or anything with how things started out too because we we started for example in this going back to the first year to let's say into this new career path we started to company. So we raised about like the two million dollars or so start of two companies with that from scratch. So you got to AOL founder of two companies from scratch and in that each of those companies would then go out and and raise additional money to try to further his own interests, you know, so kind of you have two companies with common ownership. If you will that were then trying to do their own things. They weren't totally unrelated and you know you for me that was my dream, right? That's what I wanted. That's exactly what I wanted to do. So even though it was it was grueling and and it was fraught with disappointments in and you'll small wins and losses ever given day to me that that's actually what got me up in the morning and kept me motivated and excited because I was The area I had the opportunity to make everything happen your command I was doing it myself obviously, but but no you had people helping you. You were part of a team that was trying to do this. But you knew every day that that you were you were the part of building something that was either going to succeed or not succeed largely based on your your effort were insignificant part to your efforts. And that's exactly what I wanted to do. So I loved it. I loved every bit of that even though I knew deep down that's almost from the start that one of the deals was one of the companies was not going to make it. I just I just knew that that it was not, you know, not something that is probably a good idea to execute on but the you know, the fellow that I hit you in the guy that I joined up with who was obviously the senior operator in the one with the most experience he was only committed to it so I was fully committed to it as well because I knew that if we were working together with nothing was You know for example, so that was just learning learning how to gauge the you know, the I guess dance to try to answer your question here. You know how I learned so much from that experience. I I don't think I had any regrets about how that even though things that all go. Well I didn't have any regrets from any of this because every even the bad stuff became things that you were able to play forward and apply to next opportunity and and that's just how things have continued for me since then

Speaker 3: a few things there that are definitely very different than what life is like working for a big company. So can you contrast and be a little more than I already have what it's like when you're working at a startup or accompany your founding versus like big business in terms of in terms of culture or or how they function or just even What to expect cuz I know that those are two of going from a company of of 100000 + people to a company of one or two or ten is is completely different

Speaker 1: absolutely a person who I can tell you that culture can be terrible. So this is again is not an absolute based on bigger versus small, but if you're in a a small company environment particular and entrepreneurial environment environment in the certainly one of the environment that I've been in either the ones I've built from scratch or if have have had the opportunity to be part of you will There is a just a tremendous night and day difference from the big company experienced a primarily comes down to the feeling that you are if it's done right the feeling that you are every day making an impact that is material the prospects of the company, you know, it is General Motors. For example, even though I had the ability to make substantially more impact then a good number of the people there by virtue of the positions that that I was in you still knew that you were a small Cog and it's huge machine that already had been built as a small company person and certainly a start-up person. It's your job to build a machine and that's what I tell people all the time. I'm a machine Builder metaphorically. I'm a machine Builder my I'm not happy in the machine has been built. My job is to build a machine and and make that mushy run and then other people can come run that machine and I'll go build the next machine and if you want to build that machine with me, you're in the right place. If you expect in, this is when I would interview people for jobs in my company's I would save if you're expecting to come to work everyday and know exactly what you have to do and have a Define jobs in two hands 8 hours punch the clock and leave you'll be a cog in the machine. If you will your you're not in the right place or not going to get along well, and and this is not going to be happy year or you will not be long for this assignment. But if you want to come to work every day and helped build that machine and figure things out and and take every opportunity that's presented to you and it makes things happen. Then then you're in the right place. And for the most part those are the types of of the other to me. That was when I would be for example looking to give people Join the hiring people to join in whatever capacity that was the number one thing. I look forward to that type of person can operate in an unstructured environment and make things happen with minimal Direction and help me build that machine and those are the people that you wanted with you. So if you're one of those types of people, you know, there's there's opportunities for you to do that. But that there's a lot to be sad or lifestyle and stress and just maybe some people are wired for the opposite and you know, if you just want to come to work every day have a nice steady stable job predictable and You obviously said as work-life balance implications and other things with it, there's nothing wrong with those things, but you're less likely to find that in the intern highly entrepreneurial environment and you are in a in a large company environment within established machine. Is it really unstable Kevin? I mean, I'd say one thing. I think a lot of people assume looking at the idea of moving into a new environment is that it will be unstable my most he'll probably think financially but stress level and Sue, I guess in your experience was it that for you? I mean did you was it really actually financially unstable for you while you were starting these companies or I mean it also like was even just the stress levels. Is it is that expectation really true? Oh, yeah, for sure to add the student stability for depends where you're at like, for example, if you were if you were working in a box only from the context of my companies companies that I've been in We're actually run if you were working in and one of my company's you and that you never saw Financial uncertainty. I mean, we've never missed a payroll. We paid people pretty well up Market. We pay them in a market comprable to me that's important. You know, I never wanted to that's just how I roll and even with even when times were tight, we still always made payroll and you never signed Financial uncertainty. Now, you might not have known that did it apply to me necessarily. I might not be getting paid, you know for extended periods of time, but that was because where is that was my role in that particular Enterprise, but the people who are involved in that same Enterprise with me and highly entrepreneurial environment. They never saw the financial instability have known that we just met payroll by you know, 90 minutes or whatever before defaulting on you know Banks raw or something along those lines. They didn't know that but never the less they you know, they never saw any uncertainty if you will, but I would say in general though. The volatility is probably left on the financial side, even though it does happen. Obviously you have spectacular crashes in the rocking you pull out here at any time either you never know but uncertainty can often be more on the Personnel side. And when I mean by that is is in a small company. There's a smaller company especially startup company. There is just no room to hide anybody if you will or if you don't have the right person in the right seat on the bus, you don't have a lot of time to find the right seat for that person on the bus company can do that. You know, they have they can move you around find a better job for your help. Allopurinol Luciano, you know Performance Management program, whatever the case may be in the world on on a project her in one of their company. But if it's an engineer, it doesn't have the it's not the best person to do a very specific task that needs to be done at that time. You might have to but an engineer go for example, and it has nothing to do with what their performance it's just the fact that they're not in the right seat on the bus. That's more of the volatility. You'll get making a small company environment than you'll see in a large company. And yeah, I think referencing a lot of Jim Jim Jim Collins write a really excellent writer but talks to this idea of getting the right people on the bus and how it can be so much that I can only imagine in in that start up. Are in that small company world I got is it becomes even so much more critical to do that? So maybe we can transition to the side be a little better this next kind of topic. But this idea of the probably a lot of people listing who are Engineers who are maybe thinking about starting a company maybe side business. Maybe actually hopefully to turn it up day into a full business and I think Yeah, it's it's hard to know how and when to do that. We talked a little bit about making big just make bigger moves and things like that, but I guess maybe can you talk a little bit to just that broad idea of the person sitting in the chair listening? That's like well, I would like to start a business. I'm an engineer. I have technical knowledge. I think I might have a widget or an idea. I may be what would be your advice to that person sitting in that chair with a lot of those people. They

Speaker 3: ask me exactly that question and I always try to

Speaker 1: help them. It is as much as I can as well as I understand personally how how challenging that is. First of all I'll say there is an element of Pick the right horse for lack of a better metaphor. And that is is your what what are your whatever going to build a business on or whatever you're interested in doing the attacking you don't want to develop a technology want to build a development technology of building a product and building the business or kind of three different things, but they all have the same entrepreneurial DNA if you will but considerably different trajectories as a relates to you know, how much time it takes how much money to take so on and so forth but this is love them all the same bucket for a moment. The first thing the discern is is my ideal or what it is. I want to do first of all something that I really really passionate about am I willing to Everyday get a job and and do what it takes to make this happen, you know for 12 14 16 hours, whatever it is, right as it is, is it really really my passion that I want to make it happen? That's if that's certain. You got to have asked about it. You got to be excited because that's what's going to get you over the hard times if you are no doubt going to have so you have to answer that for yourself, but then the next thing is to say if you are the metaphor does the dog Hunt is what I'm endeavoring to do worthwhile and and it may be worthwhile to me and it might be worthwhile to somebody but it is worthwhile to enough people or at a large enough scale to make it relevant in which case and that's why we call that customer Discovery or is no other way to look at that but it is irrelevant and ended that the only way you can get that feedback to start talking to other people and saying I'm thinking of doing yeah, you know, what do you think or would it be, you know any feedback on on my idea would it be

Speaker 3: relevant? You can ask some of that

Speaker 1: you can do by asking people what they think some of it is just hard reset. Is there an unmet Market need out there that I think I can feel and if I can quantify identify and quantify that I met Market need and come up with something that we see that address is that market need you can get an idea objectively is terms of whether or not your idea has Merit and then you can start asking people for their their feedback on top of that. So that's that's certainly number number to sew passion. Number two is having something that that as does the dog hunters is as whatever I want to do relevant enough at at scale or can achieve whatever scale is relevant to make it meaningful and worthwhile to me economically or it may not even be economic. It might might be some other metric that you care about if it's a social Mission or something like that. You can apply the same thought process. And I would say number three is is your timeline. I am scale. I guess his timeline / scale and that is how long is it going to take me to? You have to make this happen is it you know, if I've got an idea for coldfusion Perse sample, you know, it may be a great idea and certainly Meat Market need but it's going to take me to a million years and a bajillion dollars to figure it out. If it's even within the realm of you know physics right to make it happen. So therefore its axis is well. Is this something that that can be pulled off

Speaker 3: on a timeline

Speaker 1: and add a resource scale that is realistic or me to who access and and that's a little bit more of a there's an object development to that but also a subjective element because some things can start small obviously and then snowball from there so you can achieve a lot of scale very fast if you really did on something good but if without getting to worry about it, I think you kind of get the idea that if you did have an idea. Extremely complex going to take a ton of R&D and you know, very sophisticated labs and so on and so forth. The amount of scale in the time required to get to a meaningful Milestone that is a value value creation inflection point is going to be very difficult to achieve and therefore unless you got a rich Uncle who's got that type of capital resource. Probably not a good idea to that your 401k on sure about doing this. You're the one that would probably know the most about that technology hopefully does in being able to forecast how long it could get to a point more than the business. I comes into reaches a point of value and I think related then just curious is it these Endeavors are forever. I think I say anything bad about entrepreneurship is you know, you might be it seems to me that a lot of companies try to be able to get bought and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean it's like I markets way of RNG which is great, but it's for people that are wondering about the touch when you're stuck in that you can that be a 5-10 years thing like, I mean, maybe I know you're too but also success like is it is if someone sitting there saying, you know, I want to try that entrepreneurship thing, but you don't maybe towards the end of my career or I only think I could give it five to fifteen years is it or if you Go down there on Commercial pass. Do you need to be in it for longer than that? Does that question makes sense sense back to your previous question, whether you got your willing to step off into the great unknown your timing question. There is assume it is a five to 10-year deal and then assume that it is going to take two years to even get off the flight deck. So to speak meaning you're going to spend another unless you got something that's that's a unique most things are at least a two-year incubation. So it's going to take you 2 years just to learn to develop the relationships to develop the products assuming there's a product obvious. There's always a product of some type of service is still a product to eat. If you have something to get our first customer get people interested in all the things you need to do build a team, you know, there's a whole host of thing is going to take you two years just to get to the point where it looks interesting. And then after that you might get your personal invite, you might get your first real investor at that point and and now you're just at the start of the road right and now it's going to take you another another 3 years or 4 years after that. So it really turn it into something that is significant either as a standalone business or as a product or technology that the another company is willing to go by and I think that's in a best-case, you know, so Expect two years of wandering in the desert and you know having a really hard time and then you got to you got to be willing to two. You got to be willing to commit to that and then after that it's going to be at least another couple years. So now you're looking at 5 years and you said 5 to 10. I think that's right. I know less than 5 years before you have something significant me to

Speaker 3: give you a benchmark. And again the stuff I do is kind of

Speaker 1: bored. I got to take this Bears out across all the companies I've seen and I've been involved with lots of companies directly but indirectly with with dozens or even know even more than a dozen of startup companies and they're all the ones that haven't already pulled at at are all seven eight nine 10 years old and in our still no still in those relatively small stages of If you will so it could be a long haul

Speaker 3: let's say that you've started on this journey and you're a few years in but you're not kind of hitting some of those Milestones are getting some of those victories and do not sure what to do. When do you know when to when to call it quits went to say hey this Venture baby doesn't have a future hasn't turned out like we hoped the first sign is kind of we talked about

Speaker 1: I might have mentioned earlier, you know, having those things predefined so that you know it and of course You can start you don't know what you don't know at the beginning of anything. So you can stop some milestones and then you may have to change them as you go but try to adhere to the spirit of those Milestones. So you might say I'm going to get myself 18 months to do to establish, you know this and and if he gets 18 months and you haven't achieved the spirit of that that might be the, you know, kind of the trigger for you to the pivot to something different, but objectively, what are the some of the things that you need to think is more at what you're asking? What are the some of the things you need to do that are let's say Common in an objective across all all opportunities. I think the first thing is you got to find Whatever it is, you're you're looking to do you have to find a establish that there is a significant unmet need or that you have a customer, you know an ideal. You have a customer, you know, somebody who's who's saying? Hey, I'm willing to buy this if you can deliver it or the biggest validation point if you have something to deliver and they are buying it's even if it's you know, kind of out of speculative basis, you know that I can take many forms, but you didn't customer validation we call it from somebody that's a sign if you got something at least right, but something's take more than you know, 18 months or two years to to get to the point where you can have a customer so that that point you have to have technical Milestones that say you look if I can achieve this level of validation or this level of the development and demonstrate

Speaker 3: Demonstrate acts

Speaker 1: then. I know that objectively this warrants me to continue because if I can get the ax people have told me that will be significant. And so you can you get if you can't get the ax you have to ask yourself. Am I ever going to get to ask whenever axe might be and how long am I willing to make the sacrifices and put the effort into getting there you'll not knowing if it can be achieved and that becomes a little bit of a call on your part for you. If it called if it takes money to get there. You don't have the money in an investor pulled the plug. Obviously then the decision has been made for you and that happens all the time. But if you're doing it on your own with say as a side Hustle. And I know you're working your butt off trying to make something happen on the side. But yet you can't get to to this point where I'm going to use it example, you know, I'm going to say hi. I need to have a customer who's a software application that does something I'm going to do that software application 100% on the side. So I don't need to raise a bunch of money or build. I don't need Hardware. I don't need anything. It's a hundred percent myself writing computer code to build this application, but I'm going to sacrifice all my spare time for two years to make that happen and you get to the end of that. I'm in you don't have anybody that is is willing to use that application as a and pay you for it, which I would suggest would be a milestone. Yeah, there you got to ask yourself. Why am I doing this. I love the idea of speaking to making it objective and I think it's hard cuz especially in the passion project realm where it's it's a lot of emotions. I think maybe luckily as Engineers when we're not known for our emotional side. Maybe we're well suited for startups and because of that because we are not as emotional people in general but you got to watch yourself. I would imagine on the emotions in any kind of check that with objective data, you know, if people even say you're going to go buy a car well figure out your budget and then go to the dealership and you know, I was that way when they say well to get the next term of a lot this only this much more you can be like now my budget says X and that's over acts. So no and I think that turns it objective and I are that that's important in sounds like an important in this realm to indefinite in the morning and go around like they are you you know your coding example, it's it's that can get extremely emotional. You have to weigh that opportunity cost right that that two years of giving up all your free time could have been what could have been spending more time with family have been going on trips. There are costs of pursuing a path. I mean that you're not pursuing other pass and that's a decision that you should make consciously absolutely that's actually might want to be the most important points of anybody that's looking looking to undertake something of this nature is as I see a lot of these icy in general the ability to make things generally speaking. So I thought always just Engineers but I see a lot of Engineers, who are they want to be entrepreneurs they got the day job and they're working on stuff on the side, but they they they might even appreciate it but they're not willing to make the sacrifices what they don't know how how much they really You commit to make it happen and if you're doing it half in you are highly unlikely ever to get there. You can go half in until the point at which you're willing to go all-in, but you can't keep going half in forever and expect something to make it obvious. You know, that that you should go all-in because that's only going to be driven by you. You know that it's kind of a you going all-in and making something happen that wasn't going to happen. Otherwise is what's going to make the difference is not going to happen by itself just by you hanging around a continuing to work on something, you know, you're having some great idea that you work on an hour a week or something like that that someday is going to make you richer, you know, allow you to start your own company, whatever it is. I just don't think that happens, you know, you got to at some point say I am going to make this happen and you can't do that. With with a quart of your time or something like that and I just don't think it works. It takes too much energy to overcome the inheritance resistance to have to make it something like that happen

Speaker 3: yet. It's a really that's really good point that not everything in the silly going to work out and you really have to be dedicated to it. And so we're coming up on time. But I got one last question for you, which I think kind of ties a lot of this together is that you you've mentioned in our conversation so far towards the beginning like you knew that you didn't so they want to be at IGM for forever with you you out of their goals in life and things you wanted to do and a lot of that sounds like you really took time to reflect on where you were at in life where you wanted to go. What was important? Can you please comment a little bit here me close out about the importance of taking time to reflect and really looking inside about about your goals in the wants and desires for your life. And how you might go about kind of trying to think through that. I'm in a way that could be helpful.

Speaker 1: I'm blessed to be surrounded by a group of friends from all different stages of my life. But a good number of them from my engineering school experience Wright College friends. If you will and post at work College friends, but are still Engineers from other colleges, if you will that in engineering jobs, and the thing that that I've seen happen to many times which again is kind of why I didn't want to be that one of those is people get into the groove that they get stuck in the routine. They they have a golden handcuff kind of, you know, not great not very well paying job. I would say great paying job as it relates to the What most people are blessed with in in this country and certainly in this world? But you know that there's nobody's buying Lear Jets or anything like that on an engineering salary. Obviously, they got nice comfortable jobs and your good work-life balance in a lot of cases and every day just becomes like the next and they go, you know, there's no real Catalyst or motivation for change unless it comes from within them and they just stay doing the same thing and not really growing or years in a decade goes by and it's not so bad and then it becomes two decades I ate and now you're 20 years into your career or 35 or 25 years in your career. And you know, you've been you really haven't grown having any they haven't done anything different and You know, it still may be okay and then still may work out for your great. You still may be happy but I see a lot of people that are you know, they're frustrated now, they they're bored there. They're frustrated with where they're at. They don't like what they're doing and they can't get out of the rut. They can either they can't because they are afraid to or they don't want to work and in some cases, you know it as you get older obviously, it can't even scarier because if you get if there's a downsizing or go through some type of reduction in force, you know, you find yourself, you know looking for a new job, which would you see happened to a lot of mid-career folks and again, that's really scary. So I think that you have to you have to be Diligent about reflecting on that starting at the early stages of your career and constantly challenging yourself to break that mold because it's super super easy to get stuck into that on that track and infects the company's love it because they love nothing more than having a dedicated loyal skilled Engineers. Let's say labor in general, but certainly skilled Engineers, you know who are willing to do the same thing and keep them out of trouble for as long as it's convenient until it's no longer convenient. And is that point your labor? And And thank you, but we don't need you anymore kind of thing. Nobody else is going to do that for you. So you have to commit to yourself early in your career or even late in your career to say I don't want to be that person. I want to be somebody's always constantly challenging myself. And

Speaker 3: even if I stay at the

Speaker 1: same place, is that about moving jobs every 2 years or any like they're not suggesting that but always continuing to ask yourself. Am I really happy doing what I'm doing? And if I'm not what change am I going to make to go talk to your management about doing something different go back to school? Start a business having you know is what it is. It doesn't have to be any particular thing, but don't just keep doing the same thing. Is that well, that's what leave so many people to be in and and I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, but that ultimately is is what drove me to do what I did because when I looked at the people who had been doing the same things for her in a big company has a product development engineer for 50 years or fifty years, but when they were 50, but the 30-year career a lot more frustrated. I want to come to work everyday or frustrated can of Raid 3 Iron. That's that's not what I wanted to do. You say thank you. Thank you for coming on and telling us your story know your you have such an awesome story. I think it's really fantastic. And I think what I'm really loving about I was just at your ability to make the choices you want to make and not letting the system going to say. No. Here's your path. You're really in here even in your hands a note like this I'm going to do when do what I want to do and you know, that's it's good and bad that I appreciate you coming by and telling us about that today happy to be here and hopefully it does help some other folks as well. I see a lot of said I see a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs most of them have engineering backgrounds are good number of them. I would say over half of them have engineering backgrounds and they're all exactly you know it thinking some of the everything we talked about this evening here. They're thinking those same things all the time. So you're not the only one out there if that's what you're thinking

Speaker 3: does. This is this was this is a great conversation, Really really appreciate coming on. That was a really good conversation. I don't think I was all what I expected going into it. But Kevin really had a lot of he had a lot of cool experiences and a lot of cool insights into things Beyond in Harlingen earring career track.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree different than previous episodes, but I think in a very good way, I'm just providing some great different views of the engineering world and kind of what you can do and what you can make of it if that is what you want to do. Yeah that really great to have month

Speaker 3: journey and I think I kind of question. I asked there towards the end about reflecting his answer that I think kind of provide a lot of insight to me in ways. I initially thought about in that we're all on this path. We only have you know, so long of a career or so many opportunities to do something and we will have to make a conscious effort to understand if if what we're doing is we want to keep doing or if we want to if we want to do something else and and to do that and make it happen on whether that's going and get NBA the purpose of starting a business where that's moving within a company starting your own company has lots of different paths people can take and I think it's easy like you said to kind of float through it and come out 20 years later not happy with it. So taking time early on or or even late just to start today thinking about am I doing what I want to do or do I need to make a change

Speaker 1: hard to do especially when Life Starts, you know building up, you know, he start building the family start buying the house. You start getting side all the can can be scary and it can be hard. And so I think it is Adam says the importance of doing it as early as possible that weighs just because you know, it's harder it is it's just harder when life was getting Fuller in so, you know, you want to be conscious of that and Really think about it. I think one of the things for me I could relate to the NBA's just the importance of the network. You know what that meaning that that can be one of the big things, you know, if you're thinking about getting your MBA and you know, you're trying to figure out what it is. What is the purpose, you know as we talked about before I like have a purpose for if you're going to get a graduate degree. What is your purpose like that Network can be an important part and that's really what separates the big ivy league are the big-name SchoolsFirst the other ones even said it was great the professors at Ross that you know, what you learn here is the same as any other NBA course, it's the people around you in the network that are going to make a difference in so that can help you in deciding. What where you should go for NBA if you if the tool that you're trying to get it just the language and the framework some things you can get that anywhere, so don't go spend a bunch of money. But if you want to have it be the network that you gained then you need to try to get to the biggest name you can get to That's a good thing to think about when you trying to think strategically about why you might want to get the NBA or why you're getting it.

Speaker 3: Yeah, you have your NBA. I don't that's actually something like this feedback is something to think about like, is it work in the NBA for the network? I don't know. We'll we'll see that decision. I have to reflect and think about some but you to go before I forget we should think about this people out there listening you're listening to this in April. We were talking about snow at the beginning of the episode where recording Us in February. So if you think there's like a bunch of snow, what's the weather in April there could be happy. So don't think we're too crazy

Speaker 1: other things if you're listening feedback, give us feedback where we think we'd love to hear people's thoughts and you like this different episode. Was that what you're interested in? Feel free to send us a note on the website or wherever. Let us know if you're liking what we're doing if we could do things differently, that would be better for you. Do you like how long we do it you like the hour format? Would you like something shorter? What would be would be the most Valley to wheel of that feedback?

Speaker 3: Definitely and as you're going to hear me say at the end of the episode if you got a cool story, you know, someone who has a cool story. Let us know like we'd love that love to talk to them to get more more of you points from people all over their careers doing all kind of stuff

Speaker 1: everybody. Have a good night. Bye. Bye. Bye

Speaker 3: website. If ey see podcast.com there you can find show notes for each episode and get in touch with Troy and I if you or someone, you know, or an engineer with an interesting or even not so interesting career journey, I would like to be on the show go on the website send us a short bio and we made it to invite you to come on and share your story. And finally if you want to show your support, please rate review like or subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice.