Inside a $100 Million Company: How to Navigate Downturns, Build Trust, and Thrive

[0:00]  I think taking the emotion out of something is usually a lot of it is comes down to trusting the people that you're talking to and you know one of the things that our uh CHR o came in with was you know what's your internal like how would your internal customer rate you and that has changed the way people interact with each other and that was great it's just a simple but it completely changes when you're dealing with someone and you're having an issue and you think this is my internal customer you know the other divisions you work with whether it be purchasing or quality how would they rate you as a customer as a vendor how would you be rated and I think you know it goes back to the Golden Rule you know treat those how you would like to be treated

[1:03]  all right guys welcome back to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now today is going to be another amazing conversation because I have the honor of sitting across from the president of GDC Inc I have Andrew Kiton on the show here today now today is going to be an amazing conversation because not only are we going to learn about Andrew's heart and hustle but we're going to learn about his unconventional path to being a leader what it means to Pivot away from things that we thought we were going to do in our career building resiliency but also the Curiosity that it takes to be a leader in today's world Andrew welcome to the show man thank you it's quite an honor oh yeah so you know I think the way that we can start this conversation off is what advice would you have to our young leaders of the future who think that they're down a path right now in their education or their professional career

[1:51]  and they're thinking that this is the only path they're ever going to be on what advice would you say I actually give this advice a lot and it's don't fall in love with your career path at 18 20 25 or maybe even 30 I mean I went to art school and uh that was the hardest thing I ever did and now I'm part of running aund million do company so if you'd have told me that when I was in high school or even in college that you won't necessarily be in the art field or the marketing field which I still am um but that I would be doing this I'd have said well you're crazy so you know there's an old quote that says you know um some of the most interesting 50 year olds that I know still don't know what

[2:37]  they really want to do I think sometimes I even fall into that that category so don't fall in love with any career path that you think you're going to do because you have to be able to Pivot and and not just for the your own um Financial well-being but for your own mental health you know it it you have to be able to Pivot and figure out what is it that I really want to do and where can I make a difference this is a conversation that I wish we had more often on the podcast which is changing your mind is actually a superpower you know I feel like so many times in life this is my favorite example right you're a 17 18 year old kid you're just graduating from high school and you get thrust into the world of higher education and Life For the First Time adult who you trust and admire sits

[3:24]  across the table from you and says okay this is going to be the biggest decision of your life what do you going to do with your career for the rest of time and it puts so much pressure on us that often we think that if we're taking any type of different route about how we get to our end goal that we're not being successful but you're obviously an example of how that could be more far or farther from the truth correct correct it's it's been quite a journey that I've had you know as I said before I uh I went to Art School it used to be something that when I got into the business world it was like people like oh okay great you know but I didn't go to Art School to find myself I went to art school um to learn how to do something I loved as a trade how to do something I loved to make money and they would tell you an art school all the time that you know draw now create now do things now because when it is your

[4:12]  job you're not going to love it as much anymore and that's very true I've had to Pivot into other things I got into fly fishing and I think that became my release which also helped my career path um because the way I found this job was actually through fly fishing I met Chris Miller who's one of the owners and we stayed in touch and I ended up you know 14 years ago taking a job here at GDC so not falling in love with a career path but also being able to Pivot has always served me well I want to talk about the the mindset in some of either the internal or the external conversations that we have when we realize that we need to Pivot for the future because this is a scary process for a lot of people so how does you know a young

[4:59]  Andrew recognize that he needs to Pivot what are some of the conversations he has with himself or with his family his support system what does that look like it basically it comes down to your gut I mean it really does and as I said before what's best for your family what's best for you uh what's best for your kids and your future you know when I went to Chicago where I went to art school and I grew up in this small community Northern Indiana We're located I thought that's it I'm going to Chicago I'm never looking back I grew up on a farm I'm never going to do chores again I'm done I'm moving on and then you always see that you know the grass isn't always greener on the other side you know I've had people who worked for me young young people come to me and maybe they say Hey you know I really love it here or I'm

[5:47]  going to go back to college and I know and and maybe we need these people I have one young man in that comes to mind where he saidou know I really want to go back to college I said' here's what we'll do why don't you go to our local college and I'll we'll pay for a portion of that everything but your books cuz we need you and he said you know let me think about that and he came back in a week and he said you know I I really think I want to go back and try again at the University and I know you think this is a mistake I stop right there you're in your 20s your 20s are for making mistakes you know learn from them but they're for making mistakes and that's a pivot you know you have to take risks taken risk and I failed and I've always said I learned a lot more from losing

[6:35]  than I ever did winning and so that young man Works in our sales department as a project manager now we actually came back we didn't pay for his college but he came back and he actually works for us now you know so those are the great stories that um that work out and it's because he was willing to take that risk because that's what he really felt like in his heart he needed to do but wouldn't a what an amazing moment to be able to come to somebody like your manager your boss and say Hey listen this is what I'm thinking about and then they actually encourage you to go down that path like what a what an amazing moment of empowerment right because I told him I said look I'd rather you come back to me in 10 or 15 years and say I made a mistake then you sit here for the next 10 or 15 years and wonder what if what if I had gone back you know so that's that's one of the things that uh

[7:26]  I always said you know your 20s are for making mistakes and you're going to make a couple of them oh man you know they always say it's uh one point that you made there which really sticks out of my mind is like I've learned all of my lessons from my failures you know it is more important to have failed and know why than to have won and to not know why you won right we learn through that adversity which is really important so you mention you dropped a little bit of a nugget in there and said you know I got this job because of me out there fly fishing talk about that how'd that come to be so I one of the things I I uh I I've been in fly fishing since about the mid 90s and I'm in this really Dynamic Club in in South Bend Indiana and uh so we have this auction where this guy would come a lot and uh my business partner time they went to high school together so I'd met him and he came back

[8:14]  and I was serving on the board and he was sitting at a table by himself and I thought well you know that guy shouldn't be sitting by himself and soone over there and struck up a conversation with him and it turns out that we had a lot in common so we started hanging out a little bit we'd usually fly fish once or twice a year and one one night he text me it was like 4 in the morning said hey you want to go fishing tomorrow be at my house at like 10 o'clock he lived on this little trout stream here in Indiana I went over there and what I didn't realize at the time was it was a job interview so we actually asked me you know I was in outside sales and he's like so what's your sales philosophy you know all this and that and so I went through it you know it's all about relationships what about cold calls you have TR no I love cold calls it's a challenge I love challenges if I can get past that first that person at the the front door then I won I just want to get

[9:02]  an in I just want to be in front of someone a decision maker and if I can do that I don't I'm not going to spend Christmas with them if they tell me no great so at the end of the day a couple weeks later he sends me a text again I think it was like two or three in the morning and uh he's like how would you like to sell auto parts for a living I a Nappa or no for me you idiot and I'm oh okay well I'd love to come talk to you about this now full circle I had lost a business during during the downturn in the in the mid 2000s and I had always been pretty successful I always said you know up until that point in my life everything I touched it pretty much turned to gold and then for three to five years it just it turned to crap everything I touched turned to crap which changed me a lot made me a better person um made me uh appreciate people a lot more and so as

[9:54]  we were talking about this I he's you know he's talking about you know working for for working with for GM all these companies and what the job entailed and I was like yeah this is great I mean benefit package is great everything sounded great you know and but I couldn't figure out and I said you know here's the thing I'm not a car guy and I'm not an engineer and he's like well that's fine and I said well what is it about me that that you're interested in he said well everybody stressed out around here and he knew what I'd gone through with losing the business and and all these other things this a small community he said but I don't think they really really know what stress is but you do I said yeah I do and I'll tell you what else I can lead a team and if you tell me a story and I believe the story the story of your company I can go

[10:43]  out and I can share that story and people will believe that story too I have to believe in it but I can do that and I I'll tell you what I remember I just tell my son this driving to work my first day and thinking what you have no idea this industry you have no idea any of these customers I'm 40 years old almost and I'm thinking what are you doing here and I had just failed and I was thinking are you setting yourself up again but I have to push those thoughts aside you know I have to push them aside no I believe in myself I believe in what I can do here I can make a difference and uh and that's you know this is where we're at now and that was Chris Miller who hired me and uh he he changed my life

[11:29]  forever big shout out to Chris yeah being the guy who got you out there right on the stream as we're casting out you know being the guy who believed in you I I have a couple questions for you this is really important I'm glad that we've gotten to the point where we can be honest and open about even things like our failures you said that that changed you a lot I've been talking to a lot of different leaders here on the show and one of the misconceptions when we're in our 30s like I am right now is that we are that good everything that we touch is going to turn turn into gold but sometimes the market is with us Trends are with us and we're at the right place in the right time when you had a little bit of a downturn how did you navigate that time right what what were some of the things that you were dealing with the I would say the self-actualization the overcoming

[12:15]  challenges this is really interesting for our younger audience here I'll tell you what for a lot of time I reacted to everything everything that was coming at me I was just reacting reacting reacting and what I what would happen then is you just keep going deeper and deeper into it the debt um you know you're robbing Peter to pay Paul you're making bad decisions you would say again like in your younger years or even 6 months before that I would never do that um but when I decided that I'm GNA take the bull by the horns I'm going to contact these people I'm gonna make deals with them and I'm going to do the best I can to pay these people back to get out of this and and you know it was difficult and and um it's still difficult to go back to that mentally and think about about it you know and it wasn't that long ago we were at a dinner party and

[13:02]  someone you it's it's been tough times around our area we're in the RV capital of the world here in Northern Indiana and a lot of these companies are suffering and I someone was talking about a person who was losing their business and couldn't believe the things they had done to try to keep that thing going and you know it was kind of looking down at them for that you know and I just you know said hey you know what you do the same thing in fact you don't know what you do when when your family's livelihoods on the line your house is on the line you you don't know what you would do so taking understanding that there's a problem and I'm just going to goe on at it that definitely has served me well since then not trying just sit back and react to these issues coming in you but

[13:49]  take the bull by the horns It's Made Me successful in this job because things don't always go right at GDC and uh I became one of the people that would go and and and try to fix them with the customer and just sit down in front of the customer whether it be Ford or GM or Tesla or whoever it is and say we have a problem here but and here's our solution not just what the problem is but here's our solution you like that solution here's our aders I mean it just keep going and going and going this mindset right here is what separates the people who have the resiliency and the stick to itness to get through tough times right there's a mindset I had another guest on the podcast Ted and his in um he is a leader of a large education company he said Keen you know what we do here we reinforce the mindset of the Buffalo or the bison and I was like what

[14:37]  is that he said if you've ever looked at a herd of buffalo what do they do when a storm is coming they charge Into the Storm because they recognize if they go through the storm they'll spend less time getting rained on I love and that mindset of going into the storm is how we need to approach a lot of different problems in our lives absolutely not being afraid of conflict is so important and having those tough conversations because it can hurt one time but it won't stay around for a long time right it's really cool right and that's led to you know how we've had to change here at GDC over the last year and just having those honest conversations of um you know things aren't going well you know we've had we've had a lot of changes in the last year and and one of the things we started with is trust and and when you have a difficult conversation I think you you develop

[15:25]  when someone's willing to come and have that conversation with you you trust them like they're they're not going to you they're going to tell you hey this is we have a problem here and I just think it's a lot easier to get through it once we are honest with ourselves and admit we have a problem here I mean let's be let's be a little bit um like kind of tactful here right so the organization based on the notes that I have says that you guys were started in 1955 yep been around for a long time we are a unicorn in the in the automotive world so we were started in 1955 by the Palmer family in a barn which all good M Midwestern companies were started in a barn I think you know that being from the Midwest so that and so then it grew um in in the late 80s Loretta Miller who's still our our our

[16:14]  CEO um she took over with her husband Mory who's a financial genius and has kept us on the right path there and uh then in the late in the mid 90s their son Chris Miller who hired me came into the company and he had some he had some pretty good ideas he's kind of a uh he's a very Visionary person when it comes to Plastics and different ideas and and the whole family and the whole company is very much green driven um there's anything that we introduced that we don't take a look at what's the end use of this or how does it end so it doesn't end up in a landfill or things like that and that's the way Chris's mind works that's the way letta's mine works so then from there um we introduced a few core product lines um the biggest one being a product called sosor which is an

[17:03]  a it's a it's a meltblown media that absorbs sound it's in your it's in your headliner in your pillars makes your car quiet okay that's this is what I want to talk about really quick Andrew so one thing that we should recognize you mentioned you know going to have conversations with Tesla and Ford and GM and everybody else describe a little bit of the business model how does your organization engage with those large manufacturers and what key role do you guys play just so we can paint the picture for the audience here so mostly we're a converter um we start as a die cutter um squeak and rattle type stuff circles and squares and as I said we've kind of grown into uh uh having some proprietary um products but they're all based around um die cutting pretty much um the thing that GDC the reason we've been successful and I said before we're

[17:51]  unicorn being that we're still family-owned since 1955 we haven't gone under and um uh we're still owned by the same family I think it's us and Ford at this point so the reason why we continue to be successful is that the whole company's always been willing to Pivot as well as be being very conservative financially because the one thing we do know in automotive is there will be a downturn there will always be a downturn and you have to be ready for it and if you're not financially ready for it you're going to be in big trouble so we introduced a couple so right now we have three core product lines we still do a lot of die cutting then we have our Acoustics division which as I said was headlined by our sosor product

[18:39]  and then we do our thermoplastics division which does injection molding compression molding and that has a product called Enduro which was designed to compete against like masticated rubber which they'd use as a close out or things like that now almost everything's injection molded but again it speaks to gdc's ability to Pivot because as as that industry has changed we've changed with it you know one of the big questions I would get recently in the last few years what are you guys going to do how you going to keep with this EV thing will you get in front of it you find out what's important to them and you make that your strength and gdc's always done a great job with that of trying of like listening to the customer and listening and paying attention to what are they buying why are they buying ask them the question we tend to have enough processes on the

[19:27]  thermoplastic side and enough different products that we become experts in those products and those processes that we give variety to Engineers like when you're saying okay there's a lot of different ways to close out the underbody of a vehicle or around the the HVAC there's a perfect seal but the tooling is going to cost you a lot of money and the piece price might be a little less but still going to be expensive or there's a lot of different other things that we ways we can do it so what we do is we tend to give options in art school they teach you that variety is the spice of life and it's the spice of the artist well it's also the spice of the engineer the other thing is being an artist and being an engineer I came from the graphic design and marketing side they're the same the when you're dealing with an artist or an

[20:16]  engineer they always say in art school you know why they made frames so that you frame it and you put it on the wall and it's done and it's the same thing with us when we're dealing with Engineers is you can engineer something to death but there's a point where you're only losing money now you know what I mean because you're just you're it's it's I hate to say the word but it's good enough yeah what we're able to do is give them options and I think that's also kept us kind of being a smaller company and it's it's it's a great Advantage for us because we're not in love with one of the options we just want to show you here's where you could save money you know what's your tooling budget well this fits in you could do this turnaround time as well as our response times on getting like prototypes and things things like that our customer service is is uh something we take great pride in it's just so cool

[21:04]  to me that you know when people think about Automotive manufacturing right you think that everything from Soup To Nuts from the window to the steering wheel to the headliner everything else that comes along with that is produced inside of that manufacturing plan but there are Partners out here like GDC who are actually having a huge impact in the overall fit finish rideability and soundproofing of a vehicle that you wouldn't think so you guys are kind of like a unicorn who's just been hanging out supporting these organizations create the automotive pieces that we've actually fall in love with which is so cool it is and it's it's exciting and it's exciting to you know I like to win you know and I see like it as a competition we're in there um you know we're going at it we're trying to get to business and and it's always a big thing when we get a big program and a big a a

[21:52]  big uh package from from one of the big oems or two ones so you mentioned something that was true that we should point out is in the automotive industry there's always going to be a downturn okay um I want to talk about a little bit of a different downturn in society where the automotive space seemed to explode right during the pandemic we saw everything changed how did you guys leverage your ability to Pivot but also your sense of curiosity and how you can provide value to the marketplace during that time well so those were some dark days for our country and obviously for our community and I remember I was uh I was director of sales at that point and uh Chris was the uh Vice President of Sales and he he came in and and he said get all the sales guys together all the project managers and and we we all went into the

[22:40]  room and he's like hey this is you know this is our job here to keep the revenue going and I've got two ideas and as I said he's the Visionary guy you know and he said we can take our Mel blow machines and we can make the media that goes between the two pieces of scrim and make a mask okay and he and then we also what what do you think in that moment Andrew when you're thinking about that like wait where is this coming from well so like Chris and I have a great relationship in that he has the idea and then a lot of times I have to be the one that starts to put the details and do the eyes so in my M my mind I'm like we don't have a clean room what you know I gotta deal with the FDA and you know all these different things start to come into your head but it was a pandemic so that got a lot um looser I would say but and then the second the second one was

[23:29]  there was a face shield idea that he had for we he had talked to we had talked to the area hospitals what do you guys need you know and of course it was mass face Shields um it was it was absolute panic and he said you know we have enough cash for about for about eight months of this and then I don't know what we're going to do and everyone's freaked out right he said but we need to keep our people going we our insurance going our things going we have to keep these doors open if we can sell these two products these face Shields and we can sell these you know these this media for these masks he said we can keep this thing going and so uh the next day we had a prototype guy named Dan emry came up with the Prototype and the next day after that I had said in that men I said hey look everybody knows somebody who knows

[24:16]  everybody you know get with those people get with hospitals get with uh the government organizations and we met with uh our local congresswoman and she got us in touch with the state and I got on a call list and I was like number 888 on that call list I was the 88th person that day to talk to them about face Shields and I actually had one I could show them and uh I went through the Spiel you know hey this is who we are we're GDC automotive company been in the business in 1955 and what we do is we diecut things and we put them together and this face shield is diecut and it is put together so this is at our core and looking at these materials I can make these for 87 a piece and I can make 60,000 of them and I can have them to you next week and

[25:05]  I said stop stop and I thought he was going to like tell me you know forget it he said you you can make these at your at your facility oh yeah we yeah we're ready to go and you'll sell them to me for $187 I said yeah a187 he said I'll tell you what I'll buy as many of those as you can make up to a million of them for a187 if you're I said yeah and this is what we do so as I talked to him you know we got to know him a little bit we were only the third person that whole day because they kept talking to people who could even manufacture them and the closest price to us was like $5 and so when we did this we wanted to run on our normal margin like we weren't

[25:53]  going to gouge anybody we we didn't even think about that that's how the whole business runs run on margin why have you been successful it's why we continue to be successful this is really interesting to me Andrew because in that moment of opportunity right especially when you've got you know government institutions who are saying I've got money to give you give me as many as you can naturally I feel like the business person inside of us says oh did I say a187 I meant 387 you know what I mean and in my 20s that's what I've done probably but I'll tell you what here's what I've learned about and the automotive industry taught me this you can only lie to them once and when you're dealing with the automotive smart people who usually understand exactly what you make and how you make it especially the more they buy it and the more they start to understand it once they find out that you came off your margin or you're trying to gouge

[26:40]  them or whatever your reputation reput it's just not worth it it's and it wasn't worth it for our community I mean this you know we we were trying to keep the doors open and our insurance paid you know we weren't we weren't worried about becoming millionaires over this so it was a great story was and then Chris went on to sell you know uh enough media and we started with forign GM he went up there and actually taught them how to make mask because that's what what we you know it's die Cuts putting things together that's what a mask is too so we ended up making enough media that altogether we supplied enough media for 120,000 or million masks 120 million masks just out of GDC through that time and Ford and GM were two of

[27:29]  our first partners and uh it was really cool because not coming from Automotive I didn't get start in this like I said to him almost in my for it's was really cool to see Bill Ford on 60 Minutes talking about how they were able to move into the ventilators so quickly he's like well they're complex things and we and they have to be built really quickly and that's what we do and as you said they put things together they're going to get the components and they're Masters at it I mean look how many they make of these things a day let alone a year so it was very easy for them to Pivot because it's what they do they knew their core they know what they do and they know what they're capable of and they could easily do that it's part of what makes America great this is what I think makes first of all America great but also makes you know business great at the same time when we think about our

[28:16]  businesses in a five-year time Horizon like that's the only time it's going to be around we make certain types of decisions and how we engage with customers and how we support our partners but if your objective is to be around for a hundred years years you make decisions differently I think about the amount of reciprocity that you guys have built in the marketplace by coming to the bell and saying hey we've got these masks this is what we do we diecut we put things together at a187 how can we help you guys what do you need that is a way in which a partner steps up and keeps you in the front of the mind for the rest of any opportunities that pop up right and then we get through that and we think man we weathered this storm and not only did we did we uh keep the doors open we kept people employed we kept we kept Revenue coming through this this area through our through our

[29:03]  community we thought man we got through that one and then the semiconductor shortage in the automotive industry where you had demand go up Supply go down material cost quadruple and the way the automotive industry works is you sign up for a vehicle you sign up for that part for the life of its vehicle and there's no negotiation or price increases so you're locked in and you're seeing a 400% increase in material those are some tough times that was the real storm also takes me back to uh a quote I recently heard from one of one of the people I I really admire which is Lou Holtz who said just when you think everything's okay that's when

[29:50]  you lose and and that that was very very difficult not just for GDC but for our entire industry and people are still including us I mean until this last year trying to dig out of that hole so how did the way in which you responded with your responsibilities to the organization change from 2020 being a director of sales the semiconductor shortage are you president at this point in time or what is your I became president just this year at the be in in uh the end of March being okay got it so when you see the second chapter of adversity come we've got your semiconductor changes right how are you thinking about the culture of the

[30:38]  organization at that point in time right we've come out of a storm now we're going into another storm how are we thinking about keeping everybody on the same page and keeping Mor high it was it it it was very difficult I saw the company start to slide the the wrong way at that time um there's a lot of blame to go around and you know you're out there trying to get price increases we got some price increases from tier ones um but it it destroyed our culture quite frankly um it was a uh a very trying time we started to figure out what else can we make what can we kick off now because then when when you when you quote a new one you're at current economics so you wanted everything to end that day so you could requote yeah you know what I mean

[31:28]  and get back to where you needed to be and uh they it wasn't everybody was in the same boat whether it be the OEM on all the tier one tier twos everybody's in the same boat everyone was dealing with the same thing and and people wanted to buy cars that was the craziest part of it and they couldn't you know so it really damaged our culture um it pitted uh our different divisions against each other or different groups against each other and uh up until I think you know I think when when Loretta decided it was time for a change she was very clear that I I need to know what's going on at every group I need more than just one person telling me this is what's going on I need I need to understand what's going on in my company

[32:16]  a little bit more and uh created a team um to put that together and and and fix this thing and and it started with our culture did you ever hear in the back of your mind that quote of that question you were asked said everybody's stressed but you truly know what stress is did you ever lean back into that subconsciously at that moment uh yeah I would say I would definitely say that you know um I do a pretty good job with stress I think um but again I'm always trying to find that solution and then work toward it you know Chris Chris taught me a long time ago he said you know I want this thing to be you know we had to create a vision and I think we had lost that too in some ways and then from that from that Vision we need our

[33:07]  objectives and then we need our goals to feed those objectives that meet our vision and then we need to we need to make sure that everything we're doing is going toward those goals those are our kpis our our key performance indicators so that's how we run this whole thing you know everything we do has to be about our objectives that meet our vision and how we break that down and the first thing we did is we readdressed what are our core values how do and how do we hire and fire do with our core values do we run the business every day with our core values the biggest thing was there was so much animosity within our different groups that no one trusted each other so when Loretta said I want to create a team and here's why I went on it and Andy I want you to lead this meeting I was kind of like these people don't like

[33:54]  each other we're all G to be in a room and one of the coolest things that we've seen through this transition is this group of of great leaders start to lead again together and start to work again together you know um it's a lot easier to get where you're going everybody's rowing in the same direction and I remember sitting in that first meeting first couple and then afterward Chris and I would talk and I'm like man it's just nobody wants to talk you know we were at a place where you'd be in a meeting if you had an idea you just might be told you know that's the dumbest idea ever or if it didn't work then you're going to be you know held like oh look at you're the one that came up with that get rid of all that like I said you know you got to be willing to fail to succeed right so Chris and I would almost I mean because

[34:44]  we don't always get along but we almost fake little arguments to show them it's okay there's no malice here we disagree conflict is good conflict's what's going to bring us back out of this without malice you know it has to be we're all on the same team what do you think and then not that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard but you know and so that took some time and I still think it's it you see it rear its head every once in a while you know we just talking about a division with one of the person who's worked there for years and we are switching some things so you have to make changes and it's hard if you're going to f you know business as usual get you business as usual and she sat there and she said I'm just afraid I'm going to screw this up and and and uh one of the other gentlemen in the room saidou know what I guarantee you we're

[35:31]  going to screw this up I guarantee it and and that's going to teach us something we're going to move on I mean this culture though is so healthy you know I feel like we've been conditioned through how we just navigate the world right ever since we came through our educational process if you make a mistake you are bad you are wrong right and the world of business and life is all about making mistakes but failing forward right and so I heard a really amazing um example of this which was the difference between and this is in Amazon's culture the difference between experimentation and decisions decisions are we are moving in this direction and let's see what happens the experimentation side is we are going to take experiments but guess what's happens in experiments sometimes they work sometimes they don't and you learn from those lessons here's actually a really good one so in uh I want to say I forget what the year was but Amazon

[36:21]  tried to invent a phone I'm not sure if you ever remember their experiment called the fire phone so I hear um Jeff Bezos giving a keynote about one of the experiments that they learned from he said you know this experiment cost me $690 million you know what it was called exactly the fir phone but guess what we got out of the fir phone at one point in time we had a tough conversation with my executive leadership team where we realized we weren't going to be able to compete with the Google pixel or the iPhone just wasn't going to happen so we're going to scrap the project and they said Jeff why are we going to scrap this project and he said well guys listen we're not going to compete but what lessons did we learn here well we got the Kindle out of this experiment which we leverage we also got Amazon Alexa The Voice agent that people know today so you have to have a culture of experimentation and failure in order to

[37:09]  improve but that can be really tough when you've had an organization that's been around since 1955 oh yes for sure and and you know as I said the thing that's kept GDC uh viable profitable is the ability to Pivot and the ability to take those risks but also you know understand that at some point we may have to choose a different path but the vision the objectives the goals they stay the same you know you just might have to get there a different route I want to say this another Jeff bezos's quote he said strict on the vision but flexible on how we get there right and I feel like that's a super important lesson for us here's an opportunity for us to reflect a little bit Andrew if we were to go back let's say 10 years we

[38:00]  hop in a time machine we have an opportunity to sit across a younger version of yourself and you can give five minutes of advice on how Andrew is going to navigate the next 10 years to bring him to a conversation here with Keenan on the podcast what advice would you give to that younger version of Andrew and how he was going to navigate the future that's a great question um I think it took me some time to get my point went AC cross without malice and I think that that extended our time of having issues I think it would be don't be afraid to speak up but keep the emotion out of it and I and I think that was an issue when we saw things that weren't

[38:50]  right it was almost like are well are you you know is this just another smear campaign and then stay true to the value values that emotional regulation is really interesting to me you know I had a uh a guy on the podcast he is a uh a neuroscientist and a brain surgeon right and I asked him what is the most important skill set a human being can develop and I was expecting him to give me like some tactful answer and he said emotional regulation because if we cannot control our emotions As Leaders it changes everything else that we perceive the way people talk about the situation the way people's behavior years perceived everything gets impacted by that layer of emotion how do we do that though when our world is so emotionally charged like how do you create that separation between the

[39:37]  emotion and the message that you're trying to convey especially as a leader well I think taking the emotion out of something is usually a lot of it is comes down to trusting the people that you're talking to and you know one of the things that are uh h r o came in with was you know what's your internal like how would your internal customer rate you and that has changed the way people interact with each other and that was great it's just a simple but it completely changes when you're dealing with someone and you're having an issue and you think this is my internal customer you know the other divisions you work with whether it be purchasing or quality how would they rate you as a customer as a vendor how would you be

[40:28]  rated and I think you know it goes back to the Golden Rule you know treat those how you would like to be treated and how you get there is when you know I came from the sales Division and and I I was I was a pretty aggressive sales director and so I'd had very candid conversations with several people and then you know you see this okay now most a lot of the people who came on this team um a few of them are from sales as well okay these guys are going to come in and what are they gonna do they're going to fire everybody and then we come in and preach we're goingon to trust and you're have open you know dialogues here and there I don't know you know so I remember this this um associate came in and she was very uh

[41:16]  emotional very upset because they had made some decisions behind her back that were actually under her umbrella and she said and you talk about trust and this is what's going on and that's when I pulled out why don't they trust you why didn't they tell you they going to do this why wouldn't they I'll tell you why because You' have told them how stupid they were and that you know you would have you would just have blown them up because that's what you do because that's the only way you could get things done and we're not going to run the company like that anymore you know and she's very Val valuable part of this company still is and uh it's been great to see her evolve through that and now begin to have these conversations where

[42:07]  it's not personal we're all on the same team we're all rowing in the same direction what's the issue that's the other thing we started having different kinds of meetings our meetings are now about issues and projects and if something's on track we're off to the next project we don't talk about things we talk about issues with Solutions you know um and that's changed a lot of and we're still in the process of that like by division we're kind of going through each division um it's the EOS system I don't know if you're familiar with it but it's really been something that's that's changed our meeting structure and I started it with the sales team uh a year or so ago um and it it made my job so much easier that as I moved into the

[42:55]  president role it's like this is what we're to do and this how these meetings are going to run and and you know no one more than sales guys loves to tout when something's on track and you're going to have a three-hour meeting while they tell you how awesome they are are getting this done we just move on what are the issues and how can we fix them and are we all aligned in this we don't all have to agree with it but are we aligned are we agreeing that we're going to this is our goal to meet our objective feeds the vision what is our vision for the future so we started in 1955 where are we going to be in 2055 well where's the industry going to be in 2055 is a very interesting question as we talked about you know before uh I don't see us veering too far away from Automotive I think we'll continue

[43:44]  to develop um new new uh products within the Acoustics Market also definitely in the in the thermoplastics market um different kinds of resins um um we do a good job of of finding people who have great ideas but don't know maybe how it would work in the industry Chris is great with that because he is a plastic nerd so he knows all these people and they'll have these great ideas and they're very smart people they just don't know what to do with it and he's he's great at saying hey I got this idea um so I see us evolving we've done a great job with the EV um of of of starting to really it's just the way you Market your product differently as again to fit their need you know and so I I think we'll just

[44:32]  continue to do that grow with the industry and uh and continue to focus on our our employees that was another thing like I said the culture was broken um this year we introduced um a healthc care initiative so that it's covered by Insurance it wasn't covered by for before which was very important to me because I just think it's it's a national pandemic that isn't talk aled about enough and so having that for our Associates was very important and our team did a great job of making sure that happened as well as the first time in four or five years giving bonuses here a couple weeks ago that was huge it just show and it was based on our success and that was one of the things when we came in we preached hey we're going to fix this and this is how we're going to fix it and this is

[45:20]  why because when we fix these problems if you help us here's what it's going to lead to Better Health Care better wages better work environment and now they need to hold us accountable for that so it felt good for our team to be able to say promise number one here you go and this is just the beginning and that's where we want to be you know want to continue that with our with our Associates when I started working here people really really said oh that's a great place to work you know getting back to that because it hasn't been that way for some time and getting back to that and we're getting there is uh is very important to me this is the biggest opportunity that I think we have as Leaders of organizations over the next let's say

[46:06]  decade um you and I have unique upbringings because we came from the Midwest we grew up in cultures where people did say oh my gosh you're lucky to work at that place the GM the Ford the manufacturing plant the other organizations over the last years man we've gotten into the place where Society has almost villainized work right because people aren't happy we feel like we're work too much I want more time off I want work life balance which is great underneath that at a first principal perspective I have a personal theory that people are secretly yearning for a place where they feel seen validated heard and prioritized and I'll just add taken care of on top of that if we can get our organizations back to the place where people are saying oh my gosh you're lucky to work there those are the pieces of social connection that are going to bring our

[46:52]  communities back together and I feel so confident that we have a leader like you who's prioritized things Andrew because you're the future and taking us back to where we need to get to well yeah it's it's a it's a huge responsibility but it's one that I love and it's an industry that I love and and the automotive industry has been so important to our country you know if you look at in 1900 the number one job in America was a farmer and then you you fast forward to the 1920 and it's now the automotive industry along with uh steel and other things created the middle class and it's our job to protect that the middle class is super important and and it's our job to to make sure that uh you know that tradition carries on and and and

[47:39]  everyone thinks the automotive world is shrinking but it's not you know you look at Tesla and rivan out out west and all the Imports you know are in the South it's it's just more Global and it's like you said until I got into this industry I had no idea how vast it was and how important it was I was actually one of those people in the mid 2000s during during the the uh the downturn of saying why are we bailing them out because they had to the whole country would have folded and I never realized that until you're in the middle of because what they're really good at is taking components from company like GDC and putting it exactly that's what they're really good at well you know part of what we have here on the uh on the podcast Andrew is a tradition where our previous guest wants

[48:26]  to ask you a question um and see what your response is to this it's our blind question segment so our uh leader is the president of an another amazing organization um called Ally or blue Ally Services um they are a Home maintenance company that serves elderly people by helping them reformulate their homes but also take care of all the tasks that stop us from falling off ladders and stuff like that amazing team so this question is if you um sorry who is the most influential person in your professional life and what lesson did you learn from them H I've had I've been very blessed to have a lot of these people a lot of these people um I would probably H to say and this isn't a brown-nosing it was Pro it would probably

[49:14]  be Chris Miller just the things I've learned from him we're a good we're a good team because I feel like my strengths are his weaknesses and his strengths are definitely my weaknesses but I I would say Chris Miller has been the greatest influence on my uh professional career I just want to say a huge shout out to Chris for sending that text message at two o'clock in the morning and asking our guy Andrew if he wanted to sell car parts so it brought us to where we're at here today those small things like the biggest difference well Andrew it's easy to understand why you are the definition of heart and hustle brother I'm so glad that we were able to have you on the show and thanks again for joining us pleasure it's been great getting to know you thank you so much