Latest / The ReForge Podcast / The Renaissance Man of Manufacturing (with Colin Russ) | ReForge 003

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The Renaissance Man of Manufacturing (with Colin Russ) | ReForge 003 · The ReForge Podcast

• 0:00
  Matthew Chang: you gotta have a government that's actually trying to do things and somewhat connected to the citizenry through people like yourself.
• 0:07
  Matthew Chang: On the planning commission.
• 0:09
  Matthew Chang: And then you know what a lot of people, especially in startup world, forget, is the nonprofits are the ones that make the cities livable.
• 0:16
  Matthew Chang: They're out doing the hard work to bridge that gap so that everyone in the community has a shot at enjoying a quality of life.
• 0:28
  Welcome to the Reforge Podcast.
• 0:30
  I'm Matthew Chang, and we're here to explore all things AI automation and the American worker proving that the American reindustrialization is possible.
• 0:40
  Pivotal pressing.
• 0:42
  Thanks for joining us today.
• 0:44
  Let's get into the episode.
• 0:46
  Matthew Chang: All right.
• 0:46
  Matthew Chang: Welcome to Reforge episode number three.
• 0:50
  Matthew Chang: today is all about our host, Colin, Russ.
• 0:53
  Matthew Chang: Colin, how you doing today?
• 0:55
  Colin Russ: I am doing great.
• 0:56
  Colin Russ: I am, uh, a little bit jealous of that warm weather you've got, so you need to, bring some of that back and send it up north when you get a chance.
• 1:03
  Matthew Chang: Absolutely.
• 1:04
  Matthew Chang: We're, we're jarring it up.
• 1:06
  Matthew Chang: Yeah, we'll bring him some for you this week.
• 1:08
  Matthew Chang: in Florida, it's already spring break, so I don't know when that is for you.
• 1:13
  Colin Russ: Yeah, my, uh, my oldest or my youngest had it about two weeks ago.
• 1:16
  Colin Russ: My oldest has it in, another two weeks.
• 1:19
  Colin Russ: So we're, we're kind of split splitting the middle.
• 1:21
  Colin Russ: We're splitting the baby, if you
• 1:22
  Matthew Chang: it up by two weeks.
• 1:23
  Matthew Chang: Uh, four weeks.
• 1:24
  Matthew Chang: That's weird.
• 1:25
  Matthew Chang: Um, well, cool.
• 1:27
  Matthew Chang: So, so Colin, you are a diehard resident of Erie.
• 1:35
  Matthew Chang: Tell us all about Erie.
• 1:36
  Matthew Chang: What do we need to know?
• 1:36
  Colin Russ: I am indeed.
• 1:37
  Colin Russ: So, I, I actually, I was, uh, born and raised down in Texas.
• 1:41
  Colin Russ: little.
• 1:42
  Colin Russ: Coastal town of Beaumont, and then spent most of my life in Houston.
• 1:46
  Colin Russ: Um, grew up there, you know, lived abroad for a few years, but came back.
• 1:50
  Colin Russ: so I'm pretty, pretty big Texan, uh, at, at heart too.
• 1:55
  Colin Russ: Um, you know, I, I referred myself as a misplaced Texan most of the time.
• 1:58
  Colin Russ: but I moved to Erie, about eight years ago.
• 2:01
  Colin Russ: my kids live here and at the time I was.
• 2:04
  Colin Russ: Traveling for work.
• 2:05
  Colin Russ: So kind of just on the weekends where I landed, ended up being Erie when, the pandemic hit and I stopped traveling.
• 2:12
  Colin Russ: Uh, fi finally kind of settled down, got an apartment, got a place here, and fell in love with kind of the, the small town, you know, America, you know, post-industrial, great history.
• 2:24
  Colin Russ: Amazing affordably cost of living, for what you get.
• 2:27
  Colin Russ: Um, but just fell in love with it.
• 2:29
  Colin Russ: And, um, you know, really it, it became one of those places where, you know, there's opportunities to get involved.
• 2:35
  Colin Russ: There's an opportunity to have impact and to make changes.
• 2:38
  Colin Russ: Something that is possible obviously in, in bigger cities, but it's a little bit harder.
• 2:43
  Colin Russ: This is a place where, you know, immediately was able to get involved, join the, planning commission, um, got involved with some nonprofits, able to do just a lot without having to, you know, write a bunch of checks and, and you know, basically grease the palms of the right people.
• 2:59
  Matthew Chang: some of those big cities, you know, they like, you know, Atlanta, Miami, Boston, if, if you want to actually do something like join the planning commission, it's like you gotta know somebody or you gotta work on it.
• 3:12
  Matthew Chang: For years, it sounds like you landed in Erie and just found opportunity to help the community.
• 3:17
  Colin Russ: Yeah, it was one of those places that.
• 3:20
  Colin Russ: The, the opportunities are endless, in my opinion, but it's one of those things where you have to be willing to go look for them.
• 3:28
  Colin Russ: You, you have to want to be a part of the change.
• 3:30
  Colin Russ: And frankly, in this day and age, a lot of people, would rather sit back and complain about how things are instead of trying to actually change them and make things better.
• 3:39
  Colin Russ: I am not.
• 3:40
  Colin Russ: One of those people.
• 3:41
  Colin Russ: And so I immediately got into, you know, how can I get involved?
• 3:45
  Colin Russ: How can I make this the community better?
• 3:48
  Colin Russ: Not for me specifically, but for at the end of the day for my kids.
• 3:52
  Colin Russ: How can I make it a better place for them to grow up to hopefully raise families here one day?
• 3:58
  Colin Russ: You know, make it a place that they wanna be.
• 4:01
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 4:02
  Matthew Chang: That's amazing.
• 4:02
  Matthew Chang: Um, and I know that's one thing you and I both have in common.
• 4:05
  Matthew Chang: When we first met, we started talking.
• 4:08
  Matthew Chang: Uh, you know, of course what do you, what do you do for work?
• 4:11
  Matthew Chang: That sort of thing.
• 4:12
  Matthew Chang: But quickly, both of us shared passions about what we like to do for the community, and that's one of the reasons I've always loved Jacksonville.
• 4:19
  Matthew Chang: It's just been very easy to get involved, very easy to make a change both in the government sector and on the nonprofit side.
• 4:27
  Matthew Chang: Um, and that's, in my opinion, you gotta have both.
• 4:30
  Matthew Chang: Uh, you gotta have a government that's actually trying to do things and somewhat connected to the citizenry through people like yourself.
• 4:38
  Matthew Chang: On the planning commission.
• 4:40
  Matthew Chang: And then you know what a lot of people, especially in startup world, forget, is the nonprofits are the ones that make the cities livable.
• 4:47
  Matthew Chang: They're out doing the hard work to bridge that gap so that everyone in the community has a shot at enjoying a quality of life.
• 4:55
  Colin Russ: I mean, Erie's absolutely one of those places.
• 4:56
  Colin Russ: You know, it's post-industrial town.
• 4:58
  Colin Russ: You know what a lot of people don't realize is, you know.
• 5:02
  Colin Russ: For decades, industry is what powered these cities.
• 5:05
  Colin Russ: They provided the jobs they had, you know, your company cookouts drives all these things that they supported, um, the community where government or whatever fell short when you had just massive, you know, outsourcing and offshoring the jobs.
• 5:20
  Colin Russ: Not only was, you know, the, not only were the economic effects just devastating, but there was a real gap in, you know, providing some of services, helping to fill, fill.
• 5:29
  Colin Russ: In where things fell short.
• 5:31
  Colin Russ: and Erie has turned into wellness places, unfortunately.
• 5:35
  Colin Russ: Uh, and I say that cautiously, um, where the, the nonprofit sector has become a very large and very, significant part of the community, unfortunately, from an economic driver.
• 5:47
  Colin Russ: And that's not good.
• 5:48
  Colin Russ: And that's one of the reasons why we've gotta bring industry back and really, you know, address the reindustrialization piece.
• 5:54
  Colin Russ: We've gotta get back to the point
• 5:55
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 5:57
  Matthew Chang: Well, I What.
• 5:58
  Colin Russ: Productive.
• 5:59
  Matthew Chang: uh, I didn't mean to break down nonprofit, but for the audience, if you're not involved in nonprofit, um, then what that means in a town like Erie is the same families that have a certain amount of wealth that was most likely accu accumulated during this industrial boom that Erie experienced for, I'm guessing more than a hundred years.
• 6:18
  Matthew Chang: They're slowly kind of siphoning off some of the profits on that wealth, and they're sharing it with the nonprofits.
• 6:25
  Matthew Chang: One of the challenges without new industrial and new industry is you're not adding more families, right?
• 6:30
  Matthew Chang: So it's probably the same check writers and all the nonprofits are competing to get a little slice, which makes it hard.
• 6:36
  Matthew Chang: You get, you gotta ask for money just so you can pay staff salaries and provide the services.
• 6:41
  Matthew Chang: Well, why don't you gimme the, the top kind of one or two things, your role in the Planning Commission, which is a pure government outreach, and then in nonprofits.
• 6:50
  Matthew Chang: What are the top one or two things you're trying to make a difference in in Erie?
• 6:54
  Colin Russ: So my biggest things, um, really priorities come down to how can we support and enable private development, really drive that.
• 7:03
  Colin Russ: 'cause at the end of the day, it's private money, private capital, and really investment that's going to help.
• 7:09
  Colin Russ: Drive that economic growth.
• 7:11
  Colin Russ: so it's trying to support that and make it more attractive.
• 7:14
  Colin Russ: And then sort of in a similar breath, but a little off to the side is the housing piece of it.
• 7:20
  Colin Russ: Um, trying to make it more friendly to build new housing.
• 7:24
  Colin Russ: and at the end of the day, all of that, you know, is tied right into, you know, my.
• 7:29
  Colin Russ: Fierce or rabid, you know, pro reindustrialization because, you know, if you can't provide good housing, you're not gonna have workers.
• 7:37
  Colin Russ: You gotta be able to provide good housing for tax revenue, so you've got good schools.
• 7:42
  Colin Russ: So housing, I think is, you know, one of those critical linchpins, that we've gotta address to make it so that you can actually attract these companies to invest, to build, you know, startups to wanna bring people and their families there.
• 7:53
  Colin Russ: Because if you don't make it a place where a fam you can raise a family.
• 7:57
  Colin Russ: Nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna come.
• 8:00
  Matthew Chang: I am gonna guess Erie is one of those places that doesn't have a shortage of housing.
• 8:05
  Matthew Chang: It has a shortage of new housing.
• 8:07
  Colin Russ: Yep.
• 8:07
  Colin Russ: Uh, you, it, that is, and it's the type of housing.
• 8:11
  Colin Russ: I mean, you get, you've got a lot of just those legacy split unit types.
• 8:15
  Colin Russ: you've got it just very much, you know, old housing, you don't have the new high quality stuff.
• 8:22
  Colin Russ: You know, in the last few years it's changed, but.
• 8:25
  Colin Russ: The reality is young people don't, A lot of young people don't wanna fix or upper, um, at 23, 24, you, you, they, they've got enough enough priorities that, you know, redoing a house isn't one of'em right now.
• 8:36
  Matthew Chang: yeah.
• 8:36
  Matthew Chang: But a house built in 1930 that has, you know, some old exposed electrical and no insulation.
• 8:42
  Matthew Chang: A lot of people want something that's moving ready.
• 8:44
  Matthew Chang: Well, cool.
• 8:45
  Matthew Chang: Let, let's pivot for a quick second.
• 8:47
  Matthew Chang: So you're a Beaumont boy, Texas boy, um, relocated to probably the best part of Pennsylvania.
• 8:52
  Matthew Chang: Right.
• 8:53
  Matthew Chang: Um, what is, what is, um, what was your first job?
• 9:01
  Colin Russ: So this is really gonna make me sound Texan.
• 9:04
  Colin Russ: Um, my, I guess second cousin, technically we call him an uncle, uh, was a huge dairy farmer, outside of Dallas.
• 9:11
  Colin Russ: so I, at, I think I was about 12 on my first, one of my first spring breaks, 12, 13.
• 9:17
  Colin Russ: I would go up to a dairy farm and I'd, I'd work there.
• 9:21
  Colin Russ: During my spring breaks, I absolutely loved it.
• 9:23
  Colin Russ: So, you know, I'd go up there during calving season, I'd go up there, um, you know, anytime I could basically.
• 9:29
  Colin Russ: So, you know, I was, I did not get any special treatment.
• 9:33
  Colin Russ: I got to hang out in the bunkhouse live there, and, you know, do the whole, ranch hand ba thing, basically.
• 9:39
  Colin Russ: But, um, it, it
• 9:40
  Matthew Chang: So like the real Yellowstone,
• 9:43
  Colin Russ: Yeah, for a 12-year-old, as much as they're, they're willing to, uh, you know, get away with without, you know, getting in trouble with the family, probably before, uh, osha.
• 9:52
  Colin Russ: But yeah, it, it was, you know.
• 9:56
  Colin Russ: Still one of my favorite experiences.
• 9:57
  Colin Russ: really interesting, great opportunity to influence somebody's perspective on what hard work and kind of long duration thinking requires.
• 10:07
  Colin Russ: Um, and it definitely
• 10:09
  Matthew Chang: and getting really sweaty.
• 10:12
  Colin Russ: Yeah.
• 10:12
  Colin Russ: Uh, that's, it's the smell you smells, you never, never get rid of.
• 10:16
  Matthew Chang: So what, so, um, on the dairy farm, you go up there, you work hard, you're a young guy, you know, you've got, your back is made of rubber.
• 10:24
  Matthew Chang: Back then you can just probably carry anything.
• 10:27
  Matthew Chang: What, uh, did your uncle pay you?
• 10:31
  Colin Russ: I got a lot of Brahms hamburgers and shakes, which very few people are gonna know.
• 10:35
  Colin Russ: Maybe Dallas area is gonna pick up Brams, but probably some of the best burgers and shakes in the world.
• 10:41
  Colin Russ: Um, so I got a lot of those.
• 10:42
  Colin Russ: Um, but I, no, I, I, I think when I got a little older, I'd get paid.
• 10:47
  Colin Russ: but first few years, you know, money was not a, not the priority.
• 10:50
  Colin Russ: I just thought it was cool being, you know, playing farmer and at that point.
• 10:55
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 10:56
  Matthew Chang: And then you go back home to mom and dad and you're, you got new calluses and a few new muscles after
• 11:01
  Colin Russ: Yep.
• 11:01
  Colin Russ: Exactly.
• 11:02
  Colin Russ: Exactly.
• 11:02
  Colin Russ: And you know, nice little farmer's, tan and all the good stuff.
• 11:06
  Matthew Chang: Cool.
• 11:07
  Matthew Chang: All right.
• 11:07
  Matthew Chang: Well, some at some point in your career and, and definitely take me through the international piece,'cause I'm very curious about that.
• 11:14
  Matthew Chang: you decided you were gonna get into industrial, and you have, from what I can tell you are the, the MacGyver of factories that you've kind of, you can rig up anything.
• 11:24
  Matthew Chang: And you've done a little bit of everything.
• 11:25
  Matthew Chang: So why don't you take us through how that evolution went for you.
• 11:29
  Colin Russ: Yeah, so I, you know, MacGyver is probably the second most used term.
• 11:34
  Colin Russ: I, I like to use Renaissance man, if I'm trying to sound a little bit classier.
• 11:37
  Matthew Chang: course.
• 11:37
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 11:37
  Matthew Chang: And I can't believe I didn't say that.
• 11:38
  Colin Russ: mcg MacGyver is probably more accurate, you know, lots of duct tape, WD 40 and some, uh, vice scripts and, and you're, you can fix about anything.
• 11:46
  Colin Russ: Um, but so I, I originally was, um.
• 11:49
  Colin Russ: In, in high school I worked, a couple summers in a fastener manufacturing shop.
• 11:53
  Colin Russ: it's basically taking raw stock and just cutting it and then, you know, oil covered out, comes out, oil covered and razor sharp.
• 11:59
  Colin Russ: The other end, lots of, you know, presses, stamping all the cool stuff and was just turning something.
• 12:07
  Colin Russ: Into something completely different.
• 12:09
  Colin Russ: You know, raw, raw into a, a finished screw.
• 12:11
  Colin Russ: As dumb as that sounds, um, was just really cool.
• 12:15
  Colin Russ: I was originally, planning to go to Purdue for my undergrad, for engineering.
• 12:20
  Colin Russ: Uh, was got in ready to go there.
• 12:23
  Colin Russ: Then I went to Chicago, um, sometime in the spring for a tour of another school.
• 12:31
  Colin Russ: had a really cute tour guide and at 18, you know, hormones were making all the right decisions.
• 12:36
  Colin Russ: So I ended up thinking that yeah, Chicago is absolutely the place to go.
• 12:40
  Colin Russ: I loved Chicago, had a great time, but I had no idea what I was going to do in college.
• 12:45
  Colin Russ: engineering was kind of just always the default.
• 12:47
  Colin Russ: my father was an electrical engineer, um, was in the Air Force, for about a decade doing electrical engineering systems type work.
• 12:56
  Colin Russ: and so I'd grown up around, uh, you know, the kinda engineering mindset and so that was just.
• 13:02
  Colin Russ: Very much how my brain is wired.
• 13:04
  Colin Russ: That was path I was gonna go.
• 13:06
  Colin Russ: Then I threw it out the window and kind of just had no idea what I was gonna do for, uh, a while.
• 13:11
  Colin Russ: managed to graduate in four years.
• 13:14
  Matthew Chang: And where, where was that?
• 13:15
  Colin Russ: uh, I went, ended up at DePaul,
• 13:17
  Matthew Chang: Oh, okay.
• 13:18
  Matthew Chang: Sweet.
• 13:19
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 13:19
  Colin Russ: Yeah.
• 13:20
  Colin Russ: So I was, I was in, yeah.
• 13:24
  Colin Russ: yeah.
• 13:24
  Colin Russ: but I, I ended up, I was a clerk at Department of Justice for a couple years there in, procurement, uh, type stuff.
• 13:30
  Colin Russ: Worked with some judges cool things, thought I might be a lawyer at one point.
• 13:34
  Colin Russ: ended up not wanting to go that route'cause absolutely everybody was going to law school and just made zero sense to, you know, take out all that student debt to.
• 13:46
  Colin Russ: Maybe get a job, and do something I wasn't unsure about.
• 13:48
  Colin Russ: after graduating, worked in politics, worked on the Romney campaign, doing you what you today would probably just call targeted, you know, voter engagement type stuff.
• 13:59
  Colin Russ: at the time it was like rocket science because we were using Excel and weren't using just binders filled with names.
• 14:06
  Colin Russ: yes, the infamous binders, um.
• 14:09
  Matthew Chang: quick pause.
• 14:10
  Matthew Chang: I made history at the Georgia DOT in college because I used Excel.
• 14:17
  Matthew Chang: And I remember the head boss, the director of the DOT, walked in.
• 14:22
  Matthew Chang: He was looking at this screen and there was this data dashboard that was plotted in Excel and it was showing what's happening with vehicle speeds.
• 14:30
  Matthew Chang: Moving through the city of Atlanta on a every 15 minute basis, we had measurements from, from cameras with a early version of ai, all over the highways.
• 14:39
  Matthew Chang: He looked at it.
• 14:39
  Matthew Chang: So they, so they have this, they have these cameras, they have this, this private ethernet, you know, dark fiber installed all over the city.
• 14:48
  Matthew Chang: They have cameras about every, you know, quarter mile or so as part of their emergency and traffic response.
• 14:53
  Matthew Chang: And they had this very limited early instance of AI installed back in the early two thousands.
• 14:59
  Matthew Chang: But the data went nowhere.
• 15:01
  Matthew Chang: Which probably is how the pre Romney campaign, that's probably where the voter data went, is nowhere into the
• 15:07
  Colin Russ: Sounds about
• 15:07
  Matthew Chang: Sounds about right.
• 15:08
  Matthew Chang: And then he comes into the command center.
• 15:11
  Matthew Chang: They've got this wonderful traffic command center, looks like kind of a mini NASA command center, and there's this up on a 10 foot projector screen is MyChart and all the engineers are pointing at it, talking about it.
• 15:22
  Matthew Chang: He goes, what's that?
• 15:23
  Matthew Chang: Oh, this is, uh.
• 15:24
  Matthew Chang: This is, um, a plot of traffic flows.
• 15:27
  Matthew Chang: And what we learned was the, the peak of rush hour begins at 3:00 PM in Atlanta.
• 15:32
  Matthew Chang: And if you've been to Atlanta, you get, it's a traffic problem.
• 15:34
  Matthew Chang: 3:00 PM is is the absolute worst.
• 15:37
  Matthew Chang: And we had it by day.
• 15:39
  Matthew Chang: so he was looking at it and he goes, W how did you guys do this?
• 15:44
  Matthew Chang: And they pointed at me, I'm the 19-year-old intern, and I go, well, he did it.
• 15:49
  Matthew Chang: You know, he's, and that earned me a meeting with the area director.
• 15:53
  Matthew Chang: He said, you can come back anytime and you can intern in any department you want.
• 15:56
  Matthew Chang: Any job is yours because I used Excel.
• 15:59
  Matthew Chang: So anyway, let's pick you back up at Romney.
• 16:01
  Matthew Chang: You used Excel.
• 16:03
  Colin Russ: Yeah.
• 16:03
  Colin Russ: Well, and we were, you know, a lot of it ended up being tied to, you know, fundraising.
• 16:08
  Colin Russ: You know, we raised a helped.
• 16:11
  Colin Russ: Identify people most likely to donate to campaigns.
• 16:14
  Colin Russ: Basically proactive outreach, attend events.
• 16:17
  Colin Russ: stuff at the time was really crazy cutting edge.
• 16:20
  Colin Russ: Now it is just.
• 16:22
  Colin Russ: You know, standard playbook.
• 16:23
  Colin Russ: but it's, it, it was pretty cool.
• 16:26
  Colin Russ: You know, I spent six months flying all across, uh, the country.
• 16:30
  Colin Russ: I hit, you know, I was in every swing state, you know, I was on two, three, um, flights.
• 16:35
  Colin Russ: Uh, I think at, at the very end we were doing like two flights a day, a couple times three flights.
• 16:40
  Colin Russ: Um, but just zigzagging, Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, uh, Pennsylvania, I mean all, all over the place.
• 16:48
  Colin Russ: and it was.
• 16:50
  Colin Russ: Uh, cool.
• 16:50
  Colin Russ: I mean, getting to travel like that, it's, it's exciting.
• 16:54
  Matthew Chang: Was that before or after Florida learned how to vote?
• 16:58
  Colin Russ: I think that's kind of up to, uh, up to the interpretation of when they learned.
• 17:03
  Colin Russ: Um, but, um, no, I, I
• 17:06
  Matthew Chang: Well, we made, we made this turnaround, right?
• 17:08
  Matthew Chang: Because it, it was, uh, obviously the, the famous hanging chads, you know, Florida couldn't figure out how to vote or what a vote was or, or how you cast your
• 17:16
  Colin Russ: it was after that this was, this was Romney and, and 12.
• 17:19
  Matthew Chang: And then, yeah, I'm, I'm kind of cracking a joke.
• 17:22
  Matthew Chang: But then 20 years later, we're, we're one of the most advanced at elections where, you know, it's actually enforced and there's discipline from top to bottom and, you know, oversight and, and citizen engagement.
• 17:34
  Matthew Chang: so it sounds like, it sounds like you've seen it all then by going to all those different states kind of right, as things are shifting.
• 17:41
  Colin Russ: Yeah.
• 17:42
  Colin Russ: And, and one of the things that, you know, I, I've kind of, uh, learned to appreciate in hindsight was just the different places I visited.
• 17:50
  Colin Russ: I mean, from tiny little towns in Iowa.
• 17:52
  Colin Russ: you know, spent plenty of time, obviously in Cleveland, you know, northeast Ohio type places.
• 17:57
  Colin Russ: but really I had a chance to see a lot of different parts of America and a lot of parts that.
• 18:02
  Colin Russ: You most people don't get a chance to experience.
• 18:05
  Colin Russ: and that a lot of that really influenced kind of my love for, you know, small town America.
• 18:09
  Colin Russ: I mean, Houston's a huge city.
• 18:10
  Colin Russ: I absolutely love Houston.
• 18:12
  Colin Russ: but it is a completely different.
• 18:14
  Colin Russ: Pace of life, completely different priorities, um, and, and problems.
• 18:19
  Colin Russ: and, you know, I've always been one of those people that just kind of like problem solving, whatever it looks like.
• 18:24
  Colin Russ: So after the campaign, didn't end the way that, uh, had had hoped.
• 18:29
  Colin Russ: but ended up from there, going on to, uh, consulting, um, was at, Capgemini for a bit, in their SAP practice.
• 18:38
  Colin Russ: so in their technology
• 18:39
  Matthew Chang: I was gonna ask, is this where your love of ERPs came from?
• 18:43
  Colin Russ: Love is a word.
• 18:45
  Colin Russ: I, I love, I guess is now the beholder.
• 18:48
  Colin Russ: Um, but.
• 18:49
  Matthew Chang: for the audience'cause you're the host and they need to know this about you.
• 18:53
  Matthew Chang: Colin has been known to write long Form X threads or Twitter threads on ERPs.
• 18:59
  Matthew Chang: He is actually known for that.
• 19:01
  Colin Russ: yes.
• 19:02
  Colin Russ: I, I, I have some, some post-traumatic, uh, issues that need, need addressing.
• 19:07
  Colin Russ: But yes, that, that was really my foray into the, the formal ERP piece of it.
• 19:12
  Colin Russ: I mean, I, I, in high school, I started, Programming, uh, C plus plus.
• 19:17
  Colin Russ: Yeah.
• 19:17
  Colin Russ: So I got into kind of the systems piece for there, but that was just because I didn't wanna take whatever the other class was that I would've had to, when I was at the Department of Justice, I, you know, being in supply procurement stuff, I went into the.
• 19:33
  Colin Russ: Whatever cobalt based system they were using then found a quarter million dollars worth of supplies that we were ordering and weren't being used.
• 19:41
  Colin Russ: and was told, well, if we don't spend it, we don't get it in our budget again.
• 19:44
  Colin Russ: Um, so that was also another inflection point of, well, I can't work for the government because that's just insanity.
• 19:51
  Colin Russ: so, but all these things.
• 19:54
  Colin Russ: Yeah, wrong, wrong incentives.
• 19:56
  Colin Russ: Um, but kind of those experiences and then, you know, just people I knew, you know, networking, that sort of thing ended up, uh, in what turned out to be their SAP practice.
• 20:09
  Colin Russ: and I was in the supply chain management, uh, procure to play.
• 20:13
  Colin Russ: Procure to pay part of it.
• 20:15
  Colin Russ: at the time I was, you know, initially disappointed'cause everyone thought the finance part of it was the super sexy stuff.
• 20:22
  Colin Russ: Um, but I got into, you know, the materials management, kind of what ultimately led to a lot more of the industrial space.
• 20:30
  Colin Russ: I think my first like client was, um, Boeing.
• 20:35
  Colin Russ: Boeing or, or might have an abus, um, beginning to do, you know, a lot of really cool things with how they route all of their different materials and pieces and spare parts and starting to learn that ecosystem.
• 20:48
  Colin Russ: and my experience up to that point had large, had been kind of factory floor in more job shops, larger job shops that I worked in, in summers.
• 20:57
  Colin Russ: so this was like a.
• 20:59
  Colin Russ: Ferrari versus, you know, a Honda Civic type situation.
• 21:03
  Colin Russ: Um,
• 21:04
  Matthew Chang: going from maybe a Beaumont based job shop or a Dallas Houston based job shop to a Boeing facility to deploy an ERP for commercial airlines.
• 21:13
  Colin Russ: Yeah, with multiple facilities, multiple lines, yeah.
• 21:16
  Colin Russ: It was all different.
• 21:18
  Colin Russ: but one of the cool things with, uh, consulting, you know, obviously is you get the variety.
• 21:23
  Colin Russ: Um, you're not.
• 21:24
  Colin Russ: You may be on a project for a few months, or the work I was doing was a few months worth of work, so I got to jump around to different industries or different, uh, clients.
• 21:34
  Colin Russ: see a lot of different things.
• 21:36
  Colin Russ: But the really cool stuff was frankly just the learning opportunities.
• 21:39
  Colin Russ: I mean, you talk to people that have decades of experience and knowledge.
• 21:43
  Colin Russ: and the one thing I found out pretty quickly is if you let people talk, you know, if you ask'em a question and let them.
• 21:49
  Colin Russ: Feel smart and explain what's going on.
• 21:53
  Colin Russ: It's a lot easier to, you know, make suggested changes or, or get them to come up with the suggested changes if, if you play it right.
• 22:01
  Colin Russ: but I got a chance to just really learn a, a ton, um, from all different parts of kinda the supply chain, you know, procurement, the revenue pieces of it.
• 22:11
  Colin Russ: really just kept kind of saying yes to opportunities that came up, um, that were outside my wheelhouse and used as a chance to learn.
• 22:17
  Matthew Chang: Just kind of give us a list.
• 22:18
  Matthew Chang: So your first taste was mega commercial air aviation.
• 22:23
  Matthew Chang: What are some of the other industries you touched with ERP implementations?
• 22:27
  Colin Russ: Um, so my area of focus was, industrials, which, um, ty typically, uh, includes the energy utilities, as like a subsect of it.
• 22:38
  Colin Russ: So I did, aerospace and defense.
• 22:40
  Colin Russ: I did consumer goods, automotive.
• 22:43
  Colin Russ: I did.
• 22:44
  Colin Russ: Commercial.
• 22:46
  Colin Russ: Um.
• 22:47
  Colin Russ: Oh, I don't even remember what the, the, the technical name or whatever it was.
• 22:52
  Colin Russ: but commercial products, um, basically for, uh, B2B type, uh, produced components, you know, a a lot of the, you know, energy utilities type stuff, so distribution companies as well as power generation, and a lot of the power generation, smart, you know, distribution type stuff.
• 23:13
  Colin Russ: I started geeking out on that.
• 23:15
  Colin Russ: Um, just really nerded into it.
• 23:18
  Colin Russ: 'cause of the whole infrastructure piece of it.
• 23:21
  Colin Russ: Those areas are so complex, in terms of what it takes to build them.
• 23:27
  Colin Russ: Um, that just kind of latched onto me.
• 23:29
  Colin Russ: You know, the actual operational pieces of it are pretty cool in a very nerdy way.
• 23:35
  Matthew Chang: So all the industries you mentioned, you know, heavy industrial, power, aviation, automotive, those are heavily regulated.
• 23:42
  Matthew Chang: Did in, as you're building out workflows and EREP implementations, did you have to take all those different federal and and other regulations into account?
• 23:52
  Colin Russ: Uh, yeah, uh, I, yes, yes.
• 23:54
  Colin Russ: 1000 times.
• 23:56
  Colin Russ: Yes.
• 23:56
  Colin Russ: Um, and, and that was one of.
• 23:58
  Colin Russ: Uh, something early on I was just kinda like slamming my head against the desk.
• 24:02
  Colin Russ: Like, this is dumb, this is dumb.
• 24:04
  Colin Russ: Eventually I got to the point of realizing, okay, yes, it is dumb.
• 24:07
  Colin Russ: It doesn't matter though.
• 24:08
  Colin Russ: We have to play by these rules.
• 24:10
  Colin Russ: Um, but I, I have spent a lot of my, career operating in highly regulated, whether that's federal or state and local.
• 24:19
  Colin Russ: but at the end of the day, one of the things I found was.
• 24:22
  Colin Russ: Yes, you can have incredibly regulated industries.
• 24:26
  Colin Russ: It makes things more difficult, but it's a problem to work.
• 24:30
  Colin Russ: You know, you work the
• 24:31
  Matthew Chang: Yeah, I don't,
• 24:32
  Colin Russ: how, how you do the dance, you'll get there.
• 24:35
  Matthew Chang: we, we see all this, um, kind of bashing of regulations, especially, you know, for the, for the audience.
• 24:41
  Matthew Chang: Colin and I are both, uh, Twitter junkies and, and spend, you know, a fair amount of time discussing things and reading things on there.
• 24:48
  Matthew Chang: it's pretty trendy to batch regulations, but it's very challenging to get people to name a regulation that they want to get rid of.
• 24:57
  Matthew Chang: So when you're, when you're at Boeing, you know, a lot of that regulation comes from, from, from FAA, we sure do like safe airplanes, right?
• 25:05
  Matthew Chang: We like that.
• 25:06
  Matthew Chang: The confidence of not even thinking about if the airplane's gonna get where it's supposed to go or have some issue that that leads to a catastrophe mid-flight.
• 25:15
  Matthew Chang: So, so when you put it in the right lens, people are like, well, okay, maybe the airplane ones are okay.
• 25:19
  Matthew Chang: You move over to automotive, it's kind of the same thing, right?
• 25:22
  Matthew Chang: It's like, if I buy a car, I wanna know it's gonna drive well and safely, especially if my family's in there and I also wanna know that, that
• 25:29
  Colin Russ: gas.
• 25:30
  Colin Russ: You,
• 25:31
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 25:32
  Colin Russ: you wanna make sure pipelines aren't exploding.
• 25:34
  Colin Russ: It, it's, they're important.
• 25:37
  Colin Russ: Like you said, you know it, it's hard for people to kind of.
• 25:40
  Colin Russ: Break it down and, and I've, you know, one of the things that I observed, or kind of the, my, my lens on it was, we're United States of America.
• 25:53
  Colin Russ: Like we have the brightest people in the world.
• 25:56
  Colin Russ: We have some, some most capable people in the world.
• 25:58
  Colin Russ: Are you really telling me that we can't come up with a solution that to, you know, address these regulatory constraints while still being successful?
• 26:10
  Colin Russ: I think the answer is no.
• 26:11
  Colin Russ: We absolutely are able to like, come on, let's it, it is just another challenge that we have to overcome and it's, you know, I think a mindset shift, you know?
• 26:20
  Matthew Chang: so Cap, Capgemini and SAP implementations, let's, and, and all these different industries.
• 26:27
  Matthew Chang: What, what came after?
• 26:29
  Matthew Chang: Maybe you got tired of designing other people's workflows?
• 26:32
  Colin Russ: I had my first daughter, didn't wanna be on the road as much, uh, had an opportunity in Cleveland, to run the technology, you know, information systems group for a natural gas holding company.
• 26:43
  Colin Russ: they had, it was a smaller, uh, operation in couple different states.
• 26:47
  Colin Russ: Um, but my background with.
• 26:50
  Colin Russ: Systems and, um, kinda the whole ERP piece of it was well timed.
• 26:55
  Colin Russ: so had an opportunity there, um, and did another huge, uh, SAP implementation.
• 27:02
  Colin Russ: Lots of workforce, work management type stuff.
• 27:05
  Colin Russ: Um, the digital payments, you know, basically bringing a.
• 27:11
  Colin Russ: Very, uh, old company that had grown through acquisitions and disparate systems, bringing'em
• 27:17
  Matthew Chang: Oh my gosh.
• 27:18
  Colin Russ: one, unified roof.
• 27:19
  Colin Russ: So 24 different ERPs, eventually into a single SAP instance.
• 27:25
  Matthew Chang: I, I was gonna say, this is another thing when I share stories from inside, inside of factories with just your everyday people.
• 27:31
  Matthew Chang: They, they cannot believe the condition that most major manufacturing or, or energy supplier type companies are.
• 27:39
  Matthew Chang: I have never had a customer.
• 27:42
  Matthew Chang: Where all their factories were on the same instance of the ERP, never once.
• 27:49
  Matthew Chang: And what, you know, they're so tough.
• 27:51
  Matthew Chang: You gotta have, if you don't have a guy like Colin deploying it, you're not getting a new ERP.
• 27:55
  Matthew Chang: It's that simple.
• 27:55
  Matthew Chang: these are very challenging installs.
• 27:58
  Matthew Chang: Um, they're invasive, they're expensive, they wear the staff out, right?
• 28:03
  Matthew Chang: this is one of those that's probably the most thankless job I'd say in industrial.
• 28:07
  Matthew Chang: Is, um, is probably the ERP guy.
• 28:11
  Matthew Chang: And then in terms of as you, as you acquire companies, if you, if you go look at any of these top manufacturing brands, they're, they're constantly acquiring and you can do a little lookup on their history.
• 28:22
  Matthew Chang: You see, you know, every couple years they acquire a new cluster of factories or supply chain assets, those existing factories on their own instance of something, and they're not ready to migrate and nobody wants to spend the time or money to do that.
• 28:36
  Matthew Chang: So I had a client where we were responsible for doing engineering in five different factories for five different product lines.
• 28:44
  Matthew Chang: All five factories were on different instances of SAP.
• 28:47
  Matthew Chang: They were on SAP, but just different versions that couldn't talk to each other,
• 28:51
  Colin Russ: And they can't upgrade'em because that means they'd have to shut down this line or that line and, and that's how you end up with five different instances in five locations.
• 29:02
  Matthew Chang: Um, all right, so.
• 29:04
  Matthew Chang: So that gets you, uh, to where you're not full-time traveling consultant, you know, I'm sure you've got quite a few airline miles to your name.
• 29:11
  Matthew Chang: Then with the, the campaigning and then the SAP implementations,
• 29:16
  Colin Russ: Yep.
• 29:17
  Colin Russ: Well, and so I, I was doing the,
• 29:18
  Matthew Chang: your airline of choice?
• 29:19
  Matthew Chang: Before we go further, who's the airline
• 29:21
  Colin Russ: so it was united, uh, then I pri so my second stint in consulting ended up being Delta.
• 29:27
  Colin Russ: and I was, you know, flying Delta pretty much exclusively.
• 29:30
  Colin Russ: So I, uh, I, I miss my.
• 29:33
  Colin Russ: My Delta one upgrades, like th 72 hours out, these days.
• 29:37
  Colin Russ: But, you know, I was, I was pretty, pretty diehard Delta.
• 29:40
  Colin Russ: I still fly'em quite a bit though.
• 29:42
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 29:43
  Matthew Chang: Okay.
• 29:44
  Matthew Chang: Um, well that's good.
• 29:45
  Matthew Chang: So you're, uh, you're a United turn.
• 29:48
  Matthew Chang: Delta guy.
• 29:49
  Matthew Chang: Two stents in consulting, DOJ, uh, made big time consulting with Capgemini, uh, campaigning.
• 29:58
  Matthew Chang: Presidential
• 29:58
  Colin Russ: a af Yeah, after the con, after, um, leaving consulting first go around.
• 30:03
  Colin Russ: You know, I was in that, that role for a couple years.
• 30:06
  Colin Russ: Three, three-ish years or so.
• 30:08
  Colin Russ: I ready to go on to the next thing.
• 30:11
  Colin Russ: Uh, joined a startup that was doing, uh, customer experience payments type, uh, interaction work, uh, for utilities as the COO did.
• 30:22
  Colin Russ: A lot of the growth and product there, um, was not a great, good, good friend.
• 30:30
  Colin Russ: Um, runs the company now.
• 30:32
  Colin Russ: did not see eye to eye on kind of.
• 30:36
  Colin Russ: How we take, how we take things to the next step, uh, with the previous CEO, um, realized it was just time to, you know, move on.
• 30:45
  Colin Russ: so from there I'd said jump back into, uh, consulting, was at PWC for five years, right back into the, industrial, um.
• 30:55
  Colin Russ: Industrial space, doing a lot of energy manufacturing, uh, SAP and systems, uh, work a lot then led into process type work.
• 31:04
  Colin Russ: Well, it, we have to fix these processes and how we actually work with SAP.
• 31:09
  Colin Russ: So how does that practically translate into factory floor actually
• 31:14
  Matthew Chang: So.
• 31:15
  Matthew Chang: Let again, uh, you know, earlier I asked you, I said, Cohen loves ERPs, and then you're like, no, no, that's too strong.
• 31:22
  Matthew Chang: And then we're, we're way down in the sa, the ERP rabbit hole.
• 31:26
  Matthew Chang: we're going on half an hour here, so let, let's just, let me, let's help the audience to mention a few things.
• 31:32
  Matthew Chang: Win a, just pick a kind of a large size industrial customer if they want to implement SAP.
• 31:40
  Matthew Chang: What's the, the rough cost of just the licensing from SAP, in other words, in order to have the software.
• 31:48
  Matthew Chang: Just the software.
• 31:48
  Matthew Chang: Nobody touches it yet.
• 31:50
  Matthew Chang: What does that cost?
• 31:51
  Colin Russ: I mean, a, a decent sized company is probably paying, you know, a couple million dollars.
• 31:56
  Colin Russ: probably, you know, I, I don't know what latest pricing is, but I can easily see'em spending, you know, five, 6 million, you know, for upfront licensing.
• 32:03
  Colin Russ: And then you're paying, what, 20%, something like that annually in maintenance.
• 32:08
  Colin Russ: And that's not even services, that's just pure licensing and maintenance.
• 32:12
  Matthew Chang: So to, so if a, if a big manufacturing company, of which you know, you and I know quite a few, they want to convert from, JD Edwards or Oracle or one of these other things.
• 32:22
  Matthew Chang: In four, they're going to SAP.
• 32:24
  Matthew Chang: It's five or 6 million up front, and then they'll be on the hook for about a a million, 1,000,005 a year, something like that,
• 32:31
  Colin Russ: Yep.
• 32:32
  Colin Russ: And that's,
• 32:32
  Matthew Chang: gets paid to sap.
• 32:34
  Colin Russ: yep.
• 32:34
  Matthew Chang: here's the, here's where I'm going with it.
• 32:36
  Matthew Chang: You've already said Capgemini gigantic consulting company.
• 32:39
  Matthew Chang: You said Pricewaterhouse Cooper is like absurdly large, who, who knows how many employees they have.
• 32:45
  Matthew Chang: What is the likely cost if you have to go touch every customer's site?
• 32:51
  Matthew Chang: When they have to bring in the consultant, when they have to bring in PWC or Capgemini, what does that contract value look like?
• 32:58
  Colin Russ: I mean, you're looking at, you know, 50 to a hundred million dollars multi-year engagements.
• 33:04
  Colin Russ: Um, I mean, these, these, they're, they're massive.
• 33:06
  Colin Russ: And, and that's part of the, the very issue.
• 33:10
  Colin Russ: I mean, these things are pe, they're, they're people who make partner with one of those, you know, big, big deals.
• 33:17
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 33:17
  Matthew Chang: So I was, um, yeah.
• 33:19
  Matthew Chang: So you're saying if you hook one of these large companies that does a switchover and you're the consultant, the, the sales leader, the account leader is probably gonna make partner.
• 33:27
  Matthew Chang: Um,
• 33:29
  Colin Russ: Oh yeah.
• 33:29
  Matthew Chang: so what, that's the thing that I don't think people really have an understanding for.
• 33:34
  Matthew Chang: Is we, we were building, this really ambitious food factory a couple years ago, and I was, I felt kind of bad about the amount of expense I was running up for the customer.
• 33:46
  Matthew Chang: We were flying to their site anywhere from two to four times a month.
• 33:50
  Matthew Chang: you know, they're the client, so when we have to do the onsite work, it for the most part needed to be at their place.
• 33:56
  Matthew Chang: Uh, they preferred to host, so we're flying in.
• 33:58
  Matthew Chang: I'm taking anywhere from two to eight engineers per flight.
• 34:03
  Matthew Chang: Um, you know, we're staying at the, the Hilton or whatever where they had a corporate rate, um, you know, two, three nights per trip.
• 34:12
  Matthew Chang: And of course we're eating out on the town.
• 34:14
  Matthew Chang: You know, the, the locals in the town loved us when we came in'cause we're eating out every night.
• 34:19
  Matthew Chang: So we're running up that expense.
• 34:20
  Matthew Chang: You know, we're, we're using the Delta Jets and we're, you know, we're staying at the Hilton and we're eating at all the local restaurants.
• 34:26
  Matthew Chang: And, you know, they start after a couple months, they know you by name.
• 34:30
  Matthew Chang: Chef sends out a, you know, free appetizer to the table.
• 34:35
  Matthew Chang: You live that life, it sounds like, for a number of years.
• 34:38
  Matthew Chang: What surprised me was one of your competitors, I think it was Accenture, got selected to do the ERP implementation, their quotation for the initiative of what our, our job was to build the first digital factory of the future.
• 34:54
  Matthew Chang: That the, um, the.
• 34:58
  Matthew Chang: Cost of the, contract for Accenture to install SAP in a company that already had SAP for the first digital factory was$35 million, and this was pre COVID supply, uh, you know, inflation shock for a single
• 35:17
  Colin Russ: And there's no change orders yet.
• 35:20
  Matthew Chang: Right, right there.
• 35:21
  Matthew Chang: There hasn't been any change to workflow.
• 35:23
  Matthew Chang: We thought, Hey, we're making it so much easier because this is like high-end robotics.
• 35:27
  Matthew Chang: I mean, this is like digital, like everything's talking already.
• 35:30
  Matthew Chang: No, no clipboards to replace.
• 35:34
  Matthew Chang: it blows my mind how when you're trying to build a factory, you have this huge chunk of cost.
• 35:39
  Matthew Chang: So SAP probably got paid a few million bucks for the licensing, but then the consulting company's charging tens of millions of dollars.
• 35:47
  Matthew Chang: For a single site.
• 35:50
  Matthew Chang: I just don't think people understand that's how it works.
• 35:52
  Colin Russ: It's, it, it is, and I mean, I get into it on one of the threads, but that's part of, you know, why these projects are so painful is when you're spending that much money.
• 36:04
  Colin Russ: People don't like to spend that much money and have things not go well or have surprises come up.
• 36:09
  Colin Russ: Like they don't want that number to keep growing and growing and growing
• 36:13
  Matthew Chang: So I forgot the metric.
• 36:14
  Matthew Chang: When we, when we were sending anywhere from two to eight people per trip and we're actually engineering factory, right?
• 36:20
  Matthew Chang: We're doing the actual design.
• 36:21
  Matthew Chang: there would be 17 Accenture MBAs.
• 36:25
  Matthew Chang: They all went to, you know, Michigan and you know, Penn State or whatever, 17 of'em with the skinny gray suits, you have the skinny gray suit.
• 36:33
  Matthew Chang: You still have that.
• 36:34
  Colin Russ: No, My, my outfit was, you know, a pair of like chinos, a button down, rolled up.
• 36:40
  Colin Russ: I.
• 36:40
  Matthew Chang: But you know what I'm talking about, right?
• 36:42
  Colin Russ: Oh yeah, the, the, the consulting uniform.
• 36:45
  Matthew Chang: consultant suit.
• 36:46
  Matthew Chang: And they would take up 17 seats and these guys did everything a level above us.
• 36:51
  Matthew Chang: They had to be on site four days a week.
• 36:54
  Matthew Chang: So they're flying Monday morning, find out Thursday night or Friday morning.
• 36:57
  Matthew Chang: That was their contract.
• 36:58
  Matthew Chang: So it wa we would leave if the work was done early, we'd go hop the early flight and get out of there, save a night on hotel.
• 37:05
  Matthew Chang: They had to stay.
• 37:06
  Matthew Chang: Hey, they're eating out every single night, yo.
• 37:09
  Matthew Chang: That's the contract.
• 37:10
  Matthew Chang: So, all right, let's get us up to current, um, next industries.
• 37:14
  Matthew Chang: What's going on?
• 37:15
  Colin Russ: you know, I, I've spent the last couple years, you know, former in-laws, uh, have a number of companies, uh, manufacturing companies.
• 37:23
  Colin Russ: So I was always pulled in there doing, you know, robots, machinery, kind of cool what's next for them.
• 37:29
  Colin Russ: and they've grown a ton, which is great.
• 37:30
  Colin Russ: But, you know, the last few years I've been con continuing that thread of how do I do something locally?
• 37:35
  Colin Russ: You know, how do I get.
• 37:36
  Colin Russ: You know, make my community better.
• 37:38
  Colin Russ: My savor complex had me decide that I was going to, uh, you know, solve the electricity issue, you know, about what, three, four years ago before it blew up to exactly what I said it was going to do and where we are
• 37:50
  Matthew Chang: Are you talking about electrical gear?
• 37:53
  Matthew Chang: What part of
• 37:53
  Colin Russ: so no actual, the electrical just.
• 37:56
  Colin Russ: Production, local production and distribution of it.
• 37:59
  Colin Russ: basically trying to flood the market locally to keep prices low because if you can keep power low, you know, it makes easier and more attractive for manufacturers to be located here,
• 38:10
  Matthew Chang: so, to get, get away from this huge centralized model of electrical production, create.
• 38:14
  Colin Russ: Try and d try and go distributed, you know, more onsite storage.
• 38:19
  Colin Russ: spent about two, two years doing that.
• 38:21
  Colin Russ: Lots of great pro, pro progress, excuse me.
• 38:24
  Colin Russ: and then, you know, markets changed.
• 38:27
  Colin Russ: Capital just basically disappeared overnight.
• 38:29
  Colin Russ: left a, a bad taste in my mouth.
• 38:32
  Colin Russ: Um, just.
• 38:34
  Colin Russ: Dealing with some of those bankers, um, and kind of landed that decision of, okay, I'm not gonna be able to save everybody, save the entire industry.
• 38:42
  Colin Russ: but I can, you know, try and do, you know, something I, I can try and build something.
• 38:47
  Colin Russ: and you know, after months looking at job shops to possibly buy and grow type of thing, realize that.
• 38:56
  Colin Russ: The sellers, most of the sellers out there right now, um, what they want for their company, unfortunately, it's just not realistic.
• 39:05
  Colin Russ: they built something amazing.
• 39:06
  Colin Russ: They've spent, you know, years waking up at 4:00 AM going to bed at midnight, building this thing.
• 39:12
  Colin Russ: But that unfortunately does not translate into a bigger check when you know you've got.
• 39:18
  Colin Russ: 15-year-old, your newest piece of equipment is 15 years old.
• 39:21
  Colin Russ: When you know you're clearing 15%, you know, SDE, it, it doesn't mean your company's worth four or five times what, what it actually is.
• 39:31
  Colin Russ: and where that landed was, hey.
• 39:33
  Colin Russ: You know, it isn't realistic to say, Hey, we're gonna build this from, what you've already started.
• 39:39
  Colin Russ: And unfortunately we've got one job shop, you know, one, one shop closing roughly every 34 hours.
• 39:45
  Colin Russ: that's what the stats say,
• 39:47
  Matthew Chang: In the country
• 39:48
  Colin Russ: in the country.
• 39:49
  Colin Russ: Yeah.
• 39:51
  Colin Russ: We've got, you know, four.
• 39:53
  Colin Russ: Workers available for every 10 openings.
• 39:55
  Colin Russ: Um, you know, it's just, it's not, it's not sustainable.
• 39:59
  Colin Russ: So that led me, to come up with this concept, next industries, uh, where the premise is, well, let's decouple, the work workforce constraint from actual production.
• 40:10
  Colin Russ: Let's try and build your lights out, end to end.
• 40:13
  Colin Russ: Uh, precision CNC, you know, operation.
• 40:16
  Colin Russ: So I've been pursuing the, the premise of
• 40:19
  Matthew Chang: back to those screws and fasteners.
• 40:22
  Matthew Chang: You started
• 40:22
  Colin Russ: Yep.
• 40:23
  Colin Russ: There's just something, there's something about that, that that's the smell of oil for, for anybody who's been in a shop, there's that smell of oil that is just oddly.
• 40:35
  Colin Russ: All the addictive.
• 40:35
  Colin Russ: It's not even the Go Joe hand cleaner that smells amazing, which I love and have a, a gallon of it under my sink in my kitchen.
• 40:42
  Colin Russ: But, you know, there's something about just being in a factory that's magical, is the best way I can describe it.
• 40:47
  Colin Russ: It's just cool to actually make things, and see things made.
• 40:50
  Colin Russ: So now the goal is trying to build, you know, fully autonomous end-to-end factory, uh, from materials coming in one side to finished goods going out the other.
• 41:00
  Colin Russ: and you know, my, my focus now is on, alright, let's, let's make it happen.
• 41:04
  Colin Russ: So, uh, hopefully be working with, you know, much smarter people like you to, you know, validate and get all the robotics stuff flushed out.
• 41:12
  Colin Russ: But
• 41:13
  Matthew Chang: Let's do
• 41:13
  Colin Russ: I, you know, I, I'm one of those people that is of the opinion that yes, the, these things are difficult.
• 41:20
  Colin Russ: You know, if it were easy, sure, you know, in theory more people would do it.
• 41:25
  Colin Russ: But hard things are important.
• 41:28
  Colin Russ: This is one of those hard things that I think is very important because if we can successfully, you know, deploy a true autonomous, uh, you know, lights out factory and then continue to scale and, you know, deploy elsewhere, that's great for me, you know, selfishly.
• 41:45
  Colin Russ: But for America, that means the ability to make goods locally more affordably and create more jobs, have, you know, greater
• 41:53
  Matthew Chang: and every community.
• 41:54
  Matthew Chang: gets one, right.
• 41:57
  Colin Russ: I mean, you, you play the local supply chain game.
• 42:00
  Colin Russ: You know, if I can get you a piece same day next day because of the speed of production and quality, that's, you know, game changer.
• 42:08
  Colin Russ: It turns into, hey, two days is
• 42:10
  Matthew Chang: the load between two facilities.
• 42:12
  Matthew Chang: If you have this massive one-off order, it's just gotta
• 42:15
  Colin Russ: You get into load balancing.
• 42:17
  Matthew Chang: All right.
• 42:17
  Matthew Chang: Well I appreciate you doing that.
• 42:18
  Matthew Chang: We have two questions to kind of close this out.
• 42:21
  Matthew Chang: Uh, first, um.
• 42:23
  Matthew Chang: What was, what's your favorite ai?
• 42:25
  Matthew Chang: What's the last thing that you searched on?
• 42:27
  Matthew Chang: Ai.
• 42:29
  Colin Russ: So favorite Claude tends to be my go-to for kind of more in-depth.
• 42:36
  Colin Russ: Um, well, that's not true.
• 42:38
  Colin Russ: Tends to be my go-to if I'm using Excel, um, grok, if I'm asking, you know, just.
• 42:43
  Colin Russ: Questions about, all right, what's the real story here, type of thing.
• 42:47
  Colin Russ: Gemini, if I'm making pictures, uh, making something for a meme.
• 42:51
  Colin Russ: the last thing that I asked was asking Grock how I convert a local account on a new laptop.
• 42:59
  Colin Russ: I'm setting up to a domain connected account without having to set up a new, uh, new user and duplicate everything I'd already done.
• 43:07
  Colin Russ: So it'd been a
• 43:08
  Matthew Chang: Oh my gosh.
• 43:09
  Matthew Chang: That's the YouTube question.
• 43:12
  Matthew Chang: Right.
• 43:12
  Matthew Chang: I think when I, when you asked me that, I told you something about my kid was using me as the AI and needed to know something.
• 43:19
  Matthew Chang: Your use cases.
• 43:20
  Matthew Chang: That's what we, US dads used to go to YouTube for, was to go figure out how to fix things.
• 43:25
  Colin Russ: Yep.
• 43:26
  Colin Russ: I, I'm sure.
• 43:27
  Colin Russ: I ha I like, I've, I've asked it before.
• 43:28
  Colin Russ: I'm sure I've had to, you know, I have the YouTube clip probably saved someplace, but just easier to go pull up the phone and, all right, what heck am I doing?
• 43:36
  Colin Russ: I.
• 43:36
  Matthew Chang: All right.
• 43:37
  Matthew Chang: Final spot.
• 43:38
  Matthew Chang: Just the number one comment we've gotten so far on the podcast on Reforge here is tell us about that American flag behind you.
• 43:47
  Matthew Chang: How big is it where to come from?
• 43:49
  Matthew Chang: Is it a background?
• 43:49
  Matthew Chang: Is it real?
• 43:51
  Colin Russ: I, I need to actually, uh, measure it.
• 43:54
  Colin Russ: I, it's about, I think it's about five by eight, um, maybe a little over five and a half feet tall.
• 44:00
  Colin Russ: I got it from, my grandfather.
• 44:02
  Colin Russ: He was a, uh, lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, retired Lieutenant colonel who actually.
• 44:07
  Colin Russ: Sidebar implemented one of the, uh, first information systems at the Pentagon.
• 44:12
  Colin Russ: So I guess to some extent ended up in my.
• 44:14
  Colin Russ: My blood that I landed in, uh, SAP.
• 44:16
  Colin Russ: Um, but it was flying over a base, uh, he was stationed at in New Mexico, um, that he, I don't actually know the reason why he ended up with it, but it was one of a, couple American flags that, uh, he had, at the end of his career.
• 44:32
  Colin Russ: and it was one of the, the things I got, I've loved it since I got my hands on it.
• 44:38
  Colin Russ: And so it naturally has to be very prominently displayed in my, uh, my house.
• 44:42
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 44:43
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 44:43
  Matthew Chang: Well, there's this thing online where the bigger the flag, the more you're winning.
• 44:47
  Matthew Chang: And I think right now you just won the
• 44:49
  Colin Russ: Flag maxing you, you have to
• 44:51
  Matthew Chang: So, and, and it's a real flag.
• 44:53
  Colin Russ: Yes.
• 44:53
  Colin Russ: Yeah.
• 44:53
  Colin Russ: It is 100% cotton.
• 44:56
  Matthew Chang: Well, where's Kai Rhodes?
• 44:57
  Matthew Chang: We gotta get here on here to talk about that.
• 45:00
  Matthew Chang: So, all right.
• 45:02
  Matthew Chang: We'll call on.
• 45:03
  Matthew Chang: This has been amazing.
• 45:04
  Matthew Chang: Um, let the audience know how they can find, oh, by the way, before we pl, uh, let you plug.
• 45:09
  Matthew Chang: I will, I will be honest and tell you I've been converted.
• 45:11
  Matthew Chang: You are not the MacGyver of manufacturing.
• 45:14
  Matthew Chang: You are a Renaissance fan of manufacturing.
• 45:16
  Matthew Chang: Um, you've converted me on this call, but, go ahead and, and, uh, let the audience know where they can find you and anything you want their attention to be on.
• 45:24
  Colin Russ: Absolutely.
• 45:25
  Colin Russ: Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 45:28
  Colin Russ: Colin Russ.
• 45:28
  Colin Russ: Um, more actively though on x uh, at that Colin.
• 45:34
  Colin Russ: Um, I am actually on there and, um, probably more than I should be, but you can find me there, or, uh, twice a week here on the Reforge podcast.
• 45:44
  Matthew Chang: Right, and grab us on all the socials at the Reforge Pod, the Reforge Pod, and of course, check out our new website, the reforge podcast.com.
• 45:53
  Matthew Chang: Cool.
• 45:54
  Matthew Chang: Thanks Colin.
• 45:55
  Colin Russ: Thanks, Matt.
• 46:00
  Thanks for tuning in to the Reforge Podcast.
• 46:03
  Make sure to like, subscribe and follow us on all of our social media at the Reforge Pod.
• 46:08
  We'll see you next time.