Podcasts about RFQ

Dan Salganik, Founder and CEO of VisualFizz, helps established B2B companies plug all the holes in your marketing through integrated, outcome-focused strategies. Driven by a desire for freedom, travel, and creative expression, Dan built a fully remote agency that allows him to explore the world while helping clients create distinctive campaigns, strengthen their marketing capabilities, and generate long-term customer value. In this conversation, Dan introduces The Growth System 4 Tracks Framework—Brand & Digital Foundations, Staff Augmentation, Transformation, Transition & Expansion, and RevOps Growth Inflection. He explains how companies can select and combine these tracks to strengthen their foundations, expand internal capabilities, support acquisitions and geographic growth, and align marketing with sales. Dan also discusses growing through quality rather than speed, building larger client relationships through trust, and shifting VisualFizz from commoditized services toward solutions focused on business outcomes. He shares how identifying small gaps across the customer journey can improve efficiency, strengthen retention, and create sustainable revenue growth. — Plug All the Holes in Your Marketing with Dan Salganik  Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here with The Management Blueprint, and my guest today is Dan Salganik, the Founder and CEO of VisualFizz, a company that empowers industry-leading brands to maximize their potential with effective marketing strategies and custom-tailored campaigns. Dan, welcome to the show.  Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. I really appreciate it.  It’s great to have you, and I’d like to learn about your personal ‘Why’ and how you’re manifesting it in VisualFizz.  Wow, that’s a big question to start with. I’ll start with my kind of goal for a little bit of freedom, which is funny because the more you grow, the less freedom you have. But for many years, I started VisualFizz because of a need to travel and to have freedom to do what I want. I’m a very expressive person, and after working at a number of agencies and finding things they do wrong, and also being a big traveler, I actually decided to launch VisualFizz almost 10 years ago, which is crazy to me.  And ultimately, we’ve seen this company grow quite a bit in that time. But I built it out to have the ability to travel, to do the things I want, to build a team, to build also campaigns that are fun and they’re unique and build customer value. So you started with a great question, and there’s so many reasons why—my kind of personal philosophies and why I manage and run and grow VisualFizz—but I think travel, freedom, and the ability to see creative campaigns at scale are just a few of them.  So I saw on your website that one of your goals is to travel at least 100 days a year. So is this business travel? Is this personal? Is this a combination?  I’d say almost no business travel counts, right? Because then you’re just doing business. I love business, but that’s totally separate. It’s personal travel. Basically, every single year, yeah, for almost 10 years, I have spent about a little less than a third of the year traveling, and some years a lot more. And so, being a remote company—and pre-COVID we were remote—we’ve built this style and methodology and processes, everything around being a fully remote company or an organization. And so, yeah, I do 30-day trips. I do two-week trips. I do two-, three-month trips.  But for me, it's always very important that work doesn't slow down. But you're going to regret working your whole life.Share on X I like the phrase, “You don’t die with your money.” It doesn’t come with you, but what you do have is experiences that you can remember and memories and everything—photos and things like that. And you’re not going to want to cherish your photo when you’re at a nursing home of you working in front of a computer. It’s going to be you with friends and family, enjoying the world and eating well and drinking well and seeing sights and exploring history and things like that.  Yeah. My dad, he was a doctor. He worked very hard all his life, and he always told us when we were kids that he was going to retire at 60 and travel around the world with my mom. And then when he was 60 years old, he had this opportunity to run this hospital, and one thing led to another, and he turned 70, and then he no longer wanted to travel.  And he literally said, “Oh, I wish we traveled more while we were young because now I don’t want to travel.” So that kind of resonates with me, what you say. It’s great that you have this awareness and you make it happen. So when you travel, do you run your business remotely?  100%. My business runs with my laptop, and if I’m lucky, I have a second monitor with me. Actually, nowadays I travel with a second monitor even on a flight, if I have to take a flight.But I have a second monitor with me. I have my laptop. My business comes with me. That’s number one.  So I might switch my hours a little bit. I might change things around, but I’ve got a great team. I delegate. It’s interesting because in the early days, it was hard to travel because we didn’t have a lot of clients, so we didn’t have a lot of money. Still don’t have a lot of money, but we didn’t have nearly as much when I started the company. Nowadays, we’re a growing business, and it’s great. So finally—it’s the whole dilemma. It’s like we’re finally growing. We’ve got a real business. I can pay myself a real wage.  But you can’t leave the business for too long because then you have other issues. But it’s a good balance between the two, and I always do bring my laptop no matter where I go. You never know what happens. But if I’m truly taking time off, which is very, very hard, I give my wife my cellphone. I either don’t take my laptop or I put my laptop away in the safe, and I don’t touch technology. Because honestly, it’s very easy to get distracted.  It is super easy to get distracted. So let’s talk about frameworks because this is what the podcast is about. So tell me a framework that you have developed or you picked up somewhere that allows you to do something better than other people, whether it’s more effective, whether it’s bigger impact, whether it’s more organized, whether it’s generating an insight that can be explained in three to five steps.  I love that. Actually, this is really great timing because we just built a brand-new framework, and I just soft-launched it to the world. We had a big event last week, and it’s called the Growth System. And it’s for our soft launch called VF3, VisualFizz 3.0. We’ve scaled up. This is kind of our software reboot. There's four tracks. It's a track system, so it's similar to a framework, and they're driven by the following.Share on X Let me actually backtrack a little bit.  It’s developed for mid-market and enterprise B2B companies, especially companies that have been around for a long time, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, but have something that’s broken or maybe needs improvement, et cetera. And so they come to us, and instead of saying, “Oh, I think you need SEO. I think you need paid search,” it’s solutions-focused, not services. The services come after. And there’s four tracks that are built off of. Each track can take three months, six months, 12 months, two years, et cetera. It just depends on the business.  The first one being the brand and the digital foundation. Many of my clients come from boring industries, my favorite. They need to rebuild. They came in understanding there’s private equity money, there’s new competition coming up, this, that, and the other. It’s a new brand, rebrand, or brand infrastructure, and then web infrastructure, all focused on sales. So everything here is focused on RevOps, sales, et cetera.  The second one, track, is staff augmentation, capability accelerator. It’s helping brands that are really great at something and really not great at another thing, or have a very expensive team internally where they feel that they can outsource to an agency for a large discounted price, for lack of a better word to put it. An example is we took over the tech arm of one of our clients, saved them about 50% in their budget, doubled their capacity, have a full team, 100% uptime, things like that.  The third, the one that I'm probably most excited about, is transformation, transition, and expansion which is all about mergers and acquisitions, national expansion, franchising, scaling locations, things of that natureShare on X and how to ensure that those are done accordingly, kind of symbiotically, consolidated properly. And the way I put it is, you’re spending $50 million or whatever you’re spending to buy a company, spend half a percent or a percent of that purchase value on the marketing, on the consolidation of brands, on sales materials, HR communication, kind of that side as it pertains to marketing.  And the final one is RevOps, growth inflection. We come in, we look through the CRM, we work with the sales teams, we audit the sales teams, we do interviews with the sales teams, and we make sure that marketing and sales are not oil and water. We combine them, we develop everything, we focus on lifetime customer value, post-sales transactions, and really driven towards long-term growth and revenue, basically generation. So a little bit longer than the few sentences you asked me for, so I apologize. But this is the future framework that VisualFizz will be built upon and scale upon for the future.Share on X Like, we’re just launching this as we speak. My website’s in progress right now.  Yeah. I love it. So the big picture is that you fix the foundations, then you give them people who can actually execute, then you transition. Does the transition mean that from staff augmentation, you transition to their own team? Or what does—  No, not necessarily. They don’t have to go one after the other, and that’s something I’m trying to work around communication-wise. You might start with brand infrastructure and go straight into demand gen, RevOps. Because we need to scale now. Or you might say, “Hey, VisualFizz, why don’t you just take over our SEO department fully?” Or it’s a little bit of both.  I’ve talked to a lot of mid-market and larger, a couple quite large billion-dollar-plus companies that said, “You know what? I don’t need a new website, but I really need to understand how we focus on communication with our sales teams,” or, “We do need visual improvements for our brand. We don’t need the new website.” So you can pick and choose a little bit. My goal is to not have to do that, but there’s not a linear step that you have to take between one, two, three, and four. It’s really, “Hey, we need to scale. I do $500 million today.  I want to buy three locations across the United States. This is what I’m looking at. My goal in five years is $750 million. How do I get there, VisualFizz?” And we lay out year one, two, three, four, and five, what we do, and how we plan to scale alongside the company.  Love it. So you basically productized your offering to these four major situations, and they can be implemented piecemeal. You can start anywhere, and you can keep stacking them. That’s super interesting. So let me switch gears here and ask you, what drives growth in your business, in VisualFizz?  For a lot of time, it was the very generic hustle and bustle of just trying to do good. Be a—how do I put it? Being there. Being the fastest to answer the phone, being the fastest to email back, getting the best proposals, because that’s what you do as a small agency. But as you grow, you don’t win on speed, you win on quality. It’s different. As a startup or as a startup who’s interested in an agency, you go fast, fast, fast. But I actually tell clients, “I’m not interested in speed.” That’s why these tracks that I told you, they take a year, two years, three years.  So now the growth is really driven around my clients’ peace of mind and my prospective clients’ peace of mind, knowing that they’re working with a decade-old agency, with team members who’ve predominantly been on our team for five years or more. Almost everybody is senior on my team. What drives growth is not so much quantity, never really has been, but it’s quality. And so my intent is not to win more customers. It’s to win bigger and better customers that are going to allow us for longevity, growth, and longer sales cycles internally. That’s really what drives growth today, is less stress and better clients.  So what does it take to land those larger, better clients?  A lot of work. I think there’s a couple. One is trust. Some clients will start small, and that’s where this whole model came from. I had a lot of clients come to me and say, “Hey, Dan, I need a new website.” And I’m like, “Okay, great, but your brand doesn’t look good.” I respect the brand, and I’m not somebody to say, “Oh, you need to do a $100,000 rebrand,” because some companies really don’t need that. But I say, “Let’s look from the inside out.” And before you go, “Hey, I need a new website,” or, “Oh, I need demand gen. I need paid search ASAP,” I go, “Wait a second. Hold up.  I’m not going to spend $50,000, $100,000 on sending traffic to your website when your brand and website can’t accommodate that.” And so we start small with execution around a brand implementation. That moves into web development. That can take some time. We’re not an AI cloud web builder. Like, it’s just not going to happen. We build proper sites for proper companies. And then moving forward after that, it becomes a marketing campaign. That lasts for years.  So for me, it's really driven around that methodology to work with clients and keep growing them and scaling them.Share on X And as such, we grow because we offer more services, but it’s in lieu of hiring full-time people on their end. And so I have an example with a client where they have no marketing department, not even a director, and they’ve actually had VisualFizz become the entire marketing department, agency of record. But beyond that, just—we are the marketing department. And we probably come at a third of the cost or half the cost of what a true marketing department would cost. So it’s a win-win for both parts.  So are you going to land large clients, or are you landing small clients that you grow into large clients? So how do you actually execute the strategy?  It’s both. Over the years, we’ve really pushed to be B2B-focused, and in doing so, our client size revenue—not for us revenue, but their revenue—has been larger. So maybe back in the day we would land $10, $20 million companies. Now it might be $500 million companies. But the engagement was the same. Same size. And so now it might be the same difference where we land a $300 million company, but we can start small, but there’s more room to scale up over time, kind of what I told you earlier, as we build trust. So it might just be a small engagement.  Like I said, “Hey, let’s just do a brand exercise.” And then it moves into, “Oh wow, you guys actually provided value. The ROI was there. Let’s move into something else.” I’d say our close rate is lower, unfortunately, but our average statement of work or proposal is higher. And so again, it’s quality over quantity. I may lose nine out of 10 because I’m competing against larger companies that do technically have more to offer. But there’s those clients that say, “You know what? I really like the small boutique agency.  I don’t want to go with the 100-person shop. I want to go with the 20-, 25-person shop. I’m going to be a big fish in a small pond versus a mid- to small fish in a big pond. I’m going to go with them.” And so those are the customers that I do win right now, the ones that understand they're going to be my big fish. They're really going to be well taken care of.Share on X And then again, the trust and everything else comes with it later.  Yeah. So what’s one thing that you’re trying to figure out in your business right now?  My pivot. That’s a really tough one. My business has changed a lot in the past year. From a leadership perspective, I’ve become the sole owner of the company, which I wasn’t before. It was a good decision for everyone. I think everyone left happy. And beyond that, it’s really now, how do I build VisualFizz up? One of my biggest challenges that I face, and I think a lot of agencies face, especially when they don’t internalize their problems, is we’ve become very commoditized.  All of our offerings that we have get compared to AI, as well as there’s a lot of offshore agencies that their biggest barrier to entry was their language. And now with AI, that’s no longer a problem because we can all do our work fluently. Smart people, but being a U.S. agency, that was our advantage. We charge what we charge because we’re U.S., and the barrier to entry was high. But now there’s all these other folks, as well as AI, as well as software, as well as everything else.  And so I realized that we can’t rest on the laurels of being a 10-year-old agency. That doesn’t matter to people. What matters is results. And so my biggest challenge right now is, how do I pivot my company from being this commoditized service? Even if they’re good, even if you’re the best, it doesn’t matter because it’s a commodity. You could have the best concrete in the city, but if you get an RFQ and the other guys are five cents cheaper, they’re going to go with them a lot of times. Not always, but a lot of times.  And so my intention is what I said earlier: focus on the solutions and focus on the outcomes within our system that I’m building, because I think customers are going to care more to hear, “Hey, I’m not Dan who offers SEO services for you forever. I’m Dan and VisualFizz who take your company from $75 million to $100 million in the next year.” Like, that’s what I think drives their interest. But my challenge is, how do I prove that model out? Because it’s not a standard model that people know yet. It’s not been drilled down like the agency model has been for so many years. It’s new.  And do you feel like you can control the client’s business? You’re so good that you can control their growth, you can make them grow?  No. I would be overzealous and confident to say that I can do that. But the thing I can do is I could help work alongside them to do our best to get there, right? And I’ll give you a couple examples because, I mean, it’s all in the case studies. I took one company with my team from $150 million to $350 million with them, with them, to then have a merger of equals, and now they’re probably worth half a billion, $600 million, something like that.  And then another company, at a certain time during the—I’m going to kind of keep it vague—from $700 million to $800 million to $900 million. But that wasn’t VisualFizz. That was the economy. But it’s about finding opportunities and holes within your client ecosystem that help. So, for example, I saw a hole in what they were currently doing. Their brand was totally off, so we worked on that first. But after that, you could have a pretty website, it might return, but what happened after that is I found a hole saying, “There is so much demand for this product right now.  There’s a big gorilla in the room, a massive, massive company, and there’s you guys, maybe third, fourth, fifth, whatever. But no one’s running paid ads, for example, because it’s a commodity. And why would you run paid ads for commodities?” We did that, and the return on ad spend and return on investment on that has been exponential. Just to get us on the top of that list, it’s an obvious statement, but that coupled with a good-quality website, all the sales materials, trackability, CRM improvements, da da da da da, the list goes on.  I can’t control if the economy goes poorly, if another war breaks out. I’m a nobody. But what I can do with my team is identify little holes that eventually do integrate sales teams better, save time, save money.Share on X Well, that too. Saving time of the sales teams means they could contact more people. And then when they win a sale, that’s it, right? Sales team got their commission. What I like to think about is, okay, well, what happens after we close that deal? Most agencies stop at conversion. My intent is, I have a document I’ve made.  It’s 25 points. We stop at point 20. Sales team takes over from 20 to 24, and we start again at 25 with that same client we already won. So we could take them from whatever they were, $500,000 to $2 million for our customer. So, okay, that was a very long tangent, but gives you an idea of what I think I can control. But no, I can’t control company revenue. I don’t have that much power.  Yeah. No, the only reason I ask this is because if you’re selling an outcome-based approach, then they will ask you, “Okay, show me the outcome that you’re going to deliver for us.” And it is really hard to deliver that and to control that, or it’s impossible even. However, I really like this concept of plugging all the little holes in the bucket, right?  There’s a lot. Yeah. If you plug that, then they’re not going to lose their customers, and they’re going to grow naturally without even having to add on the top. So if you had a magic wand then and you could fix one thing in your business in the next 12 months, what would that be? Agencies are such hard businesses, as you probably know, right? I would probably ideally like to fix the sales pipeline, which is obvious. Anybody would. But I’m only one person. It’s a small team, and I do manage. I’m a pretty active founder and owner and a CEO. And candidly, I’m not an outbound salesperson. I’m good at understanding people’s needs and the marketing world, but I’m not out there speaking at events every day. I’m not out there kissing babies and waving around and winning clients.  There are people who are really good at that, loud people who have a great social presence, like the Gary Vees of the world and the Neil Patels. They’re great at this thing. I’m okay. But what I am good at, and what my team is good at, is being knowledgeable about our clients’ needs and how to, again, figure out those challenges, plug the holes, and be useful. We’re not like a vanity agency. We don’t sell pretty little things. So sometimes it’s hard to say that we’re the agency for them when they don’t have the pretty little thing. So for me, what I would wave my wand around and say is, if I could have a really strong sales team member who works beside me, and again, I could hire somebody.  I know this. But I haven’t seen the best success with outside salespeople helping, like SDRs, et cetera, because no one sells the agency work like the agency owner until you get to a certain size, until you get to 100 people or whatever, and you deal with different challenges. So having somebody who understands the business and can find the leads when we need them, because I know that once we get them in the door, it’s pretty—it’s not crazy complicated to win that work.  But getting them at the right time to understand what we’re offering and, let’s say, speed up the sales process, which right now is very slow for most agencies. I’ve talked to a lot of owners. It’s a very slow sales cycle. That would be what I’d do, at least for now.  So who’s an ideal client? I mean, you mentioned that there are some small ones that you grow. You mentioned that you used to maybe shoot for $10 million to $50 million. Now it’s $300 million to $500 million. So what’s an ideal client that would find VisualFizz to be in their sweet spot?  The thing with revenue in my industry is it doesn’t matter. If you work with e-commerce or CPGs, it could be a $30 million company with a larger budget than my billion-dollar client. That’s just the nature of it. So the revenue doesn’t matter as much. But I do think half a billion to a billion dollars is a sweet spot. A known company, but one that needs a lot of background work. And so for me, a lot of my clients are in manufacturing, industrial, construction, and logistics, among other similar complementary spaces.  Most of them are 20 to 100 years old, and most of them do not have a fully fleshed-out marketing team. And so I do have a client right now that is my ideal client, and I would love to have 10 of them. They’re a client that doesn’t have a marketing department. They’ve kind of let us become the marketing department. They’re open to our ideas, and they’ve allowed us to really take on the role of the marketing team. And so they have many locations across the country.  They’re in the industrial space. They’re growing. They’re open to our ideas, and they want us to be kind of the people that do the work for them. Everything else comes as it does, right? But the attitude that comes with a good client, that’s my ideal customer profile. But for more of a vanilla answer, I would say half a billion to a billion dollars, looking for growth, boring industries, commodities, service businesses, B2B space, many locations, wants to grow, healthy budget.  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a big difference maker. If you can find someone that trusts you, I always found that it’s so much easier to deliver value to a customer that trusts you than one that second-guesses you, right? So it becomes a win-win if they can trust you.  Yes. And I’ll be honest, the quality of my team’s work, even if it’s not directly shown, because we are a business and we do the work for our clients no matter what. But I’ll tell you just upfront that when my clients respect my team members—because I’ve had people that aren’t very respectful. I’ve had clients who are not nice. A lot of them are great, some of them aren’t. They’re not respectful to my team, and though my team has to do the work no matter what, if the client’s really bad, I talk to them and I tell them, “This is not allowed.”  It’s my team over my client every day. But if they’re just not polite or they second-guess all the time, the team isn’t going to care as much about the project and do as good of work and really go out of their way. They’ll do the work. They’ll check the boxes. They’ll do what they have to do, but they’re not going to think at 10:00 P.M., middle of the night, “Oh my God, what about this idea for this client?” And I’ll tell you, the clients that my teams love, not because they’re nice and they’re pleasant, it’s because they respect one another. They will always go out of their way and come up with new, better ideas because it’s happening top of mind all the time.  And the other ones, they’re trying—and it’s anybody—they’re flushing it out of their system until the next time they’re needed. I don’t want to make it sound like we don’t care about our clients, but at the end of the day, it’s the same thing. You have bad relationships and you have good relationships. You’re going to call your friend who’s nice and wants to hang out with you versus the guy that pushed you on the street. Just makes sense.  Plus, you’re in a creative business, and sometimes you have to take a risk in order to create something really nice. And if they don’t trust you, then you’re not going to take a risk for them. Absolutely.  Exactly.  So that’s fascinating. So if I’m the CEO or CMO of this half-a-billion-dollar industrial company with 20 sites, and we don’t have a marketing team and we really have to get going, where can I find out about you and how can I connect with you?  Well, shoot me an email. I’ll give the easy one. It’s hello@visualfizz.com. Shoot me a LinkedIn request. I mean, any way to get to me is great. I will always take a call, a strategy call. I’m not a pushy sales guy who says you have to sign up right away. If somebody has ideas and just wants to run them by me and say, “Dan, listen, I may need you, I may not, but you’ve got 30 minutes, you’ve got an hour,” I, as much as I can make the time, try to make the time for anyone.  In fact, I was talking to the sales and marketing person at a company for two years. She never ended up even working with us because of budget constraints. I still have an excellent relationship with her. She’s very nice. We would talk probably once a month. So I’m big on just when the timing is right, it will work out. So I’m happy to help.  All right. So if you are one of these companies—industrial, maybe old economy, multi-sites, maybe in the Midwest, who knows where these companies are—a couple hundred million dollars to a billion dollars, and you want a really great marketing team and maybe someone who will fix your digital foundations and build your website, or give you staff, or help you transform, transition, and expand, and build your RevOps and marketing and integrate everything, then reach out to Dan, Dan Salganik, the founder of VisualFizz, and he will take care of you.  And if you enjoyed listening to this show, make sure you follow us on YouTube, give us a review, because every two weeks—sorry, every week—I bring you a couple of exciting entrepreneurs who are building great businesses and share their unique framework with you. So Dan, thank you for coming. Thanks for listening.  Yes. Thanks for having me. I so appreciate it. Important Links: Dan's LinkedIn Dan's website Dan's email: hello@visualfizz.com

Kool Krypto is an anonymous DeFi investor and fund manager who's been in crypto since 2010.In this episode, he shares his remarkable journey at just 13 mining Bitcoin, to discovering DeFi through ETHLend, and later landing a fund seeded by a prominent New York family office after a fateful poker game. We get a crash course on onchain options from someone trading millions on Derive, as he shares his very public trade setups for BTC and ETH, including the what went into his latest $3.5M Bitcoin call spread and his viral ETH call spread for March 2027 being copy-traded on Derive.One of our best guests, and longest interviews ever. Meet an investor who's self-taught, and provides insights on his real trades, real positions, and real edge.------

Episode 267: API Heat Transfer was responding to requests for quotation when, according to research in one of its priority segments, buyers had already decided who they trusted. The manufacturer of heat exchangers had strong products and deep engineering expertise. It understood much less about how customers chose a supplier for a particular order. It would have been easy to miss the gap in understanding. API's revenue grew with healthy margins. Some customers had been buying for decades. But familiarity didn't necessarily give customers enough reason to defend API when a competitor offered a lower price or faster delivery. Daniel Herrmann, API's Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy, joins Rob Markey to explore how the company is changing its approach. Historically, a customer provided a specification, API built and shipped the product, and the relationship largely paused until the next order or service problem. Their research revealed how much happened while API wasn't in the conversation.  "We realized we were leaving value on the table," by not maintaining the relationship after the sale, but before another RFQ had been requested, Daniel explains. "More importantly, we were not there for our customers when [it] mattered." Getting involved earlier required more than scheduling meetings. Account managers agreed that talking with customers was a good idea. But without an order or technical question to discuss, they weren't sure how to make those conversations useful. API introduced regular reviews with larger customers. They developed a global sales development program to help the API team discuss customers' priorities, alternatives, and business plans. As Daniel puts it, "Investing in the relationship is selling." API also began broadening whose feedback it sought. Procurement's satisfaction with a shipment could reveal little about the maintenance team's experience after a year of operating the equipment. A new relationship survey reaches across decision makers to help API understand what transaction scores alone could miss. Daniel shares with Rob that his focus now is creating what he calls a "central nervous system" for understanding customers and turning stronger relationships into a repeatable way of doing business.  The work is still underway. Rob and Daniel examine the test ahead: whether these changes will lead customers to buy more, give API a greater share of their spending, and generate more profitable business. Guest: Daniel Herrmann, Vice President, Corporate Development & Strategy, API Heat Transfer Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company Give us feedback: Customer Confidential Podcast Feedback Send us a note: Contact Rob Timestamped Topics 02:01 – The "invisible infrastructure" behind data centers, power systems, and everyday life 09:19 – API's traditional product-first, transaction-focused model 11:00 – The difference between genuine loyalty and customer inertia 13:33 – Why some customers were leaving  21:38 – How aftermarket service can strengthen loyalty and customer lifetime value 26:16 – Building customer relationships when there is no order on the table 27:18 – Why "investing in the relationship is selling" 30:03 – Moving beyond transactional NPS to measure overall relationship health Notable Quotes 11:00: "We weren't asking whether this growth was based on inertia or genuine loyalty. And by inertia, I mean the way we had always done things and customers always engaging in a certain way. We never dug into that because everything felt good." 13:50: "We had a very consistent finding that the real purchase decision happens before the RFQ, and we were in this RFQ stage. And we didn't really understand the buying stages because we never had to previously. But when the purchase decision happens, we're not actually in the room, and so vendor selection is effectively determined before any procurement process begins." 22:02: "And there's a real parallel to API's business. Historically, we were not holding these service contracts, and we were not maintaining continuity. So every time a customer needed something after our initial sale, we were starting from scratch. And that really limits how much loyalty you can build, and it limits your share of lifetime value that the customer represents." 27:18: "Investing in the relationship is selling. That's part of the process, and that's how you evolve out of a transactional mindset. It's: you're not an order taker, you're a partner, you're a consultative partner." 37:12: "Frankly, what drew me to API was this gap that I recognized immediately where we have 150 years of history, over 120 engineers, more than a million installations, and one of the most comprehensive portfolios. But we hadn't really built the centralized commercial infrastructure to match that, and, you know, I always look at that as a central nervous system to understanding your customers."

We keep talking about China speed as if it were a new discovery. Early supplier involvement is presented as a fresh idea. Consultants are back in the building with slick decks about taking time out of the process, and the industry is nodding along as if none of us have seen this before. Jan has seen it before, so she went digging in her basement and came back with proof.A facilitator's guide from Allied Signal, dated 1993. Total Quality through Speed. One page asks the exact question the industry is asking again right now: What's the cause for the pause? Simplify, eliminate, integrate. Alongside the binder, two letters from Bill Wilcock, then president of Allied Signal Braking Systems, congratulated Jan's team for reducing the time to get an aftermarket lining assembly for the 1994 Acura Integra from months to 9 days on the shelf. They did it by mapping the process, stripping out approval levels, and bringing the suppliers in. The second letter admits the team wasn't even officially chartered. They just went and did it, and then the tools went back in the basement.In this solo episode, Jan makes the case that the barrier was never the methodology. It was leadership and culture. Speed was a value at Allied Signal under Larry Bossidy, something you were measured on, and somewhere along the way, it became a program with a binder instead of a way of operating. The one thing that has changed since 1993 is that we now question whether an approval level should exist at all, and that question carries a price. Fewer approvals mean people have to be trusted to decide. Plenty of leaders talk about that. Far fewer are ready for it.Jan also hands you the starting point. One process. Map it, find the whitespace, take out 50 percent, then do it again. China didn't invent speed. They just refused to let the approval chain eat it.Themes Discussed in this EpisodeWhy China speed is not a new ideaTotal Quality through Speed and the cause for the pauseNine days: what speed looked like in 1993Concurrent engineering and early supplier involvement since the 80sWhy the tools stalled, and the culture killed themEmpowerment as the real price of speedWhere to start: one process, one value streamLeading with conviction instead of complianceThis episode is sponsored by Lockton, click here to learn more

This episode is presented by ProphetX. Our guest is ProphetX co-founder Jake Benzaquen — we address the relationship directly at the top of the episode. Jake Benzaquen co-founded ProphetX eight years ago, long before "prediction market" was a phrase anyone outside finance used. In June, ProphetX became the first sports-native platform to win CFTC approval as a regulated exchange — and this conversation covers everything that came with it: the sweepstakes years, the $35 million raise, what's shipping on the product side this football season, and the affiliated market making debate that's dividing the entire industry. Rob also presses Jake on the questions that don't have easy answers — the investor overlap on ProphetX's own platform, the 18-vs-21 age gap between prediction markets and sportsbooks, and what happens if the Supreme Court rules against CFTC jurisdiction entirely.

GP and SP start the episode off by listing 6 things they are focusing on for NFL this year on prediction markets. Then they get to the news - which includes Kalshi putting RFQ maker fees on and ETR & Rufus taking some public projections/ models private for use on prediction markets.0:00 Keys to NFL on PMs22:30 News47:00 ETR & Rufus go Private1:08:45Welcome to The Risk Takers Podcast, hosted by professional sports bettor John Shilling (GoldenPants13) and SportsProjections. This podcast is the best betting education available - PERIOD. And it's free - please share and subscribe if you like it.Follow SportsProjections on Twitter: https://x.com/Sports__ProjFollow GP on Twitter: https://x.com/goldenpants013

Alex Bergeron of Ark Labs joins Marty Bent to unpack the Coldcard exploit, the Boltz shutdown, and what AI-driven attacks mean for Bitcoin self-custody. Bergeron argues the maximalist dogma around trustlessness held back innovation, and that collaborative custody, covenants, and vaults are the path forward. The conversation covers Arkade's smart-signer architecture, spending policies, RFQ intents for Lightning swaps, Bitcoin-backed lending markets, and why he calls it collaborative finance instead of DeFi. Plus: vibe coding, open source models, and whether AI can write secure Bitcoin software. Alex on X: https://x.com/bergealex4 Ark Labs: https://arklabs.xyz/ Find the Home Mining Playbook here: https://www.tftc.io/home-mining-energy-playbook STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/yHGkvYxdqT Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Block: Cash App: For a limited time, new customers can get $21 added to their balance. Just use code TFTC10 when you sign up, and send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Square: Visit http://square.com/go/tftc for up to $200 off eligible Square hardware. Bitkey: Use code TFTC10 for 10% off the new Bitkey. Aven https://www.aven.com/bitcoin CrowdHealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/tftc Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Salt of the Earth: https://drinksote.com/tftc Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/ Disclosure: Bitcoin services are provided by Block, Inc. Bitcoin services are not licensable activity in all U.S. states and territories, and not all services are available in all states. Bitkey is not available in New York. Block, Inc. operates in New York as Block of Delaware and is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Bitcoin is a non-deposit, non-bank product that is not FDIC insured and involves risk, including monetary loss. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures: https://help.cash.app/btcdisclosures Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at http://square.com/go/tftc! #squarepartner. Offer expires December 31, 2026 at 11:59 pm PST. Offer for $40 off the cost of one Square Stand, $75 off the cost of one Square Terminal, $100 off the cost of one Square Handheld, or $200 off the cost of one Square Register, excluding applicable taxes. Limited to one discount per product type per seller account. Each code is limited to one redemption per account holder. Valid for new Square customers located in the US only. Offer not valid with guest checkout. Square reserves the right to modify, revoke or cancel the offer at any time. Offer cannot be combined with any other coupon. Void where prohibited, not redeemable for cash, and non-transferable. #squarepartner #blockpartner

In this episode of Talking Industrial Automation, Lisa Richter sits down with Nicole Bojic, Founder and CEO of ILLI Agency, to explore the human side of B2B marketing and industrial automation buying decisions. Nicole explains why the best technology can lose to the technology a buyer actually understands, and why technical specifications, data, and ROI alone may not be enough to win the deal. Drawing from years of buyer research, she shares how fear, trust, risk, and internal decision-making shape purchasing decisions long before an RFQ ever arrives. The conversation also dives into how AI is changing the way industrial buyers discover and shortlist companies, why businesses need to create content around the real questions their customers are asking, and how smaller industrial firms can build visibility without trying to be everywhere. Nicole and Lisa discuss the shift from selling capabilities to understanding buyers, overcoming "pilot purgatory" when moving from IT to OT, and why companies should focus on building trust before the buying process officially begins. Tune in for an insightful conversation about buyer psychology, industrial automation marketing, AI-driven search, and the future of B2B technology sales.

What does it really take to access Europe's derivatives markets—and are they as fragmented and difficult to navigate as many U.S. traders believe? On this episode of The European Market Brief, Mark Longo is joined by Dr. Russell Rhoads along with Eurex's Marcel Rothacker, Head of Derivatives Trading Development, and Andre Eue, Head of Derivatives Market Development, for a deep dive into the evolving landscape of European market access. They explore the perception of fragmentation across Europe, the liquidity that may not always be visible in the order book, and the efforts underway to make European markets easier and more efficient to access. The conversation covers sponsored access, cloud connectivity, regulatory market making, vendor integration, electronic RFQ platforms, off-book trading, and the growing role of retail investors in European derivatives. The panel also discusses how Eurex is working to lower barriers for U.S. and global market participants, improve access to liquidity, and expand distribution through new technology, platforms, and brokers.

We are sponsored by Luminii. Great lighting comes together through every layer, not just one fixture. Learn more at https://www.wacarchitectural.com/ Highlights include: Q2 Executive Survey: Pompeo Group Parspec Launches Sales Management, an AI-Native Platform from RFQ to Close-out for Manufacturer Rep Agencies Light Fit for a King Moonlighting 2026 – Call for Artists and Sponsorships

Building relationships with contracting officers before a solicitation ever drops is one of the most overlooked strategies in federal contracting, and it's exactly what separates small businesses who win from those who just show up to bid. In this clip from the Federal Help Center podcast, Randie Ward breaks down how one small business turned years of relationship building into a $2 million job order contract win, plus a federal opportunity that got shortlisted simply because the right people already knew her name. If you are tired of submitting proposals into a black hole, this episode shows you what to do months before the RFP even exists. How researching forecasted opportunities and pre-solicitations before they post helped win a 51-page proposal against multiple competitors Why job order contracts (JOCs) function like an IDIQ and how relationship building unlocked a $2 million, two-year project The rule every contractor should know: program managers and contracting personnel can still talk to you before the RFQ or RFP drops, but not after How maintaining a multi-year relationship with an FAA contact who later became a contracting officer led to new opportunity alerts Why attending industry conferences like SAME (Society of American Military Engineers) and simply introducing yourself can connect you directly with a head of contracting EPISODE CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Introduction to building relationships before bidding 0:32 - How a JOC relationship led to a 2 million dollar win 1:09 - Why the 51 page proposal required strategic preparation 1:46 - Researching pre-solicitations and forecasted opportunities early 2:33 - The rule on contacting officials before the RFQ or RFP 3:10 - Maintaining a long-term relationship with an FAA contracting officer 3:57 - Turning a Christmas check-in into a new contract lead 4:33 - Why showing up on their radar changes your odds 5:08 - Building courage as an introvert to network in person 5:51 - Audience questions on building relationships and getting found 6:14 - Meeting a head of contracting at a SAME conference 7:11 - Closing thoughts on stepping outside your comfort zone Mindy gives you the federal opportunities, agency signals, recompete intel, and pursuit briefs that tell you not just what contracts exist, but which ones to chase and how to win them. Sign up for free Daily Alerts and get opportunities delivered to your inbox before the day starts.

Fabrika zemininde, üretim hatlarında ve ham madde seçiminde Endüstri 4.0 rüzgarları estirirken; iş o üretilen tonlarca malı, paletleri ve konteynerleri küresel alıcılara satmaya geldiğinde neden hala 1990'ların refleksleriyle hareket ediyorsunuz?Filtresiz Dijital'in 96. bölümünde, masadaki parayı rakiplerine kaptırmak istemeyen sanayiciler, büyük toptancılar, ihracatçılar ve B2B marka liderleri için küresel ticaretin yeni ve ödünsüz matematiğini masaya yatırıyoruz. Konumuz: B2B Pazarlamada Yapay Zeka ve Küresel Satışın Yeni Kuralları!Türkiye'de büyük ölçekli ticaret yapan birçok şirketin düştüğü çok ciddi bir paradoks var. Milyonlarca liralık otomasyon yatırımları, CNC tezgahları ve dünya standartlarında bir üretim gücü… Fakat iş küresel pazardan müşteri bulmaya geldiğinde başvurulan yöntemler hala taş devrinden kalma: Yılda bir kez düzenlenen yorucu global fuarlara devasa bütçeler gömüp 15 metrekarelik standın önünden bir satın almacının tesadüfen geçmesini beklemek ya da internetten toplama e-posta listelerine "Biz Türkiye'nin en büyük üreticisiyiz" diye başlayan, doğrudan spam klasörüne düşen soğuk mesajlar göndermek. Sektörün üzerine çekilen o sahte başarı illüzyonlarını bir kenara bırakıyoruz. B2B toptan satışta veya ihracatta sizin web sitenize gelecek binlerce organik tıklamaya ihtiyacınız yok. Sizin, Münih'te mevcut tedarikçisiyle teslimat krizi yaşamış ve acil olarak alternatif bir üretici arayan o 1 tane satın alma direktörüne ihtiyacınız var. Peki, dünyanın öbür ucundaki bu adamın "tam şu anda" bu arayışta olduğunu nasıl tespit edeceksiniz?İşte tam bu noktada yapay zeka destekli Sinyal İstihbaratı (Intent Data) ve Tahmine Dayalı Analitik (Predictive Analytics) devreye giriyor. Küresel arama trendlerini, IP hareketlerini ve kurumsal dijital ayak izlerini takip ederek hedef pazarınızdaki sanayi devlerinin satın alma niyetlerini daha onlar resmi bir ihale (RFQ) açmadan nasıl görebileceğinizi tüm şeffaflığıyla deşifre ediyoruz.İşin kurumsal karar süreçleri ve nöropazarlama boyutunda ise büyük bir hatayı ortadan kaldırıyoruz: Karar Verme Birimi'ni (DMU) hacklemek. Tonajlı satışlarda masada tek bir kişi oturmaz; CEO pazar payına, CFO birim maliyete, Fabrika Müdürü ise teknik dayanıklılığa bakar. Yapay zekanın Hiper-Kişiselleştirme yeteneğini kullanarak, bu üç farklı karar vericinin zihinsel bariyerlerini ve kurumsal yüklerini hafifletecek nokta atışı stratejileri nasıl kurgulayacağınızı somut adımlarla anlatıyoruz. Bölümde ayrıca, Joykek tarafında bizzat masasında oturduğum, yapay zekanın zamanlama istihbaratını kullanarak bir endüstriyel üreticinin 12 ay süren hantal satış döngüsünü nasıl 3 aya indirdiğimizin çok gerçekçi ve yaşanmış başarı hikayesini (case study) paylaşıyorum.Üretim bandındaki o büyük emeğin hak ettiği vizyoner pazarlama altyapısını kurmak, küresel pazarda feneri açık bir şekilde ilerlemek ve algoritmaları markanızın en güçlü satış neferi yapmak için bu bölümü kaçırmayın.B2B şirketinizi, fabrikasını ve ihracat hacmini yapay zekanın gücüyle lazer güdümlü bir sisteme dönüştürmek, masadaki parayı kasanıza sokmak istiyorsanız faruk@joykek.com adresinden bana doğrudan yazabilir veya joykek.com üzerinden stratejik hizmetlerimizi inceleyebilirsiniz. Video podcast bölümlerimiz, sahada bizzat test edilmiş vaka analizlerimiz ve dijital dünyanın perde arkası için YouTube, Instagram ve TikTok'ta "filtresizdijital" yazarak ekosistemimize dahil olabilirsiniz!

Today we're joined by Katia Banina, CEO of Bebop, to unpack one of the most misunderstood emerging trading primitives in DeFi: PropAMMs.We discuss: What Bebop does and its evolution  Why PropAMMs aren't actually AMMs  RFQs vs streaming quotes  The concept of Request for Stream (RFS)  How PropAMMs work on Ethereum  Market maker incentives and quote signing  Toxic flow and execution quality  Block builders and sidecar quote streams  Ethereum vs Solana PropAMM designs  Oracle updates and onchain execution  RFQ vs PropAMM tradeoffs  Adoption across aggregators  The future of onchain market structure And much more—enjoy!  — Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (01:35) What is Bebop? (02:25) Bebop's evolution (07:41) Why PropAMMs aren't AMMs (10:20) RFQs vs streaming quotes (12:35) Request for Stream explained (26:39) Ethereum vs Solana designs (32:05) Signed quotes and incentives (39:11) Block builders and sidecars (47:06) RFQ vs PropAMM execution (55:03) Oracle-traded markets (56:24) Adoption and market share (1:02:15) Future of onchain trading (1:03:16) Outro —Content links:https://pamm.wtf/ https://docs.titanbuilder.xyz/propammshttps://x.com/bebop_dex/status/2049867261662347594?s=20—Follow the guest:https://x.com/katiabaninaFollow the co-hosts:https://x.com/hildobby https://x.com/0xBoxer https://x.com/sui414Follow the Indexed Podcast:https://x.com/indexed_pod — The Indexed Podcast discusses hot topics, trendy metrics and chart crimes in the crypto industry, with a new episode every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month, brought to you by wizards @hildobby @0xBoxer @sui414.Subscribe/follow the show and leave a comment to help us grow the show! —DISCLAIMER: All information presented here should not be relied upon as legal, financial, investment, tax or even life advice. The views expressed in the podcast are not representative of hosts' employers views. We are acting independently of our respective professional roles.

Almost every shop owner I talk to wants to grow. Far fewer build something that can survive a real downturn. That's the thread running through my whole conversation with Chris Welch of Swissomation, and it's why I wanted him on after we met at Machining on the Summit. Chris runs a high-mix Swiss machining operation, two locations and around 120 spindles, and just about everything he does comes back to one idea: build a business durable enough to ride out whatever the market does next. We get into the moves that kept him standing when other shops folded. The 2001 telecom crash nearly took him out, and he came out of it refusing to let any single customer pass 20% of sales. He advertises hardest when he's slammed, which is why he was up 35% in 2009 while friends were calling him looking for work. He buys used machines with cash, adds his own live tooling and indexing, and stays out of debt so he never has to lay anyone off. In 29 years, he hasn't. Chris is a systems guy too. We talk through his sales-based bonus program and why he steers clear of profit-sharing, the twice-daily blueprint checks that make quality everyone's job, the quarantine-and-lot-ticket process running on an ERP he wrote himself, and how a fleet that size lets him slip short-run tech jobs in between the longer ones. He doesn't dodge the hard parts either: the Google AdWords money pit, the rough jump from owner to CEO, the training program he admits he's behind on. If one line sums up the episode, it's how Chris describes the shops that don't make it: everybody wants to milk the cow, nobody wants to feed it. Watch your debt, save your money, invest in your people, find your niche. Coming from someone who's lived all four, it's worth the hour. What's Covered in this Episode (0:00) Meet Chris Welch and Swissomation, two shops with around 120 spindles (3:08) From a 1997 start to launching Swissomation Virginia with his parents (7:49) The product side: firearms, dive gear, Peak Fishing, and AIQ Manufacturing (10:07) SMW Autoblock and the seven habits of workholding (RASRAM) (10:54) Diversifying away from telecom and surviving the 2001 crash with no layoffs (12:09) The 20% rule after losing a customer worth half his sales (13:36) Why he advertises hardest when busy, and was up 35% in 2009 (19:53) Staying debt-free: used machines bought with cash and live tooling added in-house (23:31) Riches in the niches and why handling tiny parts is the real challenge (26:04) The most effective types of trade shows for Swissomation (27:20) The Google AdWords trap and why carpet-bomb RFQ buyers stay disloyal (30:24) The $16,000 UPS theft and choosing the long game (32:38) Increase your spindle uptime with the Hennig WorkFlow Automation System (33:31) On the floor: short-run systems, twice-daily blueprint checks, in-house ERP (39:54) Cutting setup time with tooling strategy and job grouping (43:37) Get a free report of sales opportunities in your area from FacturMFG.com/chips (44:44) The bonus program: sales-based, not profit-sharing, with rejections counted twice (50:02) Boosting throughput through hiring, training, and tools he built himself (52:19) The best decision: staying debt-free and feeding the cow (54:48) The owner-to-CEO transition and knowing when to add leadership (59:04) Best advice for newer shops: watch debt, save, invest in people, find a niche (1:02:30) Where to connect with Chris and Swissomation Resources Mentioned SMW Autoblock and the seven habits of workholding (RASRAM) Increase your spindle uptime with the Hennig WorkFlow Automation System Get a free report of sales opportunities in your area from FacturMFG.com/chips Connect with Chris Welch Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Swissomation Instagram

Vladimir Novakovski sits down with Andy & Robbie to break down the Lighter bull thesis from The Tokenization Tower in NYC. We discuss Lighter's escape hatch design that lets every participant exit through Ethereum even if the protocol fails, why the RFQ model is the key to bootstrapping liquidity for pre-IPO and RWA perps, and why getting Citadel and US institutional capital on chain is the biggest unlock the perp market hasn't hit yet. He's working with the CFTC to make that happen.Vladimir Novakovski is CEO of Lighter, a decentralized perp exchange built on top of Ethereum with an institutional-grade security-first architecture.The Rollup is where the leaders of digital assets and finance converge. Live from the financial capital of the world.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:37 Perp Market Awareness Today03:26 Pitching Institutions On Lighter05:28 Ethereum Security And Escape Hatch07:54 How Market Makers Stay Comfortable11:17 How Lighter Bootstraps Liquidity12:35 Pre-IPO Perp Durability15:37 Build In-House Or Composable19:29 US Regulatory Path For Perps23:29 CFTC Innovation Council Insights26:39 Questions For Commissioner Hester Peirce28:07 Team Culture And Miami Office32:26 Founder Decision Making Framework34:46 AI Agents And Lighter's Stack37:30 Perps Market Structure Long View41:21 Power Law Or Distributed Market?Guest Socials:Vladimir Novakovski X: https://x.com/vnovakovskiLighter X: https://x.com/Lighter_xyzLighter Website: https://lighter.xyz/Partners:Better than Banks. Transparent capital efficiency earning the highest yields in DeFi. Learn more here: https://infinifi.xyz/---Dinari - Over 230 1:1 backed tokenized stocks, ETFs & more with dividends. US-based SEC transfer agent. Available on 5+ chains & via API. https://dinari.com/---Relay is the fastest and most reliable way to swap any token on any chain. Learn more here: https://relay.link/bridge---Zama is an open source cryptography company that builds state-of-the-art Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solutions for blockchain.Learn more here: https://www.zama.org/---Trezor is the creator of the first-ever hardware wallet. Securing crypto for 2M+ users worldwide. 100% open source. Learn more here: https://affil.trezor.io/aff_c?offer_id=133&aff_id=36664---

Government contracting business development is about more than watching SAM.gov every day it's about positioning your company so the right opportunities find you first. In this episode, govcon BD strategist Randie Ward walks through how she helped a small business client become the prime contractor on a $5 million university construction project without ever scrambling for an RFQ. What you'll learn in this episode: Why the tactical vs. strategic split in govcon BD determines whether you're always reacting or always ready — and how to do both without burning out How to identify and track government opportunities weeks or months before they hit any bid platform using relationship-based market intelligence The exact steps Randie used to build a winning team from scratch — securing a $685M large prime as a subcontractor and an architect engineering firm as the design partner while her client held the prime seat Why showing up at industry events and maintaining persistent follow-up with project managers gave her team an insider edge during the two-phase procurement process How coaching your teaming partners through a 30-minute interview presentation — including scripting key language evaluators want to hear — can be the difference between shortlisted and selected EPISODE CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Introduction and Mindy AI govcon research tool overview 0:30 - Eric Coffie introduces the Federal Help Center podcast 1:00 - Tactical vs. strategic business development in federal contracting 2:05 - Client background: local contracts, healthcare and diversifying into federal 3:34 - How finding opportunities before the bid platform begins 4:01 - Building the key relationship with the large prime program manager 5:38 - Tracking the University of North Texas construction project 6:20 - Connecting with the project manager and asking the right questions 7:50 - Assembling the teaming partners: pitching two large primes 8:58 - Bringing in Spa Glass and architect firm PGA to form the team 10:47 - RFQ drops and building the proposal submission package 11:37 - Phase one shortlisting and preparing for phase two interview 12:21 - Scripting and coaching the team for the 30-minute presentation 13:36 - Winning as the small business prime with large prime support Mindy gives you the federal opportunities, agency signals, recompete intel, and pursuit briefs that tell you not just what contracts exist, but which ones to chase and how to win them. Sign up for free Daily Alerts and get opportunities delivered to your inbox before the day starts.

Mary Casillo & Patrick Noone of Pallet Alliance talk about people, process, partnership & performance, & how their unique approach drives results for customers.    IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:   [03.22] An introduction to Patrick and Mary, their backgrounds, and roles at Pallet Alliance. [04.42] An overview of Pallet Alliance, and the importance of using fit for purpose pallets. [07.20] What this year's MODEX theme, 'From Every Angle,' means to Pallet Alliance and supply chain optimization. "If you look at something from every angle, you're able to optimize it to the best it can be… And you're able to fix it from every angle." "It's the opportunity to tear something apart and say: 'How do we put this back together for you?'" [09.18] Why designing custom pallet programs is like playing Tetris, or being a detective. "Every customer is different, you have to figure out what fits where… And you're factfinding along the way." [10.37] A closer look at the journey to developing a new pallet program, from sourcing and testing through to suppliers and transportation, exactly why that process is so challenging, and Pallet Alliance's approach to problem-solving. "The amount of work is monumental. We're so successful because we do all of it for them with our pallet management program… We want to make people in procurement look good." [14.38] What makes Pallet Alliance's process different from traditional sourcing approaches. [17.00] In a landscape increasingly defined by AI, why Pallet Alliance strive to find the balance between people and technology, and why AI is only as good as the data you feed it. "Part of the challenge we have now is that people understand that the data is wrong, but they don't want to invest the time to allow us to fix it for them. Or, it's that automatic RFQ, without thinking about bad data in, bad analysis out." [24.19] The kind of impact Pallet Alliance customers typically see, and how they can continue to uncover substantial savings across locations even with long-term customers. "We can save millions year over year through cost savings, more efficiency, and education in general." "We're all pallet heads!!" [26.04] What results can look like for Pallet Alliance customers, and how to measure them. "We don't have a crystal ball, but we can see where things are going. And if we can see that, we can be proactive instead of reactive, and that's something our customers really appreciate." [28.19] A selection of case studies exploring how Pallet Alliance have helped customers avoid fines, improve customer experience, meet high demand, and utilize improved materials to boost resilience and drive huge cost savings. [33.46] Where teams should start when approaching a new pallet program, and the small steps they can take towards making meaningful change. [36.00] What Mary and Patrick want listeners to take away from today's discussion. "Pallets and crates are way more complicated than you think!!" RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED:   Head over to Pallet Alliance's website now to find out more and discover how they could help you too. You can also connect with Pallet Alliance and keep up to date with the latest over on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook or X (Twitter) or you can connect with Mary or Patrick on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more from Pallet Alliance, check out epsidoes: 501: Uncover Hidden Inefficiencies and Opportunities, with Pallet Alliance 482: Transform the Way Your Business Moves, with Pallet Alliance 146: A Holistic Approach to Pallets Check out our other podcasts HERE.

Most of us are playing with AI; a few are putting it to work. The gap between the two is the difference between curiosity and a competitive edge.Jan Griffiths and Tom Roberts sit down with Cheryl Thompson, founder of the Cheryl Thompson AI Adoption Advisory Practice and one of the most practical voices in AI adoption today. With over 1,400 hours of hands-on learning, Cheryl has gone deep on what works, what doesn't, and where most people get stuck.This conversation is for the supply chain and IT professional who has dabbled in ChatGPT, gotten frustrated, and walked away. Cheryl breaks down the real difference between an AI assistant, a specialist, and an AI employee in plain English. She shares the prompt structure she uses every day, the mindset shift that separates the curious from the capable, and three things every supply chain professional should do this week to move from playing around to producing results.Themes Discussed in This EpisodeWhy AI isn't going to take your job, but someone who knows AI willThe RCRQ prompt structure: Role, Context, Request, QuestionsAI assistant vs. specialist vs. AI employee, explained The Custom GPT, Claude project, and Gemini Gem comparison in plain EnglishWhy AI will lie to you confidently if you don't push backThe Parkinson's law trap: what to do with the time AI gives backPractical use cases for procurement: RFQ documentation, supplier evaluation, negotiation prepWhy human relationships still matter more than ever in supplier developmentThree things to do this week to move from playing with AI to using itThis podcast is powered by QAD RedZone.Featured GuestName: Cheryl ThompsonTitle: Founder, Cheryl Thompson AI Adoption Advisory PracticeAbout: Cheryl is on a mission to help small business owners and corporate professionals stop playing with AI and start getting real value from it. With more than 1,400 hours of dedicated AI learning and three rounds through an intensive 12-week training program, she has built a practice focused on practical adoption, not hype. Cheryl runs workshops and learning labs tailored by function, including supply chain and procurement, helping professionals build prompts, specialists, and AI workflows that fit how they actually work.Connect: LinkedInAbout Your HostsJan GriffithsJan is the host and producer of the Auto Supply Chain Champions Podcast and The Automotive Leaders Podcast. A former automotive manufacturing and supply chain executive, Jan is recognized as a Champion for Culture Change in the automotive industry. She brings direct, grounded conversations to leaders navigating execution, disruption, and transformation across the global automotive ecosystem.Tom Roberts (Co-host)Tom is Co-host of the Auto Supply Chain Champions Podcast and Vice President of Strategic Industry Development at QAD. He works closely with automotive and industrial manufacturers to close the gap between insight and execution, helping leaders move from visibility to systems of action that drive real operational outcomes.Mentioned in this Episode:Henry Cloud, BoundariesDavid Allen, Getting Things DoneThe Eisenhower MatrixCheryl's upcoming Learning Lab for supply chain and procurement professionalsEpisode Highlights[03:11] The 1,400-Hour Rabbit Hole: How Cheryl's curiosity about AI turned into an obsession and a full-scale commitment to helping people adopt AI with confidence.[08:20] The RCRQ Prompt Structure That Actually Works: Cheryl breaks down her practical framework for prompting AI effectively using role, context, request, and clarifying questions.[09:15] Custom GPT, Claude Project, Gemini Gem: Different platforms. Same concept. Cheryl explains how AI specialists and agents work behind the scenes.[12:57] AI Is the Loud, Confident Colleague Who Sometimes Makes Things Up: Why AI hallucinations happen, how people misuse AI like a search engine, and the importance of pushing back on outputs.[14:05] Parkinson's Law Meets AI: Tom explores the real challenge companies face once AI gives employees back hours of productive time.[17:29] Only 27% of the Workday Is Real Work: Cheryl shares Asana research showing how administrative overload prevents professionals from focusing on high-value work.[18:20] Negotiation Prep Is an Ideal AI Use Case: From supplier negotiations to procurement strategy, Cheryl explains how AI can sharpen preparation and confidence.[19:37] Why Human Skills Matter More Than Ever: Jan reflects on how AI creates space for relationship-building, supplier collaboration, and the human side of supply chain leadership.[21:50] Three Practical Ways to Start Using AI This Week: Cheryl gives supply chain and IT professionals a simple roadmap for moving beyond experimentation into real AI adoption.Top Quotes[13:34] Cheryl Thompson: “AI is not going to take your job. Someone that knows AI is going to take your job.”[14:32] Tom Roberts: “Are people ready to say, okay, I've saved all this time, great. Now, what do I do?”[19:43] Cheryl Thompson: “Yeah, and I'm so glad you said that because we have to remember the human in this AI world.”Connect With Cheryl ThompsonFind Cheryl on LinkedIn and learn more about her workshops and learning labs at her website (link in show notes).Connect With UsWe want to hear from you. What are your biggest supply chain challenges right now? What conversations do you want to hear on this podcast? Drop us a comment on the podcast website. The link is in the show notes.Follow the Auto Supply Chain Champions Podcast for real conversations with leaders who are making hard choices, focusing their bets, and leading with intent.

What happens behind the scenes before a project bid is even accepted? The delivery outcome component of major programmes is fascinating, but a lot occurs long before procurement, design, and development get underway. Taking a step back, and behind the curtain, Riccardo, Shormila, and special co-host Evgenia Jilina, Colliers' Transit Regional Sector Director, dive deep into what happens before the Request for Proposal is published. The three infrastructure professionals explore the competitive, resource-intensive work that happens upstream: strategic positioning, RFQs and RFPs, partnership decisions, and the internal calculus of whether a proposal is worth the investment of pursuing at all. They break down why “winning” a project is rarely about a single submission moment. Preparing a proposal can cost millions, pull top talent off active work for months, and take months or even years—a lengthy span of time where assumptions, teams, and even the market can change. They make the case that capture planning is so much more than paperwork—it's the training plan behind the goal: the structure that helps organizations choose which opportunities to chase and show up with the right partners and narrative when it counts. Together, the panel tackles the uncomfortable tension at the heart of public procurement. It's a system designed to prevent influence, yet meaningful early interactions help clients clarify needs and bidders understand the real problem. In the end, a strategic but authentic engagement approach inevitably weighs into the final decision. Real success is so much more than a lucrative “win”: it's a mutually beneficial relationship where client, bidder, and the public recipients of the infrastructure all triumph. Key Takeaways: Why capture planning is essential to success, not a waste of time and money;How organizations decide which pursuits are worth prep that costs millions, months, and their best players;What successful early engagement looks like before an RFQ or RFP is issued;Why early conversations should be reframed as “engagement” rather than “influencing”;How to build bid teams around strengths and gaps instead of searching for a unicorn.Quote:“The stakes are high…you're expected from day one to start on a project that's bigger than the GDP of some small countries.” - Shormila CharterjeeThe conversation doesn't stop here—connect and converse with our community via LinkedIn:Follow Navigating Major Programmes: https://www.linkedin.com/company/navigating-major-programmes/Read Riccardo's latest at www.riccardocosentino.comFollow Riccardo Cosentino: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosentinoriccardo/Follow Shormila Chatterjee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shormilac/Follow Evgenia Jilina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ejilina/  

Small Cap Breaking News You Can't Miss!Here's a quick rundown of the latest updates from standout small-cap companies making big moves today:Brixton Metals Corporation (TSX-V: BBB) (OTCQX: BBBXF)Brixton Metals drilled 13.0 metres grading 594 g/t silver — including a 0.5m interval at 7,900 g/t — at the Shaft 6-Southeast target of its Langis Silver Project in Cobalt, Ontario. This zone has limited historic workings, pointing to strong potential for a new high-grade silver discovery beyond the known mineralized system. Management plans to add a second drill in mid-May as part of a 60,000-metre campaign aimed at a maiden resource estimate.Cheelcare Incorporated (TSX-V: CHER) (OTC: CHCRF)Cheelcare posted its second consecutive month of record Companion power-assist bookings for April 2026, up 147% year-over-year and 38.5% compared to March, while RFQ activity jumped approximately 64% month-over-month. U.S. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement eligibility, secured in January 2026, has expanded insurance-funded access to the product. Management views the accelerating numbers as early signs of a new growth curve for the Companion platform.Galiano Gold Incorporated (TSX: GAU) (NYSE American: GAU)Galiano Gold's Abore Program at the Asanko Gold Mine in Ghana returned highlights including 53m at 3.9 g/t gold and 32m at 4.7 g/t gold, extending mineralization approximately 95m below the current underground Mineral Resource. A new high-grade zone has been identified beneath the Main Pit and remains open along strike and at depth. With 14,500 of a planned 30,000-metre program complete, additional assay results are expected in Q2 2026.Bottom Line: Exceptional silver drill grades in Ontario's historic Cobalt camp, back-to-back record bookings for a Canadian mobility tech company, and expanding gold mineralization in Ghana defined today's most compelling small-cap stories.Stay ahead of the market — follow AGORACOM for more breaking small-cap news and insights.And don't forget to check out our podcast for deeper dives: https://open.spotify.com/show/74mVPkfalaWXFYY65A2XLM

PlastiFab/LEED Plastics has launched an online RFQ system, giving engineers and procurement teams a faster path to custom U.S.-made plastic parts. Submit CAD files, specs, and timelines in one place at plastifabonline.com — no back-and-forth required. PlastiFab/LEED Plastics City: La Verne Address: 1425 Palomares Ave Website: http://plastifabonline.com/ Phone: 1800-842-4593 Email: info@pflv.biz

This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower interviews Katie Helwig, self-proclaimed OASIS+ nerd and founder/president of Mild Red LLC.The discussion focuses on the multiple changes on the proposal and bidding side of the market. Topics includeLPTA and HTRO methods of procurement, where each fits and why/when you need one of the otherUnderstanding that you need to influence before the RFQ goes outThe need for differentiated visibility, defining your area of expertise in terms that resonate with the customerOperating in an environment with 40% fewer contracting officers and why that makes visibility, being known, more importantSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode SummaryIn this EDUCAUSE episode, Dr. Vanessa Kenon from UTSA, Tonya Bennett from the University of Pennsylvania, and Tim Boltz from Carahsoft get into the tension every higher ed IT leader is sitting with right now - when to move on AI, when to wait for policy, and how to keep curiosity alive before the feds rewrite the rulebook.FeaturingDr. Vanessa Kenon is Associate Vice President for Information Technology at the University of Texas at San Antonio - leading IT through a major university merger while keeping innovation and compliance from pulling the institution in opposite directions.Tonya Bennett is Director of Educational Technology at the University of Pennsylvania - managing the LMS-centered EdTech ecosystem across 12 schools and bringing a master's in law to every AI governance conversation she's in.Tim Boltz leads the Education Vertical at Carahsoft - 17 years in, representing 1,500 manufacturers, and building the cooperative purchasing infrastructure that lets institutions stop waiting on 12-18 month RFQ cycles.Timestamps(1:00) Bold Careers & ServiceNow University - 400+ students served and 150 chasing 25 spots(8:00) TASSCC - how Texas built its own version of EDUCAUSE and why vendor partnerships made it work(11:00) Financial pressures in higher ed - why leaning into IT investment beats pulling back(15:00) Frictionless EdTech at UPenn - one credential, every platform, zero manual steps(20:00) UTSA's experiential learning engine - DoD contractors, RackSpace, Dell & eSports(26:00) Carahsoft's easy button - cooperative purchasing vehicles already live across all 50 states(29:00) AI's legal wild west - agentic AI, IP liability & who's responsible when the agent acts(35:00) Curiosity vs. compliance at UTSA -keeping innovation alive without losing governance(39:00) Closing trends - community over commodity, workforce readiness & what's next for Higher EdListen now: YouTube x Apple x SpotifyWhenever you're ready, there are 3 ways you can connect with TechTables:1.

Felix Group Holdings Limited (ASX:FLX) interim CEO & CFO James Frayne talked with Proactive at the ASX Small and Mid-Caps Conference about the company's cloud-based procurement platform and how it is transforming supply chain management through digitisation and automation. Frayne explained that Felix's mission is to replace fragmented and paper-based systems with a unified platform that improves transparency, governance, and risk management across contractor and vendor networks. The platform acts as a central hub for vendor pre-qualification, enabling businesses to assess compliance, ESG factors, and operational risks more effectively. He highlighted the growing importance of data in managing supply chains, noting that Felix's system allows customers to interrogate vendor information and ensure higher standards across projects. As Frayne put it, “the supply chain needs to be digitised and is in the process of being digitised,” underlining the structural shift the company is targeting. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence is a key focus. With millions of compliance documents, RFQ responses, and vendor data points collected over more than a decade, the company sees significant potential to automate decision-making and reduce administrative burdens for clients. Frayne also pointed to growth opportunities through international expansion and the acquisition of NextYear, which adds over 120,000 subcontractors to its ecosystem. Combined with a large domestic market opportunity, these initiatives position the company for further scale. For more insights, visit Proactive's YouTube channel, like this video, subscribe, and enable notifications for future updates. #FelixGroup #SaaS #SupplyChain #Procurement #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ASX #TechStocks #EnterpriseSoftware #DigitalTransformation #ESG #ConstructionTech #InvestorNews #GrowthStocks #CloudSoftware

Nick Forster, CEO of Derive joins us to talk about his journey from trading equity options at SIG to building the leading decentralized options platform. Nick talks the shift from AMMs to app chains and why institutional liquidity is moving on-chain. Nick explains Derive's strategy of 'exporting' complex derivatives to 7+ chains and why on-chain transparency is the only fix for centralized OTC risks. Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com Notes: * Captured 90% of on-chain options market share. * Traditional AMMs yielded 5-10% annually initially. * RFQ for institutional liquidity. Timestamps: 00:00 Start 00:19 Nick's background 01:20 History of Options 04:15 The journey toward an L2 App-chain 07:11 The "aggregation of liquidity" thesis 09:40 OTC desks & competitors 13:47 Roadblocks to institutional involvement 16:11 Hyperliquid integration 17:09 HLP 22:09 Perps 27:17 Tap trading vs dice rolls 30:52 Value capture 34:38 EFT options 36:05 Why have perps on Derive? 38:36 Current decentralized trading tech vs tradfi 43:14 Regulations 46:16 RWAs 48:30 Bridging to other chains 50:41 Derive token 52:24 Token holders The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs builds the most efficient on-chain markets. Their orderbook and Prop AMM products have delivered price improvement to hundreds of billions of dollars in retail volume. Now, they are bringing their expertise to build Phoenix, the best on-chain perpetuals platform. Ellipsis Labs is hiring New York-based engineers. If you're an engineer looking to work with a proven team in making DeFi better, go to ellipsislabs dot xyz slash careers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Crazy Wisdom, Stewart Alsop sits down with Andre Oliveira, founder of Splash N Color, a bootstrapped 3D printing e-commerce business selling consumer goods on Amazon. The two cover a lot of ground — from how Andre went from running 40 FDM printers out of South Florida to offshoring manufacturing to China, to how he's using Claude Code to automate inventory management and generate supplier RFQs across 200+ SKUs. The conversation stretches into bigger territory too: the San Francisco AI scene, the rise of AI agents and what they mean for the future of the internet, whether local on-device AI will eventually replace cloud-based tools, and why building physical products will stay hard long after software becomes easy. It's a candid, wide-ranging conversation between two self-taught builders figuring things out in real time. Follow Andre on X: @AndreBaach.Timestamps00:00 — Andre introduces Splash N Color, his Amazon-based 3D printing e-commerce business and explains the grind of running 40 FDM machines in South Florida.05:00 — The conversation shifts to Claude Code and how Andre built an inventory automation system to manage sales velocity and RFQs across 200+ SKUs.10:00 — Stewart and Andre compare notes on Opus 4.6, debate Codex vs Claude, and Andre breaks down the new Agent Teams feature in Claude Code.15:00 — Discussion turns to the San Francisco AI scene, the viral OpenClaw launch event that drew 700 people, and what's capturing the city's imagination right now.20:00 — The pair wrestle with data privacy, the illusion of it since 2000, and whether full transparency of personal data might actually serve people better.25:00 — Stewart pitches his vision of local on-device AI replacing cloud tools entirely, and they debate the 10–15 year timeline for mainstream societal adoption.30:00 — Andre traces his origin story: a high school dropout from Brazil who spotted a 3D printing opportunity on Facebook Marketplace and got lucky timing with COVID.35:00 — They explore whether AI-generated 3D models and DfAM will automate physical manufacturing, and why proprietary specs keep the space stubbornly hard.Key InsightsLifestyle businesses deserve more respect. Andre spent months feeling inadequate scrolling through Twitter watching founders announce funding rounds, before realizing his cash-flowing, location-independent business was already the goal. The social media version of entrepreneurial success warped his perception of what he actually had built.Claude Code is becoming an operating system. Stewart describes running Claude Code as having a second OS on top of MacOS — one that makes the underlying machine legible in ways it never was before. Both guests use it not just for coding but as a primary interface for understanding and operating their businesses.Agent Teams changes how work gets done. Andre explains that Claude's new multi-agent feature lets you assign a team lead and specialized roles that communicate with each other in parallel, essentially running an autonomous task force inside your terminal — a meaningful leap beyond single-instance prompting.Physical manufacturing will stay hard. Even as AI-generated 3D models improve, tolerances of 0.5 millimeters can mean the difference between a product working or not. Design for manufacturing is a separate discipline from design itself, and proprietary specs mean open source models rarely hit commercial quality.The internet is heading toward agents. Both guests agree that AI agents will increasingly handle tasks humans currently do manually online — booking services, making payments, coordinating logistics — with the human internet potentially becoming secondary to a machine-to-machine layer.Iteration is the real value of 3D printing. Andre pushes back on 3D printing as a business unto itself, framing it instead as a prototyping tool. The true value is rapid iteration on housing, tolerances, and fit — not the printer, but the speed of the feedback loop it enables.Technology compounds in layers. Andre closes with a tech-tree analogy: each generation normalizes the tools of the previous one and builds the next layer on top. Agentic coding today is what the internet was in the 90s — the foundation for something we can't yet fully see.

Today we have on college junior & top prediction market trader Eric (Egzee). Egzee started on OddsJam and quickly worked his way up to the top of Kalshi leaderboards as one of the biggest RFQ market makers in sports. He defends his decision to take an internship at a respected quant firm, and walks us through how he manages one of the biggest Kalshi MM operations as a solo-operator in college. Really mind blowing stuff here - must listen, we learned a lot from Eric.0:00 Intro & Sports Betting Start18:00 Transition to Kalshi55:00 RFQs and Advanced Automation1:21:00 School & Deciding to do an Internship1:38:00 Q&AWelcome to The Risk Takers Podcast, hosted by professional sports bettor John Shilling (GoldenPants13) and SportsProjections. This podcast is the best betting education available - PERIOD. And it's free - please share and subscribe if you like it.Follow SportsProjections on Twitter: https://x.com/Sports__ProjFollow GP on Twitter: https://x.com/goldenpants013Welcome to The Risk Takers Podcast, hosted by professional sports bettor John Shilling (GoldenPants13) and SportsProjections. This podcast is the best betting education available - PERIOD. And it's free - please share and subscribe if you like it. Follow SportsProjections on Twitter: https://x.com/Sports__ProjFollow GP on Twitter: https://x.com/goldenpants013

In this episode of the Federal Help Center Podcast, Eric Coffey explains why winning contracts isn't about showing up when the bid is posted — it's about being discovered before the solicitation ever hits the street. Eric shares how relationship-building helped his team win a $2 million university Job Order Contract (JOC) by staying close to the project manager, showing up at events, and learning exactly what needed to be in the proposal long before submission day. Eric also breaks down the unfair advantage of engaging early: contracting personnel can talk to you freely before the RFQ drops — but once it's released, communication stops. From maintaining long-term relationships with FAA decision-makers to leveraging forecasts and pre-solicitations, Eric reinforces the core lesson: complex contracts aren't won last-minute. They're won through upfront strategy, visibility, and consistent conversations. Key Takeaways: Contractors who build relationships early get found before bids go public Pre-solicitations and forecasting are where the real advantage begins Long-term agency connections (like FAA) can open doors for years to come If you want to learn more about the community and to join the webinars go to: https://federalhelpcenter.com/  Website: https://govcongiants.org/  Connect with Encore Funding: http://govcongiants.org/funding Join 2026 Surge Bootcamp Starting January 31: https://govcongiants.org/surge

In this episode of the Federal Help Center Podcast, Randie Ward shares a powerful real-world breakdown of how relationship-building and strategic teaming led to a major $5 million contract win. Instead of chasing bids last-minute, Randie explains how early conversations with the right program managers revealed what the customer actually wanted: a capable small business prime supported by the right partners—not a massive prime contractor takeover. Randie walks through how the winning team came together by aligning a strong construction prime, a reputable design partner, and a prepared small business lead. When the RFQ finally dropped, they were already ahead—ready with resumes, key personnel, and a complete package. After being shortlisted, Randie coached the team through a high-stakes Phase Two interview with scripts, rehearsals, and precision timing… and they ultimately won. Key Takeaways: Relationships uncover what customers want before the RFQ ever hits Winning teams are built early through smart partnering (prime + design + support) Phase Two interviews are where preparation separates finalists from winners If you want to learn more about the community and to join the webinars go to: https://federalhelpcenter.com/  Website: https://govcongiants.org/  Connect with Encore Funding: http://govcongiants.org/funding Join 2026 Surge Bootcamp Starting January 31: https://govcongiants.org/surge 

Andrew and Jay walk through a situation a lot of shop owners have faced: a brutally tight print that can be machined but can't be verified with confidence. At least not without the right metrology, systems, and alignment with the customer.Instead of rushing a quote or ghosting the RFQ, this is the kind of situation you have to handle like an owner. In other words, slow down, ask uncomfortable questions, protect the relationship, refuse to roll the dice on quality.Andrew and Jay dig into that and a lot more, from CMM alignment war stories to probing macros, SMED, automation vs. operator error, and why a shop full of green lights doesn't always mean things are healthy. The thread running through all of it is simple: speed, precision, and profit are decided long before the spindle starts turning.

When demand is high, the real advantage isn't doing more - it's choosing better. This episode explores a consultative selling approach and how disciplined sales leaders improve performance by focusing on the sales funnel they already have. In this episode, Harry Kendlbacher sits down with Hans van der Eijk, SVP Commercial Western Europe at DP World, to unpack how modern sales leaders navigate high inbound demand without sacrificing focus, margins, or credibility. You'll hear how consultative selling replaces activity-driven selling, why not every RFQ deserves pursuit, and how disciplined sales strategy leads to stronger win rates in complex B2B environments.

As we close out 2025, we're wrapping up more than just a year. This episode marks the conclusion of the Machine Shop MBA series, a collaboration with CLA and Modern Machine Shop built around insights from the Top Shops benchmarking program. What started as a practical exploration of shop metrics ends with a much bigger question: what truly separates shops that survive from shops that endure? For this final chapter, we're joined again by Brent Donaldson of Modern Machine Shop, who helped kick off the series earlier in the year. Drawing from hundreds of shop visits and years of benchmarking data, Brent helps us connect the dots across operations, finance, leadership, and strategy. Together, we reflect on a clear shift happening across manufacturing: moving away from pure "rise and grind" thinking and toward intentionally designed systems. Throughout the episode, we revisit five deceptively simple questions pulled directly from the Top Shops survey. These questions challenge assumptions and expose where real opportunity lives. From RFQ response time and revenue per employee to reinvestment discipline, standardized scheduling, and succession planning, each one reinforces a central theme we've explored all year. Rather than chasing the next machine or relying on one big customer, the most resilient shops we see are building repeatable processes, measuring what matters, and reducing dependence on tribal knowledge. This conversation serves as both a reflection on what we've learned through the Machine Shop MBA series and a call to action as we head into 2026. If there's one takeaway we hope sticks, it's this: the shops that last aren't just collections of people and equipment. They are systems. Designed on purpose. Improved on purpose. And built to outlast any one individual. Segments (0:00) Wrapping up 2025 and closing out the Machine Shop MBA series (0:36) Why we created the series and partnered with CLA and Modern Machine Shop (2:25) Why you need to head to the 2026 IMTS Exhibitor Workshop (4:34) The shift from viewing shops as machines and people to viewing them as systems (7:52) Moving from survival mode to disciplined, systems-based thinking (12:33) Top Shops Question #1: RFQ response time as a competitive advantage (15:55) Top Shops Question #2: Revenue per employee as a true efficiency metric (17:15) What's Your Method? The unique financing process with Methods Machine Tools (26:47) Grow your top and bottom line with CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA) (27:37) How automation, workholding, and systems increase output per person (32:16) Top Shops Question #3: Reinvesting in equipment, software, and training (36:50) Why consistent reinvestment beats sporadic big spending (37:51) Top Shops Question #4: Standardized scheduling versus tribal knowledge (40:22) How poor systems create stress and constant firefighting (43:05) Top Shops Question #5: Leadership and ownership transition planning (46:01) The Top Shops 2026 Benchmarking survey opens February 1st, 2026 (47:27) How benchmarking accelerates maturity and reveals real gaps (48:19) How we use the Top Shops survey as part of annual strategic planning (49:19) Looking ahead to 2026 and continued collaboration (50:00) Why we love the SMW Autoblok catalog and quality (51:11) Final call to action and why benchmarking matters Resources mentioned on this episode Why you need to head to the 2026 IMTS Exhibitor Workshop What's Your Method? The financing process with Methods Machine Tools The Top Shops 2026 Benchmarking survey opens February 1st, 2026 Check out the SMW Autoblok catalog and quality Connect With MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

Solving the Unstructured Data Challenge: Preparing Manufacturing for the AI Revolution Industry 4.0 has illuminated the transformative impact of real-time shop floor data. However, vast repositories of historical engineering and supply chain data, traditionally confined to back-office systems, continue to be underutilized. To fully leverage the capabilities of AI, integration of these disparate data sources is imperative. This includes critical information residing in various forms, such as sensor readings, machine logs, customer feedback, and especially legacy 2D drawings, handwritten notes, and "tribal knowledge" trapped within the minds of experienced professionals. Traditional data processing methods often struggle to make sense of this hidden treasure, leading to inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and a hindrance to true digital transformation. American manufacturers are facing immense pressure, from intensifying global competition and economic uncertainty to skilled labor shortages and the impending retirement of senior engineers who hold decades of undocumented institutional knowledge. To thrive, manufacturers must unlock the full potential of their data and embrace the AI revolution. This webinar will delve into how manufacturing companies can overcome these pervasive unstructured data challenges and strategically prepare for an AI-driven future. Join us to discover how to transform fragmented data into actionable insights, enhance cross-functional collaboration, and drive unprecedented efficiency and innovation. What You'll Learn: The Criticality of Unstructured Data: Understand why traditional data processing methods fail to extract valuable insights from diverse unstructured sources, from drawings to machine logs. AI as a Game-Changer: Explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI), including machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), is emerging as a key enabler for structuring and utilizing unstructured data, augmenting human capabilities, and driving manufacturing evolution. Building a Data Foundation for AI: Discover how to digitize your entire archive of drawings, including old hand-drafted and scanned documents, and link them with crucial supply chain, quality, and procurement data to create a comprehensive "data lake". Democratizing Knowledge with AI-Powered Insights: Learn how advanced search capabilities, including patented similarity search (based on part shape) and keyword search, can empower all employees, from new hires to seasoned veterans, to instantly find relevant designs, pricing history, and supplier information, reducing reliance on individual memory or tedious manual searching. Achieving Tangible Business Outcomes: See how solving the unstructured data challenge directly leads to reduced costs, optimized supplier relationships, faster RFQ responses, improved design quality, accelerated time-to-market, and enhanced decision-making across procurement, engineering, and sales. Navigating the Future of Manufacturing: Gain insights into how embracing AI and a data-driven culture can position your organization at the forefront of the industrial revolution, fostering continuous improvement and sustainable growth. This webinar will provide practical strategies and real-world examples, demonstrating how transforming your data assets can create new value and drive long-term success. Meet Your Presenters: Chris Cope, VP of Engineering at CADDi: As VP of Engineering at CADDi, Chris will highlight strategies for leveraging AI to transform unstructured data and illuminate pathways for enhanced collaboration across engineering, procurement, and manufacturing teams. Aaron Lober, VP of Marketing at CADDi: Bringing deep expertise in the transformative power of manufacturing intelligence platforms, Aaron will highlight how cutting-edge technology directly addresses industry pain points and unlocks competitive advantages. Philip Carpenito, Former Chief Procurement Officer at L3Harris: As a leader in procurement for a major industrial organization, Philip will share invaluable insights into the strategic challenges and opportunities within complex supply chains, emphasizing the critical role of data-driven decision-making in optimizing procurement processes and supplier relationships. Don't miss this opportunity to revolutionize your approach to data and prepare your manufacturing operations for the AI revolution. Speakers: Chris Cope: VP of Engineering, CADDi | Aaron Lober: Vice President of Marketing, CADDi | Philip Carpenito: Former Chief Procurement Officer, L3Harris Sponsored by: CADDi Visit https://advancedmanufacturing.org/webinars for more webinars and an interactive experience with visuals.    

Future Tech Enterprise fed 29 years of procurement responses into an AI model and cut an RFQ team from seven people to one. Federal News Network's Eric White spoke with CEO Bob Venero to understand why he believes the Defense Department should use the same technology to evaluate bids faster and cheaper. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Len Testa, Jim Hill, and veteran Imagineer Jim Shull hit the IAAPA Expo show floor in Orlando, exploring the newest ride systems, vendor innovations, and behind-the-scenes stories fueling the future of themed entertainment. NEWS A look at how IAAPA blends professional showcase, industry reunion, and pop-up amusement park—complete with traffic, parking challenges, and surprises at every booth. Zamperla's full-size demo of its new interactive “flap-to-fly” ride, where sensors track arm movements to lift riders higher. The stacked-track, heart-shaped family coaster concept designed to fit high-capacity thrills into a tiny footprint. Mack Rides' water-coaster hybrid for Dollywood: a tracked boat that transitions between basins, rapids, and coaster moments. The debut of brand-new industry tech, including an AI park-operations platform launched just two weeks earlier—so new the vendor couldn't answer most questions yet. Why Imagineers were quietly examining faux-fossil rockwork in a small booth—possible clues to future projects. A vendor's dramatic countdown-clock presentation that fell apart when no one realized the microphone was dead. The team's ongoing quest for pickle-flavored cotton candy and other baffling IAAPA food innovations. Len's impromptu pitch to Doppelmayr about Universal's transportation RFQ—and the unexpectedly enthusiastic response. Why IAAPA acts as “old home week” for themed entertainment pros, with surprise run-ins, backstage conversations, and stories that won't be public for years. Full show notes available here: Show Notes Hosts Len Testa — BlueSky: @lentesta.bsky.social | Instagram: @len.testa | Website: touringplans.comJim Hill — X/Twitter: @JimHillMedia | Instagram: @JimHillMedia | Website: jimhillmedia.comJim Shull (Veteran Imagineer) — X/Twitter: @JimShull | YouTube: @jimhshull | Website: jimhshull.com Patreon Support the Disney Dish and get exclusive content, early episodes, and behind-the-scenes stories. Join us at:https://www.patreon.com/jimhillmedia/ Follow Us Facebook: @JimHillMediaNews YouTube: @jimhillmedia TikTok: @jimhillmedia Producer Credits Edited by Dave Grey Produced by Eric Hersey — Strong Minded Agencyhttps://strongmindedagency.com Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Unlocked Magic, from the team at DVC Rental Store — offering discounted Disney theme park tickets, including special events. Save on your next trip with Unlocked Magic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Len Testa, Jim Hill, and veteran Imagineer Jim Shull hit the IAAPA Expo show floor in Orlando, exploring the newest ride systems, vendor innovations, and behind-the-scenes stories fueling the future of themed entertainment. NEWS A look at how IAAPA blends professional showcase, industry reunion, and pop-up amusement park—complete with traffic, parking challenges, and surprises at every booth. Zamperla's full-size demo of its new interactive “flap-to-fly” ride, where sensors track arm movements to lift riders higher. The stacked-track, heart-shaped family coaster concept designed to fit high-capacity thrills into a tiny footprint. Mack Rides' water-coaster hybrid for Dollywood: a tracked boat that transitions between basins, rapids, and coaster moments. The debut of brand-new industry tech, including an AI park-operations platform launched just two weeks earlier—so new the vendor couldn't answer most questions yet. Why Imagineers were quietly examining faux-fossil rockwork in a small booth—possible clues to future projects. A vendor's dramatic countdown-clock presentation that fell apart when no one realized the microphone was dead. The team's ongoing quest for pickle-flavored cotton candy and other baffling IAAPA food innovations. Len's impromptu pitch to Doppelmayr about Universal's transportation RFQ—and the unexpectedly enthusiastic response. Why IAAPA acts as “old home week” for themed entertainment pros, with surprise run-ins, backstage conversations, and stories that won't be public for years. Full show notes available here: Show Notes Hosts Len Testa — BlueSky: @lentesta.bsky.social | Instagram: @len.testa | Website: touringplans.comJim Hill — X/Twitter: @JimHillMedia | Instagram: @JimHillMedia | Website: jimhillmedia.comJim Shull (Veteran Imagineer) — X/Twitter: @JimShull | YouTube: @jimhshull | Website: jimhshull.com Patreon Support the Disney Dish and get exclusive content, early episodes, and behind-the-scenes stories. Join us at:https://www.patreon.com/jimhillmedia/ Follow Us Facebook: @JimHillMediaNews YouTube: @jimhillmedia TikTok: @jimhillmedia Producer Credits Edited by Dave Grey Produced by Eric Hersey — Strong Minded Agencyhttps://strongmindedagency.com Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Unlocked Magic, from the team at DVC Rental Store — offering discounted Disney theme park tickets, including special events. Save on your next trip with Unlocked Magic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of The Prophets' vision are “The 24 Essential Supply Chain Processes.” What are they? Find out, and see the future yourself. Click here Quoting might sound like routine paperwork, but in today's automotive supply chain, it's becoming one of the biggest pressure points.Behind every new program sits an RFQ process that's overworked, outdated, and dangerously dependent on a few people who know how to make it run.That's where Ted Mabley, Director at UHY and co-author of a new white paper with the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), steps in. His study compares how suppliers manage RFQs today versus in 2002, and the numbers tell the story.The average supplier now handles approximately 800 RFQs per year, up from 495 two decades ago; yet, the tools and processes remain largely the same. Most companies are still managing quotes through emails, spreadsheets, and manual coordination, leaving room for costly errors and missed opportunities.Ted explains that while technology in other areas has advanced, the RFQ process is stuck. It relies heavily on “sticky knowledge,” the experience locked inside a handful of veterans who know which levers to pull and whom to call. As those experts retire, companies are left scrambling without proper succession or mentoring plans in place. The result is confusion, inconsistent data, and at times, quotes submitted with zero profit margins.Some suppliers are making progress by utilizing supplier relationship management tools to track and compare quotes; however, Ted notes that the gap between leaders and laggards remains wide. The bigger issue, he adds, is cultural. Siloed departments, poor communication, and a lack of accountability slow everything down.Ted believes the way forward starts with people, not technology. Building mentoring and training programs, or “farm clubs,” ensures new talent learns the process before stepping into key roles.From there, automation and AI can take on repetitive tasks, such as comparing supplier data, reconciling quotes with production performance, and even auditing PPAP documentation. But the key isn't just automation; it's connecting people, process, and systems so data actually works for the business.To fix the system, Ted recommends documenting every step of the RFQ process, identifying leaks and inefficiencies, and modernizing with lightweight digital tools that integrate existing data. He also calls on OEMs and suppliers to collaborate more closely, not just commercially, but to standardize and strengthen the systems that power their shared supply chain.The message is clear: the RFQ process might seem routine paperwork, but it's the foundation of every program launch. How suppliers manage it will determine their ability to compete and deliver in an industry that's moving faster than ever.Themes discussed in this episode:The growing complexity of the RFQ process and how it impacts supplier performance in automotive manufacturingHow the lack of automation and standard systems slows down the quoting process for suppliersThe problem of “sticky knowledge” and the risk of losing critical expertise as experienced employees retireWhy mentoring and structured training programs are essential to preserving quoting knowledge in the supply chainThe benefits of using supplier relationship management (SRM) tools to improve accuracy and speed in RFQ handlingHow siloed departments and disconnected systems cause costly errors in quote preparation and reviewThe need for suppliers to document, analyze, and streamline their end-to-end RFQ workflow for better resultsHow stronger collaboration between OEMs and suppliers can create a more consistent and efficient quoting process across the...

If you've ever lost sleep wondering whether you missed a critical detail in a quote—or felt the adrenaline of winning a job only to realize you underpriced it—this MakingChips episode is for you. Recorded live at FABTECH 2025, Nick sits down with Jason Ray, founder of Paperless Parts, to unveil a breakthrough tool that promises to transform how shops handle complex RFQs, drawings, and bills of materials. Over the past decade, Paperless Parts has become synonymous with solving bottlenecks in estimating and quoting. Their mission has been clear: empower people—not replace them—with software designed to make quoting faster, smarter, and less risky. In this conversation, Jason shares how their latest release takes that vision even further by surfacing critical requirements buried inside complex drawings and bills of materials. This episode is full of relatable stories and practical lessons. Jason explains how the new “Requirements Review” functionality captures tribal knowledge, accelerates mentoring, and helps shops avoid underpricing jobs while improving their RFQ triage process. Nick and Jason also dig into the big picture: the hype cycle of AI in manufacturing, the importance of trust and customer retention, and the future of Paperless Parts—including “historical intelligence” and next-level shop insights.  Whether you're a shop owner, estimator, or manufacturing leader, you'll leave this episode with actionable takeaways for quoting more accurately, prioritizing the right work, and scaling your business intelligently. Segments (0:53) “I Love Big BOMs”: How Paperless Parts tackles large bills of materials= (2:27) Bottlenecks in quoting and estimating—and why Paperless Parts was built (6:05) AI hype vs. reality in manufacturing software (7:39) Quote faster, smarter, and more consistently with Paperless Parts (9:20) “AI makes recommendations, humans make decisions” (12:38) Introducing “Requirements Review” to surface critical details in drawings (14:41) Capturing tribal knowledge and accelerating mentoring before retirements (17:13) Why missing something on a print leads to underpricing and margin compression (18:45) Using AI to read complex drawing packages and trigger shop-specific rules (20:22) Solving simpler problems first: best practices for adopting AI in manufacturing (22:14) Why you should join us at MTForecast 2025 (23:42) Quoting faster without over-engineering or missing key details (25:02) RFQs are getting larger—how to triage and prioritize the right work (26:47) Building an “ideal part profile” and learning to say no to non-fit work (29:54) Safety, flow state, and the hidden costs of taking on bad-fit jobs (30:53) Cash flow realities of contract manufacturing and avoiding high-risk mistakes (32:32) Aligning Paperless Parts' incentives with customer success and retention (34:38) Value-based sales process and proving ROI before the sale (38:00) Emotional ROI for shop leaders and software founders alike (40:08) Why customer success is tied to clear ROI targets and ongoing support (42:27) Selling change management, not just a tool—how Paperless implements software (45:32) Looking ahead: Paperless Parts' upcoming user conference and “historical intelligence” (49:32) Resources mentioned on this episode Quote faster, smarter, and more consistently with Paperless Parts Join us at MTForecast 2025 Achieve the 7 Habits of Successful Workholding with SMW Autobook Requirements Review Press Release Connect With MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

Unity isn't just a buzzword. It's the foundation for business growth and community impact. In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with Jeff Williams, president of Graham Associates, to talk about how bringing people together drives both engineering success and civic transformation. Working with his firm who design iconic Texas projects including AT&T Stadium and Southlake Town Square, and during his three terms as Arlington mayor, he demonstrats how unity principles scale from boardroom to city hall. Jeff shares his approach to bridging generational divides through Friday "High Five" meetings that transformed skeptical baby boomers and millennials into collaborative teammates. His engineering firm rebuilt their office culture post-COVID by creating collaboration spaces and displaying core values throughout their workspace, showing employees they're not just designing roads but contributing to state-of-the-art hospitals. When people understand their larger purpose, engagement naturally follows. His upcoming book "The Unity Blueprint" captures lessons from leading Arlington through the pandemic faster than any other U.S. city, according to NYU research, and emphasizes that modern leadership requires teaching over commanding, with trust and value as non-negotiables for today's workforce. Success comes from transforming "my plan" into "our plan" through genuine input and buy-in, whether you're managing engineers or running a city. This conversation reveals how Texas businesses thrive by embracing partnerships over politics, with Jeff's $8 million citywide rideshare solution versus $50 million per mile for light rail proving that innovation beats tradition when unity guides decisions. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Discover how weekly "High Five" meetings turned skeptical senior engineers into collaboration champions, bridging baby boomers and millennials Jeff details how Arlington saved millions by implementing $8 million annual autonomous rideshare instead of $50 million per mile light rail Learn why being the first U.S. city to run autonomous shuttles attracted Uber, Lyft, and Via to compete for Arlington's contract Hear how post-COVID office renovations with collaboration spaces and visible core values brought remote workers back to rebuild culture Jeff shares how a devastating referendum loss taught him that expertise means nothing if political consultants silence your voice Understand why the Medal of Honor Museum chose Arlington over Washington D.C.—Texas builds in years what takes decades elsewhere LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Graham Associates GUESTS Jeff WilliamsAbout Jeff TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you'll meet Jeff Williams, CEO of Graham Associates and former mayor of Arlington, Texas. Jeff stresses the power of creating unity within a company to foster a strong culture and how training and developing your people it's critical to success. Jeff, I want to thank you for taking the time and welcome to Building Texas Business. It's great to be here. Jeff: Chris, it's always great to talk about Texas and especially business. Chris: Yes. So let's start with just introducing yourself and tell us what it is you do. What's your company known for? Jeff: Well, I own a civil engineering firm and we build communities. We design public infrastructure, highways, roads, utilities, but we also do sports facilities, churches, schools there. We've done a lot of different things. Some of our projects you might recognize in at and t Stadium, we were the civil engineers for it. And yes, we did work with the Jones family and we also also know Chris: Is Jerry World, right? Jeff: Absolutely. And it was an exciting project to work on and then it's amazing how well it's aged and still the top special event center here in the country. But then we've had South Lake Town Square, which was kind of the granddaddy of all of the town centers that's here and a really special place. Nebraska Furniture Mark. We got to work for Warren Buffett there and doing his grand scape development here in the Metroplex. But then we've also, we have Prestonwood Baptist Church, which one of the largest churches in the Southwest. So rewarding to be able to do that. And then we've got Westlake Academy, actually Westlake, Texas. We actually got to start from scratch there. It was a town that we got in on the very beginning. They had one subdivision and now they've got Fidelity's headquarters. Schwab is there, Deloitte, and then Viro, one of the most upscale developments in the state of Texas. So those are some of the fun projects that we've gotten to do. I think it's very rewarding. Chris: Yeah, no, I mean it sounds not just fun but impactful and kind of be able to look around and see how you've changed the landscape of your community, Jeff: Chris. That is so, so true. There's nothing better than to be able to take your family and friends to be able to show them what you've done, but even more importantly, to actually be at one of your projects and see people coming together and families enjoying a special place that we created. And of course that moves to unity and that's one of the things that I have grown to value more than anything else is bringing people together to make a difference. That's great. Well, Chris: We have the benefit here at Warrior Miller represent a lot of very successful real estate developers. And so I think I know our real estate team feels the same way is right working with the client to bring projects like that together and being able to, the benefit of doing the legal work for that and just see to go by years later and go, we worked on that project or that park or that building or that community center is really rewarding stuff. Jeff: Really is the mission of our company is to be an integral partner in building communities. Chris: I like that. So let's talk a little, I mean, what was the inspiration? Obviously you're engineer I guess by education, but what's been the inspiration for you to stay in this industry and build the company that you've Jeff: Built? Well, we just hit it. I feel like it's such an important part of being able to build these communities for people to live, work and play in. And then that actually led me to being actually recruited to run for mayor here in Arlington and to serve there. I served three terms as mayor. That's very unusual for engineers to move into that. I didn't realize it until after I was elected and there aren't many engineers that do that. But however, as an engineer, we have designed public infrastructure. We have to sell our projects to the citizens so many times we also understand schedules and budgets and being able to work through that. And so it really was a great fit for me there, although it's very challenging and people go, well, why would you do that? Well, the reason we'd do it, it's rewarding. It's the most rewarding job I've ever had. But it also is the hardest because you're working with so many different people. But it really increased my awareness that the last thing we need to be doing is to be having dissension and conflict all the time. Instead, we need to be bringing people together to make a difference and actually work on projects that can actually, people can get behind and have passion and discover their purpose. And then of course, the results of that have been actually to forge friendships. Chris: So I guess, how have you taken some of those lessons and lessons along the way and incorporated them into the company at Graham Associates to kind of build the team there? Jeff: Well, as I came out of serving as mayor, I ended my last term in 2021. We'd come out of the pandemic. There still were the lingering effects of it. People wanted to work from home. So however, in our business, in so many businesses, teamwork is a big part of what we need. Chris: Absolutely. Jeff: I read everything I could get ahold of because we are at the beginning of a technology revolution, but we also have societal changes that happen every few months or perhaps even sometimes monthly. So I needed to understand the young people, but also needed to figure out how to create an atmosphere to where our people wanted to be. So literally our offices, we redid everything in the way of so that we could be a very inviting place that our employees could be proud of, but also that our clients would want to come because those face-to-face meetings are still important. And then part of that impact too was that we try to create special places for collaboration and we have several collaboration rooms there. And so that was a key. But also in our Collins areas, we wanted to be uplifting. So in our kitchens we have those stocked, but we also put up positive phrases there that really epitomize our core values and we have our core values that our employees actually fed into. They're displayed everywhere. But then I ran into a roadblock because our older engineers said, Hey, why are we doing all of this? And then we started in on doing a Friday staff meeting where everyone came together and we call it our high five meeting, an opportunity for us to encourage each other and to be able to share some of the stories that happened that week. And man, my older engineer said, man, that's a whole hour of billable time that we could be having. And they didn't like it at all for the first couple of months. And then magic started happening. They started getting to know each other better. And so I had millennials getting along with the older baby boomers, they're an understanding each other and now they all look forward to it. And we do soft skill training and IT team building there also. But it is a time that we all look forward to and it built that camaraderie because we need teamwork and it helps to get them there. And so then I still allow my people to work one day a week at all. But then our project managers actually make the decision on how much more if someone wants to work from home more because it depends on the project and what we've got going, but yet our team understands now that they've got to be able to build those relationships. Well, I like what you pointed Chris: Out there is it's not a one size fits all game. You got to be flexible and listen. And I think as leaders, if you can communicate that so that your employees understand that they'll understand when you can't be as flexible as maybe they would like because the circumstances don't warrant that. But then when you can, you allow it, Jeff: Chris. That is so true, and you've got to value people and be able to listen to them. No longer can a manager when they ask you, why are we doing something? Because you can't say because I said so. Chris: No, Jeff: It's Chris: Because it's the way we've always done it. Jeff: Oh yes, that's another great line. That is a dinosaur that can't act more. But it's actually exciting to be able to share with our people why we're doing things and to be able to understand the big picture of that, Hey, this isn't that You're just designing a roadway to a hospital. You are contributing to the overall wellbeing of actually being a part of the team that constructs a state-of-the-art hospital that, Chris: Well, I think the other thing you've discovered, we see it here. It was certainly part of our culture before COVID and it's become an important part post COVID to regain connection. And that's getting people together in community, in the office, lunches, happy hours, breakfast, whatever, because then you use the word magic started to happen. I think that's right, that as we gain connection with our coworkers, that helps with retention, it helps with collaboration because we get to know each other a little better. Especially important I think not just in a post COVID world, but in the multi-generational office that we're dealing with. Right? Four and five generations in one office together don't necessarily see things eye to eye, but if you get to know somebody, you can break those barriers. Jeff: That's right. And that leads to something else that I've discovered. Even if you're an introvert and you think you don't need other people, it is amazing because God made us to live in community. And when you're coming together and aligning people with a purpose and you are working together, suddenly those barriers get broken down. And it doesn't matter the age difference, the color of your skin, all of those differences disappear because you're working together to make a difference. And suddenly, again, I'll mention you end up with friendships that are forged. In fact, if you think about it, probably your best friends are the ones that you worked on a project with. It might be for school, for church or in your work. And certainly it's awesome to be able to forge great friendships at your workplace. Chris: I love it. We haven't used the word really much, but it sounds like you're defining the culture that you're trying to build and nurture there. How would you describe the culture and anything else other than these kind of high five meetings and such that you're doing to try to help nurture the culture? Jeff: Well, I think the other part to round it out is that we have got to be focused on teaching and training. I think the culture has really got to be a teaching atmosphere. People don't respond to that type A manager that is forceful and raises their voice and all of that. It's more they've got to see that you value them, each one of these employees do. But then also it's not just in how you truth them. You need to take action in teaching and training them and show them how they are going to be able to help themselves and help the team overall by learning. And then of course, we also have to create that accountability because we aren't professional teachers. In fact, no matter what business we're in, most of us are not professional teachers. So we need our employees to be willing to ask questions and to be willing to be vulnerable, say, I really don't understand this. I need help on this. And that's where it's got to be a two-way street, but yet you cannot. You got to really foster that culture where they are willing to ask questions and to let you know that they don't know it there. But then we have the ability to focus in on what do they not understand and be able to get that training to help fill in that hole. Chris: Yeah, that's so important. So true. Let's just talk a little bit about technology and innovation. What are some of the things that you see and that you've tried to incorporate there from an innovative way of doing your work or how technology's changing the trends of how you go about your work? Jeff: Well, Chris, this is one of my favorite topics, and of course no surprise with me being an engineer, but we are really at the beginning of a technology revolution. In fact, I'll never forget, a few years ago I heard the head of IBM technology that was actually out of Belgium, and he said exactly that We are at the beginning of a technology revolution like the world has never seen, and we are going to see more change than we have ever experienced. Well, there is a little bit of a problem because most people don't like change. And yet we have got to be willing to adapt to that. And I challenge our engineers throughout when I'm speaking to engineering groups. So you guys have got to take the lead in that we, engineers are typically very conservative. They find a great way to do something or they want to stick with it. But however, because of new technology, we've got to be researching that technology. We've got to be looking to see what technology is good, what is not. We even need to be helping in the regulation of it. And so consequently, I'll say this, we have got to be researching AI and software that is coming out constantly. I have two people dedicated to that. Larger firms probably have whole departments that are dedicated because we have an opportunity to be able to do things better faster, but we've got to be able to be competitive. I don't want to wake up one day and all my competitors are being able to do things 30% cheaper than I can and beating my price point and actually able to serve the clients better. And I do equate it to when computers really came online in the eighties, we were all worried about, well, are we going to have a job? Oh, well. And then others would say, well, we're only going to work three days a week now because of computers. No, we saw ourselves become more productive and we will become more productive with AI and other technologies, but also even with the technology being able to incorporate how you use it. I'll give you an example of that. When I was serving as mayor, we were the first city in America to run an autonomous shuttle, a driverless shuttle there on a public streets. And it was amazing at work that we were all scared of it, but we actually challenged our city staff to be looking at new technologies that we could use to be able for transportation. And we said, Hey, let's open up our city as a laboratory. And so consequently, our staff came up with the idea that we really could have Uber and Lyft type process and actually have driverless shuttles that are seven passenger vans that could be going out throughout our city in a very cost effective way. That'd be much cheaper than high speed rail or light rail there. Of course, high speed rail is still a ways off. But anyway, long story short, we went out and did an RFQ, Uber, Lyft and a accompanied by the name of Via all proposed on it. And we ended up being the first city in America to implement technology rideshare and then added the autonomous vehicle to it. And now cities across America are doing that. And instead of paying 50 million a mile for light rail, we are end up calling actually covering our whole city 99 square miles for $8 million a year. It's an amazing thing and very cost effective. Everybody's business. We've got to look at how can we do things different and more cost effective utilizing the technology. Chris: Let's talk about a corollary to that. What are some of the trends you're seeing in your industry that we should be prepared for and maybe how is being based in Texas influencing those trends? Jeff: Well, it's growth, Chris. The growth is a big change in our business there because in growth is so big and so consequently the biggest resource we need or people, it's not, we can all buy our software, we can all buy our computers, but it's really about people. Every business I talk to, it's all about finding those people and then yet we've got to be willing to train them up there. And of course, really when you're hiring experienced people, many times that's just a stop gap because they don't quite fit what you need. So I think the big change that we're seeing trend that businesses are needing to train their workforce up and do that as fast as you can because we need more people to be able to fill those positions. So again, we've got to become teachers, we've got to be able to be efficient. And then I still think one of the biggest challenges in business and really in fact in America is that we have so much dissension. People have a tough time getting along with each other. Arguments come up and then suddenly that cancel culture comes and there's no forgiveness. It's I'm done with you. And that is a poison for business there. And none of us as managers want to spend all our time in conflict resolution. So to that, right? Chris: One of the things I talk about a lot is that if we can remember to give grace in the business world, we do have a personal life a lot, but for some reason we get into, then we think we switch and put the corporate hat on or business hat on and we kind of forget that. I think that is an important aspect to remember, to your point, it helps diffuse conflict. We're imperfect human beings. And so learning to have accountability but also with a touch of grace can help resolve conflict, avoid conflict mitigated in the workplace. Jeff: That's so true. Chris. I had an interesting thing happen along these same lines as New York University actually studied Arlington when I was mayor, and they got attracted initially that we had become the sports capital of the nation, but yet they looked at how we did things. And I needed help as a mayor, so I sought out people. I needed experts, I needed people that would work. I needed input from our citizens. And so we ended up working together to accomplish a lot of things. We had to work to keep the Texas Rangers here in town. There were a lot of other cities that wanted to move them out of our community. We also had not been bringing in jobs there. And in 2014, the year before I came in, the big headlines read that the DFW Metropolitan area had created more jobs in any other metropolitan area in the country, and Arlington was not doing that. And so we had to jumpstart that economy and then yet I needed to unite our leaders and we did that. And throughout the pandemic and so forth, New York University studied us and they believed we came out of the pandemic quicker than any other city in America, both physically and economically. And so they encouraged me to write a book on Unity and how you did it. And they also then took it a step further and they went to Forbes and I ended up signing a book contract with Forbes and were releasing the Unity Blueprint on September the ninth. That really is that plan. Therefore being able to bring people together in both your personal life, your life, and then even our civic involvement and so forth there. And that has been a big change for me really since I came into office. I always valued people, but now getting it, taking it to the next step of unity because how much time is wasted there when your employees are fighting with each other or arguing and then it's a lasting effect. They never work together as well. And so working and creating that culture and actually adding forgiveness to your core value I think is a very important thing. But then also getting people to adopt character values themselves, to have a foundation that they can work with. And when you see people working to be a person of character, there can be forgiveness, but there's not much room for forgiveness when it's constantly on the other person. It's a tough deal. Right. Well, Chris: I didn't realize about the book. That sounds, I'm excited to see it and read it, and I don't know if there's anything that kind of comes out of that as a tidbit that you might be able to share with us now the listeners about maybe obviously the lessons you've learned along the way, kind of that something that you've incorporated into your kind of leadership style that has helped foster unity within the organizations you've run. Jeff: Always amazed when a person gets appointed president of his company or gets elected to a position and many times they don't have a plan. And then in addition to that, if they do have a plan, many times they didn't get any input on it. They literally concocted a plan of their own versus the opportunity for you to work on a vision and a plan after you have researched it, and then you take it to your employees and get feedback from them. And suddenly that plan transforms from your plan to our plan. And it's amazing when you get that buy-in, how it can really work together, and you're not having to sell your plan all the time. They're doing it for you, and it makes all the difference. I'm very excited about being able to move out there around the country and pushing towards unity as a matter of fact, and our book has already reached the number one new release by Amazon. They're in both business and Christian leadership, so I'm pumped about that. That's awesome. Congratulations. But we're not perfect people. We all need the space, but if you're employees can see that you're working towards it, if your fellow employees can see you are working towards being that person of character and wanting to do it. Now, we landed in the middle of honor museum here in Arlington there. We were in a 20 city competition for that, and it's probably one of the greatest things I've ever been involved in. We had a six month journey there and competing against the other cities and it was a national museum. And you go, well, why didn't they go to Washington dc? Well, the reason they didn't is going to take 20 years to get it built. And we in Texas here, can get things built quick, can't we? Right. You've got great contractors, architects, engineers to make that happen. And real estate people, Chris real estate people, government. Chris: That wants to get stuff done, right? That's right. Yeah. Rather than being an impediment to getting stuff done. Jeff: Well, the middle of honor museum or the Medal of Honor recipients that were leading that recognize that very thing, they also saw that we are the center of patriotism and we can get things done. We have a track record do it. Chris: I had there's, we could do a whole episode I think just on that museum. I had the privilege, Texas Capital Bank did a little Texas tour and they hosted something here in Houston that I was invited to all about the museum, what it is, how it came about. Very unique, very special, very proud that it's going to be in Texas and hopefully more people will take time to get to know what this is all about and then go visit it once it opens. Jeff: Well, the thing that surprised me is when I actually visited with these Living Medal of Honor recipients, and each one of them has pledged to spend the rest of their life making more of a difference there. And what they're doing is they are pushing character values, integrity, sacrifice, courage, commitment, citizenship and patriotism. Well, that's what all of us need. And currently the state board of education here in Texas has adopted a two week curriculum that our students will study in school and then they'll be able to take a field trip to the museum or a virtual field trip. And I think that's gotten everybody excited that that is happening. And then of course, it's not just the youth, our adults too. So there are adult programs that are going on, but it had me reassess my core values. It had me to, I really wanted to reassess my character values and so forth. And in business it always starts with you got to do what you say you're going to do. But then I had an interesting thing happen and I pretty well knew the answer when I asked it, but I was speaking to 20 Chick-fil-A managers, and of course Chick-fil-A is number one in service, aren't they? Chris: Right? Jeff: I asked them, I said, guys, what are you looking for and you're leader? And they immediately spoke up and they said, we are looking for a leader that we can trust, and then we're looking for a leader that values us. I think that's where it starts for us then in Texas. We know that we get that right and we believe in partnerships and collaboration, and I think that separates us from so many other places in the country. Chris: So kind of tagging on with leadership, lots of theories and about how to become a leader, how to grow as a leader. I think you hit it on the nail on the head when you said you got to be a man of your word or a person of your word. Do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. It's kind of a foundational element, but I know from my own personal experience and talking to others, we learn a lot as leaders from mistakes we've made. And I'm just curious to know if you could share one of those rather than a mistake. I call it a learning moment where it didn't go as planned, but you learned from that and from that it actually probably accelerated your leadership skills because of it. Jeff: Yes, no doubt about it. That's very easy for me to say because one of the biggest disappointments I had in my career is we had worked on a Johnson Creek Greenway here in Arlington. It was a nine mile creek beautiful creek, and we also were going to be doing a river walk in the entertainment district around those stadiums and so forth. And we had done all the preliminary planning there. It got through the core of engineers, and we also had held major charettes. We were winning awards from all over the country. I was actually traveling and speaking on that. I had an incredible partner with me, a guy by the name of Jim Richards. I loved working with our team and I thought, this is what I'm going to be doing the next 10 years. But however, the city had to pass a sales tax selection to fund the project, and they hired a political consultant that came in and said, Hey, I think you guys ought to attach an arts referendum on this. The Johnson Creek project is so popular, the Riverwalk will go, let's attach that to it. And then there was one other thing that came in that was so unique, and that was that some of our people had actually gotten a agreement with Smithsonian to build a branch museum on this Johnson Creek river wall. And so they put that on the agenda there for an election, but the political consultants said, we don't want anybody doing anything. They said, we do not want Jeff Williams and my other partner going out and speaking, what if you make a mistake and you say the wrong thing or you stir people up? And then they also did not really realize that our refer referendum was very popular. We lost that election by a few hundred loaves. It was one of the most devastating things. And it's taken 20 years. A lot of it's been And it changed my whole career there because I had to study why did this happen? How did it happen? And I said, I have got to learn about how to handle sales tax and bond elections. And so I studied hard and in fact, I learned a lot on the Cowboys sales tax election because we had that coming up a few years after that. And we were prepared when we got into the Cowboys sales tax election. And I ran several school and city bond elections after that. There's times when you have to learn more and to be able to take control. And little did I know that it's going to prepare me for serving as mayor later on too. But I'll never forget, in 2008, we had a recession and y'all may recall that. And we had a bond program going on for public works and parks, and I was not mayor then of just engineer. And we were in trouble because if we didn't get these road projects through, and actually some of these parts projects, we had buildings that were in badly needed repair wreck centers, so forth, we had to again, engage more people and raise more money. And we went ahead with that sales tax or I should say bond program, and we were able to get it passed in the midst of that. And again, I think unity and learning about knowledge there played a huge pull. I'm a big researcher. I love to, and there are so many books out there, but also generally we never come up. We think that we come up with some creative idea that no one has ever done well, especially in business. Somebody has done it. Find them, find and you can learn from their mistakes and hopefully not make your own, but also learn from their successes. But great question, Chris. Chris: Yeah, no, you're so right. I mean, I tell people never stop learning. Be curious. We learn from our mistakes. We can learn from others and we can learn from our successes because sometimes we're successful despite ourselves or despite the plan. Lots of people will tell you it's good to be lucky every now and again. So sometimes that happens. But if you take the time to learn the why behind the success or the failure you will have learning and then that learning you will grow from Jeff: You just spur the thought that I think is so important as you are a success as you grow in your success in business. There, the ego definitely comes up. And then we all know that we've got to be careful and be humble, but I want to create a definition for humbleness because so many times when we hear humble, it goes, oh, well, you need to be modest. You never to don't need to show that confidence and so forth are really, I think the important thing about humbleness is that you need to realize that you are vulnerable and that we need other people. And you can't do it alone and you don't need to do it alone because you'll not really succeed as well. So as a leader, you walk along a cliff every day and we need people to be able to keep us from falling off. And I think you've got to continue to remember that every step of the way and there's always somebody that has a better idea. Let's go find it. Chris: Yeah, that's great. Jeff, this has been a great conversation. Just love your insights and your input. Can't wait to see the book. Unity. I want to turn just a little before we wrap up, is there a favorite spot in Texas that enjoy visiting or just kind of think about when are not doing all the engineering work and planning communities? Jeff: I love Texas. There are so many rural areas and cities, but I've got to share with you about three quick ones right here. One, Arlington, Texas has become the destination between Orlando and Vegas. And it is amazing how you can come now to the metroplex and you can see all kinds of events that are taking place there in our stadiums. And it may not be sporting, it may be concerts, it may be wrestling, who knows what it may be there going on. But then also we have the premier park in the state of Texas, I believe in River Legacy Parks, 1300 acres on the Trinity River bottoms and all of the tree growth and everything is still there. Amazing place with a world-class nature center there in it. But then you can go to Fort Worth and experience the Texas experience, the Stockyards, and then the world-class museum. And so we do staycations here because we don't want to take advantage of that. But then I'll hit two others real quick. Lubbock, Texas, I know you're going to go what in the world? Check out that restaurant scene and check out the music scene that is out there. And then Tex always got things going on, but of course we love Austin, San Antonio there in particular, Fredericksburg, east Texas and Tyler is awesome, but we have found a great beach in Port Aransas, har cinnamon chores for sure. We love it Chris: A lot to offer, right? Big state. A lot to offer. We accommodate all types and tastes. Right. Well that's one of the things I love about the state of Texas is if you can kind of find anything that any interest you have, we can satisfied. Jeff: That's right. That's Chris: Maybe not snow skiing. We hadn't figured that one out yet. But other than that, I think we got you covered. Jeff: Yeah, that's right. And of course Colorado's worried Texans are going to take over Colorado. We do head up there to do our skiing Chris: For sure. Okay, last question. Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Jeff: Oh my goodness. I hate to make this choice, but I've got to talk barbecue. We have a really neat story here in Arlington with Harto Barbecue. This was a guy that was a backyard barbecue or Brandon, he's Texas monthly now has him in the top 50. But it was really neat. We had the first neutral World Series here in Arlington. You remember during the pandemic they picked us to in the LA Dodgers in Tampa came to town. The LA Dodgers found the small little barbecue spot of Hertado here in downtown Arlington and it went viral. They put it on social media. Everybody found Brandon Hertado, including Taylor Sheridan and Taylor Sheridan with Ellison started having him out to his parties and now he signed an agreement with four six's ranch that Taylor owns to supply the beef. And he's now got several restaurants. It's just a really neat story. And how many times is it so fun for us in Texas to discover that next new barbecue spot? Got 'em all over the place. It's awesome. That is a cool Chris: Story. I've not heard of that, but now I'm going to have to go try some, so love it. Well, Jeff, this has been great. I really appreciate you taking the time, love your story and just congratulations for all the success you've had, and I know you'll continue to that into the future. Jeff: Thank you, Chris, and look forward to continuing this relationship. And thank you for what you're doing here on the podcast. Chris: Absolutely. Jeff: And remember, let's build Unity and the Unity blueprint. Special Guest: Jeff Williams.

In Part 2 of our conversation with certified lead auditor Jess Teasdake, we dig deeper into what it really takes to build an efficient, audit-ready quality management system (QMS). If you caught Part 1, you heard us talk through the big picture: certifications, audits, and what separates a good QMS from a bad one. This time, we're getting tactical. We're not just talking about passing an audit—we're talking about building a system that supports your team, reduces risk, and eliminates waste across your business. From risk registers and RPN scoring to digitizing your paperwork and planning with cross-functional teams, we cover the actual tools and habits that make quality real on the shop floor. Along the way, we share stories from our own shops—what's worked, what hasn't, and how integrated technology has changed the game. We've lived the paper-chasing, binder-filled chaos that too many shops call a QMS. And we've seen what happens when you replace it with a connected system that actually reflects how your shop runs day to day. If you're working toward certification—or just want to build a culture of quality that doesn't require heroics to maintain—this episode is your blueprint. Segments (0:26) Grow your top and bottom line with CLA (2:53) Recap of Part 1 + why efficient QMS design matters in regulated industries (3:33) Defining and mapping core processes from RFQ to shipment (6:23) Risk-based thinking: risk registers, RPN scoring, and real-world examples (9:11) Tracking and improving risk scores over time with team input (11:33) Cross-functional planning: involving machinists, programmers, and QA early (12:57) Ballooned drawings, IPCs, and quality planning before the job hits the floor (14:01) Integrated quality checkpoints: from receiving to signoffs and inspection (16:20) Why going paperless saves time and improves accuracy (17:56) Join us at Top Shops 2025! (18:51) Quality as a company-wide responsibility—not a department (21:12) Digital documentation strategy and collaboration tips (23:26) How to implement QMS step by step (26:55) Linking vs. integrating: what real QMS tech should do (29:50) Before & after ProShop: how integrated QMS changed our audit process (33:46) Certification myths: ISO, AS9100, and audit readiness every day (35:53) Why QMS should be built into your tech stack and team culture (38:07) Use Hire MFG Leaders to recruit the next level of talent Resources mentioned on this episode Machine Shop MBA: Planning for Precision Register for Top Shops 2025 now: Get 20% off with code: MAK20 Connect With MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

Brandon Acker is CEO of Titan Abrasive Systems.  Bio: I acquired Titan Abrasive from my uncle in 2013, after working with him for years learning the industry. I had two main goals in the early days. One was to keep costs low for customers by selling direct to them versus through a huge distributor network. I had seen the challenges – including the long lead times and meeting quotas versus providing the best system. Second, I wanted to solve some of the legacy industry challenges, such as blast cabinet legs that crumbled at the mere bump of a fork-lift and energy inefficient equipment. I wanted Titan blast equipment to meet the rigorous demands of companies blasting on a daily or even 24/7 basis – while providing unmatched performance benefits. The Titan team has achieved all this and more. Today, the Titan name is synonymous with rugged, high performance blast equipment that's custom engineered to solve tough application challenges.  What's in our future? Like you, we're navigating supply chain challenges and rising costs.  We're redesigning our media reclaim system, and want to take another look at our dust collector. We've begun our move into more complex application challenges in the nuclear, aerospace, and energy industries. And, we want to expand our team. But one thing will never change: You deal with us. No reps, no middlemen, no waiting weeks for an RFQ. You get intelligent engineering, product advice, and friendly customer service that can't be beat. That's the Titan difference.  

Let's be real—every shop says they make quality parts. But doing it consistently? That's a whole different game. In this episode of the MakingChips Machine Shop MBA series, we break down what it actually takes to build—and sustain—excellence in quality control. From quoting parts you can actually make, to in-process inspections, to how your shipping paperwork could delay your cash flow, this episode covers the full spectrum. We dive into real-world strategies for building quality into every step of the process—from the first RFQ to the final shipment. We talk about ownership, team structure, risk-based IPC strategies, final inspections, and how a simple $100 reward created a culture of accountability on the shop floor. Whether you're building your first quality system or tightening up an already dialed-in process, this conversation will challenge you to think beyond just tolerances and calipers. You'll hear how quality isn't just about measuring—it's about quoting smarter, communicating across departments, and building a shop culture where excellence is everyone's job. This episode is packed with sharp insights and real-world stories from three shop leaders who know what it takes to deliver consistent, swit-level quality. Segments (0:50) Get excited for Top Shops 2025! (1:14) Why listening to MakingChips is SWIT (2:40) Why quality starts in quoting—before a chip is ever made (4:36) Aligning your manufacturing plan with your quality plan (6:35) Why you should track which tool cuts which feature (7:23) Probing vs. offline inspection: finding the right balance (8:27) Should quality report to operations? (Organizational insights) (11:41) Why balloon drawings still matter—and the tools to make it easier (14:30) Incoming and outgoing inspections for outside processing (16:48) When (and why) to keep quality in-house (17:41) First articles, first parts, and final inspection clarity (20:18) Grow your top and bottom line with CLA (20:57) Should machines sit idle during inspection? Risk vs. throughput (22:47) Calibration musts: Why you can't trust dropped tools (24:08) Catching bad tolerances before they hit the floor (26:00) Deviation requests: When it's worth asking (27:00) Rotating inspection plans and in-process strategies (29:53) Building inspection frequency around quantity and value (30:35) Peer checks and the $100 bill that changed everything (32:05) What “final inspection” really means at Hill Manufacturing (36:02) When paperwork mistakes delay payment—and damage quality ratings (37:37) Systematizing delivery to meet each customer's expectations (39:16) The bottom line? Quality is everyone's job (40:21) 3 reasons to check out Buy the Numbers Resources mentioned on this episode Get excited for Top Shops 2025! Grow your top and bottom line with CLA High QA Lights Out Automation Trap Series Connect With MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

Mounir Benchemled is the founder of Velora, an intent-based crosschain trading protocol that makes complex trading strategies simple and accessible for users.  Why you should listen Mounir's deep expertise in DEX aggregation and intent-based trading has positioned Velora as a leader in the DeFi space. As the platform evolves, Mounir is steering the next stage of growth by focusing on crosschain interoperability and agent-based execution, ensuring the best possible user experience with reduced gas costs, slippage, and revert protection.  Velora's core mission is to simplify access to DeFi by breaking down liquidity fragmentation—aggregating over 160 integrated protocols across Ethereum, BSC, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkEVM, and more. One of Velora's standout features is Delta, a trading layer that shields you from MEV (miner extractable value) issues and rids you of gas costs. Delta uses "Portikus Infrastructure" and a fleet of competing settlement agents to secure best‑execution swaps—without upfront gas fees. On top of swaps, Velora offers on‑chain RFQ (request‑for‑quotes) from vetted market makers, yield optimization tools, and a public API/SDK for advanced integrations—making it a go‑to for DeFi devs and institutional teams. Velora is carving out the middle‑layer of DeFi—powering fast, secure, cross‑chain trades with gasless UX and plug‑and‑play tools for developers and institutions. Supporting links Stabull Finance Velora Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.    

Ahmad fills in for ryan on RFQ! Website

In high-stakes, complex sales, success often hinges on what happens before the RFQ ever goes out. In this episode of B2B Sales Trends, Harry Kendlbacher sits down with Shari Begun — VP of Global Sales — to unpack what it really takes to win large deals in today's environment. From account planning and roadmap conversations to stakeholder mapping and value defense, Shari shares practical strategies sales teams can use to shape buying decisions early, avoid competing on price alone, and close bigger deals with more predictability. Whether you're managing a long enterprise cycle or just looking to sharpen your RFQ approach, this one's packed with takeaways you can use right now.

At the heart of The Prophets' vision are “The 24 Essential Supply Chain Processes.” What are they? Find out, and see the future yourself. Click here In this episode, we get real about a topic that doesn't get nearly enough attention in automotive: the strain on supplier relationships. With tariffs, lead time cuts, and constant disruptions, the old “just send the RFQ and hope for the best” approach simply doesn't hold up anymore.That's where Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) comes in—and not just as a tool. We're talking about SRM as part of the procurement strategy.Our guest, Achim Gatternig, Senior Manager for Procurement Projects at Magna, knows exactly what that looks like. He walks us through how Magna approaches Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) in a way that's built for today's supply chain challenges — and tomorrow's.And it all starts early. Before the first quote request goes out, Magna teams are already narrowing down a fit-for-purpose list of suppliers. They're not just matching parts but aligning capabilities, volumes, and timelines to strategy. The goal? Fewer surprises, better results, and stronger long-term relationships.But it's not just about smart planning—it's about real-time visibility. Achim shares how Magna gives suppliers monthly scorecards tracking quality, logistics, and delivery accuracy. It's not about policing—it's about creating conversations based on facts, not feelings.And when crisis hits? That data becomes gold. Whether it's a tariff shift or a plant fire, SRM gives procurement leaders the clarity they need to act fast. Achim walks us through possible scenarios of how the right information at the right time could help companies avoid cost hits, move tooling, and re-strategize without chaos.Of course, not everyone's on board. Achim gets candid about the challenges of pitching SRM to skeptical execs. His take? Show them what it costs to make decisions in the dark and then what's possible when you don't.From pushing ESG requirements down the chain to spotting supplier risk with external data to using AI to manage information no human team could handle alone—Achim shows us what modern procurement leadership really looks like.And his advice for anyone thinking about SRM? Don't overthink it. Just start. Pick the right system, make it fit your world, and give your team the clarity they'll need for whatever comes next.Themes discussed in this episode:Why supplier relationship management is the hidden driver of procurement strategyHow Magna leverages SRM to reduce risk and improve sourcing decisionsWhy SRM is no longer optional in automotive procurementHow SRM tools help teams respond faster during supply chain disruptionsWhy early supplier alignment is more valuable than late-stage negotiationThe real cost of not having supplier data when a crisis hitThe need for a single, shared view of supplier data across teamsFeatured on this episode: Name: Achim GatternigTitle: Senior Manager of Procurement at Magna InternationalAbout: Achim is Senior Manager of Procurement at Magna International, leading global procurement teams for complete vehicle manufacturing projects. With over 18 years at Magna, he's held several key roles across the supply chain and procurement space, including Global Strategic Commodity Manager and Head of Tools and Data Management. Today, he oversees both project-based procurement teams and system administration for critical SCM applications like SRM. Achim is passionate about enabling supply chain teams to succeed—by guiding them...

Strategic marketing investments can transform small AEC firms into industry leaders.Katie Cash kicks off the SmartWin 2025 Speaker Spotlight Series with guest Erica Wozniak Fisher, Director of Marketing and Business Development at The Arkitex Studio. Erica shares her journey from managing major projects at Texas A&M University to driving strategic growth for a small Texas-based architecture firm. The discussion highlights how smart, modest marketing moves can lead to big wins. Erica emphasizes the essentials of branding, targeted networking, and leveraging the right tools and partnerships.  Even small steps, like refining RFQ templates or attending key conferences can deliver impressive and measurable results.Don't miss Erica's practical tips for small firms striving to stand out in the AEC world. Tune in to the new SmartWIN25 Speaker Spotlight series for a sneak peek of what's to come this February.Topics discussed in this episode:SmartWIN25strategic investmentsarchitectureArkitexAEC GrowthTexas A&M UniversityMarketing and business developmentsmall firmsFollow Erica Wozniak Fisher: https://arkitex.com/Connect with Katiehttps://smartegies.com/

Send us a textUnlock the secrets to precise ICT project estimation and revolutionize your approach to competitive bidding with our latest episode. Discover how microestimating can transform your project management strategies and drive profitability. We break down the intricate process of estimating ICT projects into a clear, structured approach, from initiation to presentation. By mastering the art of crafting accurate bids, you position your company for consistent project wins and stronger client relationships. Our discussion provides clarity on vital industry documents such as RFB, RFP, and RFQ, ensuring you're equipped with the knowledge to excel in the procurement landscape.Join us as we delve into effective techniques for preparing estimates, emphasizing the importance of understanding the client's needs, budget constraints, and competitive landscape. We share insights on the power of clear communication and documentation in preventing costly misunderstandings. Learn how to critically analyze client-provided designs to identify potential flaws, building trust and credibility along the way. Explore the distinction between direct and indirect project costs, and the critical need to track these for project success. Finally, we highlight the symbiotic relationship between microestimating and project management tasks, setting the foundation for successful ICT project execution.Support the showKnowledge is power! Make sure to stop by the webpage to buy me a cup of coffee or support the show at https://linktr.ee/letstalkcabling . Also if you would like to be a guest on the show or have a topic for discussion send me an email at chuck@letstalkcabling.com Chuck Bowser RCDD TECH#CBRCDD #RCDD

Will we have a new champ for RFQ or will Ahmad repeat? Website

SUBSCRIBE TO WATCH THE VIDEOS FIRST https://www.youtube.com/@dodcontractacademy/?sub_confirmation=1  GET CERTIFIED: Earn up to $400K a year as a freelance GOVERNMENT CONTRACT CONSULTANT: https://www.govclose.com/sales-certification FREE BOOK: Download the "Government Contract Planner" For Free at https://www.dodcontract.com   Retired Colonel Lewis Orndorff, an expert in government contracts with over 30 years of experience walks through  reading and understanding Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and Requests for Quote (RFQs) for government contracts. Colonel Orndorff provides crucial advice on often-overlooked elements in these documents, such as FAR clauses, cost structures, and compliance requirements, that can significantly impact a company's obligations and costs. The session includes practical examples and advice on identifying and understanding key contract details, ensuring companies make informed bidding decisions. Additionally, the episode discusses negotiation possibilities and the importance of understanding contract clauses to avoid potential pitfalls. I Ideal for those interested in government contracting, the discussion also highlights the benefits of joining the GovClose certification program for specialized training in this field. 00:00 Introduction to Government Contracting 00:00 Introduction to Reading an RFP 00:16 Understanding the Documents: RFQ vs. RFP 00:39 Key Considerations in Proposals 01:42 Detailed Examination of Solicitation Sections 03:59 Contract Types and Their Implications 06:39 Importance of Reading Clauses 08:40 Tools and Strategies for Cost Estimation 10:26 Navigating the Proposal Submission Process 11:49 Highlighting Important Clauses 16:21 Practical Examples and Case Studies 30:02 Q&A Session