Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Cris Young

Curt Anderson  0:01

Here we go, Damon Happy Monday, my friend. Thank God. It’s Monday. How are you? Dude?

Damon Pistulka  0:06

It’s awesome today, Kurt. Thanks. Happy to be here.

Curt Anderson  0:10

Hey, your team won yesterday. So it’s a glorious Monday so man manufacturing Monday motivation. I am so honored. I am so thrilled hardly slugging away guest night for our big guest today, Cris. Young Cris. Happy Monday. How are you today?

Cris Young  0:28

Very well, Kurt and Damon. Nice to see you gentlemen today.

Curt Anderson  0:32

Oh, this is so awesome. So Damon, i Are you sitting down for this one. Dude, this is this is like this is gonna be on fire. So let me just share a little tidbit out Cris. And then she has a ton to uncover for us. Cris, we have an E commerce expert here. We have a database diva. If you don’t mind me referring to you as a diva, Cris, we have she’s a monarch of women in manufacturing, truly a pioneer and a champion. She has all sorts of exciting things going on. Cris, let’s just and you’re also just rocking it in the fastener world. So I have a bunch of questions that I want to hit for you. Let me let me let me start with this. How about we start with our dear friend Pat. Let’s go to Youngstown State University if you don’t mind, how’s that for you? So that works. How’s that? So I’m gonna dig we were gonna dig into manufacturing ecommerce. You have a patented software product, a SaaS product that is cool and cutting edge. So as Cris and I connect, we’re like kindred spirits. We’re going through, we have all these random connections. We’re like, man, Cris, we talked long enough. We’re gonna be related. We find out the SBDC advisor at the Small Business Development Center at Youngstown State University. Our dear friend Pat, Cris, talk a little bit about the Youngstown State University SBDC. And our dear mutual friend, Pat.

Cris Young  1:43

Well, Pat is just an inspiration to any small business that she comes across. That’s That’s first and foremost. And Youngstown State SBDC is a leader, leader in the state of Ohio, which is huge in manufacturing. As you both know, she, Pat, you know, well, first, I went there as a just as a small business, I was looking for help. MIKE Yeah, doing my doing my accounting, to get ready for investors, and, and, you know, fundraising. And so we went there looking for help on that. That’s how I first got introduced to her. Through that, you know, we talked and we realized that we had a lot of things in common, we were both passionate about helping small businesses. And she then at that point, asked me to come on and be a small business, you know, advisor in the area, which was, I mean, eye opening and inspirational and just really, really was a great experience for me meeting other small business owners helping them to accomplish the tasks they needed, really something I’m very passionate about. So, you know, I have nothing but great things to say about Pat and the young sound, Small Business Development Center, that through that, through that, I became familiar with a program called Manufacturing Day, which was run by a private company in the originally, but now I believe it’s owned by Nam, the National Association of Manufacturers. And that was an Pat was a great help with that, that program, so for five years in a row in the city of Youngstown. And we just we just crushed Manufacturing Day, we had an event where there were all all types of entities were involved in it. The government was involved in it, the manufacturing associations were involved involved in it. Workforce associations and agencies were involved in it. Schools, we brought in, you know, from the little kids all the way up to the college, and everybody just participated in 3d printing. I don’t know if you know this or not, but Youngstown is definitely a leader in the 3d printing world. We have the right behind the Youngstown business incubator, I’m drawing a blank on the name but American makes sorry, yeah, American made facility correct. And they were also very, you know, helpful and served as advisors for the Manufacturing Day. And they served as hosts for the Manufacturing Day. We brought in, we brought in the fastener industry, we invited the fastener industry for one of them. We had just some really cool and inspirational and I call them kids because you know, getting to that age now. But we from Youngstown State University that have gone on to do some amazing things that are working in the nationally NIST right now. Yeah, and and you know, in Boeing and just like it’s just amazing, just amazing. And they are really devoted and dedicated to the manufacturing community. They are in Youngstown.

Curt Anderson  5:05

Well. Cris, thank you. And so and I’m going to send this recording to our dear friend Pat, Pat’s, the director of the Youngstown State University, Small Business Development Center. anybody listening if you’re like, Hey, what is this SBDC? What is the Small Business Development Center? There is an SBDC near you. There’s nearly 1000 centers around the country. They’re always parked at a college university near you, if you just Google SBDC Small Business Development Center. I was actually an advisor for many years, Cris was an advisor. And so again, Cris, I knew, you know, I saw you had like a long history of New England, you know, born in Boston, I believe. And then I’m like, wait a minute, Ohio. What was she doing in Ohio, and then I saw your connection. We do a ton of work with Youngstown State University SBDC and Pat and hurt and Craig Zamri is an awesome, awesome guy. They have a dynamic team. They do robotics, 3d printing, we could go on and on. So that’s our love fest for Youngstown State University. SBDC. So Cris, let’s get back. Let’s get back to you. So I just want this might Daymond you sit down for this. This might take me a minute. You ready? I’m

Damon Pistulka  6:06

ready for this one.

Curt Anderson  6:06

All right. So Pat, Cris, I’m just going to read off a few things on your resume, if you will. So President of women in the fastener industry, you ran the steering committee of women in entrepreneurship. You were the co chair of women in manufacturing for the Ohio chapter, like you said, one of the greatest states of manufacturing in our wonderful country. You’re a board member of the United States Women’s Chamber of Commerce. You’re part of the fastener news. You are the CEO of product genius technology. My goodness, I’m like I’m out of breath. What an over I feel like a total underachiever right now, but you just have it’s such an illustrious career. Let’s start off with talk a little bit about how did you end up in fasteners? You’re just a little bit with Daymond? Myself? How did fasteners come on your radar to begin with?

Cris Young  6:51

Yeah, so as I was saying a little bit earlier, you know, I started in the faster industry at a really young age, I was not even able to see over the counter. My dad, my dad worked at a hardware store. And my job was to bag the stuff as it came down the conveyor belt, if you can even remember conveyor belts, you know, it was it was it was my introduction into the industrial world. And every job that I’ve had since then, has been related to the industrial the industrial world, you know, I did, I, I think I pretty much covered the supply chain. I was a not a manager, but a dispatch supervisor. For ups. I did that for seven years. So I’ve seen the logistics side of it. I’ve been a, you know, a manufacturer I’ve been in, in this distribution. So I’ve really just and and the best part of it is I combined all of that knowledge. And I’m sharing it with anybody and anybody who will listen to me. Yeah. And that’s what really really, I’m passionate about.

Curt Anderson  7:59

That is awesome. So as Damon I you know, we’re both proud girls that Cris is just, you know, to hear that you’re at that, you know, at the store can even see over the counter, and jump in things. And we have a couple of notes here. Bob feathers. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us, Nathan job to note. So guys, happy Monday, Cris shirt. So you know, it’s common, you know, sometimes we’re like, Hey, Dad did this mom did that. And we want to go a different direction. What really tugged your heart like what drove you to like, Hey, this is the course I’m going I’m going to take my path this way.

Cris Young  8:31

I’m probably being told no a lot. You know, growing up, you know, you’re a girl and you just, you’re supposed to do things a certain way. And I’m was never one to accept no. So when you know, you were supposed to be home playing with dolls. I was on the baseball field. You know, you were 13 years old when I was told I couldn’t play in the Babe Ruth League, you know, my heart was broken. But got over that. And I’ve just, I’ve just used that to enable myself to push forward. And, and, you know, my pushing forward has allowed me to be able to give that strength and and guidance to others that, you know, think that they can’t do it. Yeah. So you know that that’s pretty much what what drives me. You know, I’m deeply influenced by my environment. And I’m going to take that and use that, to my benefit, and to the benefit of others, if at all possible.

Curt Anderson  9:44

Yeah, that’s fantastic. And so Cris, you’re out. You’re in Maine, and you follow your career, you’ve lived all over the place and again, like really passionate on manufacturing, in particular, just rounded off all these organizations that you’ve been a part of. You’re on the board you’re president. So Talk a little bit like, where did you find it within you like, I’m going to be a pioneer, I’m going to be an inspiration for young women out there and like really steer that ship just share a little bit like what went on there for, for that journey for you?

Cris Young  10:13

Well, I wasn’t always I’ll have to say that, you know, in my my teen years, I was not always the most outspoken person. Although Leo, and very opinionated, I pretty much kept that to myself, in my teen years, however, just getting into the workforce and seeing the opportunities that were available out there, but that you you really weren’t able to tap into. And again, you know, being told no, had had a profound influence on my career and my life in general. And I don’t like to be told no. So I realized there was certain things I had to do, I had to be more outspoken, I had to be part of organizations and be willing to take the lead and be willing to, you know, make sacrifices in order to accomplish the goals that I wanted to. So that’s, you know, that’s what pushes me forward and to this day is still pushing me forward. And seeing other people out there, going through the same experience that I had. And not being able to, you know, reach out or connect or whatever was just the for instance, one of the last last few manufacturing sessions you had, I believe her name was Megan.

Damon Pistulka  11:36

Yeah. Yeah. Megan Ziemba. Yeah, Megan.

Cris Young  11:41

Right. After that, I read up a little bit on Megan and what she was doing and who she was connected with. And right away, I saw somebody I needed to connect her with. So I got on the email, I typed it out. I said, Hey, Sarah, I really want you to meet this. Megan, I think that you guys have you know, something in common. You’re both very passionate about women in manufacturing. Let’s, you know, you two should get together and start talking. Have a conversation. You know, I stepped away at that point. But, you know, I saw Megan and Sarah were connecting. And that made me happy. And that’s what that’s what it’s all about, you know, to people, you know that they should be working together. Get them together. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Well done. Good stuff.

Curt Anderson  12:30

So Cris, let’s let’s, let’s take a deep dive into some of the organizations that you’ve worked with. So folks are out there like, you know, she’s I didn’t know there’s a women in fasteners, women in entrepreneurship, women in manufacturing, you know, can you talk a little bit about, you know, those particular organizations, how you got involved, how other women can get involved.

Cris Young  12:47

So for women in the fastener industry, there were plenty of other groups out there, but nothing that really, you know, catered to women and women have unique issues doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you know, wearing high heels on the on the warehouse floor is not, you know, it’s not cool. Yeah. It’s not safe. So we have our own unique issues. So a bunch of us got together. And we drew up the, you know, articles of incorporation, and, you know, filed for whatever, the 505 C something, whatever that is. Yeah, exactly. And we were granted that and we, you know, go out there and we talked to all these women in the industry, and we push forward for things that are necessary. Childcare is a big issue. Yeah, yeah, being able to work from home is a big issue, you know. So I say those issues, because that’s first and foremost, right now with going through going through the pandemic, but you know, other things as well. But definitely issues that Concerned Women in the fastener industry, for women in entrepreneurship. I was a business that was trying to develop a technology in an incubator, and they’re all of the advisors were male. Great, and that’s, believe me, you need that information. And I take nothing away from any of them. However, there were certain issues, certain certain things that would happen to a woman business owner, that would not happen to a man business owner, and you needed somebody to talk to about it. So we went to the leadership and we said, hey, you know, you got to do something about this. Okay, let’s start a group. Let’s start the women in entrepreneurship group. And Cris, you’re going to be on the boy. There you go. No problem. That was great. Because we got to we got to do things like when social media really hit, you know, hit businesses in the fact that they needed to do it. Yeah, we we had done it already. And so we created a program and we shared it with all the women entrepreneurs. They were coming in. And to this day, they’re still using it or growing from it. And so again, just things, little things that we can do that share and educate and connect other people to things that they need. Very important, very important that each one of us, you know, does not only for ourselves, but for others.

Curt Anderson  15:20

Right, that is awesome. So Cris, let’s, um, let’s talk about women in manufacturing. You know, we interview a number of folks that are involved with women in manufacturing, great organization, chocolate, and you were active with the Ohio chapter, it talks about like, so if somebody is coming from a different state, like how could they reach out how could they get involved with their local chapter on women in manufacturing?

Cris Young  15:42

Have you guys met Allison yet? Great, Alice.

Curt Anderson  15:46

We I know us as a matter of fact, we have another woman that we’re interviewing in January, who’s part of the Ohio chapter and she’s involved with with her Yes,

Cris Young  15:55

Alison is just a dynamo. Yeah, I mean, she is just she is there for the cause. She worked at PMA precision manufacturing association or something to that effect, also in Ohio. And that’s where I met her from. Yeah. And we, you know, we showed up at one of her, I think Ohio might have been one of the first chapters that was opened up and met her there and just really, really liked her mission, really like what she was talking about how she, you know, how she set up the organization. And, you know, as I said, Ohio’s a huge manufacturing state. So it wasn’t really hard to get people involved in that. But since then, she’s, she has gone on, and I think she’s, you know, probably close to, if not all 50 states. Yeah. And she’s just, you know, she’s just taking this thing, and going and going and going with it. And it’s just so great to see women, and especially younger women stepping up on, you know, onto the leadership platform and doing the things that need to get done to help those behind them.

Curt Anderson  17:10

Yeah, it’s yeah, man, it’s so good. It’s so inspiring to see, in Daymond, we’re involved with multiple different networking groups. You know, there’s the Twitter chat group for manufacturers on Thursday, our friend, Dan bigger, you know, and there are tons I’m gonna see a majority are women in manufacturing in that group. And you’re just seeing this trend is just more and more Cris. And again, it’s just great seeing, you know, you were truly a pioneer and just champion this cause. So let’s, let’s change gears a little bit. So let’s talk about we’re ecommerce geeks here. And you’re an E commerce expert. And I went through a little demo of this, this little product that you created, you’ve actually patented, please talk to us about what is this product that you’ve created, and let’s dig deep into that.

Cris Young  17:51

So a fastener distributor, you have to go out there, and this was in 1999, you have to go out there and you have to, you know, online was booming, we had the.com, boom, everybody’s going online, you’re gonna do this, you can do everything’s gonna be electronic at that at that. Well, in the b2b world, or in the industrial b2b world. I’ll clarify that. Yeah, that’s not exactly how it happens. Okay. There’s a bunch of dinosaurs there. Excuse me for calling on that. But truth is truth. Right? And they don’t want to change. And so we, when we went out, and we interviewed every software company out there that we could, that we could get, you know, to come in and visit with us and demo for us. And we realized right away, this is just not going to work for fasteners, you search one little thing at a time, one little thing, one little thing, that faceted search, right. So we started working on it in the background, and we came up with, you know, a little nap and everybody has one of them. Yeah, with with with the design on it. And we’re like, how are we going to get this done? And believe me, we tried many, many software companies. And we were told now this is never just not you guys a pipe dream. This is not going to work not going to work. I mean, I went to software developers in New York, and went to software developers on the West Coast. You know, and it was just the same answer, same answer. So 10 years went by, still got my napkin. Then we move out to Ohio, and on. I’ll never forget to stay Sunday morning and I’m an architecture geek. So I love to go look at old buildings and their storefronts. Just just for the heck of it. We go downtown Youngstown, on a Sunday morning, no traffic, and we’re driving by on the main street there federal street, and I see the Youngstown business incubator. Business You better in Youngstown. What are you kidding me? Anyways, I called them up on Monday morning. And I said to them, you know, we have a couple of things technology wise we can we can come in and show you. Sure. And at that point in time it was the SBA. Yes, you had to go through the SBA to get in there. So we went, we met with Bill. Ah, and we discussed with him and he said, You know, I think he might have something I’d like you to meet with the business development person for the incubator. Okay, that was great. Met with them. They were intrigued. And we actually at that point in time had to two plans that we were working on one was the software, and one was a marketplace. Oh, no, excuse me. It wasn’t a marketplace. It was a trade show electronic trade show for the fastener industry. And we showed them the plans and they were like, well, we really liked the software thing. And that’s something that we’re focused on is SAS, SAS platforms. Okay, that’s great. You know, they gave us a little more due diligence, you know, do you meet this criteria, whatever. We got through all that. And we were accepted into the business incubator. Five years later, we come out we have two patents. It was am I allowed to swear? It was it was hell. I’m just blunt. Data is so hard, so hard to manipulate. But we found ln the first technology team we hired totally ripped us off. Oh, no, no, we went out. We raised funds. We did the whole that whole scene. And we got ripped off. Yeah. Anyways, we met through some other meeting that we had we, we saw this technology team, and we you know, we were intrigued by them. We asked them, can you think you could do this? They’re like, Yeah, well, let’s give it a try. So we worked really hand in hand with that team. And I’d like to give them a little shout out Moreland connect in, in Hudson, Ohio, great, great bunch of guys, and really talented. And they were able to help us. And at first, we thought we were a little fastener company, we could use this, we could grow really, really big. And the more we sat with it, and of course, being in the technology incubator that pumping you up, the more we realized, okay, you’re going to be able to use this for a heck of a lot more than fasteners. Yeah, right, you’re gonna be able to use this for whatever has, we call it a complex product category.

You know, platform. And basically, it eliminates faceted search, the, what you see on the left hand side of the page, you know, one, one little click at a time, and then the page reloads over and over again until you get fed up with it. We have eliminated all of that you can see over well, however many products are in the category I use, I typically use the hex cap screw category, because it has over 17,000 different items that you can look at, when you can look at them all on one page without software right? Now, of course, you didn’t mean some people don’t want to do that, that they get overwhelmed by that. But I assure you it’s very easily organized and displayed. And it was just we just really excited about it. We think that, you know, at first you had the the ListView of products were where people had to list, you know, the 700 pages of 111 category. And then you had the grid the well, they referred to it as the grid, which is really the same thing just in side by side form. Yeah. And then we hope that the protein is technology is the next view that you see out there. of products. That’s that’s where we’re aiming to go. Right. Very cool.

Curt Anderson  24:08

Yeah. And I’ve had the honor, I’ve gone through a demo, guys. And what I did is in the chat box, I put a link to your website, Cris and so product product genius technology, again, so if you’re just joining us, Cris champion of women in manufacturing, cutting edge e commerce SaaS product that Cris has created, patented herself, and I went through that demo, and I’m telling you, it is mind blowing. So you know, Damon, we preach constantly to anybody and everybody that will listen, I like how can you make it as easy as humanly possible to do business with you, especially like you’re saying, Cris, you know, as manufacturers that we have these real complex, complex problems and situations, we’re always preaching about configurators and you have a really concise, a powerful solution for manufacturers. Let’s take it one step further. So talk about so someone made Christmas music. Here’s your singing my song I’m digging this tight, let’s take it one step further, what does that relationship look like? They contact you, you take them through a demo, what do they what are they going to expect? What would they see talk a little bit about what that what that opportunity opportunity looks like.

Cris Young  25:13

So exactly that you contact me, we’ll take you through a demo, we’ll talk about your needs as a company where you see yourself going forward, you know, a lot of these manufacturers are really afraid of E commerce. And but the truth, the truth of the matter is, okay, even if you don’t sell directly to the public, you still need an E commerce app application, because you need it for quoting, you need an RFQ. Right? So I use the word e commerce, but you know, when you’re talking to some of these manufacturers, you might have to tone it down a little bit. Yeah. And tell them that you know, or explain to them that it’s, it’s a, it’s a search and sort system, that’s going to help you whether you choose to sell online or not, period and a story. So, you know, and then we’ll we’ll give them a questionnaire ask them, you know, pertinent questions, what, what kind of shape the data is in, which is, data is another big thing for me. I’m not sure how I even got into this. But let me just tell you after working on the data for the patent, I am a data wizard.

Curt Anderson  26:22

The date I call you the your you are the date database diva, man, I’m telling you, I just

Cris Young  26:27

live I never in my wildest dreams, would I have ever thought that spreadsheets would excite me. Yeah, but they do. They do. Yeah. And I just I love sorting through the data. I love cleaning it that’s through the patent process. Was that was something else we had to do. We cleaned and standardized the language for the fastener industry. Right. And that just, you know, you know, what can you say about it? It’s really I, I don’t know, I just get turned on by data sheets.

Damon Pistulka  27:06

It’s interesting that you talk about data, because I was just on a call earlier today, I mean, literally an hour ago, where they were talking about an industrial supplier, that their biggest challenge in going to e commerce and selling things online, and we’re talking a multi 100 million dollar company that sells very little as an industrial distributor online, their biggest problem is getting the data from the manufacturer, so they can actually list their products for sale on their ecommerce platforms. This is a thing that we as manufacturers, industrial, whatever you’re making OEMs, when you’ve got hundreds 1000s 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of skews. Often as your biggest problem is really, my data is back there in a catalog somewhere, we didn’t write it so that could be sorted could be categorized all this kind of thing. And I don’t care what industry you go in with a lot of skews, they still have that problem. And the data that clean up that you’re talking about is something that is so critical, because that drives like you’re saying, you want to improve your internal quoting, efficiency, give your give your customer service people a tool where in two seconds, they can have everything they need for the quote, yep, doesn’t matter if you’re selling online or not.

Cris Young  28:23

I think that’s I think that’s the number one thing, that’s the first step you have to do go online, whether you do ecommerce or not, you have got to clean your data for the exact same reason you just said it helps your sales people. Yep, it helps your customers, you know, the workforce is changing right now. Yeah, when we were, you know, pandemic or not things, we’re gonna move towards a, you know, electronic system for doing automatic, you know, tasks that can be automated buying is one of them. Yeah, so you were going to have to do this sooner or later. And the companies that jumped on it, and you know, got on it right away, and they cleaned and sorted their data. And they have, you know, efficient systems that can read and interpret that data, and analyze that data. Those are the ones that are going to succeed, all the rest of them are going to get bought by private equity.

Damon Pistulka  29:17

Well, and you the one point in this is that your internal people don’t know all your skews, all your solutions, they don’t and they won’t, unless you make it really easy for your people that are working with that information to find exactly what they need, when they need it just like your customers need to do. So. Whether you’re selling in online, outside outside people or you’re empowering your customer service or your account people to be able to turn a quote faster, and with better products to the end customer. It’s the same challenge. But these companies that have like you’re talking about what you’re seeing what your solution is helping them do is helping them just get their products known and available the best products to their customers.

Cris Young  30:09

Right? Yeah. Yeah, it’s, like I said, I think that’s the the number one issue is the data. And as soon as you get that sorted out and you know, in a in a, in a form that’s going to help, isn’t it? Everything today is about the customer experience. You know, and we say the customer experience, but really your salespeople are also your customers. Yeah, you want to say that out loud or not? That’s the truth of the matter. And, you know, you got to have you, you just you have to have that. You have to have that. If I could say anything, if anybody takes away anything from this conversation today. It’s go get your data cleaned.

Curt Anderson  30:50

Man, let’s just good. It’s lunchtime over here. Let’s just save her that one, Cris. So Cris, we have a few comments in the chat box I want to share. So when when we’re off the program, go through the comments section. So Bob feathers, Bob, happy Monday, my friends, so he drops in you that you want to connect with Susan, whilst we have another connection for you, Julie, I want to I want to mispronounce your last name. So you may data Todd, I know. I know. Dana, Tad, Dina TADS. I got cert man, I met Dana, from search conferences like 20 years ago. Um, here’s a great comment. How does it’s a question how does this facet list UI perform in search results? I’ve had some SEO challenges with our fancy e comm UI and Gatsby framework. would wonder how you overcame that an app not optimized for search, Kara to chime in on that?

Cris Young  31:41

Well, first of all, was the standardization. Okay, one thing we find repeatedly in people’s data is that you could have the same item listed 11 different ways. And I just choose the number 11. Because that happens to be my my famous example. There was one hex cap screw that was HXH GX CS. I mean, it was just on and on. And on full thread ft thread, it was just crazy. So you’ve got to do that first, right? You standardize your data use you set it up for Pim. So you your your, your data, your data sheet, he has everything that is attached to that that product. Yeah, you you have your the characteristics of the product itself, you have the products, it’s related to you have the images, everything is connected all together. And then when you go to put it online, there’s no question as to SEO optimization, because everything’s there. And everything’s correct. Awesome, awesome.

Damon Pistulka  32:49

I just dropped another acronym in there that I just want everyone to know Pim, people don’t understand if you don’t work with a lot of SKUs. You don’t know what a PIM is, you know, that product information manager, I believe that’s, that’s the right acronym. I mean, it categorize it. And this is what, just so many, if you’re trying to use an ERP system, they really aren’t a PIM system, they don’t do the right, you know, with all the other things, but these systems, these PIM systems behind this, really, with the categorization, and even the content and everything that they they hold and organize and make easy to use. They’re so critical in these high SKU count companies as well.

Cris Young  33:31

Right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, as I was saying, you know, you have you have, you have all this data, and you, you, what we find also that is that you hire outside companies to enter your data for you big mistake. You need somebody within the company, who knows the language knows the, you know, the way the way that customers search for it, for one thing, and then even within the same company, you might have two or three people entering, you know, well, Bob is needs this product for a customer. And so he’s going to enter it into the system one way, and then Tom’s going to enter it into the system another way because he also needs it for his customer. It’s the same item, but it’s listed, you know, on your data sheet, five different ways. That’s not going to help you it’s not going to help you in search engine optimization. It’s not going to help you when you go to get online. It’s not going to help you with any software program, from your customer relationship to your ERP to your accounting to your data, not going to help you’ve got to straighten out your data.

Curt Anderson  34:39

And this is a circuit. So that’s where it starts. Let’s just I met Cris, I know we could go all day. Well, let’s let’s unpack a couple things that you just dropped. Okay, so one thing Damon, we love to preach to anybody that’s want to listen to us out there, right? Our dogs our family. How can you help that ideal buyer make a bind to cision on a Friday night at midnight, without having to wait for you to open up your doors on a Monday morning. And that’s what Cris that’s exactly what you’re describing, look at this powerful tool, this resource that that ideal buyer, we don’t care what time zone they’re in, where on the planet they are, whether I’m open, I’m close, I’m remote, not remote, I can land I can use a tool such as yours, and deliver a wonderful, powerful customer experience. So they don’t go somewhere else, right? We call them our soulmates when we get those soulmates man, we don’t want them going anywhere else. So again, you’re delivering that powerful product, data, data, data, data, you know, in and then another bombshell you dropped. People don’t think about this, we always think about that ideal customer. And now with this, this awful labor challenge that we face, we finally realize like, hey, guess what? Our staff, our customers as well, right? Our teammates, our employees? How can you help those guys, those folks, those ladies, how can we help them be rock stars at third job, and let them be salesperson, people, you know, like, help you know what you’re doing in my you know, when I went through the demo with you, you know, I had a bunch of aha moments, light bulbs that were going off were like, man, now I can take my customer service, rely on my website for that customer service activity, and let my sales people be salespeople, let them do what they’re what they’re, you know, we don’t need them to be order takers. Let them be sales, folks. So Cris, I know we could go on and on. I wanted I wanted you’re active with fastener news, could you please share what’s going on with fastener fastener news and like for anybody in the fastener industry, if they’re not familiar with it, what benefits they do you deliver with a faster news.

Cris Young  36:35

So fast news was started because we really just we were small distribution company, and we had no voice out there. So we we, we embraced social media and content early on, and realize that, hey, nobody else is going to do it out there. I mean, we have there are publications in our industry, to this day, who don’t have a interactive website, which blows my mind, but that’s what’s out there. So we said to ourselves, Well, how can we how can we get a greater? How can we provide influence and a greater awareness of what’s what’s going on out there in the industry? And so we came up with fastener news desk. And basically, we, we talk about everything that fastener and fastener related. So most of the other publications within our industry, strictly talk to the fastener industry. And that’s well and good, but gets boring. And there’s not a lot of news out there. And furthermore, it doesn’t help you sell because your customers, you’re not talking about your customers. Right. So we incorporated technology, we incorporated 3d printing, we incorporated, you know, just in manufacturing in general. And we talk about and to all of those industries all at the same time. We’re not just limiting. Well, fasters is the focus, and that’s the name of our media arm. We have adopted all of these other avenues to be able to spread the word. And that’s just that. We love doing it. We love being able to talk to other people in other industries in hearing what’s going on, which is how Megan and Sarah that I introduced to Megan Sarah Gorky. She’s huge in 3d printing women in 3d printing a leader, another pioneer, you know, leading the cause out there. And that’s how we got to know her. Yeah, it I’ll tell you one thing I knew I thought I knew so much about the fastener industry before I started fashion and newsdesk. And now I just know, I mean, so much more. I mean, it’s just incredible. I know about mergers and acquisitions. I know about who’s doing what who’s celebrating a birthday and the little things, the big things just amazing. Every day is just amazing that the stuff that I learned, and I love it, just love it. That

Damon Pistulka  39:12

good. Good stuff, man. I

Curt Anderson  39:14

know we could go on and on with us. And Cris What I love what you’ve done is like Damon, you do an amazing so we do e commerce training my buddy Mark hills on a program on Monday, my friend we need to connect. Deena Todd, I can’t believe Dana tied if you’re Dana, if your salon she’s a pioneer in E commerce marketing from like, I met her in 2003. Man, we need to connect, we need to have you on this program. True pioneer. But Cris, what you’ve done is like, you know, Daymond we’re constantly talking about building that community, you know, training sessions, you do an awesome job of that. We talked about on Friday, we had a phenomenal guest. We had marks cousin John on the program on Friday. Like curating that content. And Cris, what you’ve done is you’ve done all that. We’re like you’re pulling in people you’re built, you’re branding yourself as the Already in the expert, you just raise your hand in like anybody out there that’s like if you’re, you know, you’re struggling with being the best kept secret, or you’re trying to figure out this whole digital game. You know, look what Cris has done. Cris, you are such an inspiration. I just, it’s just overwhelming. You know, you’re you’ve look, came into an industry, you know, the dude’s world and you just came in smashing ceilings, you know, you took with women, manufacturing women and fit in a fastener industry, women in entrepreneurship, you just constantly look what Cris does. She just constantly, consistently through her career, raises her hand and says, you know, what, if nobody else is doing it, I got it. I’ll do it. Let’s take this on. And I’ll tell you, you’re just you’re such a man. You’re just monumental. You really are. You’ve created such an inspirational path for other people to take this on. And we’ll conclude on this with that fastener news. Again, like you came together in your industry, and said, like, hey, I want to be the authority in this topic. Let’s pull everybody together, you know. And so you’re just you’re doing an awesome, awesome job. So, Cris, so I put obviously, we’re on LinkedIn, we’re on Facebook. We’re on Twitter live today. All sorts of places that we can connect with you. I put your LinkedIn in the I’m sorry, put your website in the in the chat link. How can people connect with you? What’s the next step how we need to know more about Cris Young? How can they find you?

Cris Young  41:21

Well, he’s certainly you can find me on LinkedIn. Definitely there. I’m on Twitter at Cris Young. We’ll see what else you can connect with me at faster newsdesk, you can connect with me prior to unis technology if you go to my LinkedIn profile basically all of my you know links to connect with me are there probably including my phone number, which is you sitting down for this 11877 forest grow say it again cost also something we did nobody else was doing it it was available. We will we will like out we can’t believe this is still open out there. It’s 877 for a screw

Damon Pistulka  42:07

my goodness.

Cris Young  42:09

Ah, oh, you know, little tongue in cheek there. But hey, that’s awesome. marketing is marketing. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  42:17

I absolutely. I love it. So I get it. I

Damon Pistulka  42:21

I just couldn’t I just followed you on Twitter, too. This is awesome. It’s just your I just want a jazz awesome, just awesome.

Curt Anderson  42:30

Yeah, me too. Today. You’re truly a gift you are a blessing and again for our dear friend Pat at Youngstown State just give you a shout out there again. Again Cris Young CEO of product genius technology guys. Just man take this and just like go out just for for Cris ‘s sake, go out and just crush it the rest of this week. So thank you for your time, your passion, your energy. Hang out with us one second. You guys have an awesome, incredible week. Damon, we’re back here on Friday, man, we have a killer program with SARAH SCOTT are going to be geeking out on ERP systems on our Friday show. So Cris, thank you for joining us today, guys. Thank you, everybody. Dana. Thank you. Gosh, she has like bright we’d be at a conference and she has like the bright red dyed hair and we love Dana Dean. I gotta connect with you. Thank you for joining us today, Cris. Thank you. We’ll see you guys soon.