Manufacturing eCommerce Success – with Bret Boyd and Trevor Bryant

Curt Anderson  00:01

Hey, happy Monday. Hey, Nicole.

Nicole Donnelly  00:04

How are you? Curt? I’m doing great. It’s weird to see you on the Zoom. I just saw you in person last week. So I

Curt Anderson  00:11

know. I know we’re hanging out. So yeah, we’re hanging out in Niagara Falls. Damon. Happy Monday, your CX one. How was your weekend? My

Damon Pistulka  00:17

friend has a great weekend, man. Great weekend.

Curt Anderson  00:20

Yeah. And you know what? No call. I know. He knew that. He took his mom to the Seahawks game last week. So how did my time at the game?

Damon Pistulka  00:26

Yes, she did. Yes, she did.

Curt Anderson  00:29

Because my, how was mom Damon at at took eight year old mom to the Seahawks game. It was our first NFL game. God bless her. She was decked out in our Seahawks garb. So I man we have a super, super exciting program here today. This is like a year in the making. So I’m going to introduce a couple folks here. So we got Bret Boyd, CEO of sustainment Bret. Good, I guess good afternoon for some of us, right. Good afternoon. Good morning. How are you today?

Bret Boyd  00:56

And well, thank you. Appreciate you having us. Absolutely.

Curt Anderson  00:59

Trevor Bryant, how are you my friend? What’s happening? Happy Monday to you. How’s how’s things in your world?

Trevor Bryant  01:03

Things are going great. Thank you for having us and appreciate being here.

Curt Anderson  01:08

Okay, so let’s I’m going to do a little background here. So Damon, you ready for this one? Okay. So, our friend Dr. Boyd, so I’ve had the honor privilege met Bret for like, two minutes of your goal in Chicago. Brett, you are a force reckoned with. And so first off, thank you for your service to our country, my friend for tours to Iraq. For two tours to Iraq, Army, just veteran West Point grad. Why for how to like, talk to us about the four tours. I’ve just you piqued my curiosity. Can you just take us there for a minute?

Bret Boyd  01:43

Yeah, I mean, look, I Well, I appreciate the sentiment First off, so and I didn’t I think it’s more of a timing thing. So look, I was a senior at West Point, when the towers went down, we were kind of the war class for the Iraq War. And, and I served as an infantry officer in the 75th Ranger Regiment, did the, I guess a lot of back and forth to different combat theaters around the world? So call it a timing, timing incident as opposed to any specific aptitude here? Well, I

Curt Anderson  02:11

appreciate your humility. And so it he, you know, again, just for those of us we, you know, I appreciate your humble, you know, very kind gracious, just for those, those of us that just admire the work that you did, give us a takeaway for tours, what was like, you know, from being, you know, overseas representing the country, give us like, a little takeaway, from your perspective, you know, representing United States overseas.

Bret Boyd  02:37

Yeah, I mean, look like so at the end of the day here, so I’m gonna software entrepreneur now. And we’re gonna get into Seoul, this whole thing about building companies, but I actually think there’s a lot of connectivity between my time in the military, right, I mean, so. So, military service, again, this is in that kind of special operations, light infantry world with extremely capable people working on extremely interesting and difficult things. It’s all about filming teams, and solving problems. And, and empowering people to do great work. I think that’s success in the military. You know, we watch all these movies where you got the, you know, all the hard up, everybody’s running around yelling at each other, and so on. And in my experience, it’s a lot more around just empowering teams to do what they do. And I actually think software companies and companies in general, kind of work the same way it’s about building teams and solving problems. It’s a little different when nobody’s shooting at you and your own in Python, as opposed to you know, do whatever but but there are some commonalities there. Right.

Curt Anderson  03:43

Well, I love it you know, leadership teamwork, camaraderie. I agree with all that. So again, you’ve got to you’ve had a great big background, we’re going to dig into that your post military career we became a tech superstar, we’re gonna get into sustainment Trevor, let’s get a little back into your background longtime manufacturing. Let’s talk about your path and how you’ve made this evolution into like more tech what what’s your story please?

Trevor Bryant  04:06

Well, I originally I had an automotive background as a Auto Tech and a service manager and then moved over to working for in the tool industry for snap on tools allows us manufacturer and out on the sales side on that and then you know, as time went on job changes and development over the years in different experiences. I ended up as a sales director for a company that sold metrology equipment. So really the last step in manufacturing to make sure good products are going out the door. Then from there, shifted over to the software side, working for a large distributor of Autodesk software. So really at the very other end of manufacturing more on the building side and then then moved in to actually right in the mainstream working in a manufacturing facility where we did Custom Machining oversaw the customer shooting division sales department for we did precision Custom Machining all the way to volume Custom Machining. And we also had a division of a company that did automation and did made our own equipment as well. So really, we had internal and external customers. And we did as much sourcing here inside the US as we could and had customers all over the world. So and then that was what led me to sustainment here is seeing opportunities out there and challenges that were out there. And happen to get hooked up with sustainment and was all on board for what Brett and the team are trying to do here.

Curt Anderson  05:32

Absolutely love it. And so again, the mission here is growing US manufacturers love it. Bret, let’s take us take us through the journey on your end, you know a lot again, guys catching us, you want to connect with Trevor on LinkedIn connect with Bret on LinkedIn, you’re gonna love their background love what they’re doing, especially for our manufacturing friends out there, they have an extremely dynamic, powerful solution. So Bret, just walk us through like your post military career, kind of this tech evolution, and how did you kind of plant your entrepreneur entrepreneurial flag into sustainment?

Bret Boyd  06:05

Yeah, so I think it’s actually mean, I like to look at the world in terms of problems that need to be solved. And I think, you know, there is a very interesting and dynamic problem that needs to be solved in this world of manufacturing that we work in here. Right, when you look at manufacturing there are in depends on kind of whose data you look at, but call it somewhere between 270,300 1000 manufacturers in the United States. So you’ve got a big industry, it constitutes something on the order of 11% of GDP and 12% of employment are in these 300,000 businesses. But when you look at the characteristics of these businesses, they are primarily small. So just under 99%, are our small businesses by NAICS code. And around 83% of manufacturers in the United States are sub 50 employee businesses, right. So you have this massive, fundamentally, structurally and even socially important industry to the United States. That is that is really contained in this long tail of small and medium businesses that are spread throughout the entirety of America. I have never validated this, but I suspect every city, every county in the nation has a manufacturing footprint. And when you look at how the industry has evolved here, over the past 10 years, there have been some pretty powerful businesses that have been created to help you connect with manufacturing suppliers on the other side of the world. You know, everybody talks about Alibaba as the platform business. They know there are others that work in these different areas. But if I want to go find a manufacturer on the other side of the world, I can generally have a technology enabled experience to go find, compare, do business with manage projects, communicate, share information, etc. Like I can have kind of a technology enabled experience to do that. overseas. But if we look at how that happens in the United States, there’s still a lot of friction in the way that this works. And that starts from, hey, I need a supplier to help with, you know, injection molding or with whatever. And, you know, the solution to that tends to be like, hey, who knows a guy, you know, to go find a business or are Googling around for a lot of these websites that, you know, that candidly, are not optimized for search engine optimization, and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, when we look at it, we just see a system that, that that could be made better. And there are a lot of people who are trying to like onshore and localize manufacturing and air some like serious constraints and friction points to doing it. And we want to knock some of those down. But But probably most importantly, we want to do this in a way that actually helps the small and medium supplier. mean, there are way too many of these businesses that have grown up that when you talk to manufacturers, they’ll say hey, like, you know, Company X is great. Like it allows me to really efficiently lose business to a Chinese company, or, you know, or so on. And so we really wanted to build this business, kind of around the ethos of being the company to help enable, empower, and support small American manufacturers. We actually set this up like we’re a public benefit corporation, specifically anchored around that mission. We’re going through the B Corp certification, we are free for suppliers, and it’s not a trick we’re not trying to be you know, free Intel expert, we’re actually our platform wires. And, and it’s an important commitment. So, so we started that we started this business in early 2020. You know, we’ve we’ve gone down the venture capital track so we’ve we’ve gone through, we’re like a series a stage venture backed business. We have a line of business in the department of Defense actually presented this idea way back at the very beginning to the to the Air Force, and and are part of the solution whereby the Air Force depots find and connect and do business with, with their manufacturing suppliers. Then we also have a commercial business where we’re again, we kind of work in this space in between manufacturing buyers and manufacturing suppliers to help them more efficiently do business together, starting from finding companies comparing companies working through the PIO process with companies securely sharing technical data with companies all the way through basically project management and, and really getting worked up. That’s kind of our our ones over the world around how we started and how we got to where we are.

Nicole Donnelly  10:47

I love that. I think that’s just so you know, lead time is one thing that you’re all the time from customers in manufacturing that they want their lead times to be, you know, how can it be shorter? How can I get what I need faster. And we saw COVID really created a lot of disruption there with global supply, supply chain and everything. And I just love this, that this solution can really help that what are you seeing, like, how are you seeing your solution? The connection, you’re making the supply chain? How is that impacting lead times for these American manufacturers by keeping everything local this way?

Bret Boyd  11:22

But I guess the first general principle is that I would say that this like this onshoring. That’s not a great word, let’s call it this localization of manufacturing supply chains. This is a second shift that, you know, candidly, I have bet my career on that I think will define the next 20 years of, of the global economy like this is real, it’s happening. And, and again, we want to play a small part in helping facilitate that. But this whole idea of like technology and more capable equipment driving localization, at the same time, the risk dynamic of all of these fully outsourced supply chain like this convergence is, is really creating a generational inflection point that that are causing most to think about how to localize how to actually not just have everything optimized for cost and be as cheap as think about resiliency and redundancy. And it’s

Damon Pistulka  12:23

one, I think to Bret, you brought this up a while ago, when you’re talking, there’s you said that 83% of these are less than 50. People, they often have websites or digital President’s press presence, that are not optimized for SEO, you can have suppliers in in the in your town, the town next door that you never even know about. And you go across the globe to try to find something that your best supplier could be next door. If I look at your system, and I go if you did nothing but do that. It will be huge for the manufacturing industry in the United States.

Bret Boyd  13:01

Though you bet. And you know, the US and this is going to be a gross oversimplification. But just to generalize this is that it almost there at these silos, there are these geographic or these industry silos of just businesses that know each other. And again, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not ill intentioned, it’s not anybody’s fault, but you just have these little kind of regional and industry ecosystems, and why you’ve had all of this innovation around, you know, equipment, again, we kind of grew up in people building airplane parts, but there’s so much cross pollination between you know, if you have the ability to build parts in aerospace and aviation, you can also support, you know, medical device, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, you know, the list goes on and on. And I think just by, you know, building these together into a network, there’s a ton of value to unlock. And again, like, for the small businesses, but also like for our country, and as far as this whole, like national economic security, that it’s important, very seriously as well.

Curt Anderson  14:07

Yeah, I love that. And, you know, we talk a lot about like the CRMs, you know, out there, and I love what you guys, you know, you’re the supplier relationship software software solution. And so, Trevor, do you if you want to chime in at a few comments, but I know we want to dig. I know the three of us on stage here. We are dying for a little demo and just kind of take us on a tour, anything that you want to chime in or any feedback that you have to blend in with the conversation. And then I was wondering if you want to actually pull up the website so we can take a peek?

Trevor Bryant  14:33

Yeah, definitely. And one thing I would touch on is, you know, Nicole’s comment about lead times being such a struggle, you know, having a manufacturing background, really one of the bigger challenges we solve around that also is not just the lead time of getting delivery, but just your turnaround time on getting a quote, because lots of times manufacturers are just sitting there saying we just got a price. I don’t even have the work yet. I just need a price. And we are huge at solving that. And then they can drill down further and say, okay, which price is the best which which quote is the best lead times, and really kind of take it from there.

Nicole Donnelly  15:08

That’s a really good point. Because you know, if you can get that price to the customer, you know, faster than the competitor, you know, you’re already building that relationship of responsiveness and trust. It’s a really great point,

Curt Anderson  15:21

you might only be the cheapest, you might, you know, but just but having that competitive advantage is just you know, that communication is just so critical. Absolutely. Love it. Trevor, do you want to do you want to pop up your screen? And we’ll take a peek at what’s going on here at Sustainment?

Trevor Bryant  15:35

Yes, definitely. Perfect.

Curt Anderson  15:37

And what you know what? So David, I was there? Was there like a supply chain thing going on in the past couple years that I wasn’t aware of? Is it too soon? Can I say that joke yet? Or I’m just kidding. So alright, let’s go here. So I sit back, grab you for having lunch, enjoy your lunch, because we’re gonna take you on a little tour of sustainment and sustainment that tech. And Trevor, what do we see here? What’s going on?

Trevor Bryant  16:02

Yeah, so So two things. One, I’ve got you guys on two screens. So if you see me popping back and forth, it was it’s because I’m looking over there to see your faces. But so really, what we’re looking at here is just the Resources tab. So this is just the landing page for manufacturers who go to define the resources that are available to them in their area that are more related to like the MEPs and government type of resources that are there to assist and help manufacturers. And really, from here, you can kind of see the platform’s broken out in here on the side, on the left nav into a couple of different sections, one, you’ve got your home, which is going to take you to some conversation, history, things that are important to you your most recent activity, then you’ve also got your finding suppliers, your buyers section here, and then your suppliers section. So this is really where I’m going to kind of dive into and talking about where a buyer would use our platform. And then where a supplier or more of the sales side of the team would use the platform because there are multiple, multiple different job functions inside a facility that would want to use our platform. And everything I show you today, as Brett had mentioned is is free up to a certain usage level, but a small to medium size manufacturer can jump on here, access everything, use the tools for free, on the supply side, it would always stay free for them. So they’re going to come in here and they want to be made aware and work and actively be a part of projects. That’s something that has no charge for them as a US manufacturer, the buyer side, there are different levels and different pay structures, or fee structures. But we’re going to avoid most of that today and just kind of talk about what the platform can do for them. And then I’m happy to do one on one demos, q&a for anybody that wants to that wants to set up a meeting with me as well. From where I’m going to start here is I’m going to actually jump into the find suppliers tab first. And I’m logged in as if I’m in the Denver area. So you’ll see it’s kind of really focused here and in Colorado. But we have approximately over 14,000 manufacturers representing our platform, all at different levels of engagement, you know, some registered logged in and using it on a daily basis. Other ones that we’re still just getting on to the platform, but you’ll see the different, or the concentricity here right around the Denver area in this Colorado market. If we were to show all the if I showed all the country at one time, you pretty much just see a big red blob. From here, you can do things like filter down and search by area search by certification. By process type, whatever you want to do in the map will readjust and look for what you’re looking for by keyword or by by area you’re looking at. So if I wanted to go in for a quick example here, you were up in Seattle, if I remember correctly, at the introduction, we click search, and boom, we’re going to reorient the map, take a look over in Seattle area there. So this is how you’re going to find your suppliers that are local to you and your neighborhood. This can be everything from a large buyer looking for someone to get a project together with even to a smaller manufacturer who’s just looking for someone to send heat treating type of work to, you know, or outsource something for capability or capacity. And you can access that find suppliers from inside of a project as well. But really for looking at this from a buyer’s perspective, or from a supplier ces perspective, you would go in and you would work with either my suppliers or my customers, they function the same so I’m just going to kind of live in one of them just for example sake rather than have a very redundant presentation of showing you the same thing twice. So really, what we’re looking at here is all the suppliers on the platform that I’m connected to these are all the different manufacturers that I am connected to here. And then from there, I can put those manufacturers in the list so and lists can be used quite a few different ways. You have your your favorite people to go to for doing billing, you know your approved vendors. We’re doing Swiss machining, you’re approved third party metrology labs, you know you’re a to La labs. So you can really put these into buckets. And what’s important for you as a buyer, especially if you’re in a larger company, is typically someone else has approved those vendors, they get into that list. And now you just quickly and easily know who to go to, for what type of work. So nice streamlined way to keep everybody on the same page using the same process and working efficiently to outsource projects. From here, you can take a look here, I’ve just chosen this is kind of my my eight group of suppliers here so I can do what I want. You take a look here for this, this big test project, this could be a different type of project I’m running, you’ll see the different suppliers out there that are approved to work on that project. And you see things like the NDA flag that’s letting the buyer know, or the supplier or whatever, instantly that there’s an NDA on file with this manufacturer, which is very important to your small to medium sized manufacturers, because now you’ve organized and put this all into one place. I have worked at companies in the past where you could find NDAs in four different places, they could be in a file cabinet at reception, when they signed it when they came in. They could be in the CFO or the CIOs desk are folders, I should say file folders, it could be on a shared drive for everybody to have access to or they could be in the CRM, this is a nice way for a company of any size, because this is unlimited access for the NDAs to have the ability to organize their NDAs quickly see who they have an NDA on file with. And not only that the ability to request NDA signatures to be electronically signed right to the platform. So it just be as simple as request an NDA signature, it’s gonna electronically go to those people, they sign it, the signed version comes back and boom, you have it a copy of it right here on a record

Curt Anderson  21:51

that a traveling HR real quick, I’m gonna pop in. So we’ve got a couple of questions from coming in from Karen Karen’s a dear friend, she’s heavily involved with women and Manufacturing Association in Texas. So Karen, Happy Monday to you she has a comment here. Fascinating. What have you encountered as the biggest challenge to connect all the dots within em manufacturing ecosystem? Brett or Trevor, you guys want to grab that one?

Bret Boyd  22:18

I can jump in on that one. I mean, the biggest challenge is you actually need to provide value to manufacturers in order to get them to give you their time and attention, which is scarce, right? I mean, that’s the hardest point of this is, you know, you can say, Hey, everybody, you know, join, you know, join that thing. And it’s like, ah, we got another list or another thing I gotta join and another login that I have to remember, and so on. And I guess what we found is you really need to give value mean, so like what Trevor is showing you here. So you’ve got the ability to have all your suppliers in one place. They’re all pushing you accurate data around their processes, their certifications, you know, everything that they do, and what they have available, and so on. So that they’re ready for for you to do projects with. And, and in order to enter that needs to be valuable to suppliers, like to actually take the time to participate. You know, and so if you can imagine this platform three years ago, you know, it was relatively bare bones, and there was just the company profile. And then it went from the company profile to helping companies securely share technical data, which is part of this whole ongoing cnmc requirement for cybersecurity down the manufacturing supply chain. So then that’s a give that we gave away to suppliers, and then this NDA thing keeps coming up coming up, you know, who said, look, let’s actually make the investment to integrate like a whole document sharing an NDA sharing piece in here. And that’s what like all of these different areas around data sharing and NDA management are, are useful tools to manufacturers, but then also have the benefit of like, they’re two sided. So in order to be effective with that, you’re actually recruiting one of your partners that you want to have your NDA in place with onto the platform. And so, you know, this idea of like delivering value down to the small manufacturer, so that they work with other small manufacturers on the platform, is where we’ve we’ve found the most success.

Curt Anderson  24:17

This is such a powerful solution. And then Karen follows up with, you know, what’s the approval process to get on the list?

Bret Boyd  24:25

You know, so we are so buyers make their own lists. And again, what we’re trying to do is we’re actually trying to take I mean, you know, usually we have purchasing, contracting supply chain operations, procurement, like these types of folks are actively in our software. And we actually want to make it easier for those men and women to do their jobs. We do not want to try to be a platform that takes them out of needing to do their jobs. Right. So when what we’re trying to do is we’re actually trying to facilitate if we get time we’ll go into a project like hey, I need these parts to be built and when See these parts of the bill, I’m actually not trying to like we’re not xometry, or one of these platforms, it just says, Hey, give me the parts, we’re actually trying to allow that person, that purchasing contracting professional to just really easily and seamlessly fought like do their job, you know, which is fine, multiple suppliers, compare them against each other, manage the assessment, evaluation, quoting etc. And I say that Karen is a lead in that the the, the lists that you make for your company, those are your lists, right? Find them however you want. You can add companies to them however you want. And you actually own your own qualification of suppliers as well, like we do some data quality things, obviously. But we still actually think that there are companies have different processes that they use to vet and first article test and so on their suppliers. And so we’re actually we’re keeping that in the hands of professionals who do that just trying to make it faster and easier for them. Perfect.

Curt Anderson  26:02

Okay, great. And Brett, you mentioned, if we had time to go, you would actually pull a project. So Trevor, I’d want to throw you off on your demo, but whenever, you know, take it from here. And then if you want to dig into a project, that’d be great.

Trevor Bryant  26:13

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And then one of the things didn’t hear her talk a little bit about what Brett was just discussing there as well is when when supplier or when buyers invite their suppliers to the platform, and they join the platform. That’s when we really see a really high engagement as well. And we start to see great back and forth between the suppliers and buyers. And then watch them start to grow from their buyers, adding new suppliers and suppliers finding new buyers as well. So one of the nice things for a buyer and a supplier that’s beneficial for both your two is to see how the certification badges is pink right here. So this is an easy way for a buyer to be able to verify whether the certs are up to date for their suppliers that they’re about to invite to this project. What’s nice about that is when they send that request has already been sent on this you can see on 712, but when they just with a click of a button, request that they update their ISO certification or their FFL, whatever it happens to be, there’s either missing a file or expired. The nice thing is what’s in it for that supplier is they’re updating it for everybody to see now, it’s not just going it’s not an email to one person as it would be in a you know, in a quote or something along that line. They’re updating their profile, everybody’s seeing this updated information. And now everybody’s finding and if they do an open search as well. So there’s a benefit for the supplier on that side. And really, for a buyer creating a project with their existing supply chain, it is a as simple as just checking the boxes, create a new project, they’re going to create this RFQ. And really what’s nice for them is now their buyer or their suppliers. Don’t know how many people have been invited this project necessarily, but instead of it being a BCC email that’s going out to a dozen companies or whatever with communication going every direction, possibly subject lines getting changed and coming back files getting attached that are too large to email. That’s all being managed right here inside the platform. And I’ll get to showing you where all that is housed in a second. But one of the things I wanted to show that is really key, especially if you’re an HR company, and you also want to make sure you have NDAs in place by checking these boxes right here. If the company you send this request to is not ITAR registered and have their, their ITAR registration here on the platform loaded up, or they haven’t signed your NDA, they will not have access to those files, they’ll get the email saying hey, you’ve been invited to a project. And then we’ll say But wait, there’s more. You know, now you need to go in and sign the NDA or you need to upload your HR registration. And I can tell you, I have been on the receiving end of HR documents when I did not work at an HR company. It happens out there. It’s it happens every day. So this is and I’ve also been on the receiving end of getting ITAR ITAR information where they’ve had to give me a zip drive to carry with me because you know, not everybody knew things were going to travel securely and that was the only way to have it happen. And that’s a waste of time and that is a waste of resources. Right? So as opposed to having a free platform right here that could just transfer that data for you in that ITAR secure environment. Man

Curt Anderson  29:21

you guys are solving so many problems like it’s crazy like the just and I don’t mean to detract your Trevor but just the organization like you guys have thought of like all these details are like every person procurement is just like you know jumping for joy right now to see what you guys are doing here. This is please keep going. This is

Trevor Bryant  29:38

no and and you know what not only procurement should be jumping for joy possibly legal shouldn’t be jumping.

Curt Anderson  29:47

Legal is given a big thank you ppreciate you guys. This is great.

Trevor Bryant  29:51

So um, so from here, I mean, really, you would just finish populating the project here adding your files you needed to selecting the date Different types of processes, what I’m going to do is I’m gonna jump over to a project that’s kind of in limbo that’s going on here, I’ll choose this one that’s actually been awarded because it has some, and it’s a fake project, but it has some decent information around it. Sure, you come into the project, you can see, you know, the suppliers that were chosen, you can see who was awarded. So once the project has ran its course, and you’ve got your quotes, and you award it, the Creed upon delivery date, the amount that was agreed upon. And then that gets a word of them these other to get a, you know, a polite email that, hey, thanks. But maybe next time type of email, where this one actually gets the intent, you know, an email of intent. And then from there, you could attach your Pio to it to send over as well. But what’s really nice to go back to what you were just talking about a minute ago, Kurt is that solving that problem of communication around a project, all the communication inside of a project happens inside of the project, everybody who has access to that project inside of a company would have access to that communication. So if Nicole is on vacation, and she’s got a project going, and you are you’re trying to follow up, so you don’t have to disturber all that information, all those conversations, the communication is right inside that project. And while the project is active after it’s been awarded communication continue. So if someone in manufacturing has a question about manufacturing a bill of manufacturability on it needs a tweak and tolerance, they have the ability to ask that right to the platform be captured inside the platform and live there forever. Which is extremely important. Not to mention, going back to what was talked about a little bit earlier, you know who you’re dealing with. So it’s not a game of telephone, during the course of a project, if something needs to change, you’re actually just talking to the person who owns the project and talking to the person who’s making it. So disconnect is not there. Plus, you have all of that past conversation as well around a project. So say you go to do this project, again, you want to look at who your previous bidders were and what questions were asked or their past quotes, you can just go right back into that old project, look at that information, again, because maybe it’s going to be three times the scale this time, and you want to involve a couple suppliers to limit your risk. documentation around the project file size up to 150 gigabytes. So you can share large 3d models in that ITAR secure FedRAMP secure environment right inside the platform. So which that is huge. Because that is a problem, the challenge for a lot of small and medium sized manufacturers is receiving those documents, email them out. And next thing you know, you’ve got to do some sort of other file sharing that requires a password to jump in or anything like that, yeah, leaves right here in the platform. And if you’ve given them the ability to download it, they can download it, to use one of their other programs to potentially, you know, set up their machines or run it or do the recording if they’re using some sort of 3d modeling for cooling. Okay,

Curt Anderson  32:55

like the Alright, let’s take a pause here first. Like that, like errant, Karen says while she’s doing the happy dance. And so this is just this is just absolute amazing. And you look at like the efficiency, like you’re saying, like, someone’s on vacation, just that email trap that email like, disaster of like, hey, Damon, did you get this? Hey, did you see this data files too big, not secure. You know, not to mention, you know, folks that are using, you know, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to insult anybody, anybody out there using Excel. We had a CEO of a company on Friday, and we were talking about, like, you know, the, you know, when you’re in Excel hell of trying to manage projects like this, you know, like you have a secure on a cloud base that this is just so powerful. Damon, could you use this when you were in your manufacturing days? Or what do you think

Damon Pistulka  33:45

definitely, because the the, for me looking at it. As Karen said, The NDAs the ITAR registration, the as 9100 If you’re in the aerospace, or in another industry, those certifications are huge. Because then you can quickly go on to your suppliers that could potentially do what you needed to do. And the communication is so key, because when you get into these large, multi component assemblies, there’s all kinds of questions that happen. You know, there’s all kinds of questions that happened back and forth. And trying to manage these before through email with 10 different suppliers is is it’s just tough as heck. And you know, and when you have clearly articulated the answers, two One, you know, then then you may even be able to push push those other ones out to everyone else to these answers and update the project with more answers as you go along to be able to make sure everyone understands so you can get better, better quotes and better you know, get your your needs fulfilled better. Yeah, yeah, that’s cool.

Curt Anderson  34:51

I’ve so I have a quick question for you my friend when you you know when you kind of like you’re the visionary, the brainchild what you know what was going on in your life that you saw, like, man, there’s this a tremendous problem going on here. Like, where were you at in life? Or what, you know, what made you? You earlier? You said, I bet my career on this? Why did you believe in this so deeply that you’re willing to bet your career on this?

Bret Boyd  35:13

You know, candidly, it’s actually really fun to work with, with professionals, like Trevor, and we’ve got a bunch of insiders that grew up in estimating and grew up. And like, actually, in the midst of all of this pain, you know, because even heard my intro, like, there is a strategic problem that I think we need to solve as a country, we need to solve it emotionally, we need to solve it economically, the Department of Defense needs to solve it, they’re running around complaining about a 40% reduction in their supply chain here over the last 10 years. And so, you know, the initial hypothesis is that there’s a thing here. And then obviously, the details matter, right? And this gets to, you know, Karen’s points of, you know, of like, Okay, how did the list work? And what do we got here, and so on. And so, you know, this is not any of these entrepreneurs that stand up and, you know, kind of take full ownership of the implementation of an idea, I think, are kind of full of it, because it really does take a lot of different perspectives coming into problem from a lot of different areas. So we’ve got to, you know, it’s I respectfully choose to answer that question in a different way. We’re going deeper into this over time, right? Like our customers are pulling us deeper and deeper into the project management and project execution space. So you can’t and I don’t actually think Trevor is worth time trying to demo this right now. But like, once you award a project, you essentially transition into like a project management mode. And we’re not trying to make like industry shattering project management software here. And a lot of companies that have made super complicated project management stuff, and that’s all great. But wouldn’t it be great if I could, like have a pizza tracker, where my supplier is like, Hey, um, you know, your shit, like, like, something like that, like that level of detail. And again, with the idea that we’re, we’re trying to be the relationship fabric and prevent you from having to call all your suppliers once a week to be like, Hey, are you on time? Are you on time? You know, so we’re going there. And then at the end of a project, when you close it out, we ask you questions around on time, on quality and on cost? And really, that’s for you as a buyer. Right? So look, Trevor’s ahead of me here. So, so the idea is that we can collect data, this is actually not for that we’re not going to Amazon and review supplier, that’s not our business. But our business is you as a buyer, like, Wouldn’t it be great to have a dashboard of all of your suppliers over the past 10 years and be like, oh, yeah, these guys or gals were great. These people I needed to pay extra attention to, you know, and actually have, have a system there, that when you look at huge tear ones, and so on, they have these very sophisticated portals and all this kind of stuff that you have to go in. But, but down lower it is it’s Excel, and PowerPoint, hell, and you know, maybe some ERPs have some functionality that people to people use in different ways. But we just think there’s an opportunity to facilitate this whole this whole piece from I have a job to be done. Who’s the best supplier in my supply chain that I trust? If I don’t have some? How can I easily pull someone in and invite them to be part of my supply chain? And then how do I go from po you know, into project management into kind of learning and getting better over time?

Curt Anderson  38:29

Well, I remember Bret, I remember you were going to call this I know about guy.com. But you decided to go with his team. Did I have that conversation? I think we you and I talked about that before. But Trevor, is there anything else? As we’re running through the demo that you really want to show the folks here that dude, you’re blowing a lot of minds here right now as you want to know anything else here.

Bret Boyd  38:50

Trevor? Just so we have some love for for folks on the supplier side. This is useful on both but this all i You’re ahead of me here? Yep, yep,

Trevor Bryant  38:58

figured that was where you’re gonna go. So the ability so supplier can come in here and go to the opportunities tab. And really come in, you can see right now there’s these opportunities from a 3d manufacturing and ra 3d, they can click on that project name, learn a little bit about that project to see if it’s a good fit for the processes they do. And then click participate. If they want to submit a quote for that project. They want to jump in get access, you know, sign the NDA get access to the 3d models, the prints, whatever, verify terms, conditions, all of that. And then if they want to, you know, submit a quote for that. And really, it’s a two step process they request to participate and then a 3d manufacturing in this case for the one I have up, they would actually accept them to participate. It’s not like they just get the opportunity it’s a 3d is going to look at their profiles say yep, they look like a good fit. And let’s go ahead and move forward and they would accept them. So

Bret Boyd  39:54

yeah, and if I can, if I can layer on that real quick. So if you if you think of back in the project creation workflow, Oh, I mean, we find that the majority of the time, I’ve got a couple of heat treating companies that I trust or whatever. So I build a product, I build a project, I invite the companies, I know, you know, and then I work through this process to be more efficient, etc. But if there are cases where I don’t actually have a company I want to work with, or maybe I want to really broadcast this to bring new companies into my supply chain. So what’s happening is, as a buyer, I can say, post this to the sustainment community. And that’s how this lands on the community page that anybody can come look at. So you know, again, if you’re a supplier, now, here’s a couple of jobs that, that that are posted to the community, now, you can request to participate. And again, we’re not doing this with with software, you know, etc, we’re actually saying, so you can say, hey, I’m a good fit for this, because of this experience, the buyer can look at it and be like, I agree, I’ll include you in my process, or, you know, I don’t agree, you seem like you’re out to lunch, and I don’t want to spend time on you. Facilitating the relationship development and connectivity, which speaks to a lot of the frustration we hear from manufacturing suppliers who are like, I don’t know, you know, I throw my bid in, and they’re clearly just going lowest cost, and I never get to talk to anybody, I never get to present why we’re, why we’re better or why we should be considered. And so that’s another facet of this thing.

Curt Anderson  41:21

You know, I love this, and, you know, you guys, your tagline manufacturers, you know, manufacturing solution made by manufacturers for manufacturers, and you also say, the next era of global supply chain, supply chain technology. And this, like, I’m just blown away, and I had an eye, you know, Brett, when you and I talked last year, and I met some of your team, I you know, I had an idea of what you guys, you know, didn’t do now, are you constantly like you’re you’re in constant, you know, digging in with clients, and like, you know, creating new solutions, how does that work as far as like communication with your clients and add ons to your solution here.

Bret Boyd  41:55

The velocity at which businesses grow and evolve at this day is actually so fun. I mean, this is actually the most fun, I make a joke with the team that I say look like, you know, there’s gonna come a time in five years or 10 years where we’re arguing over if should the button be blue or yellow to increase conversion by 3%, or whatever. Yeah, but that’s not now, like now is actually something entirely new workflows around by, you know, and system connectivity. And who should we be integrated with? And how can we be, you know, again, a good partner across the ecosystem here to be this connective tissue in between manufacturing suppliers. So this is? Yeah, I mean, we just redid the search interface last week, next week. Anyways, there’s a lot it’s happening.

Curt Anderson  42:40

Never, never, we never product like this. It’s never any new code. Did you have a comment?

Nicole Donnelly  42:44

Yeah, I was just gonna ask, I mean, it seems like you’ve had a lot of organic growth in terms of your suppliers and your buyers that are coming on the platform, whether people are using it naturally, you know, they’ll bring their buyers suppliers and into the platform, what are your other strategies, just to try to just really get some even more momentum on trying to get more and more manufacturers on the platform?

Bret Boyd  43:06

Yeah, so there there are, there are a couple of ways that we do this. Right. So one of our most interesting and, you know, candidly productive relationships is that the we actually are trying to partner with the other ecosystem participants here who we feel have kind of aligned objectives and upskilling, and uplifting, small and medium American manufacturing. And so these are, you know, the anchor of these are probably the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which is funded under the Department of Commerce through NIST and has a group at every state. So you know, using the MEPs, as an example. So we go to the MEPs. And say, look like our our incentives are aligned in terms of we’re trying to help manufacturers, you know, again, our business we monetize on the buyer side, so a buyer’s having access to more better qualified suppliers is helpful for us. And so we partner with groups like the MEPs, to say, to basically power the manufacturing network of I think we’re 12 or 13 states right now. And in that relationship, we’ve got we’ve got folks said, you know, again, not just the MVP, but at associations at you know, chambers of commerce, even that all of these different types of groups that exist to support manufacturers, where we provide technology where they can, you know, as you can see, just think of from that perspective, they can more efficiently organize, create lists, reach out support manufacturers, etc. But it’s, you know, it’s only useful to the state of Colorado for example, if manufacturers are on there, so then we’re aligned that we reach out to them together and as you all know, this is a very it’s a personal industry and it requires personal relationship of trust and, you know, boots on the ground and so on. And, you know, and is a growing software company here in Austin. We’re not everywhere. And so we really value these partnerships with support organizations across the country.

Curt Anderson  45:06

Well, that’s fantastic. And I know, Trevor, when you first started, you pulled up that resource page. And I just love that because I saw some associations. You mentioned that. You know, Brett, you just mentioned that MEPs were dear friends with the manufacturing, extension partnerships. And so love that you’re aligning with those folks, and you’re just delivering such high value. What a great solution that you have. Trevor, I know, I want to be respectful. I know you guys are super busy saving the world and just delivering this awesome product. Why don’t you take it in? Could you take us home any last things that you want to show us on the demo here?

Trevor Bryant  45:35

I think probably the last thing I’d want to actually show you in the demo is the more have a discussion of that I have with so many manufacturers. And that is whether you’re a startup newer manufacturer, or smaller facility want to build that wanting to build out the best processes from the beginning for your supply and buying side, were a great fit for that. And to give a story of a customer I spoke to a few weeks ago who took over after a procurement professional had retired after almost 30 years, the way he was trying to find who he outsourced to was by going to accounts receivable and seeing who they were paying. This is a way to keep your company from falling into that trap and being organized from the beginning. What was awesome about that conversation is about a week later, I was having a conversation with a manufacturer procurement professional who had been with the company for 37 years, manage their procurement for 27 years. And when I asked him how he chose his outsource partners, he said, Well, I just start typing in their names, as like, how does that get duplicated? When you leave? We have the answer for how that gets duplicated, when you can still just type their name in, we have a search field. But now it’s not no one’s digging through someone’s emails or spreadsheets or going off of their experiences or calling bill after he required or retired two months ago saying hey, this, and we solve for that. And we solve for it nicely and extremely affordably with a an easy, no cost entry point for a small manufacturer. You know,

Curt Anderson  47:05

we I’m sorry? No, we, we need to have you back. Now I have a question. So going through your accounts payable is not a great way to find suppliers is that we’re implying? I’m not I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed here. Trevor, is that is that what you’re implying here?

Trevor Bryant  47:21

I’m gonna say no, but I’m hoping he had a good Accounts Payable let’s go through and tap into and it wasn’t it was slipping through a ledger.

Curt Anderson  47:28

That’s right. Well, we need to have you back on because I that you know what, my goodness, you know, with the baby boomers, and you know, Dave and I are Gen Xers with a jet, you know, with this massive retirement and they’re leaving a legacy, you know, all that thought processes in everybody’s mind. That could be, that could be a whole show in itself. Nicole, I’m sorry to interrupt you.

Nicole Donnelly  47:47

That was exactly what I was gonna say. So many of these, these manufacturers have, you know, these experts that have been on the team for decades, and all of that tribal knowledge is just sitting in their head, right. And like for these businesses, to really be able to grow into the future, they got to get it out and have a process that was very easy for other people on the team, new people to come pick up and very quickly be able to get the work done that they need to do. So. I think that’s a great point. Trevor, I second that.

Damon Pistulka  48:16

When you look at this, and you look at your supply chain, it’s often one of the one if not the most critical things in being able to run a successful manufacturing business is knowing you’re gonna get your stuff from the right people on time, all that, that. But the the, as you were saying the coal curtain and Trevor and Fred, it’s like this, this is like a CRM for your supply chain. Right. But it’s got the features that you need in in a supply chain, but it’s got the cool features like a CRM does where you can go to Damon in the CRM and go okay, what have we talked to Damon over the last 25 years if you use him, right, and, and what projects have we worked on and all this kind of stuff that you really want to understand from from a supply chain perspective. So exactly like you were saying, Trevor, you don’t go back through and look in your AP and trying to figure out who we bought stuff from, because you don’t have the details in it even if you did right. And that just the the detail that you’ve gone through in here to all the way to the NDAs and registrations and how the quotes are released and having the bigger network to go through. is incredible. And then Brett, the way that you guys are rolling this out, being a public benefit corporation working together with the Association, the MEPs you’re getting in the hands of people that really need to use it.

Bret Boyd  49:42

And look to to bring this kind of to come back high level. I know I started a little high level at the beginning here but there’s a I think it is existentially important that we digitize and upskill and uplift manufacturing across the United States which means this In the labor, I mean, again, when you talk about manufacturing, all the news stories are, you know, big company X or big company wide. But again, the combat power of American manufacturing is in this segment. Yep. And I think it it all happens as an ecosystem, right? I mean, these are all brilliant businesses that are really good at what they’re good at. And they organize in different ways. You know, they combine in different ways. And, and I don’t think there’s like a clear understanding of that, when everybody looks at manufacturing strategy for the United States. It’s around, you know, let’s drive investment in technology X or technology, right? Why it’s, but really, it’s this whole ecosystem, and how, you know, how these companies partner together, how they work together, how they enter new industries, how they digitize and invest in new technologies, and robots and new software, and all of that kind of stuff. Like, that’s all. That’s all happening now. And it’s kind of fun to be part of.

Curt Anderson  50:57

Well, I agree. So I know we’re coming to coming in at a time, Trevor, I’m gonna pull this all back on stage here. So first off, How about how about a huge round of applause for our esteemed guests here today. So Trevor, thank you for joining us. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule for join us, Trevor parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you would like to share as we close out from your perspective,

Trevor Bryant  51:22

I think my wisest words, were my last ones. And I don’t think I can top those, but from the manufacturing environment, it’s awesome to be a part of the solution instead of a part of the problem. And honestly, that was I can say, I seen the things we’ve solved. I know that, you know, companies I’ve worked for in the past, I was the guy making spreadsheets and I was a guy with tribal knowledge, working with other people with tribal knowledge and, and perpetuating the problem. So it’s awesome to be a part of the solution.

Curt Anderson  51:52

In front of people, I absolutely love it. I phenomenal just at standing ovation for both you guys. Brett, thank you for being a visionary for bringing this dream to life for your entrepreneurial drive extremely inspirational. parting thoughts? Where’s the wisdom that you want to share with folks today as we close out?

Bret Boyd  52:12

And I don’t think so I think just to continue to pile on to the answer of the question of like, how do you get the word out there, you know, I responded, all the ecosystem partners and so on. And I appreciate you bringing that up. But candidly, things like this are the other way that we get the word out there. And so I do see you all as part of this ecosystem, and I appreciate the role that you all play. Like this kind of stuff helps, you know, because again, we are we are trying to help a segment of the US economy that is heads down doing work, you know, these may not be sitting at their computer waiting to get your like email marketing message. These are folks that have stuff that I respect, but it’s, you know, but it also means we need a lot of channels and a lot of partners and it takes an ecosystem. So So I appreciate what you all

Curt Anderson  53:00

takes a village. Well, Brett and again, as we open up the program, if anybody missed it, thank you. I know you’re extremely humble when I say this, but you know, we applaud you salute you for serving our country for tours on Iraq, West Point grad. And just my admiration for both you of what you’re doing to help manufacturers make their lives easier, make their lives more efficient, you know, have a one place a hub of information. So when people transition out that it’s all there, we’ve got to have you back. And so we can dig in further. We encourage welcome everybody connect with Trevor on LinkedIn connect with Brett on LinkedIn, go to sustainment dot tak tell your friends, your family, your dog, anybody that you know, that has manufacturers in your world, that there’s a great solution. And it’s sitting right here at sustainment. So, guys, thank you for joining us. Brett did you have another word that you want to

Bret Boyd  53:50

just gonna flip stop on that. So if you go to our website in the top right corner of the screen, there’s a Join Now button and it’ll take you like three minutes, you’ll say, you know, are you a buyer or a supplier or both? And then you’ll be in and again, no costs, no big time commitment, but please come check us out. And then as you join if you have any questions, please let us know. But But yeah, Sustainment.tech join now in the top right corner. I just wanted to stop on that. Thanks, Curt.

Curt Anderson  54:15

Awesome, awesome, guys. Nicole, as always, thank you for joining you know, we just need that female perspective. You know, are these dudes on stage? Damon, thank you my brother. Appreciate you. We’re gonna be back here. We have a great guests on Friday. So just go out there. Boy. If you weren’t inspired today, man. I don’t know. I was super inspired. Go out and just be someone’s inspiration. Just like Trevor just like Brett keep crushing it, guys. Bret Trevor, hang out with us for one second, and we just wish everybody an amazing, incredible week. Thank you guys. And there we go.