Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Matthew Fieldman at MAGNET

Curt Anderson  0:01

Hey, here we are so Damon. Thank God it’s Monday, brother. How are you? Dude?

Damon Pistulka  0:06

Awesome, Kurt. Awesome. Glad to be here today.

Curt Anderson  0:08

Hey, happy Monday. Hope everybody had an amazing, awesome weekend wherever you are. So, man I don’t know about you is like 60 On Friday, then snowing on Sunday. I’m not sure what was going on here. So that’s waiting for you. Yeah, Mother Nature’s little mixed up. So guys, I want to give a big introduction to our dear friend Matt Fieldman. Matt, welcome to the program. Happy Monday. How are you?

Matthew Fieldman  0:30

I’m great. Great. Enjoying the snow coming in through my window. And I wish the Browns have one on Sunday. But that’s you know, it’s always next week.

Curt Anderson  0:37

Absolute man. It was kind of rough football weekend, wasn’t it? So Damon, we won’t go there. So we won’t go there. So anyway, we have a ton to uncover Latson pack, Matt. So Matt, you are with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership in Cleveland that is magnet MEP. So we have a lot to uncover. I knew and what you’ve what you have going on. But please share with everybody. What is the MEP network? What is the Manufacturing Extension Partnership?

Matthew Fieldman  1:04

Yeah, the MEP network is the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. It was it was started in the late 80s as a response to foreign competition in manufacturing. And since then, the MVP network has evolved. And I can get into that. But the idea is that every state in Puerto Rico has one central resource where a smaller medium sized manufacturer can call up and say I need help, or I have an opportunity, can you guys come and help me. So we touch about 28,000 companies a year. And that means that really we’re creating retaining over 100,000 jobs in manufacturing. So it’s very exciting because rural manufacturers, urban manufacturers, any industry can have, you know, one trusted resource. We’re about half funded by the Department of Commerce and half funded by client fees. So it’s great public private partnership, again, covering every part of the United States and creating a real network for manufacturers to tap into.

Curt Anderson  2:03

Well, that’s phenomenal. And again, so our program is manufacturing Monday motivation. And that’s why we love chatting with our MEP, folks, because if you can’t find motivation in this 28,000 manufacturers are touched and impacted by the Manufacturing Extension Partnership 100,000 jobs retained for are a wonderful resource of manufacturers here in the United States. So Matt, what we’d like to do let’s take a deep dive into you your background. I know you’re we’re talking college football, you’re a Florida Gator if I’m not mistaken. And that’s right. Get the champ no scary game Saturday, but you guys prevailed.

Matthew Fieldman  2:40

Yes. Well, lucky season this year.

Curt Anderson  2:43

MBA from George George, George Washington, rather George Washington. And so please share a little bit about your background. What led you into manufacturing? How’d you end up at magnet? Let’s hear your story.

Matthew Fieldman  2:55

Sure. I grew up in Orlando, Florida, I originally thought I was gonna be a social worker, I went to University of Florida and got a degree in psychology. But after some experiences in social work, I realized that I wanted to do something different. So I actually got into fundraising. And that led me to an MBA at the George Washington University where I could mix my love of working with people with my love of business. And so fundraising is that. And so I’ve been working in the nonprofit sector my whole career, and made my way to Cleveland in 2007, with my wife to settle down, we now have three kids, and really found myself you know, Cleveland, such a great town for making change and having an impact. So I found myself involved in all sorts of different nonprofits, including those related to workforce development, and getting people jobs, getting people the skills they need to have successful careers in a bunch of different industries. And eventually landed a magnet, January 2015, I joined the team. And it’s been a great ride. I feel like I get to make a difference every day. I like to say there’s never a dull day in American manufacturing. There’s always something coming down the pike. There’s always a new technology that’s radically changing the workplace. There’s always new products, new competition, and the stuff coming out of Washington is always always exciting. So every day I get to walk in and make a difference. But, you know, I get to I get to have an impact and use my skills. And you know, and the best part is I get to tour plants and see cool stuff being made and cool people enjoying their jobs. Yeah. And it’s been a phenomenal, phenomenal cloud.

Curt Anderson  4:36

Yeah, this is awesome. And so James John Konkol gave a good morning. Hello, James. Welcome. So again, guys, if you’re just chiming in we’ve got Matt from magnet the Manufacturing Extension Partnership in Cleveland, Ohio, and Matt dude, like you’re giving me chills, man, this is so exciting, so awesome. And what’s great is, you know, a fierce advocate like yourself, you know, you know, previous generation where you know, hey, go to Silicon Valley get into Tech so on so forth, there is so much excitement so much energy going on in manufacturing manufacturing is cool. But I love what you’ve done with your nonprofit background. I think you even have a certificate in nonprofit management from Case Western, a very prestigious University in Cleveland. But I want to touch Damon, you’re gonna be blown away by this I want to touch on some of your what you do in the community. You have multiple things going on. So you, civil society Fellow at the Aspen Institute. You have We’re the 2014 fundraiser of the year, according to fundraising Success Magazine do that are pretty high. And what I like to talk about real quick here, you raise $600,000 for the Edwin’s restaurant and Leadership Institute, this is so inspiring what you’ve done. share with the folks what you’ve done with this with this program at

Matthew Fieldman  5:50

AdWords is amazing. If you’re ever in Cleveland, it’s one of the best meals you’ll ever have. I lay that out there, you know, drop the mic right there. Um, so Edmonds is the project of Brendan, just housekeepers, the CEO, and he actually wanted to CNN Heroes Award for it. I mean, it’s absolutely amazing. So he shared with me the idea of creating a restaurant for formerly incarcerated people, he himself had a run in or two with the police growing up, and where people who had been formerly incarcerated could launch careers in fine dining. And so Edwin students are with us for six months, and they are then placed in restaurants around Cleveland, the restaurant has over 400 alumni, and a recidivism rate of less than 2%. So we’ve really figured out how to get people out how to get them great jobs, how to keep them out. And it’s a pretty simple formula. And it works for every workforce development program. You give people a vision of themselves in the future doing great work, and that’s easy. In culinary. It’s much harder in manufacturing, people just don’t know what a CNC machinist is. They don’t know what a welder is, you know, but but for culinary, you know, what a chef is, you know what the waiters and bartenders, but once they have that vision of themselves, you give them the skills and tools to get there, right. That’s also relatively easy in, in culinary, a little more difficult in other fields. But the the skills, you know, that that learning is is is critical. And then finally, give them support along the way and afterwards. So, Edwin’s our first hire was a case manager to help the students with all the issues they faced outside the workplace, because we knew that if they came in hungry, if they came in not knowing where they’re going to sleep that night, if they hadn’t been facing the challenges, they would not succeed in the workplace. And so the program has been phenomenal. Edmonds is now four different businesses more than just the restaurant, there’s a bakery, a butcher shop. And I’m forgetting the fourth, but that there’s also multiple housing options under the Edmonds umbrella as well. There’s a dormitory, there’s alumni housing, that’s family housing, because we knew that that was the number one problem that students were facing. So you know, I’ve learned so much as a result of of Edwin’s, I continue to sit on the board and continue to be involved. But mostly, you know, one of the big things is that people can make change with the right team, the right attitude, and the right commitment, you can absolutely make change. And then and I would say the other lesson is, look, people who are low income are not low income, because they want to be low income, they’re low income, because they don’t have the skills for that that ramp to get to the next level. And if you provide it for them, you know that those three elements have a vision for the future skills to get there and support along the way, you can get people to that next level, they will rise to the challenge. And so I’ve seen that now. In Edwards with culinary. I’ve seen it in coding, and I’ve seen it in manufacturing and so there’s just tremendous potential to to do this around the country.

Curt Anderson  8:50

Okay. That’s, that’s why I just love this program. Just so that man if you can’t get inspiration from this, I you know, this is just so awesome. My friend John Buck Leno is on the program today, John, happy Monday, my friend, he’s in Jersey, he preaches hunt the relationship. John, you and Matt should definitely connect. You guys are perfectly aligned on hunting the relationship. Man. I’d like could you please segue you touched on you also do coding, you’re taking sickness, same successful concept. So for folks that want to go into culinary, you also there’s a lot of folks out there out there that want to go into coding talk about Cleveland codes, in which this program?

Matthew Fieldman  9:28

Yes. So in 2016, after Edwards opened in November 2013. And we saw that it was working. So in the November 2011 2015, I started pitching the idea of taking this idea and bring it to other industries and the one that was very clear, a very clear fit was coding. Also, you know, skill based also, an intensive boot camp could get you from point A to point B where you could, you know, enter a lucrative career and also just in high demand. And at that point, you know, coding boot camps were all the rage But they all run about 30, between 13 and $20,000, for three months of education, that is just too much for someone who’s coming from a low income background. And so I started pitching the idea and found a great partner in Cuyahoga Community College. And so we work together to develop the curriculum, find the employers find, find students get it paid for by the federal government, by our Workforce Investment Act dollars. And it worked out great. So Cleveland code has well over 100 alumni at this point, if you get in, you go for free. You know, you meet the criteria, you go for free, you get all the support along the way, you get a laptop, you get a meal, you have lunch every day, you get bus passes, I mean, it’s it’s a, it’s a free ride to a coding career. And you see people go from $8 an hour to $25 an hour. I mean, it’s just it tremendous. And we’re feeling really important jobs in Cleveland tech industry. So it’s been a great experience as well. And again, kind of proven that people will rise to the challenge, if they’re given the if you set the bar high, but you give them the support to get there.

Curt Anderson  11:08

That is art. And I love that line vision of themselves. Yeah, even through a bootcamp and they can see a vision of their future selves, man trapped in one,

Damon Pistulka  11:18

when you when you talk about that, Matt, and you see this in people, if we have a vision of ourselves, that is one thing, that’s where we’re going to be. And if you can provide the vision of themselves, I mean, I can’t emphasize this enough in your program, you’re probably helping these people because they’ve, they’ve not had that support in the past, where it’s like, really, you need to understand and visualize yourself and see yourself being successful in this as an integral part of then becoming successful in it.

Matthew Fieldman  11:48

Correct. One of the one of the great pieces of Cleveland coaches that it’s first of all, it’s a four month program, so it’s a little longer. And and it’s every Friday, they spend time working on themselves, whether that’s soft skill development, whether meeting with CEOs, and then there’s a field trips, so they go to see Highland software, and when you see a tech environment, and you’re so excited to slide down the slides at Highland software, or eating their cool cafeteria, or all the different amazing options, you can envision yourself, you know, you get excited about it. And that’s the motivation, you need to overcome the challenges, which will be academic, they’ll probably be extra curriculum, there will be challenges along the way. But when you say I want to be there, I want to sit at that computer and do that job. It’s so valuable. So that’s the that’s that’s the the model

Curt Anderson  12:36

to it. Well, congratulations, kudos to you, our hats off to standing ovation to you. This is so rewarding, so wonderful that you’re, you know, paving a path for folks that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have that opportunity. And again, thrown out in our manufacturing hat. We need tech jobs, we need tech talent in manufacturing. So again, you’re bridging that gap. And I know we could talk about nonprofit all day I’ve one Mart and then we’re going to take a deep dive back into the MEP network, rekindle share a little bit about what you did was, do you ever sleep I don’t have three beautiful daughters, I don’t know, I don’t know how you ever get through the day, but share with everybody what you’ve done with rekindle.

Matthew Fieldman  13:14

Um, so the the idea for rekindle came really, as soon as I started to Edwin’s, which was that my Jewish friends who are on the east side of Cleveland, where I’m active in the Jewish community don’t know, my black friends who are generally in different neighborhoods and amazing social changemakers. But there’s just no platforms for them to connect on. And that’s only been been exacerbated by the pandemic, where most of us are working from home. And you know, there’s no socialized period. So, you know, you look at the history and you realize, like, our neighborhoods were set up so that we are separate. And unless we actively work to connect, it won’t happen and will continue to run in our bubbles. And certainly social media is based on bubbles. You know, that’s what gets you coming back as people who are like you saying things you want to hear. So I want to create a platform for connection between people who aren’t, aren’t the same, but actually, in many ways, have similar values and have a lot more in common they have differently. So I created a fellowship program called we can build, we just graduated our second cohort a couple of weeks ago. And so far, we have 26 fellows, half black and Christian, half white and Jewish. And we bring them together for four sessions, total of 12 hours of intensive dialogue, group activities, connected relationship building, with the idea that we can build stronger relationships, build more understanding, and then move that leads to collaborative action. So that means everyone at the end makes an action standard where they say, here’s what I want to work on who wants to join me. And so that’s so critical to not just not just build relationships for the sake of having relationships, build relationships, and that’s important but build relationships, you can leverage them to make Cleveland and America a better place. So it’s been a wonderful thing, our third core core it kicks off in the spring it’s fully over recruited, you know, it’s full. So it’s a model that I’m trying to build out that could scale nationally. And, again, create that even more of a movement towards social change and social justice that we, we could use we could use more of in this country.

Curt Anderson  15:15

Yeah, man, you set the bar pretty high, Damon, we need to step up our game, you know, I feel like a little under achiever hanging out. Yeah. You know, so let’s take all right, Matt. So again, you know why we love doing this program. So for folks that are not familiar with the MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership, this is just a sliver. Now, you know, this mat is a giant, you know, just a force to reckon with in the community in Cleveland. And on a national front, we’re going to dig into America works. But I just want to give an idea just to kind of personalize the folks behind the MEP network. So guys, you’re just getting a small sliver of the opportunity, the skills, the talent, the passion that goes on at the MEP network. And this is just one individual. So Matt, again, kudos to you for what you’re doing, you know, in your community and a national scale. So let’s take a deep dive, you are a workforce, you are a force with workforce development. Okay? Please share with everybody what is America works?

Matthew Fieldman  16:12

Cool. So when I started at magnet in 2015, I remember from my first conference, that the sessions were all about engineering and operations and new product development. But the conversation in the hallways was on workforce, how are you getting people into jobs? How are you retaining them, and it became very clear that there wasn’t enough going on to connect the network as it related to workforce. This was reinforced when we wanted to start a youth apprenticeship program, specifically for inner city youth to go and experience manufacturing careers. And I went to the powers that be in Washington and said, Hey, someone in this giant network of 51, organizations nationally, must have done this previously, you guys must have best practices, we don’t need to recreate the wheel here, right. And they said, We have no idea like, go Good luck, you know. And I just felt like there had to be more, there had to be a better way to connect in a better a better way period that rather than having to recreate the wheel on youth apprenticeships, that we knew were going on in other places. So fast forward, I was able to write a grant to the Department of Commerce, NIST, and got to fund it, and was able to launch America Works, which is the whole goal of it is to create better communication, collaboration and cooperation across the MEP national network. And so we’re doing a bunch of different things, to get the best practices out from rural Montana or Utah, or, you know, Georgia, wherever it might be, get those best practices out, get them into the database, make them more accessible to any professional that needs them. And then, you know, fund innovations in this space. And just make sure that we are pushing as hard as we can to fill the open jobs, which are almost 900,000, according to the latest data, almost 900,000 manufacturing jobs, and keep the people we have So retention is a huge issue. And of course, the adaptation to new technology is really critical. And you know, Kurt, you said like, I’m one person at the network is amazing. There’s about 400 450 workforce professionals nationwide. And they’re all experts, they’re all incredible. And I like to say, my goal is to give them every tool, the latest knowledge, the latest technologies, so that they can go in when they’re meeting with a CEO or manufacturing company, they can bring their A game and every tool that’s out there, that’s been proven in other communities they can bring to bear. And, you know, I know that they’re working and jumping from client to client and project to project. So everything I do is basically like, if you can give me two hours a month, I will make it the best two hours you spent that month, you know, I will give you as much value as I possibly can. And so, and not to mention, if you ever need anything, just email me and I’ll get it for you, you know, chances are I have it on file. But if I don’t, I’ll go find it for you. And so I love the servant leadership piece of this, that I get to serve the 450 workforce professionals because I know that they’re, you know, this is direct impact on the company’s making more products, direct impact on the United States to have a better and more vibrant economy and direct impact on the people who are being employed. And so you know, that they have this opportunity to launch a manufacturing career or advanced manual manufacturing career. So it’s what is you know, I’m just one person, but I love the ripple effects that they can have nation nationally.

Damon Pistulka  19:29

Cool, and you’re

Curt Anderson  19:30

doing an awesome job. You know, and we talked about this frequently in our program. As a matter of fact, Matt, we were talking about our friend Mike Womack at the New Jersey MEP. Mike is a millennial does an amazing job of you know, in in You’re doing fantastic work. dispelling the myth of this is not grandma and grandpa’s manufacturing world anymore. The dirty that perception those days are really completely gone. Share a little bit of like what you’re seeing the work that you’re doing to kind of help dispel that myth. And we’re really kind of we use that Word you know, everybody used that word that cliche rock star, your rock a fine Mac manufacturing a few, we’ll talk a little bit about what’s going on. on that end.

Matthew Fieldman  20:07

Yeah, I like to say we need to move from the three Ds dark, dirty and dangerous to the four C’s manufacturing is cool. It’s challenging. It’s cutting edge. And these are commendable careers. I mean, these are life saving careers in a lot of in a lot of areas, as we saw with, with the response to COVID. So I spent a lot of time working on how to make manufacturing more cool, and how to promote the career pathways. Because, yes, you know, Amazon, or maybe your local restaurant now is offering $15 An hour jobs. But do those really have the career paths that you want to be on? Are they going to take you from where you are to where you want to be? And so there are really three areas that I think American manufacturing needs to focus on. And I’m working to help push that forward. So number one is engaging new populations. So we know that we’ve left behind a lot of different populations, we’re way over populated in terms of white men, and way under populated every other demographic, and particularly, you know, we skew older and the baby, the baby boomers are beginning to retire. And we have to be prepared for that silver tsunami that’s gonna hit it’s hitting right now. So those new populations are youth, they’re re entering citizens, they’re immigrants, they’re women, we just have to make our manufacturers as welcoming as possible. And, and those training programs to be as inclusive as possible. So we have a lot of work to do in Dei, engage new populations. Second one is new methodologies. Right, this generation learns differently, we we can do our jobs from our computers, we want to learn from our computers and our cell phones as well. So there’s all sorts of cool technologies in terms of like, I’ll just give a shout out to tooling you that offers over 600 courses online to the augmented reality, the virtual reality, there’s just so much out there in terms of technology that can advance people quickly, and get them in, get them ready to work from day one. And then finally, we need to try again, new new areas of manufacturing. So we need to figure out how we can do more with bootcamps more hands on projects that they can do from home, and then also work with on site training. So figuring out, we’re going to put in a robot and then we’re going to try and train you how to use that robot how to maintain that robot how to set up that robot. And so that’s not, you know, going to happen in your local community college or you know, a classroom environment, you need to do it, you know, on the on the plant floor and make it as relevant as possible. And so that’s, that’s what I’m pushing. I should just mention, give a plug for myself, actually, I write about this on a monthly basis for the NIST MEP blog. And so if you will Google Matt Field med at NIST, it comes right up. And so I’m writing, you know, what’s working, where I think manufacturing training needs to go. And, you know, just just pontificating, as best I can’t, but this is this is my world. And I like to share what what, what I think the people, you know, people in this field, because no,

Damon Pistulka  23:09

well, yeah, it’s it’s interesting, Matt, is, as you said, you know, getting diversified. The workforce is something that is literally gonna kill manufacturing, if we don’t figure out how to do this. Because as the population has diversified in the United States, I don’t know that our manufacturing has kept up with that. But that’s awesome that you’re helping people to really think about it, because that means communicating differently. That means communicating in multiple languages. That means communicating, you know, different working environments, working schedules, there’s all kinds of things that this really means. But when you get there, and you really can get that diverse workforce, one of the things that’s happening in manufacturing, too, is when you don’t have diversity in people, you don’t have diversity in ideas, like you do. And that’s something that I think that we can gain from tremendously in the in the industry.

Matthew Fieldman  24:04

That’s exactly right. Having having a bunch of different perspectives around. Yeah, around the table is huge. And also, you know, these, it just goes directly back to what do we want American society to be? Don’t we want everyone to have an opportunity to attend to the middle class. And that’s, I mean, that’s half the American dream. And so, you know, I’ve seen through all my different programs, one job can revitalize a whole family. And a handful of jobs can revitalize a community. When you have, you know, when you can bring five, five households into the middle class, that’s the families that’s the and the businesses that they patronize. So the local restaurants and the barber shops, and the banks. So the what’s cool about manufacturing, especially American manufacturing, is our supply chain and how you know, purchasing one car has this unbelievable ripple effect down the Delta supply chain for American communities. So I definitely bring it up in everything. that I that I do is how are we going to make sure that this is accessible to everyone? How are we gonna make sure this is, as, you know, inclusive as possible? And thinking about, you know, all that what everything that means? Are you offering different languages? Are you offering it to people of all ability levels? Are you offering it in on public transportation so people can get there and back. So just, you know, all the important questions that that need to be asked right up front, rather than at the end, rather than watching a program be like, Why does everyone look the same? And know that they look the same? Because you’re not thinking about all the different factors that need to go into the need to go into a program from the beginning? Yeah,

Curt Anderson  25:40

this is fantastic, man. Look, man, great suggestions here. We had Jamie quell from the Missouri enterprise on the program back in August. And Jamie, if you too, haven’t connected or collaborated? Boy, you guys are perfectly aligned. We do all the time. Yeah. He’s a force. And he has, you know, you guys are just throwing out excellent suggestions, you know, flexible workforce, you know, people are doing daycare. So I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of new, exciting opportunities, and these things can give you a competitive advantage. You know, I’m glad you mentioned those articles. If you don’t mind. I you know, as I was doing a little prep work for our conversation today, guys, I dropped two of Matt’s articles in the LinkedIn thread here. And Matt two, I absolutely loved them. Damon, you have to check them out. One was one recruitment video every manufacturer needs and that was phenomenal. We do our Friday program. Every Friday, we had a video expert right down the road from you in Dayton, Jeff Long, true focus media, I’d love for you and Jeff Long to connect Matt. And he did. In Damon, you do a great job preaching on how manufacturers even if they’re resistant to social media, or they’re like, Man, I’m at full capacity, I couldn’t take on another customer if my life depended on it. Boy, Matt, you do a phenomenal job on why you need your social, or video or that website needs to be the first line of defense as far as pulling in that talent, just for folks. And folks, you know, please check out and I also got five workforce lessons from the Mars mission. So just scratch the surface on that video article that I thought it was brilliant. Nice. Yeah,

Matthew Fieldman  27:10

you know, so so much of what we talked about in our different sessions. And what you read about online, is, you know, you stuck with this, and you talk about this, and we need to have and I just decided we needed one engaging transcript that has it all. And you know, what does what does a displaced worker? What does a young millennial what is? What is what does your workforce want to hear from you? And that’s what I wrote. So they want to hear about the flexible work, they want to hear about career advancement, they want to hear why pick you, it is such a, I mean, the last number I saw this might be a little outdated. Is there 10 million open jobs in this country right now? I mean, you there is such a competitive market out there. So why you you better have a really good answer. Yes. And I love you know, I wrote about how the, you know, it reminds me of the Harry’s video, that was great. There was a video a long time ago about that. One of the disposable razors and the CEOs riding through the plant.

Curt Anderson  28:14

Yeah, Dollar Shave Dollar Shave.

Matthew Fieldman  28:17

Me, Maria Maria is great. And like everything, it was just fun and funny. And that was kind of the vibe I was trying to get is that it should be fun, it should be engaging, and that CEO better know everyone’s name in that video. Because that’s, that’s the advantage of a small manufacturer is you can create a family environment where people know each other where people care about each other. And that’s, that’s how you’re going to beat the Amazons of the world. And I think we need to beat Amazon at workforce. I’ll just put it out there, because I think our jobs are better. And you better believe Amazon’s gonna automate those jobs as soon as they can. So they’re already experimenting with robots. So if for American society to thrive, we have to get people into small manufacturers. And well, that where they will be happy with it will advance their career where they will provide more and more value as they move up the chain and start not just making products, but designing them and not just designing them but selling them. Not internationally. And so, you know, I just I obviously I’m really passionate about this, and I felt like one video. Yeah, you can shoot it on your shoot on a cell phone. I mean, it’s easy, don’t don’t kill yourself. If you have money for fancy production great. But people also see through fancy production, you know, they want authentic they watch anyone. So just make it simple, make it easy, and, and sell the person on why they should work the same way you sell your customers on why they should buy your products,

Unknown Speaker  29:39

man, that

Damon Pistulka  29:41

it is it is something we talk about a lot because manufacturers forget about that part. So many times you know it you’ll look at a website and it’ll say everything about oh, I’ve got this equipment and these are the problems we solve and if they worked on it, they’re speaking to their customers. And then there’s no pages on their website that says, What’s it like to come and work for us? Right? Why do you want to be here, just all the things you’re talking about. And that is the first thing that a potential employee does is they come and look at your, your website, if you have something that’s inviting, they’re going to have the inviting the warm feeling before they come and see you, or talk to anybody from there. And that is really an extension of how sales have to be done now, right? Because people have to be able to research and get to know things and really understand things before they want to talk to somebody doing the same thing for potential employees, I think is critical.

Matthew Fieldman  30:41

Yep. And let me let me build on that and give a preview to my next blog post, which is on we need to approach our people the same way we approached lean and operational excellence. So I created a people dashboard night that gives up, you know, what are your what are people saying about us? How diverse is our workforce, all sorts of different other pieces that are absolutely critical to a healthy work environment. And we need to quantify that the same way we quantify our lead times that are, you know, time, time, changeover times and things like that. And so really, really critical. Thanks, John, for sharing that link about the Life pages. That’s that’s, that’s, that’s a that’s a LinkedIn innovation. That’s been that’s been exciting. And, but But I do think that a lot of people are going directly to that company’s webpage to see what’s going on. And they want a page on culture. And they want that video right upfront on why, why you should work there. And then, you know, that feeds into your recruiting metrics. And so you should be seeing how many people have watched the video this month, if there isn’t a correlation between number of video views and number of applications, you’re something Something’s off. So there’s just a, there’s a, there should be a very easy pipeline from from your website to application. And then if you can find the time and find the energy, you should be speaking at every local high school, you should be contacting every local community college professor and saying, I have I have jobs. Let me know as soon as you ever next graduating class. You know, it’s that proactive piece that’s huge as well. And so, you know, this is there’s a lot of best practices in how manufacturers can be proactive and fill that pipeline before people even come to your website.

Damon Pistulka  32:20

Yeah, you know, there’s there’s a gentleman I know Matt goosey in Wisconsin has a Mrs. machining. And he, I believe his father started working with the high schools and local Community Technical Colleges, for machinists. And he now has a program. And I don’t know how long it’s been running Forgive me, or I don’t understand it. But he, he brings high school students out several times a year to the manufacturing facility so they can see and understand what it’s like to work in a machining facility. But the remarkable thing is his average age of his workforce now by doing this for many years, and I I’m apologizing again, but it’s like under 35.

Matthew Fieldman  33:07

Amazing.

Damon Pistulka  33:08

It, would you say that? Because what’s the average age of manufacturing is something like 50, some years old now or something like he is flipping the script on this?

Matthew Fieldman  33:18

Yes. And, and there are manufacturers that are doing this. And I remember one of my first meetings, Ivanka was I went to a manufacturer in rural Georgia County, and they had partnered with their local high school, and it started with the owner’s son, who said, who wants to come work at my dad’s company, and then and then they have to find the replacements. That’s the one requirement is you. And so he always has five students from that high school, you know, and they’re 10 minutes down to allow, but I can tell you that, at least according to magnet state of Northeast Ohio, our pre pandemic survey, only 13% of manufacturers were engaging with high schools. So that 87% We’re leaving High School’s talent on the table, and especially when, you know, there’s no reason especially when all the all the misconceptions about liability, and those are all been handled. So any manufacturer should be able to work with their local high school, or at least have that conversation of hey, can I can I start the students excited, you know, get them excited to seniors and hire them as soon as they come out. And then by the way pay for their college. And that’s so critical as you know, build your own pipeline because people are not changing jobs the way the way manufacturers want them to. You got it you got to grow your own these days.

Curt Anderson  34:31

Yeah, I absolutely love that. You think about you know, high school kids, they drive around the community. And you know, they see this big manufacturing plant and they’re like, hey, what goes on behind those walls? Well, I know I was there I took a tour I spent you know, Manufacturing Day You know, I was part of a program or you know, workshop or what have you. So mean opening up as manufacturers open up our doors to the community is just so powerful. Get if you guys are just joining us your four C’s I just want to recap that cool, challenging cutting edge commendable. I have those those of you got it. Man. I know. I know, man, we got a ton of cover. And I know I want to be mindful of your time now. Hey, we’re on the street with American works is you have some really cool cutting edge programs. I heard you. You mentioned tooling you. Tooling you, you have in a manufacturing mini grants. Can you just share with the folks some of the programs that you’ve been rolling out? Under America works at that. And this is nationwide? To my understanding, right? Yes, exactly.

Matthew Fieldman  35:27

So the the mini grants per second, and I’ll show some other ones. So we had the first round this past summer, I want to say and then our second round just opened. And we had applications from all over the country, we funded everything from the Puerto Rico MVP, to offer more more apprenticeships and to translate the existing apprenticeship materials into Spanish, because apparently a lot of the stuff was not translated in Spanish, the Montana MVP want to partner with a prison down the street to do training of people as they were exiting prison, and then placement into jobs. You’ve interviewed a catalyst connection out of Pittsburgh, yeah, they wanted to have their first workforce focused conference for the Pittsburgh region. And that’s great, because that puts the MVP in the driver’s seat of workforce for Western Pennsylvania. So the there’s just tremendous ideas out there, and it was great, we’re $10,000 would make a difference to a lot of these smaller MEPs that with not a lot of money, you know, is great to give them both the money and the kind of stamp of approval and say this is important. This is innovative. And this is this is something the whole network nationally could learn from another partnership, you know, you’ll go back to diversity. So there’s a great organization out there called Women in manufacturing. And I reached out and said, Why is it NIST MEP corporate members of whim and they said, We don’t know. So we were able to put that membership in writing. And now every employee within the MEP network, which is over 1500 is now a member of women manufacturing. So they can take care of taking advantage of their national resources, and also their local programming. So building that it was really important. One of the other really cool connections I was able to make was between tooling you and the company, GTL that offers tablets for for people in prison. And, you know, these are communication tablets, but more and more, they’re being used for educational programming. And so GTL and tooling, you are working right now to pilot, some manufacturing training on GTL tablets for current prisoners, where they could come out with a certification, I’m ready to go to work. So that’s super exciting. And the, you know, again, it was just a matter of connecting two dots, you know, two really, really important things that are going on out there. And then finally, you know, we’re gonna have the MVP network’s first nationwide workforce focus conference in June here in Cleveland at the new magnet, at the current magnet building, we’ll go see the new one. But what’s exciting is, you know, it really addresses what I said back when I first joined the network in 2015, was that everybody’s talking about workforce, but we’re not focused on it well, that we’re focused on it. And so I’m really excited to feed that fire and try to address this as best we can, you know, get these million jobs filled for, or at least have the pipeline to get them filled, automate the ones that need to be automated, and just make our our American manufacturing industry as vibrant as possible.

Curt Anderson  38:21

Man, I just, you know, I just want to recap that real quick, Matt. So again, just you know, your your entrepreneurial spirit, your passion is so contagious, you know, many grants. So now what, Matt, what, what, what you did is you went to other MEPs, from Montana to other other sectors. And you offered many grants to help folks put out fires with very specific needs that they had in their community. phenomenal job you’ve women in manufacturing is we have a number of folks that have been in our program. We align ourselves with a lot of folks in a women in manufacturing world network, kudos, you to align that you mentioned tooling you, you you have your workforce conference, the first one and just look, you know, you talked about your folks like you know, the nonprofit work you’re doing like Edwin’s, and with Cleveland coding, and we talked about that, you know, the vision of your future self. Dude, look, what you did in 2015, you’ve come into the MEP network is just a force. And I you know, did you know that we were gonna have a little pandemic or something because like, man, you were on the forefront of like this workforce, you know, need five or six years ago, well, before we got into, you know, the challenges that we’re facing today. So, you know, just think of how far you’ve helped and push the MEP network along to be in better, better prepared for what we are facing today, along with our manufacturers. So you know, again, our hats off to you, Matt, you’re just doing incredible work. As we wind down as we kind of close things out. Again, I encourage welcome invite everybody on a call. Please connect with Matt. We obviously we’re here on LinkedIn. We’re on Facebook, we’re on Twitter. You can find Matt on any platform, go to the MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership. website. Now, any last parting thoughts, pieces of advice that you’d like to share with anybody or manufacturers out there, as far as how they can tackle their workforce challenges?

Matthew Fieldman  40:09

You know, I think I would just leave with the idea that how important manufacturing is to our, to our country, because for too long, it’s gotten a bad rap. So I just want to mention three, three areas that I think are so valuable. So first of all, I think we’ve realized through this pandemic, that we actually need as much production domestically as possible. It’s important for national security, but it’s also important for resilience to the economic shocks and the disasters that happen in the world. You know, these jobs just paid better than service jobs, skills to make stuff, you know, when I can put somebody in front of a half million dollar CNC machine, they can make millions and millions of dollars with a product over the course of the year. And that means I’m going to pay them more and that I think, is huge. And then, you know, again, we just don’t talk enough about how manufacturing is the elevator to the middle class, and you don’t need college to get into the middle class these days. In fact, college is in many ways a barrier to getting a new lead with so much debt, you’re not sure what you’re going to do with you know, any statistic we’ll show you how that how the cost of tuition has skyrocketed. I mean, we I can I can get you great, a great job with three to six months of training. One of my favorite conversations I had was with the head of HR for Little Tykes. And so little takes, obviously makes amazing kids toys, very familiar with them have lots of cozy gates in my, in my garage. And she said, You know, I can hire marketing people anywhere in the world, I can hire accounting people anywhere in the world. And she’s like, generally, we hire them in Poland, because they speak really English really well. And they’re very well trained. And they are a third of what we pay Americans. She’s like, the equipment is here and the supply chain is here. And so I need injection boulders, like you wouldn’t believe. And so what she told me was with a six month training program, she you would hire you would earn $70,000 a year. They don’t by the way, really cool toys that only bring people joy, right? Yeah. And so the, the impact the why of manufacturing, we’re finally getting back to it. It’s so great to get back to the why. And just every manufacturer, listening every nonprofit economic development professional, always start with your why and make sure you hit it really, really hard. Because that’s that’s how we’re gonna distinguish ourselves from the other sectors that are out there and distinguish ourselves from the competitors that we have. Yep. Good

Curt Anderson  42:33

moment of silence for just a moment of silence guys, it’s lunchtime here in the East Coast in eastern timezone. Let’s just let’s just kind of Matt Dude, this is just absolutely phenomenal, in which it’s so exciting to just bring in this passion back to US manufacturing, it’s gone on way too long. You know, as far as again, you know, overlooked, neglected, downplayed, down, written, whatever, however you want to play it. Those days are done, you know, we need to really shine a bright light and you’re doing an amazing job just telling it like it is we have our four C’s. So we’re gonna wrap up. So Matt, first off, thank you, man, thank you for taking the time to join us and to share your expertise, your passion with us. Thank you for what you do in the Cleveland Northeast Ohio community. Oh, my goodness, you know, between Edwin’s rekindle Cleveland coding what you’re doing at magnet, what you’re doing for American works is just nothing short of miraculous. So very inspiring. Thank you for what you’re doing there. Lastly, thank you what you’re what you’re doing with the MEP network for manufacturers nationwide for all your MEP friends, fellows, comrades, if you will, yes. Just doing awesome awesome work. So guys, again, we’re gonna wrap up manufacturing Monday motivation with Matt Feldman from magnet America works. Matt Dude, we salute you for everything that you’re doing. Please connect with Matt on LinkedIn. So guys, we wish you just an absolute amazing, incredible week, go out and just smash your goals. Man. If you want to get inspiration, look at Matt’s LinkedIn profile, see what he’s doing? We all need to keep up with Matt. Instead of keeping up with the Joneses. We need to keep up with that. So you try it you can definitely try. We’re gonna we’re gonna do our best. So hey, guys, go out and crush it. Damon, we have an awesome program on our Friday program. This week, we’re going to talk about efficiency hacks. So how can we do? How can we capture profits quicker, easier, faster? We’re gonna talk about that on Friday. So Matt, stick with us for one second. Guys. Have an awesome Monday and we’ll see you again on Friday.

Matthew Fieldman  44:39

Take care