Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Nate Wheeler

Curt Anderson 0:01
Bam. Hey, thank God it’s Monday Damon, how are you, brother? What’s happening? Dude?

Damon Pistulka 0:07
You know, we’re just we’re just enjoying the springtime weather here in Seattle man,

Curt Anderson 0:10
man. What how Mother’s Day weekend? Did you How was lunch a

Damon Pistulka 0:13
good stuff?

Curt Anderson 0:14
It’s well, yeah, all right. Yeah, yeah. Phenomenal weekend here. Just you know weather is finally beautiful 70s 80s all week and I’m absolutely thrilled honored. What a privilege to introduce our guests. Today we have the one the only Dave Are you sitting down for this thing? You have Nate realer in the house, Nate, how are you doing? Good. How are you? Hey, man, we are just better than you could possibly imagine. So we’re going to take a deep dive. So first, Nate, US Marine, my friend. So thank you for your service to our country. As a veteran man, we applaud you, we salute you. So thank you for serving our country proudly in the Marines. And you are a manufacturing marketing guru. So you are just you speak our language, you sing our music. So we’re gonna have a fun discussion here taking a deep dive. But let’s go back in time, so you decide to go off into the Marines. And then I want to kind of let’s, let’s learn a little bit about Nate. And then we’re going to slide into how on earth did this marine become a manufacturing guru for manufacturers?

Nate Wheeler 1:16
Sometimes I have not even sure how it happened myself. It’s interesting on the path of life just kind of takes you a route and you just follow it. Yeah. But yeah, so I really, really kind of weird path to it. So I started off going to school for engineering, I spent about two and a half years at Penn State for mechanical engineering. And, you know, for whatever reason, it just, it was not where I was at that point in my life. And so, and I’d always want to join the Marine Corps, and I was like, well, it’s now or never, yeah, was 2004. And so I signed up went off, you know, much to the chagrin of everyone I know. But so I went off and spent four years in the Marine Corps infantry had some really good experiences, there had a lot of interesting training, a lot of interesting deployment experiences. And so that was a great experience that, I’m glad I did. And I’m glad it’s something that I think it’s, I think it’s a great part of, of any young man’s life, if he chooses to incorporate that. It can be a really good growing experience. At any rate, I got out of the Marine Corps finished up my undergrad and Pennsylvania, moved up to San Diego got my master’s degree in International Business. Still not quite sure what I was going to do at that point. But I met a friend who had a website that sold skateboarding lessons, and we use SEO and lead and AdWords to get people all around the country who are looking for skateboarding lessons for their kids. And so, when the guy always had people asking me was how, how do I get a skateboard for my kids before the lessons. So I decided I want to start a website called skateboard for kids.com, which I did, and I still own it, it’s kind of a background, I still ship some skateboards out of my basement, but it’s not real, you know, something I put a lot of effort into. So so that was kind of my first real experience in in business and in a successful business that I made money off of, and make connections and used SEO and a lot of different techniques to get those leads. So in the process, all that I met some guys that you know, had some other experience I didn’t have we came together for him we create. One of our first customers was a manufacturer. And I just really took an interest in I really love the idea of things being built, I love the economic benefit that has and how how much of a core it is to, you know, what our country offers and what our country is. And, you know, I just found out that I was really good at getting business from manufacturers and building websites for them. So that just kind of became our primary area of business. And we’ve really loved what we’ve done since then.

Curt Anderson 4:03
Awesome. So let’s take a deeper dive John Berg Leno drops a note saying hello. So anybody out there. Welcome to Manufacturing Monday motivation, guys. We’re here with Nate Wheeler. If you’re just joined us, Nate is veteran, as he just mentioned, served proudly in the Marine Corps. And now he’s a manufacturing marketing guru for manufacturers. We create web designs, and has a lot to say there’s a lot of W’s there, Damon, so Nate, let’s, you know, you and I have known each other for a number of years. And I just I love the work that you’re doing. You do a lot of high end high level web design projects. And I look I want to take it one step further. You’re talking about man, I love manufacturing, what our country offers, so on and so forth, you know, in with your skill set with your E commerce and SEO, you could have gone into any industry. Just share a little bit of like, why you love working with your manufacturers and just let’s start digging into some of those success stories that you have and some of these processes that you’ve been working on.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
So, you know, like I said before, the one of the reasons I really love working with manufacturers, because I feel like they are the foundation of the success of our country in general. And I feel like anything that I can personally do to facilitate their success is going to reflect on, you know, my region, reflect on my lifestyle, reflect on, you know, quality of life for everyone around us. And it’s something that needs more focus. I always find it interesting that we have a department of agriculture, but we don’t have a department of manufacturing. Well, yeah.

Curt Anderson 5:33
That’s a That’s a powerful statement. Right there. Right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 5:37
And in the percentage that the that, you know, not to say anything, and I love farmers, but not saying anything against that that industry, but it represents, you know, a tiny percentage of the GDP of our country compared to manufacturing, which represents a massive percentage of the GDP. So, yeah, it certainly requires more focus. And there are some programs out there and things like that. But from the ground level, the things that we as marketers can do to actually increase that GDP increase the success of the manufacturers, is so much more powerful than what is really being done from a high level. Right.

Unknown Speaker 6:18
Wow. Right. department of manufacturing.

Curt Anderson 6:22
I had to write that down. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Damon, we need to contact a local camera. Yeah, I’ve got going all over that.

Damon Pistulka 6:29
Because you’re right. Why the heck not? Right. Why the heck not? That’s awesome.

Curt Anderson 6:35
So So Nate. And what’s interesting, again, like when you think ecommerce web design, lighting manufacturer is a little bit, you know, slower to the game tech wise, you know, they live for years on trade shows, you know, maybe word of mouth. And so, you know, again, you embrace this, this industry, if you will, that was you know, a little bit on the tech side, not tech savvy side of things, right, if you do agree with that talk. So, yeah, let’s talk about some of the manufacturers, you know, different industries, as you got into this, you know, and when you started up your business, you know, a lot of times a startup man, you’re just you’re trying to take any bit of business that you can to survive, right? You know, your startup guru, you’ve had, you’ve been a part of numerous different startups. So you know, how, how were you able to laser focus on manufacturers? Did you get a lot of resistance in the beginning, or, you know, walk us through, like how you really kind of catapulted yourself this direction.

Unknown Speaker 7:24
So the very, the very first step, and this was when I, before I even started this company, I met a local business owner owned a advertising agency, they’re moving more into digital, and they had a client out in Union City that did fiberglass molding, and he had been struggling with content writing. And I’ve always considered myself a good writer. And I was like, hey, I can write the content for it never done it before. And so he was like, Well, if you want to give it a shot, I’m like, I’m not just gonna give it a shot, man, I’m gonna knock it out of the park. And so, so having no experience in this, I said, Okay, what do I need to do to write really good content for this person? So I said, I got a scheduled meeting with them and went out to their factory. Well, first, I did some preliminary research on fiberglass molding came up with a lot of good information went out there, guys give me a tour. And I said, so. So this is, so is that this kind of fibrous, he’s like, how do you know that when I did my research, so I went and wrote the content, they didn’t have any edits, it was perfect. And from that point on, I just really felt a passion for that industry, I just really wanted to be involved in promoting manufacturers. And so then, like I said, one of my first customers happened to be a manufacturer, they made industrial furnaces. And we built that website, and I just realized that number one, manufacturers tend to have very low level of digital and aptitude in. And even beyond that it reflects in their web presence in their opportunities that come from the web. So they have a long ways to go in a lot of cases, number one, number two, they have a lot of economic benefit from the marketing that we do, you know, when we get a lead for manufacture can be worth, you know, $20,000, it can be worth $200,000 Or a million dollars. So, when we do marketing, the amount of investment that they make into that is a pittance compared to what we can actually get for them. Yeah. So there’s a lot of return on investment, which is always a good scenario to have when you’re providing a service. And then the last thing too, is that over the years, through a lot of struggles, a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I’ll tell you what, there was times where I wanted to completely give up. I was like I SEOs moving too fast. I can’t figure out what they’re doing with these algorithms. And I I just quit trying to figure out what Google was doing. And I just started to ask myself, What would Google do? What would you do if you’re trying to serve really good search results? Well, it all comes down to good content and good backlinks. If you have those two pieces of the puzzle together, and you, you know, there’s obviously nuances to each of those and how they’re constructed. But if you have those two elements, you’re gonna have good ranking and you’re getting a lot of leads. Right? That’s awesome.

Curt Anderson 10:18
Hey, we have a couple shout outs here. So our dear friend, Cole, Daniel is in the house today. All right, that’s Hi peeps. And John drops this comment. You did research? What a concept? No, too few to you know, just to take that time and actually do the work. He says. So John, thank you do. And, you know, so this is awesome. Now you have a great process, if we want to slide into this on how you help, particularly meat machine shops, custom manufacturers, on this marketing side. Nate, Sue, do you want to take a little dive there and just kind of enlighten everybody? What do you do to help? You know, help your clients show their superpowers and expose their strengths to the market with this SEO strategy?

Unknown Speaker 10:58
Sure. Yeah. And that’s a good question. And the program that you just mentioned, it exists in one of the toughest to differentiate markets, and that’s in the machining market. Because even if you ask most machine shops, what they’re really good at what you know, what, what are your core competency? And they’re like, we’re machinists, like, everybody knows what it is, they’re, we’re no different than anybody else. A lot of them say that. And in the thing that we’re really good at is drawing out what they’re actually really good at understanding from the perspective of their consumer. Okay, so you, you know, you do a lot of aerospace work? Well, if I’m the guy looking for a machine shop that can do aerospace work, what am I looking for? Well, I’m probably going to be looking for somebody with an ISO 9001 certification, probably as 9100, I’m going to be looking for some case studies on some parts that you’ve done related to that. So we can always pull out those areas of specialty and display them in a way that makes sense to your target market written with content that your target market will be looking for. And so I think, really being able to, if we can do that for machine shops, we can do it for anybody, right? I agree with that. So that’s a big thing. And so displaying your credibility through a website design, something that’s clean, something that operates well, and has well written content is step one, step two, how are we gonna actually get the traffic to the website, because when we build a website, it’s got a good foundation, we’ve built that we built that solid foundation that we can grow off of, then there’s the rest of the SEO process. And that usually occurs after the websites built. So with mean jobs, I got a lot of, well, let me digress. So we have a lot of customers that are, you know, larger, you know, couple million dollars up to, you know, whatever 50 100 million dollars, they typically will have a really custom website design, we go through a design phase, we you know, discovery phase, design phase, development, phase content, all this stuff goes into this website design, you know, typically a little bit higher price point than, you know, a really small job shop can afford, not that it’s a ton of money, but it’s something that if you’re a one or two guys shop, it’s like, yeah, I just don’t have the cash flow. So I had a lot of the small shops contact me and I was just like, I don’t know what I can do for you, you know, what I love to help you out. So what I did, I developed a template more or less, that really fits machine shops, it has really clear display of offerings that we can switch them out, depending on what your offerings are, we can switch out the pictures, the content, your logo, your colors, so we can build this website really, really quickly. And it doesn’t cost us a lot of money or developer resources to do it. And then I developed some other relationships in the industry where I could get some backlinks very easily, I have a partnership with a couple websites, and I say, Hey, I’m gonna pay you so much a month when I get a new customer, I just want to plug them in. So I have those built out. So basically, I created this small machine shop marketing program that very, very cost effectively, I can just turn them on. And it’s awesome. I am getting these guys ranked in their local markets. It’s not an extremely broad geographic thing. But in you know, if you’re in Pennsylvania, and you want to rank for contract manufacturer, and you know, Pittsburgh or whatever it might be, that I can get you ranked for that stuff pretty quickly and easily. And you’re gonna start getting leads, we’re not talking massive leads, we’re not talking a ton of them, but it’s enough they provide you some stability and consistency in your business. Right.

Curt Anderson 14:24
I absolutely love that. It just what you’re doing is you’re you’re at least just getting them in the game, you know, yeah. Let them get started and pull up by Johnson. Really, what would Google do? Right? So yeah,

Unknown Speaker 14:36
yeah, exactly. Yes. If you guys want to see an example I’d be happy to share my screen. I don’t know if that’s

Curt Anderson 14:44
absolutely man, that would be perfect. So just a couple of comments here. So our friend Nicole, you know, understand and preset perspective of the customer. You know, she does a great job of really focusing on the consumer. And and we’ve got Chris Young with us today. Daymond just now nice public comment where We were going to chime in.

Damon Pistulka 15:01
Well, I was just saying, you know, these that once you get people set like that, right, a small machine shop is set up there, they’re starting to do it. If they start producing a little bit of content, a little bit, a couple of months, something just to get some freshness on their website. It’s gonna really go a long ways. Exactly. Really go along. And I’ve

Unknown Speaker 15:21
got the perfect example to kind of expound on that. That’s a great point. Pull it up, Nate. Yeah, sharing my screen now.

Curt Anderson 15:28
Yep, hit Share, and then we’ll pop it up. And then so what we’ll do probably on your computer is you’ll just see this. Yep. And then I’ll add it right there, then just go right, go to the screen that you want to show.

Unknown Speaker 15:40
Okay. And I already had tristate pulled up here, but I’m gonna pull this one up. Yep. So you can see my screen. Yep, perfect. So this is the small machine shop marketing template. And it’s, you the cool thing is, is in fact, despite the fact that it’s very cost effective, it’s actually probably nicer than 80% of the websites on the web. Yeah. But it has all the elements that we expect to see from a manufacturer’s website, you have a clear statement about who you are and what you specialize in, you have a clear calls to action, you have clear display of what your offerings are. And then some good content on the homepage that really lends itself to that, you know, SEO side of things. So that’s really the core of what you have what you need on a website. So to expound on Damond stamen, this. So these are some blog articles that that we’ve written for them. And in this particular one, you we incorporated the keyword set as 9100 certified machine shop. Now what is awesome is based on even the low level SEO that we’ve done for them in the backlink building, this article is the number one search result nationwide, if you will, as 9100 certified machine shop. So clearly, we picked a keyword set that that you know, doesn’t have a ton of competition. And that really gets some business they got leads within the first couple of months. So this is a really good example of how you can add content to your website that will get you business.

Curt Anderson 17:15
So Nate, let’s let’s pause on this for one second. Because I think this is really important what you’ve done here. So no. Jobs is no no, we we and that say so. Yeah, we love to talk, we thought that we’d be syndrome. And so when you land on the manufacturers website, and what is it, you know, we deliver on time, we are awesome. We have these certifications, we are high quality, they’re just you know, they just talk all about themselves. And so the customer so John, thank you, very observant. John, so did a great job of helping that customer tell the story. But I love what you did is you had ITAR, you had 9001 Oh yeah, well, I think was at 1702. Five, or you know, whatever that standard is what you’ve done with that client said of Daymond, John was talking about like, Hey, I’m a manufacturer add bend metal, I cut steel. And so therefore, you know, would do for anybody. But Nate, what you’ve just described is like, when you talk to that ideal your customer, when you talk to them, they’re like, Well, no, maybe I’m an odd automotive, maybe I’m an aerospace. I’m more specific, so you’ve niched them down. And so now they can come up on that, that particular keyword, or they’re staying within their industry. So I love what you’ve done to be really real demand to get them understanding how to search work.

Unknown Speaker 18:29
Exactly. Yeah. And that’s a great point, because a lot of companies would write a page that says, I’m a automotive, you know, automotive machines. Yeah. Well, no, that’s not a search term. Nobody’s gonna Google that. Right? Yeah. You got to think about what is that automotive OEM looking for when they’re looking for a machine shop? Right, right.

Curt Anderson 18:49
No, I absolutely love that. So Alright, so let’s continue going through that process. So you, you have the template. So you can machine shops out there, you can get them online, create that presence for them, extremely inexpensively, quick, fast. And it’s a nice online presence. So it’s not cookie cutter. But there is a format that is a proven concept. Yeah, then you’re going to dig in. So then you offer some content services, you’re gonna help them write out some content with keywords, that type of thing. Exactly. Yep.

Unknown Speaker 19:16
Yep. So so we have, and I do have a couple different tiers available that are going to determine how much content we can write after the websites built, but typically, within that initial, you know, layout, putting that website together, we’re gonna write about four pages of content for you. Right? And that happens to we have content writers that write for you know, very technical and manufacturing subjects every day, we set up an interview, ask them a bunch of detailed questions, we’ll record the call really allows us to go back and write that piece very efficiently and get it in your words. And then we put it on the website. So that’s typically how the how the content writing flows.

Curt Anderson 19:54
Perfect. Okay, awesome. Well, go ahead. You

Damon Pistulka 19:57
don’t you don’t really like about this. What you’ve done This, Nate, is you’ve laid out a process to do this, like manufacturers are used to process right? You’ve not you’ve taken this, yes, there’s creativity in what you’re doing. But there’s a process that that manufacturer can see, follow and understand. Because you’ve got the template, you’re making it efficient, because you’re doing it this way. And you’re making it effective. That’s, that’s really cool.

Unknown Speaker 20:22
Thank you. Yeah, it’s definitely something that needs to be done. Because we know that these digital projects can really get out of control pretty quickly. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 20:32
Yeah, absolutely. So hey, we’ve got Michael Gordon here today, Michael, thanks for joining us, again, John, Chris Nicole, anybody else out there with with we are with Nate Wheeler, from we create web designs, and website guru Search Engine Optimization guru for manufacturers. Now you have super exciting news here to share, Nate, you also have a marketplace, I think I’ve got a quick blip of it, to share again, but I would love to learn more about this marketplace that you’re offering for your mate? Well, you know what, before we do that, you shared an awesome story about kind of how this came about. Let’s go there first, we’ll keep everybody on the cliffhanger on the edge of their seat. But why did you create what inspired you to create a marketplace.

Unknown Speaker 21:17
So, you know, as a web development company, a lot of times we’ll have you know, kind of gaps in projects and things like that. So I always try to keep you know, my developers working on something that’s going to, you know, benefit us and benefit our customers. And I had this vision for a regional marketplace, something that that would benefit the manufacturers that were on it and really facilitate regional collaboration. And one of the one of the opportunities that I came across recently, that’s, you know, a little bit removed from this project, but it became very connected, is, you know, we generate a lot of leads for our customers, one of my customers generates, you know, three 400 leads a year. They’re very selective, they’re a large company, and they only work with very specific type of leads. And so I asked him, Well, what happens, the other 250 300 leads that I get you an error. And he said, Well, you know, sometimes we’ll try to link him up with somebody, but usually, we just tell him, I can’t help him. And I’m like, Dude, you got to send those to me, I can find somebody to do the work, we can keep that business in the region, we’re already doing the work, right? Why not keep the business here, right. And so, you know, there’s, there’s two ways that it can work, it can be, you know, a for profit scenario, which, you know, a lot of a lot of manufacturers could benefit from that concept, even though a lot of them also are very, very protective, and kind of closed off to the idea of outsourcing work, even if it’s somebody regional, but I really think we need to open our mindset, I think we really need to think harder about this because especially with the employment situation in this country, now, every single manufacturer is telling the same story, we can’t find enough people to do the work. Well, if you’ve got on one hand, a manufacturer that’s you know, bursting at the seams and getting a ton of leads they can’t service you got to other manufacturers that you know they have a couple guys they’re not busy they need work. Well, why not work together? Why not, you know, leverage those resources you might not make the same margin on the job but at least you’re maintaining control delete. So that’s one function that we’re really be you know, having a lot of success with in tristate manufactured marketplaces, having these personal interactions with customers that we know are getting a lot of business. And we say, Hey, do you have anything coming in that you can’t do? And it just on Friday, I had a machine shop that I work with, send me a lead. They said, you know, either we don’t have the capacity or the capability to do this job. Can you find somebody and I right away knew exactly who to contact? I contacted him. He said, Yeah, great, I’ll quote that he just sent me a quote, I needed to forward it over to the to the person that was looking. So I think that something like this has enormous economic power. I mean, if we can really get a huge percentage of manufacturers in the region bought into this idea, it could be massive. Think about it, we’ve got 10,000 manufacturers in the state of Pennsylvania, if we 5000 of those sharing five leads per year, even an average of you know, 30 $30,000 a lead which very small for a manufacturing job. We could this could be almost a billion dollars. Right? Right. I mean, it’s huge. And that small scale,

Curt Anderson 24:27
right? I absolutely love this Nate so so first off, kudos to you for the innovation to come up with this. The you know, the being the Go Giver, the connector that you are to even put this into place. And there’s combination things that I’d like to touch on real quick, you know, reshoring you know, what you’re doing with helping reshoring you know, we’ve, you know, caught how challenging it is right now. I know you can see you’re gonna pull it up. So while you’re pulling it up, I’m just going to chime in real quick on how important this strategy is, you know, So much disruption over the through COVID. With the vulnerability of products, you know, everything being offshore, so on and so forth, what you’re doing is not just regionally, you’re giving other companies an opportunity to say like, Hey, what’s going on here? What can be made. And let’s, let’s take a little demo here, what’s going on? Sure.

Unknown Speaker 25:18
So even beyond the kind of the linking up in the collaboration between regional manufacturers that we’re really trying to promote the really, really exciting thing about this site is that we can use our marketing knowledge and our ability to do SEO to generate leads that are coming from around the country, I had a lead come in from Boeing, that was looking for a, you know, very, very complex part that required some plastic fabrication, some machining and some, you know, metal fabrication. And these, I’m getting leads like this, through this website, people outside the region that are doing Google searches for manufacturing services, and reaching out to me and that I have the ability to give that business to somebody that’s on the website, right. So so this has kind of a multi faceted approach to really benefiting the people that are that are on it. So this is just the homepage, there’s a couple different functions here, you can list your business, you can search for manufacturers, we created some really cool filtering ability. So you can search, you know, based on, you know, specific needs, and then you can drill down into companies that have specific certifications, kind of additional abilities. We have the career section that we’re still kind of building out. And then I have a marketplace section that, you know, I really want this to become an all in one solution for manufacturers to work together. So it’s a place where you can post materials, if you’ve got, you know, if you’re a fabricator, and you’ve got a giant steel yard stuff rusting into the ground, put it on the marketplace, there’s people out there that need stock, steel. So there’s things like that if you upgraded your machinery, you can post your machinery on here. So there’s a lot of cool things you can do with it. This is the company search we laid out, you know, so you can search by keywords, you can search by industry. And then basically, you know, these are companies that have signed up, like I said, you can filter you can search by specific type. So this is like the metalworking category. You can see all the companies that are in metalworking, you can drill down and find exactly what you want to work with. And down here you can see some SEO content. This is what we wrote. So we could really get this page rank for for different keywords. Cool thing, we’ve written a lot of news articles, too, that are focused on keywords like you know, top injection molding manufacturers, and top CNC machine shops and such. And it’s really cool a lot of these keywords you Google top injection molders in New York, our site is on the first page, right on and on and on. So this is really, really cool. We’ve been having a ton of success with the organic SEO. And I’ll just show you real quick. What we’re getting here I’ll do 16 months. So this is clicks and impressions from organic search results. And you can see it’s just skyrocketing. Every day, we’re hitting new highs. And so as this grows, I’m going to be able to send more and more business to the people on the website.

Curt Anderson 28:14
Man, dude, this is absolute. That’s awesome. Yeah. And I actually recognize a couple my buddy Andrew Ripley machine I saw he was on your list. And yeah,

Unknown Speaker 28:21
I know, Andrew, he’s a cool guy are actually both on the membership committee for the NTMA.

Curt Anderson 28:31
Yeah, so we Daymond I interviewed Roger last fall. Yeah, if you if you’ve, if you’ve met Andrew in person, Yes, Andrew is mine. He’s like, like, I’m six foot. And I don’t know, if I come to his shoulder. Like he’s, he’s the nicest guy in the planet. So that was, that’s awesome. So, Nate, let’s take what what inspired you to like, I mean, this isn’t just like a little hobby is a side hustle. Like, this is a prominent play, you’re attacking keywords, you’re driving business, like you just laid out the numbers, you know, even like, if you were a fraction, correct, and those numbers you throughout, this is powerful, what you’re doing. And for those customers, you know, the three, four or 510 person machine shops, they’re just, you know, the reality is they’re never going to sit down and, you know, belt out content, but you’re you’re doing that for them. Now, you’re creating an opportunity for them to be competitive. From an SEO standpoint where I’m just fired up, as you can tell, let me get a question in that in that ramble that I just had. Where do you see this going? Like, what’s your vision? What’s Nate’s dream? Where do you see this going?

Unknown Speaker 29:37
So this is something I’ve never really talked about before, but I have

Curt Anderson 29:43
an exclusive Daymond. We got an exclusive from Nate Wheeler here live. Awesome. I

Unknown Speaker 29:46
have I have this idea of and it’s transportation related. Yeah. And there’s a lot of company there’s a lot of people out there from Elon Musk to you know, you know, countries in Europe that have explored similar concepts. I feel like I have, what the future of transportation is. I know that sounds huge. But I really like I’ve had this thought, in my mind, I’ve written plans, I know exactly what it looks like and how it works. And I feel like someday, all of this effort that I put into creating these collaborations between manufacturers is going to lead to a project, that I can bring a bunch of them together to work on this specific thing. And we’re going to absolutely change the way the world operates. That’s all I’m gonna say. But that’s kind of my really, really long term vision. Awesome.

Curt Anderson 30:38
That’s that big, audacious goal, man, you know what, and thank you for your trust that you shared it with us, you share it with the folks here today. And you know, what, you know, if you if you believe in like the whole, you know, manifesting and you know, laws of attraction, if you will, dude, you put it out there, you put it out there and live, it’s now you know, can’t take it back, dude. So now we’re gonna hold you to it. So how now, Dave, and I and the rest of us here, we can be your accountability partners, and we are rooting you on to victory, man, this is absolutely awesome. So let’s wind down I want to one thing that I want to share is you’re super active with a big brother and big sister program. And I’d say that’s huge. And my family. My father took on a big, big brother program about 20 years ago, that young man had a lot of challenges. And now he’s a thriving young man. So it’s really impacted our family. Huge. Tell us a little bit about your role and what you do with the Big Brother Big Sister program.

Unknown Speaker 31:31
Sure, yeah. And in the sake of full disclosure, my my little aged out of the program, and, you know, he got to a different stage in his life. And so so we’re not still together, but you know, still wish him happy birthday and things like that. But I was with him for seven years, I was also on the board of the local Big Brother, Big Sister program. And it’s it is a program that I am passionate about, I feel strongly that if we can influence the younger generation, it’s one of the most impactful charitable contributions we can make. I mean, yes, you can, you know, give somebody 10% of your income, you can do a lot of different things with your money. But if you can actually spend your time with somebody and influence them in a way that, you know, is going to turn them into a better citizen and a, you know, a more fulfilled person. There’s nothing bigger you can do. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 32:28
Wow. Moment of silence there for that Ron Damon moment of silence. And how about Nicole Donnelly? Love your vision, man. So that was, that was awesome. So I know you’re super busy. Let’s wind down my last question for you today. You know, US Marines. You’re a thriving entrepreneur, you are just dedicated to helping manufacturing. Dude, I love that the Department of manufacturing, we got to tell everybody, talk to your congressperson about that one, Governor, whoever we need to get that. And I know, they might push back say, hey, we have the Department of Commerce. But I think we need a department of manufacturing. But Nate is your, you know, taking this marketplace to a high level you have a big dream, who and what inspires you? What’s what’s what’s behind your relentless drive?

Unknown Speaker 33:19
The one the one idea that I mentioned to you is is something that you know, it is it’s a distant vision, but I do feel like it’s a goal I’m working towards. And I feel like it’s bringing all the pieces in, I’m putting all the pieces together. But what really does inspire me is seeing successes for the companies that I work with, I genuinely get pumped up, when I can show them, hey, we just doubled your traffic. And they say yeah, well, we’re getting a ton of phone calls, or a ton a ton of leads. I just get excited about that. I mean, that’s just something that really drives me. That

Curt Anderson 33:53
is awesome. So alright, Nate, how can we and I’m sorry, I said last question. Last one, where can everybody find you? Obviously, we’re here on LinkedIn, maybe somebody’s catching us on YouTube Live, maybe Twitter? Or maybe they’re catching us, you know, months down the road? Where can they reach out? Where can they connect with Nate to get a little more of this expertise?

Unknown Speaker 34:11
Yeah, I mean, the easiest thing you can do is just send me a direct email and just Nate at we create.com that even kind of rhymes. So it should be easy to remember. Yep. And at it, we create.com You know, and if you if you were to go on we create.com and fill out the contact form that’ll, you know, that’ll come to me as well. So that’s, that’s probably the easiest way to do it. And I’d love to talk to anybody that’s interested in growing their business. Interested in getting involved with the trusted manufacturers marketplace. We’re certainly growing fast and excited to add anybody into that site we can and also little side benefit. Everything is kind of ordered sequentially. So if you sign up today, you’re going to be at a higher spot than somebody that signs up tomorrow. Yeah,

Curt Anderson 34:58
so obviously Yeah, first come first rank, right? So all right. So guys, let’s wind down on the so as Nate just said, first off, please connect with Nate. So hopefully, Nate, you’ll get a couple of contacts here. From our friends and family here at LinkedIn. So connect with Nate on LinkedIn. Check out we create his an awesome website, all sorts of information for you. Again, tri state. The website again, is tri state margai.

Unknown Speaker 35:24
state manufacturers.com.

Curt Anderson 35:26
I state manufacturers.com. Thank you, tri state manufacturers.com You absolutely want to check that out. And again, he’s driving enormous traffic for manufacturers in the region. So that’s New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. So check that out. Nate, thank you, my friend. I really appreciate this. I just man Damon, I wish you massive success with this program. Super excited rooting you on and we’ve got to have you back again. Dude, we gotta we gotta have this conversation again, Damon. Any last thoughts for everybody here on this wonderful Monday?

Damon Pistulka 35:59
Well, I mean, hey, go out and have a good week. But I love what you did Nate with you’re taking the TriState manufacturers making that directory, seeing that vision because you are really helping drive collaboration, which will make the tri state area stronger over time. For those people that want to participate. Other people may choose not to, but I think they’re going to be missing out. It’s just awesome to see what you’ve done there. Thanks so much,

Unknown Speaker 36:24
David. Appreciate thank you both for having me on. I really enjoyed it. And I love what you’re doing as well. And I love the fact that that we share this passion and that we’re we’re on the same team here.

Curt Anderson 36:35
Absolutely. So Nate, hang out with us one second, guys. We wish everybody an amazing, blessed, wonderful week this week, Dave and we’ve got a few things going on here. We’ve got Yeah, faces of business every Tuesday and Thursday with Damon Pistulka. He’s interviewing amazing, incredible, wonderful entrepreneurs Damon, we’re back on Friday. Man, we have a good one. On Friday, we’re gonna be talking a little bit roller derby and how a TEDx

Damon Pistulka 36:58
talk TEDx and roller derby

Curt Anderson 37:02
can explode your business. So join us on Friday on manufacturing ecommerce success. guys keep going out and crushing it. We wish you an amazing week. And God bless everybody. So hang on Nate, and we’re ending the break