Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Whitney Koch

Curt Anderson 0:00
Damon How about a little drum roll for everybody? You got it you got the drum. Oh there it is Damon Happy Monday my brother How are you dude

Virginia Lynn Peterson 0:10
until and great Kurt doing all right,

Curt Anderson 0:13
man. I what? I’m like I’m already speechless and we’re just getting the party started. Yes, starting right now, man look at who’s here we’ve got Angela already. Angela. Happy Monday to you get my dear beloved Diane buyer she’s in Pennsylvania we’ve got and our brother from another mother. We’ve got Trish, Trish, thank you for all of your wonderful, amazing support. We’ve got Ngor here today. So guys, happy Monday manufacturing Monday motivation on Damon, what month is this?

Virginia Lynn Peterson 0:47
Manufacturing month,

Curt Anderson 0:49
it’s manual month this whole month and so what we’re going to do is we’ve been practicing our German and so we’ve got England, missy, thank you for joining us here today. So I we’re gonna do a little song we’re gonna kick things off in German Whitney, are you ready to kick things off in German? So I will do my best. Okay, I’m just teasing about the Whitney Kotch in the house today from Walker. She’s coming to us live from Houston. Whitney. Good morning. How are you my friend?

Whitney Koch 1:17
Good morning. I’m excellent. So nice to be here with you both.

Curt Anderson 1:21
Oh, man. We are super, super excited. You have to forgive me. I think my speaking German, my Rottweiler. Whitney, first we want to kick things off my first question for you today. And what a great way for us to celebrate manufacturing month by bringing you on live first day of the month. Great way to kick off this exciting wonderful month. Angela says right here

Whitney Koch 1:45
breaking out the German Oh, there’s my husband. My husband came Yeah, David

Virginia Lynn Peterson 1:50
cry.

Curt Anderson 1:52
Hey, we’ve got Joel Joe. How are you? Dude, we’re gonna talk about Joel today. So I let’s get this thing rolling here. So all right. Whitney, my first question for you today. You just shared some what you’ve had. You’ve lived in Wyoming. You’ve lived in Texas. You’ve lived all over the place. Went to school in Pennsylvania. We’re going to dig into that today. As a little girl growing up. Who was your hero? Who was your hero growing up?

Whitney Koch 2:19
When I lived in Wyoming and I definitely looked up to any Oakley. I was really into that. You know living in Cody Wyoming. Home Buffalo Bill Cody. Yeah, me about the Wild West show any Oakley was just such a strong, tough woman also originally from Ohio, which is where my parents are originally from. Yeah, she was pretty cool. And I also really admired Teddy Roosevelt, one of my favorite presidents and just you know what he did for preserving nature? Living out in Wyoming? Those were two big influences on me for sure.

Curt Anderson 2:56
Well, I can ask Damon, we have not had those two folks on our as an answer on that question. So drop the mic on that one right out. John bugling. Oh, that was our first mic drop right there. In Teddy Roosevelt. As a matter of fact, my my little my ratty that was just going crazy. He is named Theodore named after your Roosevelt. So how that way? We come see oh, so how about that one Whitney. So when I want to give a shout out to the husband right now. So we got Joe go. And as I understand as an Army veteran, Joe, God bless you, brother. Thank you for serving our country. That’s a shout out to Joel Whitney. That’s what’s going on with you and the husband with her for a second.

Whitney Koch 3:38
Yeah, we recently celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. Just a week ago. Last Monday. We have our four year old son just work in work in staying busy. Trying to be best parents. We can be the best people we can be. Yeah, getting ready for Halloween. That was our big thing this weekend buying Oh yeah. All the Halloween decorations all the pumpkins?

Curt Anderson 4:06
Well, yeah, Missy says, Hey, awesome. That’s our hobby showed up. We’ve got Rossi. Here, Ross, how are you? My friend loves manufacturing. And I know we got our first bike shop right here and of course Katie is back up here Annie Oakley. Okay, so let’s do Oh, girl. What do you got? Damon?

Virginia Lynn Peterson 4:30
Well, Angeles, Angeles comment about Annie Oakley. I didn’t free to love him, but ain’t afraid. I didn’t realize that was a

Curt Anderson 4:43
man i afraid to shoot him either. John McLean. Oh, that’s that’s mic drop number two, right. Yeah, that is another shout out to Joel Joel. Again. Thank you for your service. So Whitney, I so lived all over and so you had a great time and huge wind up in Houston, you shared a little bit about Wyoming and dad was an engineer, as I understand you kind of brought you all over. And what’s fascinating is you went to college and Pennsylvania went to, we are What does we r stands for by any

Whitney Koch 5:14
chance? Well, that’s why you call out. So when you’re out on campus, and when we yell we are and then you yell by Penn State. So whenever you’re out and about, if you see someone wearing Penn State gear, you can yell out we are and

Curt Anderson 5:26
that’s right. And so you’re you’re a Nittany Lion, which is fascinating, where like you live nowhere near Pennsylvania, you end up at Penn State, grad, top cut one of the top universities in our wonderful country. What brought you to Penn State.

Whitney Koch 5:41
It’s kind of funny, when I was in high school, I was very into learning the German language. And I also was part of our school newspaper was very interested in journalism, and then the graphic design side of it. So when I was looking at colleges, those were the two things that I was really looking for, I wanted to find a school where I could continue learning about both. And that was actually hard to find at the time. I don’t know if that’s still the case or not. But Penn State had a German program, a solid German Program, also the ability to do a Bachelor of Science instead of a Bachelor of Arts. So I was able to take business courses as well, and still get my German major. And they had graphic design. And my dad and I did a college tour spring break my junior year, and we stepped out of the rental car and State College and something just felt right. I knew it was the right place.

Curt Anderson 6:35
And you just felt right at home. And so you’re in a very, you know, very impressive unique major, you are a German grad, you did your master’s degree, you have a German Studies master’s degree, you also did a year abroad, where are you Frankfurt, or Where were you on your?

Whitney Koch 6:50
Well, I studied abroad in Fribourg, which is southwest Germany. And then I had a Fulbright and I did that in Frankfurt, was there for about a year. That was a really cool experience.

Curt Anderson 7:04
Nice. Oh, that’s awesome. So alright, so it begs the question, we’re gonna slide into your superpowers and manufacturing. But as you’re driving your your education and kind of going that route Gurmann, what was the what was the path that you were looking to take going that route?

Whitney Koch 7:19
Education, that’s what I ended up doing. I was a German teacher at a local school district for four years and just realized that it wasn’t my lifelong career. And I wasn’t interested in getting a PhD. I didn’t have a topic that I felt so strongly about that I wanted to research and teach on forever. And so when you’re in education, there aren’t as many paths, right? If you just really enjoy teaching, I didn’t want to be a principal. So I started looking outside of education for some opportunities. And that’s how I ended up at Welker. I started as our technical writer. And it was just kind of a good, a good transition for me lots of transferable skills going from teaching to technical writing.

Curt Anderson 8:09
Awesome. We’ve got some great conversation going here still. So Angela, she’s back on any Oh, Danny as a kid, of course, John McLean. Oh, he’s like, Hey, man. Fan. We’ve got Russ hedge coming back, Ross again, Happy Monday to you and then to Invigor. Now Dan Pena man used to be a Penn State fan, but he’s given a little go blue there. So

Whitney Koch 8:30
my husband from Michigan, so Okay, so

Curt Anderson 8:33
we’ve got Michigan in the house. We’ve got Ohio State, we’ve got Penn State. So let’s come back here. Whitney. So again, you’re pursuing a career in education. You speak fluent German, which is what a great talent and skill to have. Talk to us about like what inspired you I know, you talked about, you know, 2014 I believe you end up bringing your superpowers to Welker. What was that a big leap of faith? Like why, you know, women in manufacturing, right, Damon, we loved women in manufacturing. Why did you bring your skills, your talents, your superpowers to manufacturing? What really appealed to you about Walker?

Whitney Koch 9:08
Yeah, well, we at Walker, really emphasizing the manufacturing side of our company more recently, but we are really known in the oil and gas industry, right. And being in Texas, Texas is just known for oil and gas. That’s how I ended up here. My dad is a retired petroleum engineer, my sister works at in the regulatory side of it, you know, dealing with platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. So it’s just kind of a family family affair. So being in the oil and gas industry, just sort of made sense. A little bit, just be in the Houston area and given my family history. And that really helped me understand our products and what they’re used for in the industry. And then moving over into the The marketing department and then connecting with the USA manufacturing, our group on Twitter has really just, I think helped us really position ourselves better as a manufacturing company, which is really what we are we can manufacture anything.

Curt Anderson 10:16
Perfect. Okay, so we’re gonna go deep there. So let’s talk about when you made that transition where you know what, what made you think about like marketing you go from, like, you know, your four you mentioned like, Hey, I might do my PhD, passionate about teaching and being an educator, how did those skills transition into marketing? Yeah,

Whitney Koch 10:36
well, I just really love writing, reading, writing, technical writing, you know, not the most creative of writing ever write instructions. So that got a little dry. For me. I did work with our marketing department while I was in that role, helping you know, figure out companies style and standardizing some things and so after about five years of doing technical writing and just feeling ready for a change, it just sort of made sense to move over to marketing and help flush out our website content. And then it just sort of evolved from there.

Curt Anderson 11:17
Okay, now we got to have we got Diane is a trifecta mom here. Diane How can we have

Whitney Koch 11:25
the same anniversary to

Curt Anderson 11:29
great company? Yeah, so you need to connect if you’re not friends with Diane boy, you need to connect with Diane buyer. She is absolutely amazing. And of course, Angela says Wow, what an amazing story we’ve gotten Val’s here today and we’re gonna do a deep dive into our to our Twitter chat group. So Whitney, let’s talk about Okay, so you signed into it you bring out this wealth of you know, you’ve you’ve studied global you have a wealth of information, passion, you bring to Welker marketing. Let’s, let’s go there, like when you your first day on the job, or when you first started, no, see, there’s somebody out there like, man, Whitney, you know, um, you’ve really caught my attention. I’d like to take a summer type path, I’d like to get deeper into marketing, any words of advice? Or like, what was that? What was that transition like for you when you first started into marketing?

Whitney Koch 12:18
Yeah, when I first started, I think the most important thing that I did that really helped me was to dive deeper into our industry dive deeper into oil and gas so I can better understand who is buying our products? Why are they buying our products? What purpose do the products serve? Also really relying on our internal subject matter experts. We’re a smaller family owned company, we have so many employees who have been here 20 years, 30 years, 40 years and longer, and they just have such a wealth of knowledge. And, you know, it’s really important to take advantage of that if you know, you work with people who have a longer tenure, make sure that you are listening, right and asking and asking and listening, learning from them from their experiences. And when you have that perspective, it just makes a really big difference.

Curt Anderson 13:19
How have you so again, let’s go back 2014 compared to today, I know you do an amazing job. And again, guys, if you’re out there, drop us a note. If you’re not connected with Whitney boy, you absolutely want to connect with Whitney here on LinkedIn. And she’s doing an amazing job connect with her on Twitter, of course, and we’re going to talk about community building. But talk when, in 2014, when you first started, what were some of the things that you they what were some of the strategies, tactics that you were implementing then in whether first compared to how you’ve evolved as a marketer today?

Whitney Koch 13:49
Okay, so I moved over into the marketing department in 2019. Actually, yeah, so I’ve been with Walker since 2014, does a technical writing for about five and a half years moved over to marketing. So when I first started, we were really focusing on building out our web content, writing more details about our products. You know, being a having been around for a long time, we have kind of a steady customer base, right? So people always come to us for our constant pressure cylinders, or a certain sampler, like that’s what they know us for. And so just making sure that we have enough information about those products for people who don’t know us, yes, right. And then also the people who do know us making sure that they know us, for the other things that we do the other services that we offer as well. So yeah, just making sure that we have that information out there. That was kind of the start and then you know, 2020 kind of threw a wrench in stuff for everybody.

Curt Anderson 14:54
2020 2020 By any chance slightly, just a little bit.

Whitney Koch 15:03
Yeah. So we typically attend a fair number of trade shows and industry schools. And so of course, none of those happened right in 2020. I think maybe we made it to one before everything shut down. And that summer, I just thought, Okay, well, we still got to get ourselves out there. And we had our, our Facebook account, we had our Twitter, but nobody was really owning those channels. And that’s when I said, okay, like, I really like to do this. And you know, it’s 2020 global pandemic, you really need to be doing this right if we’re not able to go out to shows and schools and meet people in person. And yeah, it’s grown. Grown a whole lot since then.

Curt Anderson 15:50
Well, you’ve done an amazing job and we’ve got to you’ve got to hit some of the comments here. So again, so hey, hats off to Katie. Katie, I still need to see some ID from you. Because I don’t believe you have been the Marines. Man. She looks down but she’s got bless your sons. Katie, thank you for their service. We appreciate you. We’ve got Diane giving a shout out to Katie here and of course, like I love this one from Trisha, do you see this? Great grandfather saw any Oakley as a St. Louis World’s Fair. John McLean. Another Dr. Mike moment right there and a Nicole is like, she’s been like on vacation with her husband. She’s supposed to be on a flight today and she’s even checking in on you with Bill. How cool is that, man? So, okay, and eight. We’ve got Julie. We’ve got Julie here today. Hey, Julie. And man, I’d like Man, they’re just coming fast and furious. So if I missed anybody, I apologize. So hey, guys, happy Monday. Again, we’re here with Whitney Kotch super excited to talk about Welker. I have a bunch of questions for you, Whitney. But first, what on earth is a natural gas sampler? For goodness? Oil industry? Yeah,

Virginia Lynn Peterson 17:00
I’m looking at this stuff. I’m like I was at school for engineering. I don’t understand what this stuff is.

Whitney Koch 17:06
Okay, so yeah, that’s pretty neat. So in the oil and gas industry, you’ve got natural gas, you’ve got crude oil. And when you’re talking about crude oil that gets refined into different products, like the gasoline that we put in our cars, diesel, and natural gas is used for generating electricity, heating homes. And so when it gets produced, it needs to be sampled. Because you need to make sure that the quality is where it needs to be right. And so especially in the US, we have such a big network of pipelines, but they’re not all owned and operated by the same company. So whenever you are transferring custody, for example, like that is often a sample point for crude oil and natural gas so they can collect the sample. Depending on the product, it might need to be mixed. And then you’re analyzing it to make sure that it’s on spec, and then that also can determine the price that you’re paying

Curt Anderson 18:06
right. Now, Whitney eight years ago, could you have said that? Yeah, I was like,

Whitney Koch 18:12
No, I never could.

Virginia Lynn Peterson 18:15
Well, and you’re talking about gas and liquids, too. So it’s a completely different kind of animal to try to take a sample. And then does the equipment actually then analyze it to

Whitney Koch 18:27
we don’t have analyzers yet. You’re just collecting the sample from the pipeline, and then a couple of different ways to sample so you can sample directly to an analyzer. So we have samplers that do that. And then you can also sample into a container and then take that container to a laboratory to test it. And then when it comes to natural gas, you know, it also needs to be authorized. So we make authorization equipment to inject that the liquid odorant or also vaporize the natural gas with the odorant. So it gets that rotten egg smell and let you know if there’s a natural gas leak.

Virginia Lynn Peterson 19:06
A lot of people don’t know that that smell is added to it. It’s just,

Curt Anderson 19:11
I’m wondering, you know, back to my dog that authorizer I wonder if you could help out with you know, we’ll talk about that offline when we’ve got Leslie here from the New Jersey MEP, buddy Mike Womack. He’s been a frequent guest here. And we just got all sorts of comments. We’ve got Matt goosey here today, Matt. Go packers. So drop a note. Let us know that you here give a big shout out hello to our dear friend Whitney. What an amazing guests. Now what I’d love to talk about is manufacturer. I heard small family business, a lot of manufacturers. This whole marketing thing online marketing thing maybe hasn’t been a top priority. Can you talk about the culture and how Welker just really collectively decided? It seems like you guys are all in can you talk about like the management Oh, ownership culture, like what had them buy in? And was it pre COVID? Was it COVID? What like, what did that look like?

Whitney Koch 20:07
I definitely think COVID played a big part in that. And we haven’t historically done a lot of print advertising or anything like that. And so, you know, with the pandemic, it’s like, okay, well, we’ve already got account setup we’ve posted on before, but we just have not done that consistently. We’ve never thought about a strategy or really what to do with that, we are also in the process of really trying to launch ourselves as more of a as being known more of a as a manufacturing company, and not an oil and gas company, and also offering some contract manufacturing services. And so being able to do that, through our social media channels, really just made a lot of sense. And then especially as those different channels have evolved, you know, like Instagram, you know, reels have become so much more popular, being able to do video, things like that, it has been great. And I think especially for so many manufacturing companies that are smaller, right, and maybe don’t have the money for fancy equipment or a lot of manpower, you really don’t even need it, you know, with a lot of the tools that are out there, and not everybody even really wants to see a really highly produced video, either. It’s, you know, the day in the life behind the scenes kind of stuff, right? Pretty much always does. Well. That’s what people want to see.

Curt Anderson 21:33
Yeah. And you could do a great job like you have and you’ve been posting frequently I’m going to talk about kind of like the rhythm and pattern that you kind of get for yourself. I know you’re doing like the 10 days, the 10 Gratitude days. Is that what it is? Oh, yeah,

Whitney Koch 21:45
for me personally. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 21:48
Gratitude days. I know like if you go on Whitney’s profile, there’s a nice video of you kind of explaining your role with Walker if you like, Dude, you’re all over the place you do like a Wednesday book review, I believe. Talk a little bit about you know, in just look at this chat box. Like guys, I can’t just go on

Virginia Lynn Peterson 22:05
crazy today.

Curt Anderson 22:05
Keep it on fire, man. And so in any comments, and anybody out there Polly roses here. Yeah. Julie Nicole again. So guys, thank ya. And your this is your like breaking the internet. Whitney, this

Virginia Lynn Peterson 22:20
is I’m sitting here going through your company page. I mean, you guys do a really good job on your company page to have mixing in product information and people information and just good good solid posts. It’s it’s really cool.

Curt Anderson 22:32
Really cool. Yeah. And I think a big thing that I that I take away with your posts is just the off how authentic you are, how genuine you are and how like caring and like Damon’s describing, like I view you guys like, you’re out there as a manufacturer, but you’re an educator. So I feel like Yeah, and I wanted to kind of late, you know, tee that up of like, you know, Penn State, your master’s degree going abroad, and how you’ve brought as an educator, becoming a marketer and how you really married the two and you are just doing such an amazing job of that. Talk a little bit about like, again, so any new marketers out there, or somebody that’s kind of struggling? Can you talk to like as an educator, how has that skill set really transition so well for you as a marketer?

Whitney Koch 23:17
That’s a great question. Um, yeah, I think just keeping it simple is huge, right? Especially teaching, I was teaching high school teaching that kind of complicated subject, right. You don’t want something to be so over their heads, you’re just getting a bunch of blank stares are that they kind of check out move on, right? You want to simplify, make things engaging, visuals are always good, you know, who doesn’t love to like watch a video in school and do some more fun hands on kind of things. That’s why I really like doing kind of behind the scenes videos behind the scenes pictures. It’s just really neat to see that other side right and when teaching a foreign language you know that’s kind of what I always really loved as a student and what my students loved just like learning about the culture right so it’s not just a foreign culture but the culture of your business and just getting to know the people who are there so you have that more personal connection to to that company to the brand to the products

Curt Anderson 24:29
keeping it super simple absolute love that Damon like when we do our training like you know so Whitney our benchmark is like you know, we set the bar at Kurt so like if Kurt can understand it, anybody right so like you know the way you explained your natural gas sampler, man I totally got it understood it so I love how you explain that. Let’s I gotta hit a couple more comments here. Wrote Polly rose, our dear friend Whitney. And John Molinos says Walker social media is is audible Surely our dear friend says great job Whitney. So my god when you’re just getting so much love and attention. Let’s talk about that. You know what, since we’re here, let’s go there personally, okay. What did you have any idea like two years ago, like this raving community that’s just showering you with so much love and attention right now? What has it done for you personally, you’re just crushing it on LinkedIn, the community that you’ve built, we’re going to talk about the Twitter group. Let’s go there right now, talk about how you’ve built just this wonderful community, online, what it’s meant to you?

Whitney Koch 25:27
Well, I posted about the other day, but it really all kind of started with Julie pacella. And then, you know, Julie is amazing. I Instagram was kind of my preferred platform. Personally, it’s just, I don’t know, I like the way that it’s set up. So I like to spend a lot of time on Instagram, you know, engaging with the companies that we follow, just and also just seeing what other people are doing what other companies are doing and kind of snagging ideas using it for inspiration. And I don’t even know how I got started following Redbull International. But I started following them pretty early on after taking over our social media. And I don’t know how many posts I bookmarked for inspiration, and you know, interacting in stories and things like that. And finally, I just DM Tara was like, you know, I’m Whitney. And we like kind of got to know who was actually there behind the account. And not long after that we connected here on LinkedIn. And then she has to be up with Dan bigger. You know, Dan, everyone.

Curt Anderson 26:37
Yeah. And you’re like, as soon as you connect with Dan bigger your entire life.

Virginia Lynn Peterson 26:41
After that, I met Dan, and this is the way it went.

Whitney Koch 26:44
And he explained the USA manufacturing our Twitter chat to me Twitter was not a channel I spent a whole lot of time on I did not understand at all how a Twitter chat would work and really like what the point was. But so I lurked for a week or two and then started participating and it’s just been so much fun. It’s like the highlight of my week getting to learn from like this amazing community learn about so many different things, really any area of manufacturing. So many things you know, I never knew before I learned so much about manufacturing this year. You know, just meeting amazing people through that like getting connected with Jump replay. Now I’ve got my whole list here and my friend Katie McDermott and manufacturing hype girl and she and I kind of teamed up and did some things on Instagram together. Through them getting connected with Inger and Sri Maha appear and doing their video challenges and just getting more comfortable even being on camera myself. That was something this year I really wanted us to do more short form video but couldn’t really get anyone interested in being on camera as well. I guess. I guess I need to be the one who

Curt Anderson 28:03
drew the short straw, right? Yeah.

Whitney Koch 28:07
Yeah. And you know, so they’ve all just been really pivotal in making that happen.

Curt Anderson 28:14
Well, hey, and I gotta come back to a few of the comments here and man we love Katie Can I just mention how amazing of a connection Whitney is? We became fast friends really? Because she is so supportive. She and I love reading and planning and gosh, I love you. Thanks for her and she’s asking here is this your first live by any chance?

Whitney Koch 28:34
My first was like the one and only guests I got to jump on to one of angers lives with some other people a couple of months ago.

Curt Anderson 28:42
Now your season you’re getting a lot of love here. And a lot of love here for Dan. You know Julie is a forest. Forest he is go alright, Woody. Alright, so let’s dig into like Walker any like, let’s talk about some you’re talking about your post this community content educating any stats any like, from like if we were interviewing, maybe the owner of welcome What did like what are some of the positive things that you’re seeing on the business side of building this community?

Whitney Koch 29:13
Yeah, that’s really great. We’ve definitely gotten some feedback from people about emails that we send out. I also do like our email marketing posts that we’ve gotten, we’ve really kind of just been tracking our followers and I was actually looking this morning. And you know, we started our YouTube channel, when was that maybe like a year and a half ago. And we just had 50 new subscribers today, which is really exciting. Just in the last year, so we’ve grown Twitter has been insane. We started with just 42 followers, and now we’re like over 1000 And most of that growth has been this year after joining the USA manufac During our Twitter chat, and then I want to give a shout out to Deb komen to I started joining her social trust Twitter chat. It’s another great community to learn about, you know, building social trust online. Also awesome for marketers. You know, here on LinkedIn, we’re getting close to 2000. And we started with just over 1000. Same thing with Instagram. You know, we had the account, but it wasn’t active. We had no posts, and we’re closing in on 1000. It’s been really cool.

Curt Anderson 30:36
Well, again, kudos to you. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, yeah. And

Virginia Lynn Peterson 30:40
you think about Welker, you think of the industry, and I think Instagram, they don’t really, you know, you don’t see that. But But I want to tell you, that Instagram and industrial and manufacturing and b2b companies, if you’re not trying it, at least getting out there, I think you’re missing out because it’s, it’s, it’s a place you can get you can get a lot of good interactions. Yeah. And

Whitney Koch 31:05
especially, you know, watching videos of machining, it’s just those oddly, yeah, that’s why it’s like the perfect place where you can get in there. And, yeah, it’s so neat. You know, that’s something I never, ever thought about before working here. And, you know, I still really don’t know a whole lot of those machines work, but it’s really cool. Just, you know, thinking about who is making your products, and how are they

Virginia Lynn Peterson 31:33
made? Yeah, that I absolutely love this. So,

Curt Anderson 31:37
let’s go here, if I’m not mistaken. So you know, the walker story is really fascinating. So if I’m not mistaken, Robert Walker is the founder. And he founded the company in his garage man, that is just so inspiring. I think they’re on their third generation infrastructure. So Brian, is Brian leading the ship now?

Whitney Koch 31:58
Yeah. Brian, was Bob Walker son. He is our CEO and Josh Walker. He’s the Bob’s grandson. He is our company president and they’re also other Walker siblings who are part of the team. We have a sister company on our same property. And that’s headed up by Brian’s wife. And it’s led by one of Josh’s siblings by Alice Walker. So yeah, very industrious family. They’ve got a crazy amount of patents between all of them. Yeah, it’s really cool.

Curt Anderson 32:35
And what an absolute great story and again, being new, you know, just through our friendship and just kind of checking it out and I was just captivated with a lot of information. And so again, if I were your ideal buyer, I’m that pert that persona Damon we combos soulmates, you know what, Walker what, what Whitney in the team that wouldn’t with the walker family, what they’re doing, they’re doing an amazing job with love using that line, let’s stop being the best kept secret. They’re attacking social, you know, and who are you speaking to? You’re speaking to that engineer, or maybe somebody in procurement, but now they you’re helping them you’re helping educate, which is you are the educator, and you’re doing an amazing job of helping your soulmate make that buying decision? And I know you just put up if I’m not mistaken, I think I saw a post that you just put out about the know, like, trust that I just see that from you recently.

Whitney Koch 33:23
Oh, yeah. That’s on my my LinkedIn. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 33:26
So that’s, you know, so I feel like you guys aren’t talking to talk you are walking a walk through amazing job. Really setting the bar high. I think I saw a question from Katie here, somewhere in there. So here it is right here. So let’s hit this question real quick. Whitney, what is your favorite color? And what’s your favorite?

Whitney Koch 33:45
My favorite color is pink. Hence, my ensemble for today.

Curt Anderson 33:49
What a coincidence. Same with

Whitney Koch 33:53
my favorite tech tool? It’s a good question. Um, probably Canva

Curt Anderson 34:00
Canva.

Whitney Koch 34:02
Right now, I do have to say, you know, our, the visual imagery of our social media posts really took off. About a year and a half ago, we had an amazing graphic designer, Maya Hiatt, she deserves so much credit for her skills and her beautiful work, she’s moved on to another opportunity, but she did so many great things for us, we’re able to keep that going. And you know, we really wouldn’t be where we are without her either.

Curt Anderson 34:31
Okay, so let’s do this. I want to come back to the Twitter group. And so for anybody out there, I know we have a bunch of folks that are just you know, part of that community and today we weren’t about branding. We’re talking about building online community and anybody out there if you want to drop the hashtag so Whitney, if somebody’s like, Hey, did I hear you see Twitter, our USA like what is so anybody that’s new to this that really needs to know about how amazing and incredible this Twitter group is? On Thursdays at two o’clock Eastern time. I’m one o’clock Central. Could you please share with everybody? What is this Twitter chat group and anybody from the Twitter chat group, drop the hashtag in the chat box, please, I would love you. And thank you more than I already do Whitney talk about this Twitter check.

Whitney Koch 35:14
So it’s the USA manufacturing hour. We’re on Twitter every Thursday at 1pm Central. And the group is organized by Dan Fager, Angelica cielo Ruby received and Kiersten and they just facilitate everything, we’ve got a huge group. And really doesn’t matter what your role is, within manufacturing, you have a topic idea, you come in and lead a chat, they hold your hand walk you through everything, and you show up to the chat each week, you get a question every five minutes or so you get to respond. And there’s a lot of the same kind of community going on, you know, like we have in the chat right here. They’re on Twitter. So you’re getting to, you know, meet up with some friends and then also learn and, you know, share from your perspective, too. We’ve got people from so many different areas of manufacturing, you know, like we are, you know, primarily in oil and gas, but we’ve got people from like packaging, and then you’ve got, you know, virtual assistants really any way that you are connected to manufacturing, and then just bringing in the perspective of your niche. Right. And so you just learn and then a crazy amount.

Virginia Lynn Peterson 36:30
And yeah, that’s Yeah, I think you hit on one of the key things about Whitney is you have such a wide range of people doing so many different things in manufacturing, that a question will be posed, and the answers that you see come from all the different backgrounds and different experience and then globally to so you get such a good amount of interaction and perspective around the topic. That’s the thing. I think that is really understated or, or we need to emphasize is that group, good perspective around these topics? Because I think the people around me, I’ve been on it a couple times, right? Every time I do it, I host it. I go, Wow, there’s so many good perspectives in that. It is well worth your time to spend to get in and and listen to that and get involved in

Whitney Koch 37:21
Yeah, just an hour a week and you can learn so much and make really amazing connections. That’s how I’ve met you know, a lot of people who are here today got connected with people like John Bufalino, Nicole Donnelly, Polly bros, and you know, they’ve made a huge impact, you know, just for me personally, and then also for our company.

Curt Anderson 37:41
Isn’t it absolutely insane of the relationships that you can build out a Twitter, you know, like 100. And you build these relationships, and of course, Katie, here’s the hashtag right there. So again, if you are a manufacturer, if you want to hang out with a really cool kids, right, Katie? In on every Thursday, two o’clock Eastern, one o’clock Central, so Katy does a great job. And I think a lot of these folks have been guessing are so you know, go to either Damon’s website, my website. Yeah, that’s Katie. Julie, Dan, John, all these folks have been guests of ours. Again, big shout out to Ruby, big shout out to Kirsten, everybody from the Thursday group. But when I want to come back, and I, again, I apologize if I’m not keeping up with everything. Matt has a question here. Can you track how much you increase sales that you’ve brought in since starting social media?

Whitney Koch 38:29
Yeah, that’s a really good question. We have not done the best with attribution. That’s something that we are working on. We added it to the RFQ form on our website this year. And, you know, have looked into getting a CRM to you know, a bigger CRM tool to you know, kind of track that and be able to attribute it attributed better.

Curt Anderson 38:55
And I love that and then Diane, thank you, she does a shout out to the MEP. So again, guys, if you as you if you catch us Daymond I love interviewing MEPs that’s a manufacturing extension partnerships. They are absolutely amazing. There is a an MEP near you. There is one in all 50 states are an incredible resource. They have grant funding to help manufacturers. They have all sorts of programs webinars. I’ve got a webinar coming up next week at iMac the Illinois. I’ll keep you guys posted on that. But alright, Whitney, let’s go here. Okay, so we’ve talked about social media. We talked about our Twitter group on Thursdays we’re gonna we’re gonna wind down things because I know you’re super busy. We got to get the walkers just cranking LinkedIn, what has LinkedIn what like, where did you start? How many connections did you have say when COVID started your LinkedIn life look like today?

Whitney Koch 39:47
Yeah, I probably had maybe like 250 connections. wasn’t personally on LinkedIn a whole lot other than just sort of scrolling and looking at things related to Welding gas, you know, trying to get some ideas not really engaged in a whole lot. And that for sure changed after getting connected with the USA manufacturing our group and especially with Polly rose, and also Inger, and really just rethinking, you know, yeah, I work at Walker. But I can also be, you know, kind of a brand ambassador. And so the way I show up here is important. Polly worked with Steve SAMMS. He’s our director of business for authorization and, you know, helped him understand that as well. Like, what a valuable tool that is for thought leadership and just being out there and making connections and realizing, you know, it’s a long term. It’s a long term thing, right, you know, just gonna sign on to LinkedIn and you know, land a big whale, right? Yeah, but you’re gonna be there building relationships, you know, that Kol t factor? You know, so people know, if they’ve got a question, they can come and talk to you. And you know, you’re not necessarily gonna see those results right away. But that doesn’t mean that what you’re doing isn’t important,

Curt Anderson 41:07
right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, KL t. Let’s do a recap know, like, trust John McLean. Oh, that might drop like I lost track a long time ago.

Virginia Lynn Peterson 41:18
Those relationships as John No.

Curt Anderson 41:21
Hunting relationships in Whitney, what’s phenomenal is like, you know, you have a long buying process, you know, long buying cycle, right? What’s fascinating is you never know is that connection, that tweet that blog, post that video, something that they saw today in the b2b world that might not come back, you know, like, it’s, you know, like, Hey, we’ve got Lori here from MVP network. So hey, Happy Monday to you, my friend, we have Bob, your director. He’s been a guest on our program. And I was with Maui and Michael last two weeks ago at the MVP conference. So she does a great job brighten your brain backyard at Penn State there. Whitney, how about that. So Laurie, thank you for joining us today. But as you’re you know, with these relationships, it’s it’s you’re planting seeds. And so like, you know, if we’re in retail, and like I’m trying to sell this pen, well, like we need quick hits, I need to sell a heck of a lot of these pens, make a living, what you’re doing is you’re like you’re planting those seeds. You’re a farmer, you’re nurturing these relationships, putting yourself out there so people see you on that know, like trust as that expert, as the educator. I tell you, my hat’s off to you. You are just what a breath of fresh air you are. Okay, let’s start winding down. And guys again, please connect with Whitney here on LinkedIn. She is absolutely is Katie and Val, everybody out here just showering. Polly rose. Everybody’s just showering Whitney with love. And Dima, we had like a record today. Yeah. I couldn’t keep up. Right. So when you this arrived one of mine down with our dear friend Joel. This wonderful, lovely other half of yours. You know, God bless him if you guys caught us late. When he’s husband, they just celebrated their seventh anniversary and Joel probably served in our in our army. Thank you. You have Henry, your young man in your life. Preschool. And you are doing an amazing job of bringing your educating superpowers to manufacturing. You are an inspirational woman in manufacturing. We love what you’re doing. My question to you is looking forward. We just started the fourth quarter. You believe that? Two years? That was today Nelson. It’s October whatever. Yeah. So who or what is your inspiration? today? We talked about your hero Annie Oakley and being your heroes growing up, who is your inspiration today?

Whitney Koch 43:50
That’s a really good question. I think I would say my son my husband to just my family. Yeah, they’ve been a huge source of personal growth for me and you know, when you’re a parent you just want to be the best parent you can be right

Curt Anderson 44:11
man drop the mic number like 18 right there so I guys so let’s wind down I know everybody’s super busy on this wonderful beautiful man. look out my window. It’s like a gorgeous Monday here. I guys let’s wind down let’s just recap. Whitney Kotch here. Whitney. Let’s give a please if you guys want to stretch your legs. Let’s give us a question for Whitney just being an absolute amazing, wonderful Rockstar. Whitney. You are one of those people you just just make everybody around you better and I’m not just saying that. Look at the chat box guys go back if you miss any of this, please listen to this replay. Catch what he’s got going on go to Walker is so inspiring. This company was pounded in somebody’s garage. And now here you are in the 21st century, just really stepping up your game. Appreciate it. When any last words that you want to share with the crowd today.

Whitney Koch 45:12
Just community find find yourself a community in whatever industry you’re in. Or it doesn’t even have to be your industry right? It could just be a hobby and find yourself a community someplace where you can connect with people and feel inspired and motivated to grow and do better and be better

Curt Anderson 45:38
no words there’s no i guys, so what we’ll do is we’re going to wind down Whitney. Thank you. God bless you. You do volunteering at your church? I

Virginia Lynn Peterson 45:50
tell you man awesome man. How

Curt Anderson 45:53
did they make you so good? We got to talk to your mom and dad. Mom and dad for a wonderful young woman here so guys take this program and just you know be someone’s inspiration go out and just boy if all of us dedicated ourselves to being somebody’s inspiration boy somebody out there could really use it need it be an inspiration to someone just like Whitney as to all of us. wishing everybody here a great manufacturing month. We wish you guys a great week Daymond you’ve got faces a business coming up on Tuesday and Thursday at six o’clock, three o’clock Pacific we are going to have a fun time capturing data. Right What do we got?

Virginia Lynn Peterson 46:35
We got Manufacturing Day we’re gonna do what’s good for us. What’s manufacturing mean to us? It’s time for people to come up and share what manufacturing means to them to us, and we’re gonna have a good time this that’s right

Curt Anderson 46:50
guy. So hey, love to connect with you connect with myself connect with my dear friend Damon Basilica, eggs your way and connect with Whitney. So guys, when you hang out with us one second. We’re gonna go down. You guys go out. Have an amazing, incredible week, everybody. Thank you guys. Thank you