SEO Success for Manufacturers: Grind Lap Teams Up with IMEC and B2Btail

Damon Pistulka 00:01
All right, everyone, it is Friday, and you know what that means. It is time for us on Prop, being the best kept secret, to go live and talk another interesting story about manufacturers. And we’re going to be talking about SEO Success for Manufacturers. We’re going to talk about how grind lap teams up with IMEC and B2Btail for SEO success. I’m Damon Pistulka, one of your co hosts. That gentleman way over the other side, over there is Curt Anderson. He’s going to be taken away from here. Let’s do it. Curt. Alright guys.

Curt Anderson 00:40
Man, Damon, happy Friday. How are you doing? Good week. You doing great. Great. You’re doing good. Alright. So you ready? Are you sitting down? Which really good you did. Alright, you got coffee and you he’s on the West Coast, so it’s a little early for Damon. So alright, let’s go around the horn. So we’re big baseball fans here today, we’re going to go around the horn. How about we start with a handsome guy in the middle. Let’s start with Frank the tank at grindlab. Frank, how are you? Dude? Happy Friday. Happy Friday. You happy Pi Day? That’s right. And hey, it’s zinc Pat Saint Patrick’s Day weekend coming in here, right? Anybody Irish? Anybody, oh my goodness, right? Everyone is Irish. Everyone’s Irish this weekend, right? So, alright, let’s move down to my dear friend. Let’s go to Melanie Robinson. Melanie, where? Where’s Zamboni?

Melanie Robinson 01:24
Zamboni is off plane with his buddies at daycare. Oh,

Curt Anderson 01:28
he’s at daycare today. Alright, so Melanie is so we’re, we’re dog fanatics, so we geek out. We might the dog conversation might come up in this conversation. So Melanie, thank you for joining us. And then we’ve got Andrew K Andrew Kucienski, Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Kucienski 01:42
Dude? Happy Friday. Doing Excellent. Thank

Curt Anderson 01:44
you. All right, so, all right, let’s go here. I’m going to start with I have three opening questions. They are three separate questions, three separate questions. You guys ready?

Frank Ross 01:55
Sure, ready.

Curt Anderson 01:58
I’m going to start with Frank. Frank, Frank, we were talking baseball. Hey, Frank, when you were a little guy, did you grow up in Chicago? Where’d you grow up? South suburbs, south suburbs of Chicago. When you were a little guy, growing up in south suburbs of Chicago, who was your hero? Who was your hero? Who’d you look up to? And now, Melanie Andrew, I’m coming at you guys with two totally different questions, so frank, I know I’m open up with Who was your hero when you’re a little guy growing up South South Side Chicago,

Frank Ross 02:27
there’s my cousin that lived next door, your

Curt Anderson 02:30
cousin. And was he? Was he one of the baseball guys? Yeah,

Frank Ross 02:34
he was a baseball guy. I don’t know how much older he is than me, but he used to his friend would come over and they would play baseball in the front yard, and then they would let me come and we would do running bases, and I was the runner

Curt Anderson 02:45
you, you’re all time runner. I

Frank Ross 02:48
there’s one thing I could do, is run.

Curt Anderson 02:50
Love it. So alright, what was, what’s your cousin’s name, Bob? And why would why did you look up to Bob? Why was Bob your hero?

Frank Ross 02:58
Well, I didn’t have any brothers. I just had sisters, and so they live right next door, and he liked baseball, and he liked the White Sox, so that’s pretty much

Curt Anderson 03:07
with it. It was all over from there. So alright, so he looked up to Bob, so that was your hero growing up. Alright, great role model. So Melanie, what’s

Frank Ross 03:17
that? Frank? He’s in jail today. I don’t know how good of a role model.

Speaker 1 03:22
Yeah. Apple

Curt Anderson 03:30
didn’t fall far from the tree, did it? Andrew tree, so Alright, Mel, I’m going to come at you with a different question. You ready? Down? Are you ready? Melanie, when you were a little girl growing up, who was your hero?

Melanie Robinson 03:45
Totally different. You know, I didn’t really, I don’t recall really having one. I was the tomboy kid who played a lot of different sports, and so I did like the girl thing of figure skating and horseback riding, but I also played softball and hockey and football were my two top, you know, sports to watch as I grew up in a really big, you know, environment for that. So I was kind of all over the place. I didn’t really have a singular hero in that way.

Curt Anderson 04:22
No, okay, how about So Black Hawks, the 85 bears. Any, any heroes there?

Melanie Robinson 04:29
85 bears is pretty much all of them,

Curt Anderson 04:34
team, right? We just, we’ll go. McMahon the bridge, the whole like the whole team, right? Walter

Melanie Robinson 04:39
had a sweet spot for Walter, Payton and Jim McMahon. I like, you know, Peyton’s an obvious, yep, uh, McMahon, I just, I like that. He had attitude,

Curt Anderson 04:51
great heroes. So I love it. So, Andrew, I’m not very original. Who is your hero growing up? Well,

Andrew Kucienski 04:57
Frank, of course. Um, that was. That’s obvious, yeah, yeah, I used to see his picture in the post office on the wall, and I want to always meet that person. Actually, it was Ryan Sandberg. Growing up as a kid, I was educated, so I was a Cubs fan. Grew up, good education, good fundamentals, you know, no criminal history. So, in fact, actually, I used to when I did live on the north side, and it was at a time when you were in the city of Chicago, and you could actually, as a child, go somewhere. I was 1314, I remember going with my sister. She was a year older. I would take the bus to the to the Jefferson Park. L and I would take the train to the Addison bus. We would go to the Cubs game, and if they act, I actually got to meet Bill Murray. We had standing room only tickets, and we’re standing there, and we’re sitting talking to this guy, and he’s telling us jokes and laughing, and my sister says, I know you. I know you. You’re famous. I’ve seen you on TV. And he kept saying, you know, shut up. Kid, shut up kid, you know, hiya hot dog, Will you shut up? And, and he was telling jokes and, and at the beginning of this, or the middle of the seventh inning, they walked up to him and said, Mr. Murray, come with us. And he went up to the to the booth and talked to Harry and sang the seventh, you know, same with him in the seventh inning stretch, and did his heel so but I was a Cubs fan forever. And Ryan Sandberg, he was the bomb. And then I actually had a friend who knew Walter Payton and and when it was the the bears, you know, is Peyton, you know, watching sweetness go. I mean, that was just just the bomb, to see him play, because he was just a genuinely nice, nice and just, you know, to watch him on the field. I mean, it was just holy cow. I mean, I mean, that was just grace in action. So from from a sports perspective, those two, it was great. And then later on in life, I got the bug that Melanie had. I went to Boston College and got the hockey buck, and then just the Black Hawks, just watching anything in the Hawks. I mean, that was just hockey. Is just a fun time. And you, I don’t care. You can watch anyone play hockey and just fall in love. Yeah, really, it was Sandberg and Peyton. Well,

Curt Anderson 07:20
that man, two great answers. Frank, I know I heard a couple digs in there about the north side and education and a few other things. But just facts. Facts. Just a facts. Man,

07:34
right? So

Curt Anderson 07:37
what was, what was Walter Payton’s tagline? Do you guys remember his tagline.

Frank Ross 07:44
Tagline, never

Curt Anderson 07:45
die, never die easy. Remember that one?

07:47
No, no. I

Curt Anderson 07:50
think, yeah, I think I might Google. I think you wrote a book. I think we’re gonna have to confirm that, but it was never die easy. Was sweetness. So, alright, great answers here. So we’re going around. We’ve got cousin Bob, we’ve got the whole, the entire 85 bears, and then we’ve got Ryan Sandberg, and, of course, Walter Payton. So great answer, Frank. We’re here. We’re talking about Grind Lap. And can you do me a favor? I don’t I, you know, I’ll put it out to any one of you three. Grind Lap. Can you please share who is grind lab, and how are you guys making the world a better place? Who wants that one?

Andrew Kucienski 08:24
Take it. Andrew, okay, who is, who is grindlet, you know, I always kind of try and think of, you know, what’s, what’s our elevator pitch, right? And what do we do it? And I’ll share it with you this way. I’ll try and dumb it down, if that makes sense. And I was just talking to my daughter about this last night. I’ve got a 22 year old and a 14 year old, and I always ask my my children’s friends, I go, What are your parents do for a living? Whenever they come over, my kids are always, you know, why do you ask that? And it’s, yeah, I just want to know. I’m curious, you know, you know, maybe later on in life, if I need a favor, or I need something or I want to know, what do they do? And so I always ask my kids, I go, Well, what do you tell your friends? What do I do? You know, what? What is it at work that I do? And it used to be, you know, you know, well, you yell at people that, or something like that. You know, that was in the old days when they’re younger. And I go, but no, what is it that we do at our company? You know? How do you simplify it? And they always say, in the simplest level, will we make round things rounder, and we make flat things flatter, you know. And that’s really in the simplest term of things. And then, you know, but my, my sales gimmick, my little kind of speech thing, because, you know, if you go to someone and you say, Well, you know, we do blanch grinding, we do flat lapping, you know, we do od grinding, we do centerless grinding, we do honing, you know, if you ask anyone on the planet what is honing, they probably, you know, 95% of the population doesn’t know that, and 4% of the population is lying. And then the other 1% knows the honing is right. But you know, and then let’s be honest, you know, yeah. And then, you know, I can do my fancy sales speech and say, we make things so flat. We measure the flatness by the amount of light deflected by a helium atom. I mean, that sounds really kind of cool and impressive, right, you know? I mean, that’s, that’s how I get all the girls at the bars, right? You know. But what we do is, in a simple level, is machine shops make something. They make a part. You know the world goes around because, you know, when you get your car, you don’t think about all the components that go into your car. You don’t think about all the parts. You know, in an airplane, when you get an airplane, you want it to take off, you want it to land. You don’t even pay attention to that, right? You’re more worried about getting to Disney, or getting to your conference or whatever. You don’t think about all the components. But a machine shop, they make a part. I brought some with me. I’ve got this little guy right here, right? What does it do? No one knows. A machine shop is really happy. They can take apart and they can, they can design it, and they can machine it, and they can hold a tolerance to five thousandths of an inch, right? They can make this so that’s, you know, 1.35 inches plus or minus, you know, two one thousandths of an inch, and they’re happy. Well, this part needs to fit inside of something else, right? Well, that’s not good enough. They need to hold that tolerance to within 51 millionths of an inch. Well, that’s when you come to me, they need to keep something flat. They need to take two pieces of metal. And they need to hold them together. And they need to have no gap between them. They need to hold them flat. So where there is they’re flat to within. You know, one helium light band to within. You know, you measure the high and the low spot, and they vary by no more than 127, the thickness of a human hair, right? That’s when you come to us. So it’s we really take what a simple machine shop does, and we make it finer. You guys, I see that. I see the gray hair, and I assume there’s gray hair somewhere there. At some point your hair. Do you remember BASF, right? It was that one the commercial I say, we don’t make it we make it better, right? That was our tagline. That’s at grindlab. What we do, we make it better. We hold that tighter tolerance. We make it you know? We go that Expo step. That’s what we do. We improve upon what a customer, what a customer makes. I don’t make anything in my in my shop. I take what you give me and I make it better. That’s my 15 second elevator speech in two and a half minutes.

Curt Anderson 12:33
15 second speech in two and a half minutes. Dude, that was absolutely perfect. Man. I love the analogy. Yes, and for us older folks, we totally get the reference for the commercials. That was a great one. Frank, anything that you want us piggyback. I want Andrew shared. What are your thoughts? How would you describe if somebody said like, hey, how does grind that make the world a better place? How would you respond?

Frank Ross 12:54
Well, what I learned in manufacturing is a ski, right? Everybody needs their their part done faster and in the precision grinding the table off what Andrew said, all the other people upstream do their thing, and more than likely, they’re going to miss a date, just because of the nature of the beast, and because grinding is so far down the supply chain. So by the time it gets to us a grind lab, everyone needs it fast. They need a quick turnaround. They need it literally. If they could hand it to us, wait, and then we hand it back to them, and they go on to their next step,

Andrew Kucienski 13:28
and it’s still waiting

Frank Ross 13:30
the next step. So what we focus on is speed, and I learned that early on in my Motorola days, it’s just book to ship, cycle time, turnaround time, etcetera, etcetera. So I think that’s what we do by having all the services, the Blanchard, the honing, the OD, the ID, etc, that Andrew mentioned under one in one building at Grand Lap, you just give it. You give the part the grand lap. We do what you need done to it and give it back to you in a short time frame. It doesn’t have to get shipped to granite, get shifted somewhere else, gets you somewhere else, then go back. So I think that’s what we do to make it we kind of get you back caught up again on the tail end of your supply chain.

Curt Anderson 14:12
So Frank, are you calling yourself a perfectionist?

Frank Ross 14:16
Not as much as I used to be. I’ve learned. I’ve learned enough at City Hall.

Curt Anderson 14:23
Well, I think you’re pretty darn close now, what would you contribute? What would you add? What are your thoughts as far as, like, how does grind that make the world a better place?

Melanie Robinson 14:30
I think, as somebody who’s new to being in manufacturing, I’ve been more on the services side of the supply chain. I’ve really, I think that a big differentiator is the consultative approach. If they these guys to get a quote for something, and they’re looking at what it is and what it’s got to fit into, and what other information they’ve received, they’re like, Well, wait a minute, but what about that piece? Can we help you with that piece? Us, because we do more than one service, right? And so, you know, and even if we don’t do something, Andrew was just telling me a story this morning about how, you know, we have a customer that they do this one piece of it, they want to send us the material, have us do stuff, send it back to them, and then have them send it back to us or something, and they’re nowhere near us geographically, but we know somebody here who’s down the street, and so now we’re saving speak to the speed, right and but also the quality of the product we save them time and money with. You know this, more consultative solution like this is not just performing a service, but it’s a solution to your to your problem. And I think that’s, you know, something really special about, you know, what we’re able to do here, you

Andrew Kucienski 15:51
know, Curt, if I, if I could piggyback off of that real quick. I was, I was reading last night an article, and it wasn’t really an article, it was like a Reddit kind of thing in manufacturing, and someone posted and said, Do engineers learn more on the job or in school? And one of the things that I found here and Frank doesn’t like, occasionally, what he doesn’t like, what if you use the term job shop, right? Because we’re more than a job shop. But part of doing all this contract manufacturing, and with the number of customers that we have in the variety of parts, with what we see and the experiences we bring in, is I can look at a drawing and I can see something coming in, and when I say, I should really say, we at grind that, right? The company be it right that we’ll look at something come in, and we’ll look at the way something is designed, and the piggyback off of what Melanie was saying is, and it’s they’re looking at one specific aspect of it, and they come to us and go, can you do this? And we’ll look at it and say, yeah, we can do this. But while we’re looking at your part, you’ve got these other six things going on, I kind of think you’re doing it a little inefficiently. Have you ever thought about doing this? Have you ever thought about doing that? Or, you know, in the middle of this operation, you know, maybe we should do this first, or that first. I had a customer come to me the other day and they want me to remove anodizing. Anodizing is a for lack of a better description, you’re, you’re adding, like a pleating, or you’re, you know, you’re coding a surface with something, right? And they want me to remove this anodizing. And they say, what’s a real simple process? We just, you know, we just want you to lap off this, you know, this anodizing. We’re only putting a thin amount on, can you can you remove it? You know, it should be fast. Well, the surface that they want us to put the anodizing on is curved, and they didn’t realize it, because it’s just the natural their machining process is curved. So we only need to remove this much material, but the surface is curved. Well, for me to remove that much material, I’m going to have to remove the entire curve. It’s a lengthy process. So I said to him, I go, Well, how about you send me the part first? I’ll lap it completely flat. Well, pretty flat, you know, one or two helium, white pants. Now, when you anodize the whole thing and send it back to me, it’s a lot cheaper, it’s a lot faster. I’m probably going to save them. Oh heck, they want to send me these parts once a month. I think I’m going to save them about $1,000 a month by sending me the part twice. So how about I do that for you? Their engineer designed it, came up with the whole process. But because we’ve seen it, and we know anodizing, we do that consultative approach. And I could have just sat back and said, You know what? Send it to me. I’ll charge you the money, you know? But that’s what we do. And because we’ve got the experience of working with all these things, we go to them and say, look, I think I’ve got a better way for you to do it. And I think that’s what Melanie is referring to. Not just order takers, yeah, we just, we share our experience. We want to make it, you know. And we ask a lot of times, when the drawing comes in, well, what are you doing with this What are you doing with this part? What’s your goal? Because then we can look for that and say, Well, based on our experience, here might be a better way to do it.

Frank Ross 19:08
Yeah, a lot of times, if I can jump on the A lot of times, they’ll ask for a really tight tolerance somewhere, and that really tight tolerance will force us to go to a lapping operation, right? And we’ll take a look at it and ask the question, Where does this ultimately use? What’s the next step in this? And they’ll tell us, and we’ll say, Well, if you can soften that tolerance x whatever that is, we could blanch or grind it instead of lapping it, and we could do it a heck of a lot cheaper. And they’ll go back and take a look and go, you know, you’re right. We don’t really need to hold that side of the tolerance there. And if you could save us that money, that’s great. So they’ll kind of redesign that aspect of their part before they give it to grind lab to go ahead and do that’s it. I got

Andrew Kucienski 19:51
one more quick story on this, and I know this. I’m still in my 15 second elevator speech, right? We had a part we were working. It was a bronze bushing that the customer sent to us that we had to, we had to grind the OD and we had to have this micro finish. It had to be this eight, this eight micro finish, unbelievably smooth, shiny. Had to polish this thing for this bronze bushing. It was going on to part of a landing gear for an airplane, right? And we were struggling getting into an eight micro. We were struggling getting to an eight micro. We were talking to the engineer and going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Well, the rep that we were working with at this that this bronze company doing it, went out to don’t think it was Boeing, it was a different airline manufacturer. And they went out and they talked to them, and they were talking to them as the guy, as the actual mechanic, was going to put it on the plane, he’s going to put it on the plane, and he goes out there with a friggin hammer, and he puts it up there, and he’s just banging the thing and beating it out of the plane. Do we really need this eight micro finish? Do we really need the smooth part when the guy’s beating it on with a hammer? No. So a lot of times you take that now we have that as experience for the next time, and that’s the stuff that we build on, and that’s why we ask questions all the time, and that’s the experience that we use to develop, right? And that’s when, when Melanie says, the consultative approach, we always ask questions, and that’s why we give you a four hour answer for a 15 second question. Little

Frank Ross 21:26
Andrew, you gotta stand up. It’s a little tagline underneath the logo,

Andrew Kucienski 21:33
the right lap difference, right? That’s what it is, right?

Damon Pistulka 21:38
Well, and you mentioned it. Someone mentioned before, you know, is the engineer really understand or learn anything in college, or is it on the job? And I don’t think they, you know, college, yeah, teaches you math, but that’s about all engineering school does. But when you get

Andrew Kucienski 21:52
out, draw the thing in CAD but not why you need to drop but

Damon Pistulka 21:56
you make a great point, because it could be that engineer is designing that landing gear assembly. And they went out and just searched Google to go, Okay, what’s the normal tolerance for something in this kind of situation? They got no idea what that looks like. They didn’t pick up pieces of metal and go, Okay, what’s it look like on these different finishes they had. There’s nothing in there, because they’re in that electronic world of designing anymore and and probably are not even being, never even seen it go together. And University

Andrew Kucienski 22:26
of Illinois, their racing team, reaches out to us every year, and we work with them. We do some work for them. And last year they came out to us and they said, you know, we’re designing some brake rotors, and can you grind the brake rotors for us? And he comes back to me with this design and and I say, Well, how flat Do you want them? How parallel do you need them? And he goes, I don’t know. And I say, Well, we’ve got a customer, and they’ll probably love the plug right now, like I should have told him, to watch this strange engineering. Strange engineering sends me brake rotors all the time to grind, and there’s tolerances. And I, I said to him, I go, Hey, I got a buddy over at strange engineering. You want to do some brake rotor work? Why don’t you give him a call? He comes back to me. He’s got the perfect specs. And here’s u of i Now, and because he’s an engineering student, yeah, he doesn’t know what specs to hold, but now he’s got practical experience. And those are the things that we do to put, you know, to put this in play. And right next is your real world experience versus textbook. Yeah, right.

Curt Anderson 23:29
I love it. Hey, demon. We got a couple comments here. Diane’s Diane

Damon Pistulka 23:33
started today. She says, Happy Friday and Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. That’s awesome. And she was referring back to Frank talking about the running the bases, that’s great as well. And then Melanie again about participating in team sports teaches us that, while there are many good heroes and mentors, teamwork makes the dream work. Absolutely awesome. Diane, and then she also said one other important thing that you guys were discussing, turnaround time is so important, because people are the farther you get down the process, the more light you deal with. And I I remember talking with a shipping guy in a manufacturing facility one time because he was complaining about overtime. I said, Well, if you’re at the end of the process, you get everybody else’s poop that gets there, and you get to deal with all that. So that’s the way that works, yep. But then we’ve got Vishal. Terry said, Hi everyone, Vishal, here from India, and that’s the way we go. Thanks so much everyone for dropping your comments today.

Curt Anderson 24:35
Alright, so let’s, let’s dive into manufacturing. So Frank, let’s, let’s go back to your career. You mentioned morgue roll up. What brought your talents, your skills, your superpowers, into manufacturing. Why did you choose manufacturing for your career?

Frank Ross 24:49
Yes, I didn’t. I didn’t choose manufacturing. I chose to be an industrial engineer because I hate waste. I like things efficient. I like to see things run smoothly. Um. Um, and the part of that industrial engineering, naturally just went to manufacturing. So I kind of manufacturing was the outlet for that passion. And Motorola was great because back then it was produced inventory reduced, book to ship, cycle time improved, turnaround time. Quality was a table stake. There was a lot of manufacturing that took place where I was in Schaumburg. I mean, a lot of manufacturing. So there was always some issue with the part, and you had to get the line back up and running again. And so that just ingrained on me. You know, we had to make the month at Motorola, then you had to make the quarter, then you had to make the half, then you had to make a year. It was very hockey stick every month. And so you learned real quick that by the problem, you gotta identify the short term fix to keep the customer going again. And the customer could be the assembly lady in the front end, as opposed to, you know, a customer, customer. So you gotta come up with that short term fix, then you gotta come up with the long term fix to make sure that problem never happens again. And that was just like poetry in motion to me, because it made just perfect sense, and it aligns so much. And then as I gained more experience there, I learned how to look at, how does material flow, how does information flow? Take it back from the shop floor to the design engineer. What Damon was saying earlier. You know, they designed a vacuum. We on the shop floor, we have to make all those pieces come together, designed for manufacturability, right? So I got smarter and smarter at that, and all the interrelationships in the entire ecosystem of it. And then as I continued to go on through life, you know, I saved so many, $30 million a year following those same principles I use at Motorola that were just literally pounded into your head because every day was faster cycle time. Gotta get it done, problem. Get the line back up, running again, get the parts inspected. I need 10 parts to get me through today. Send the respect to the vendor. That’s all it was. And that just played right into my passion. Well,

Curt Anderson 26:57
absolutely love that man and understand the customer’s customer that that’s that. I absolutely love that line now, now you and you and Frank just started working together, like a few weeks ago, a couple months ago, or how been working

Frank Ross 27:10
together? I can’t remember. We met this morning.

Curt Anderson 27:12
You met this morning. I said, coffee this morning, right? How long have you been hanging out with Frank to take

Melanie Robinson 27:17
we met in thought like 97 I think we grade school. Is that right? Yeah, isn’t that crazy? Um, we, we both were hired, not too far apart from each other, at an x ray manufacturer, a company that did real time X ray. And so I was marketing trade shows, events, things like that, and he was in charge of manufacturing,

Frank Ross 27:47
and I’ll tell you a cool story about that. Melanie used to do the trade show. RSA was the big show every November, I think, radiology show, right? Yeah, yeah, it was the big show. And we had a booth there, and Melanie was designed to boot. And she used to tell me how she would double the padding of the carpet in the booth, because you’re on your legs all day long, so the booth would be more comfortable. So I would go to the show, and I’d go to all these booths, you know, and then I would go to our booth, and sure enough, you could immediately feel so when I built my house and I needed carpet, I said, I want to double the pad. I’ve done that in two houses. I double the pad, and my kids go, oh, I appreciate Melanie for this carpet. The house I’m in now. Nine years ago, I carpeted it, I doubled the paddock, and to this day, my kids go, Yeah, this. I don’t like this about the house, but I love this carpet.

Curt Anderson 28:49
Okay, so everybody listening, if you’re doing a trade show, you’ve got it. So where

Melanie Robinson 28:54
did you come up with that one? Well, here’s the deal. It’s not it’s not cheap. Okay, so I would not do that for a normal trade show. You can get by this particular show, huge. It was five days long of like, eight to 6pm and that is a killer on your feet. It really is, because there’s no padding anywhere else in the place, right? So, yeah, if it’s a two day show, I’m not going to spend that kind of money. And this was a large booth. I mean, it was 400 square feet, was the smaller version, but, yeah, you just, you had to, I mean, it was just, you know, it was a really large show. And, yeah, but, you know, I would not recommend that from an expense perspective, to do for every trade show. But when you have those kind of hours, yeah, you’ve got, do

Andrew Kucienski 29:50
you? Do you think, though that people, the visitors, might have actually spent a little more time there because it was comfortable on their

Frank Ross 29:56
feet night and day? Difference you.

Curt Anderson 30:00
Right? Like their booth is, like, completely packed with everybody just standing

30:04
there. Just like to have

Andrew Kucienski 30:07
a reason they like that booth better, and don’t know why,

Melanie Robinson 30:10
right? And our sales reps, notoriously, in most companies, sales and marketing don’t get along. They’re always button hacks, right? Um, oh, no, they love me.

30:22
Yeah. Absolutely

Andrew Kucienski 30:24
genius.

Curt Anderson 30:26
Of genius. I don’t know

Frank Ross 30:27
Melanie, when we were working at that company, I actually got an idea to do a startup. Mm, hmm. And Mel, I went to Melanie. She was sharing an office with an HR lady. And I went to Melanie, I said, Hey, can you help me make a trip brochure and design some business cards I want to take the Consumer Electronic Show try to get this business off the ground. And she helped me. She found out the printer, shoes local, hooked us up, got all these things made. They were beautiful. We took them to show us great. And when I left the office, her and the other lady’s name was and I said, when I get this going, I’m going to hire you guys. And when I left the office, the two of them just left, you know? Well, I hired when we started up, we worked. I heard them both. Years

Melanie Robinson 31:08
later, we were both working for him, yeah,

Curt Anderson 31:11
my goodness, so I so you can’t get enough of working with Frank. Is that? What’s going on here?

Melanie Robinson 31:16
Mom, Yeah, cuz, then we, then we split up for a while now we’re back together,

Curt Anderson 31:21
back together at grindlab and just all sorts of fun things. I know a lot of logistics. So alright, Andrew, let’s come to you. You, I feel you have a fascinating story. Did you go into manufacturing? Or did manufacturing find you? How did, how did that go? Well,

Andrew Kucienski 31:35
actually, my background is information technology. It’s educational administration. In the late 90s, I owned an IT company, and I readily admit I ripped everyone off, and with y 2k told everyone it was a it was a waste, but made a lot of money doing that in the early 2000s I went and took over a technology school for a college that was underperforming, wound up starting an online college, and was a college president for a while, then wound up leaving there and running a competitive intelligence firm for a short amount of time. And then when the world ended in what was a 2007 2008 when everything decided to go to hell in a hand basket. I lost my job, and happened to have a neighbor who said to me, you know, I run this little manufacturing place, and we bought a new ERP, and I need someone help and helping to set it up. Do you know anyone with any IT experience? And I said, Sure, I do. And I told my wife. I said, Well, you know, I got nothing going on right now. Let me help him out, and I’ll be there for a month or two, and then I’ll figure something out. And I believe that was, I don’t know, 1516, years ago, and here I am. And every day I am surprised that I am a, still here and B, I’m surprised at the things that we can do. I had no idea of, you know, I’ve oversimplified everything in the manufacturing world. Yeah, things are made and what’s done, and I am just constantly surprised at what can happen in the manufacturing world. So that’s, that’s how I got here,

Curt Anderson 33:23
well, and I have to, you know, like, when we kind of like that old cliche of, like, the dirty manufacturing all that stuff, I tell you, Andrew, like, as much, dude, you like one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever met. But in all seriousness, you have a natural ability and a gift of, like, like, I under like, I don’t know a thing about grinding, but like, you bring it down to, like, my level, but I understand it. You’re phenomenal with educating your customers. You’re, like, obsessed with customer success. And like you said, like, we’re not just grinding and providing that service, you’re providing that consultation. And so when people come to you like, you’re, you know, they’re they’re getting your best self. And now, Frank, you guys have multiple brands. How did you want to mention that at all that you guys have kind of multiple moving parts, sir, yeah,

Frank Ross 34:05
I mean all the different services, I assume you’re from, to the Blanchard the laughing Yeah, that’s, that’s part of the advantage, right? That’s part of our strength with speed. You know? If you need to get something and you go to a Blanchard house, and then it has to get a nice, tight finish, like Andrew was talking about, they’d have to send it to a laughing house. Well, if you need it fast, just the shipping alone is going to destroy your your cycle time, your turnaround time, your book, your ship cycle time, whatever buzzword you use. So the fact that we have all those services, you know, at one company, it takes away the finger pointing, and also it gives good collaboration, because we could say, well, we’re going to blanch or grind that first to get all the material off. They’ll save you a lot of money. Then we’ll send it over to lap and get you that really flat finish. And then we could take it to OD and owning or whatever else we need, grinding to get it to the part the way you need it so it never really leaves the building. You give it to us, and then we give it back to you finished. And Andrew always tells people. So if your part is leaving your building, call us, because we’ve been doing this for such a long time. Call ground up. We know everybody. We can get whatever. You know heat traders. We know those players. We know those we can get whatever you need, and it’s one purchase order, it’s one stop shopping. There’s no finger pointing. We’ll collaborate, and we’ll manage that process for you.

Andrew Kucienski 35:24
And we, we started as a lapping company. I mean, it was, you know, when it was started by John galicio, I mean, he sold lapping equipment, and it was, you know, he said they used to sell lapping equipment, and it was, you know, we’ll set up the machines. We’ll, we’ll set up the machines in house, show you that we can let map lap and mass produce your product. And then, you know, when we do that, we’ll sell you the machine at your business. And a lot of the customers said, well, we don’t have enough for a full time work of a machine. Can we run that stuff and out, you know, can you run the parts in house? And so the this lapping company that was selling machines. They started doing a little bit of that in house and but they didn’t want to do that. So he says, Well, I’m going to start my own company, and I’m going to do that. So he started that with lapping. And what would happen is, is he did that with lapping, as Frank alluded to, is, you know, lapping is a great process. It’s like a finished Carpenter, right? But you need a rough Carpenter, right? You know, I need to take down a heck of a heck a lot of material quickly, right, so that I can, I can do the finish. So as John was doing they says, Well, you know what, I really gotta buy a blazer grinder, because I gotta, you know, I gotta do that. I gotta build up on and so he would start to do that. And we’ve kind of carried that through to today, you know, where we say, Okay, well, you know, we see this is the next step in the process, as far as what we’re doing or what we even do now, occur with our with our approaches, you know? And I told Frank this, I think, what did I say I wanted for Christmas, like three years ago, I said, we gotta buy some centerless grinders, because I noticed a lot of our customers want us to send something out for centerless grinding. So I said, You know what? For Christmas, Frank, I said, I need six center list grinders. You know, we gotta add centerless grinding to our bag of tricks. And so we see as the market grows and as customers start asking for more things, or as I start seeing more drawings come in and we’re quoting customers and saying, Well, wow, a lot of these drawings are also calling for this service. We should really bring that in house. So we start to do that, and we start to add those services because it just makes more sense. It just, you know, keep it all here. And even, as Frank said, with the with the finger pointing, I see this all the time, stuff comes into us. And you know, if you need to hold something at a right angle to a flat surface, if that flat surface is wrong, I can’t, I can’t hold that that route, perfect example. I got a part right here, right if I need to hold this and this at a right angle, and you don’t make this right for me, this correct for me, I can’t hold it there. So you know what? Send it to me. Let me do this and this. Because if this is wrong and I can’t do this, now I’m going back to my customer, and I’m saying, Well, this was made wrong. And then they’re going back to them and sending it back to them, and then they’re arguing and saying, No, we did it right. Let’s have someone else just give it to me and let me do it, because if I screw it up, I can’t call anyone. I gotta fix it, and then I gotta fix this. And I don’t call my customer, I don’t say anything. I find a way I fix it and I get it done, and the customer gets a good part. So we just add that service now. Now I figure a way to do it. I add it. I add that to my bag of tricks, and we just go from there. So those are the services we just slowly but surely add them, which is why, as Frank said, you know, we always say, hey, if it’s leaving your building, call us, because we slowly but surely, over time, add services. And in fact, you haven’t asked this, and if you ever do, you know what’s our biggest problem? What’s our biggest headache? It’s getting our customers to understand what we do. I have customers to this day who will call me and say hey, because it’s leaving their building. Hey, Andrew, do you know anyone who does centerless grinding me? Oh, you do, and

Frank Ross 39:11
maybe it’s on quotes. I mean, we’ve spent years, yeah, that is the biggest challenge, right? We have all these services,

Curt Anderson 39:20
right? Well, speaking of that, I’m going to segue, man, we could be here all day. I’m going to pull up your website. You guys cool with that? I’m going to put up your website, and because I’ll tell you something for manufacturers, this is a phenomenal website, and let’s take a look at it. There

Andrew Kucienski 39:35
was a company that’s been helping us with our website and our SEO. I can’t remember the name of that company. You might know the name of that company, Curt,

Curt Anderson 39:45
or something I got, I gotta ask my mom. I think my I guess my mom, company

Andrew Kucienski 39:50
detail. I believe we found them through iMac, right? Hey, and you know

Curt Anderson 39:54
what we’re going to give? We’re going to give a big shout out to IMEC. So let’s who wants to give a little. Grand tour of the website, because I’ll tell you, you guys have done a phenomenal job. And as you mentioned, Andrew, lot of folks were like, Hey, we don’t know what you do, but you guys are fierce educators on trying to help your clients. We’re going to poke around here, but just when somebody lands on your website, just walk us through. What do they see? What’s going on here? Sure. I

Andrew Kucienski 40:18
mean, well, we do talk about initially when they go to our website, we give an initial, you know, kind of information. Here’s what we do with the lapping, the honing. Just

Frank Ross 40:26
interrupt you. What you got right there on the screen. Go up a little bit, little bit. I want to see the red. There you go for the perfect finish on every part, your single source for comprehensive services.

Andrew Kucienski 40:38
That’s what we’re trying to hit, one stop shop. Drop the

Curt Anderson 40:42
mic right there, right yeah. So, so let’s go there. Andrew, for safe, for like, we don’t have to do a super deep dive, but you’re talking honing, lapping, center grinding, all sorts of different grinding, yes,

Andrew Kucienski 40:53
with od ID, yeah.

Frank Ross 40:55
Even within lapping, you have single side and double sided

Curt Anderson 40:59
and so, for like, our So, machine shop, CNC shops, like, are, like, are they, do they know that language? Or, like, that’s where you’re coming in, as a consultant, kind of educating them. Well,

Andrew Kucienski 41:09
you know what? It’s interesting. A lot of people know the language. A lot of people don’t. There’s, there’s different terminology. It’s kind of like, you know when you talk about Kleenex, right? You know, Kleenex versus tissue paper, you know, some people will call it Madison grinding. Some people will call it Blanchard grinding. Some people will call it, you know, surface grinding. There’s a there’s that’s one of the things in this industry that kind of bugs me is there’s not a lot of standardization of things, you know. And to oversimplify it, you know, I always call it round and flat, you know what? If you need it round, we’ll help you. If you need a flat, well, you know, we’ll work. We’ll work through all those different ways. And that’s also why I say too, if it’s leaving your building calm, you know what I mean? Let me figure it out. And Curt. Part of it too is it depends on who you’re dealing with. If you’re dealing with, you know, a manufacturing engineer, it’s one conversation. If you’re dealing with a purchasing agent, a lot of times, we’ll get a quote sent to us, and they’ll say, can you process per print? And they have no idea. You can call them and ask them a question, and they can’t tell you if the print is upside down or right side up or inside out, or if it’s a mirror image, right? You know, they can’t tell you if it’s a metric or imperial. And then, and then you’ll, you’ll get the engineer who can give you every answer to every question, or even sometimes the engineers can’t answer. So it really depends on who you’re speaking with, as far as what they can give you back. And a lot of times, once again, that’s a consultative approach. They’ll send us a drawing, and we’ll call them back and tell them what they need. And sometimes we call them back and say, here’s how much stock, here’s how much extra material you need to leave on the part for me in order for me to do the work. So we’re educating them all the time as far as what needs to be done, right? So here on the pages, as far as where you go, if you can scroll back a little bit too, is the process that grind, where you had the black box. What we do is the typically where grind lab fits into play is usually we’re toward the beginning or toward the end of the process, we either prep material because in order, for example, for it to fit in the machine, everyone loves consistency. And when you get something from like a mill, the you know, the plates are not flat enough to get it put down, or the bars are the wrong thickness, something like that. So we’ll prep materials for everyone so it can fit through their machines. Excuse me, or at the end of the process, it’s already been machined, but they can’t hold the tolerance, or it’s been to a heat treater, and when things are he heated, they’ll get bent, or the size will change. And so we’re doing that final process for them. So that’s why we’ve got here the pre machining, the post machining. We try and give, like, an overall picture of, here’s what we do pre machining, here’s what we do post machining. And then if you scroll up, of course, you know, for the people of the different educational levels, as far as what we do is, I show pictures, you know, here’s what we do. If does your part look like this? It’s round. It’s flat. Here’s kind of how we do it. You can click and each one goes each image you click on it, and it goes to a detailed page of with a description of, here’s what we do. Here’s how we do it.

Curt Anderson 44:34
Yeah, this is absolutely fantastic. No anything, what? Anything that you want to add to this. Mel,

Melanie Robinson 44:41
as far as the site goes, I mean, I’ve, you know, it was it started before me, and I think it’s fantastic if I could add just one thing that I’ve been thinking about as we’ve been talking through our approach and the consultative piece and all that, one thing that I find unique about this business, again, being newer. To it is how your competition is also your customers. And a lot of cases, which is just so strange to me, and I think it’s been really impressive to hear stories about how, you know, competitors are also partners, not even necessarily just a customer. You know when, when we talk about taking on more services and doing more, it’s not just for the sake of taking on more. We’re not going to take on something if we’re not going to be experts at it, if it doesn’t make sense to we know people who do can do things, and we work with those people on behalf of our clients too, and that’s all part of that approach.

Curt Anderson 45:42
One thing that I want to bring up, so, you know, sometimes, are you better off taking the vitamin? Are you better off taking the aspirin? Right? Like, are you better like, being proactive compared to being reactive? Andrew Frank, or whoever wants to grab this, like, you know, when I’m looking at these pre services or post services, do I Are there ways for customers out there to be like, you know? How can I be more proactive? Or are they always typically reactive?

Andrew Kucienski 46:13
I would love it if our customers were proactive. Most often they’re reactive, typically, in our world, we live at a lot of the work that we do is post machining, and we’re at the end of the food chain, and everyone tends to run long and run late. So the material was delivered late. Someone called in sick, so it was machined late. The heat treaters running behind schedule. Something got delayed in shipping. Not that this would ever happen, but the salesman promised that it would be done in a week, even though it’s, you know, 17 days of machining time to begin with. Yeah, yeah. So Grind Lap is always, you know. Hey, I know I got you the part on April 1, but it was due January 3. Can you make up the time? So we’re always reactionary, and we’re always trying to make up that time. How do you do it? That’s kind of the world that we live in, yeah. So so that that’s, you know, that’s what we do.

Curt Anderson 47:21
It’s shocking. You have that great head of hair, and I don’t think you have a gray hair on you so far as as stressful as your business can be, man, you’re doing. You’ve got your genes.

Andrew Kucienski 47:29
I’m married. I’m married. I’m used to getting yelled at. And I say, yes, you’re all the time. You got a good point.

Frank Ross 47:35
Our motto, our motto is Semper. Gumby, always flexible, right? Because, yeah, it’s contract manufacturing. Yeah, you have to be after me. It’s all about speed. Nobody wants to hear the labor pains. They just want to see

Andrew Kucienski 47:48
the baby, yeah? And, you know, and we live in this world, and because we have so many customers, and you can bounce back and forth, and I just get a customer today, they’re sending me 48 parts. And the question is, you know, we need them. And you call back and you say, Okay, how many do you need right away? Well, we need four this week. Mind you, it’s Friday at 1220 and I had the conversation at eight in the morning. We need four this week. But the other, you know, the others we need, we can push off for another three weeks. Okay? We can figure something out, right? You know. And so, you know, you kind of horse pray, then you work with them, and you figure it out. And everyone’s living in the same world, yes, yeah, you know. And you just have to my first, my first real job, Boss, this guy named Mike Ludwig, and he taught me, he said, you know, solving the customer’s problem is different from doing what they ask you to do, you know, and you have to identify what’s their real issue, what what needs to be solved, right? Because when they, when you first walk in the door, they’re saying, I need this. Well, let’s find out what your real problem is, and how do we solve that? You know, and that’s, and that’s what we’re doing, and that’s, that’s going back to Melanie’s consultative right? It’s not even necessarily fixing their part, right? It’s, it’s solving the issue with their customer, you know, how do we help them? How do we get that going? And that’s what we do, you know? I mean, you know, we’re a service business, and service is not just servicing their part. It’s servicing your customer, right? It’s a little

Curt Anderson 49:19
bit of plain detective and just trying to figure out what the true culprit what the challenge is, and what do you need to do immediately to just get them out of trouble, is what you’re saying, right? Well,

Melanie Robinson 49:29
at the same time, I think that what Andrew said is is so true with anything. If you have context for why you’re doing something, you’re going to do it so much better than if you know someone says, I just need you to do this. Well, if you don’t know why you’re doing it, you know you can’t add, you can’t be that value add that, you know could make the difference, right?

Curt Anderson 49:54
Well, I tell you one of the things that you guys did So Andrew, when Andrew can’t sleep at night, he’s up pecking away on the computer. And he’s unapologetic educator, and so he put together tons of blogs, and so we had the honor and privilege of working with the team at grandma and through IMEC. And so Andrew, we’re as we we’re going to be winding down. I know I can keep you guys all day just share a little bit about like, your your, how do I say your commitment to that education piece. And, like, you have some amazing content that you’ve put out on the website. I love this one here,

Damon Pistulka 50:25
just the one you’ve got up there, because when I first realized what that was and I got meaning, I was like, You gotta be kidding me, right? Well,

Andrew Kucienski 50:33
first of all, like, when I started my undergrad, I was a math major, and so when I when I came to grind lab, I was like, What? What the hell is going on? Yeah, yeah, and it’s still to this day, it drives me nuts, but that’s one of the things that actually, when Curt, when you you talked about us doing this, it’s actually really helped. You know, putting putting together these blogs has really helped our search rankings number one. But it is helpful, because I’ve actually had a couple people mention it, and at first I thought, these are going to be just, you know, kind of like, you know, I’ll be honest. When you said, do these blogs, I thought, okay, you know, I’ll pay you lip service, and I’ll do a little bit of it to that. But it actually has really helped, and it’s been informative to some people, but it also has helped our search engines rank, our search engine rankings, and it’s good information, right, you know? And I think it educates some of our customers. And I also think it helps lead Grind Lap for people to see that there is something behind it, that we do have that consultative, that we do know what we’re talking about what things we’re not just saying. Hey, give me a part and do something, and we can explain it, and we can have there’s knowledge behind what we do.

Frank Ross 51:52
We’re legitimately experts, yeah,

Damon Pistulka 51:56
seeing all the content it really Yeah, we do know what we’re talking about.

Curt Anderson 52:00
Yeah, right. And so what he did, he teamed up with our with Amy and our team. And so Andrew had the foundation of literally dozens, I think was like 30 blog posts that were just kind of right, that were sitting on the sidelines. And so it was just great. It was just such a gift to just kind of watch a team come in and like they’re just putting out content after content. We went through a little exercise and like our ridiculously important keywords, hey, Andrew, Should I do the pop quiz for Frank see if he still remembers? Should I do that? Remember? So we’re I’m sitting in their their conference room, and remember Google eats? Andrew? Remember that one? Yes, yeah.

52:42
I go,

Curt Anderson 52:42
we’re talking about Google eats. And like Frank rattled off. He goes, Curt, I got it right here. It’s expertise, authority, experience and trust. Andrew would nearly fall on the floor. We were we were diet, so that was

Frank Ross 52:58
kudos to Curt and his team at B2Btail educated. They made us much better. From an SEO perspective, we learned, Oh, absolutely. Kudo, absolutely. And your team at I met made it all possible with the grants and so on. So, you know, you just got to take advantage of your opportunities. And what a blessing it’s been. That’s

Damon Pistulka 53:15
awesome. Yeah, it’s

Andrew Kucienski 53:17
been, it’s been really helpful. And, you know, and we’ve actually Curt, I don’t know how many of your of your contacts, have continued to do things and stuff like that, but, but we continually meet and you know, we’re going over everything, and we’re reviewing, you know, all the tools that we’ve gotten from you, we’re going through, and we still use all the tools. We still go through everything. You know, we’re definitely not as skilled as putting things with the blogs in the Queen’s English, as you’ve been able to do with us as things with that. But it’s, it’s, oh man, the stuff that we’ve been able to do by working with you is just amazing. I recommend you at every, every turn that every you know, a chance I got. It’s been really helpful. Thank you, Andrew, later,

Curt Anderson 54:09
my mom called you didn’t she’s on

Andrew Kucienski 54:13
the phone right now. I’ve got her on,

Curt Anderson 54:15
like the kid, like he’s hanging on by a thread. He’s very, you know, alright,

Andrew Kucienski 54:19
I need him to finally move out. Yes, that was classic, alright?

Curt Anderson 54:28
Mel, how about alright, we’ll wind down. We’re coming to the bottom of the hour. I know you guys. Have you? Andrew’s got deadlines ahead. We’ve got to get

Andrew Kucienski 54:35
cramping. I’ve got about a dozen quotes to get out the door, to get

Curt Anderson 54:39
out the door. So alright, Mel, let’s go here. Best way to reach out to you guys at grindlab. What’s the best way to find our team, our friends at grindlab?

Melanie Robinson 54:47
Quote@grindlab.com even if it’s not a quote, send it there. We will help you. That’s the easiest.

Curt Anderson 54:55
That’s right. They’re all over social media. They’re on LinkedIn, Facebook. Go to the. Website, YouTube, you name it. They got all sorts of blogs and so and Frank, as you’ve mentioned, for our friends at iMac, you would recommend your friends, your family, your dog, Zamboni and Malays dog. You recommend all your friends to our friends at iMac.

Frank Ross 55:15
Amen, absolutely.

Andrew Kucienski 55:16
Oh, absolutely.

Frank Ross 55:19
Find another MEP, wherever you are, and find them and tap that tap that resource.

Melanie Robinson 55:26
Yeah, it really has been phenomenal. It’s been a great experience, and I think that kudos to Andrew for having all that content written ahead of time that just made us be able to do so much more with Curt, yeah, because we weren’t spending calls just talking about, well, what should the content of this one be? I think that you know that just gave us just so much more out of the program than had before. Not that it wouldn’t have been helpful before, but it just was like a step up from that. That is part of why we’ve just, we’ve been so excited about it, and so, you know, have so much passion for it. It’s been wonderful.

Andrew Kucienski 56:09
I give kudos to Curt, because he’s like a muse I’m telling it’s like, yeah, I don’t have an idea. And Curt, it’s like, well, you don’t have an idea. Let me give you this idea. Let me, let me give you this exercise. And then, like, five minutes later, there’s like a spreadsheet of like 36 things to go through.

56:24
Yeah, yeah,

Melanie Robinson 56:26
that’s true. You are good.

Curt Anderson 56:27
And Mel, you had, you had a great advice of, like, man, every client should like be you know that. So, So Andrew, we’ve decided we need to clone you. And, like, we need like 20 Andrews out there. So tell your wife, tell your parents that we’re going to have like, 20 Andrews. Frank, is that scary or what? What are your thoughts?

Frank Ross 56:44
Yeah, I’m out of here.

Andrew Kucienski 56:48
My mom has an opinion on that right now. Yeah, you know. And focused. Oh my gosh.

Curt Anderson 56:56
20 Andrews. So I know, and I you know, and from by my heart, man, I just, I love you guys. Andrew, share before we close out. Share with, what did you do with your dad in 2024 just you and your dad did it in 2024

Andrew Kucienski 57:11
you mean the the bank robbery? Oh, no, um, No, the other the other thing, yeah, yeah. My, my father called me and said, Do you have a passport? And I said no, and he said, Well, go get one. We’re going to Poland, and my father is a member of the Northbrook Rotary, and they partnered up with a rotary group in Germany, and that they had been working with, who had between the two rotary groups had raised money and gathered supplies, and what we did is, there was they had a big semi truck full of supplies that went from Germany to the Poland Ukraine border. And what we did is we met a pastor from Ukraine, and we met them on the Polish Ukraine border, and unloaded the truck and put it into all the goods, into smaller vehicles, so that they could go into Ukraine and would not be targets and deliver relief supplies to towns. And so, yeah, we got to go do that. And that was, that was kind of fun, and what, and

Curt Anderson 58:18
how would your dad? My dad is 8383 man, I tell you, that is what, what kudos to you. What a wonderful father son experience. Yeah. So inspiring that was. And so we were working together when you did that. And so kudos Are you your dad for Yeah. And it started

Andrew Kucienski 58:38
with the phone call, do you have a passport? Do you have a passport? You know, when your dad calls and says you have a passport, you don’t know how to handle that.

Curt Anderson 58:49
And David, how about this comment here from Diane, she’s like, I need new Yeah, I didn’t know that. Yeah. She says, Love the MEPs, love IMEC And so yeah, as we Alright, so as we wind down, Frank, any parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share for folks out there, just anything that you want to pass along. Yeah?

Frank Ross 59:10
I mean, thanks to b 2b, tale, thanks to IMEC. And you know, if you’re, if you’re part, sleep in your building, call grandma, 630-458-1111, or look us up online at grind up com.

Curt Anderson 59:23
All the cool Andrew, close us out. Why are all the cool kids going into manufacturing these days?

Andrew Kucienski 59:29
You know what it is? Honestly, if you haven’t looked into it, it is really cool. The things that you can do, come in and come play it. It’s really playing. You don’t realize it, you’ll have fun. It’s not sitting at a desk. You’re making really cool stuff and that now I’ll add to what Frank says, we’ve added some equipment. We got some cool people working here. We’ve got capacity. If you’re currently manufacturing and you’re sending stuff out, give us a call. You’d be pleasantly surprised to work with us. Yup, awesome.

Curt Anderson 1:00:03
Alright. So alright, we’re going to close out. First off, I want to give a huge, huge heartfelt welcome or thank you to all three of you. So Frank, Melanie, Andrew, thank you guys, and for everybody that’s been hanging out with us, how about you know, great opportunity to stand up, give a stretch and out of a big standing ovation for Andrew, for Melanie, for Frank, for absolutely crushing it today, they’re just helping, just making manufacturing awesome right here in Chicago. And you guys are doing amazing, incredible work. Go to Grind Lap. Check out their website, go to their LinkedIn, all sorts of wonderful information. Damon, as we close out what I was like to say, man, just go out and be someone’s inspiration, just like these three, and you too will make the world a better place. Why don’t you, you guys, you guys, hang out with us for one second. Damon, why don’t you close us out? Alright,

Damon Pistulka 1:00:52
well, this is awesome, getting to talk to you guys from grind lab and Frank and Andrew Melanie and and just a we all knew that Curt needed to move out of myself. Yeah, that’s so great, man. I just gotta say it again. It was so funny. Thank Diane for stopping by and dropping those comments in there today. We got Vishal, we got Pavon, we got and just others that are listening, but you are not dropping comments. We appreciate you being out there and being with us every week. If you got in this late, go back to the beginning. You’re going to have to hear some of the one liners, first of all, because there’s a lot of great ones in there. And look at the wonderful stuff that grindlap is doing and the awesome website that was produced by B2Btail. Thanks everyone. We’re out for this week. We’ll see you next week. Bye.