Episode Transcript
Hello, my friends. This is Brett Kesling of the EO Podcast Network and host of the ESOP podcast. I'm grateful to collaborate with my friend Jesse Tyler, to bring you the Owner to Owner podcast where Jesse talks with real rank and file frontline employee owners. Unlike other podcasts, these workers take a few minutes off from their jobs and then get right back to it. You'll notice at times the audio is not quite the quality that we'd like to bring. But the reality is with frontline employee owners, not everyone has a conference room or quiet area or even the equipment to participate as some do. We really appreciate their commitment to employee ownership and their willingness to come on and share their stories, and we hope you'll agree that their words more than make up for any technological challenge. I hope you'll enjoy this episode. Welcome to The Owner to Owner podcast with your host, Jesse Tyler, part of the EO Podcast Network. Welcome to the Owner Owner podcast. I'm Jesse Tyler, your host. We do this podcast to bring the voices of the rank and file the daily workers, the different perspectives from the company. It's great to hear through different media and other podcasts from folks that run companies heads of HR and the like to share the employee ownership story. This focuses on employee owners that you don't usually hear. And we've had a lot of fun with this. We're excited today to welcome Margaret, John and Paige from Tech Edge. So what we want to do is jump right in and start hearing from the owners instead of the podcast host. So if we could start, Margaret, if you could kick us off and give us a little bit of your own intros with who you are, what you do, your job title and your tenure. We'd love to, love to hear that, and then we'll get started from there. Yeah. My name's Margaret. I've been with Tech Edge for 19 years now. Being with Tech for 19 years? Yes, I am fully vested employee owner with them. My job title is Operations Quality Manager, which is a long way of saying I help people do their jobs a little bit better when they're having trouble with the job. I work with the employee owners to help them bring the solutions to me because usually it's them that have the solutions and we work together on implementing no solutions to make their jobs. That's great. That's great. Thank you. Paige, could you introduce yourself? I am Paige. I'm a photo tool technician and I've been with the company for seven years now and yes, I am fully vested. So as a photo tool technician, I actually directly work with CAD and operations to create tools that work with some of our materials that we create and edge. Nice. Thank you. John, please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is John Matthews. I am a production manager. I've been with the company for 12 years. I started off as a supervisor, was promoted to manager over a couple of years ago, and I find it very rewarding to be there at Tech Edge. We've gone through some changes in the leadership that is currently. Really promotes unity work and it's a pleasure to actually focus on that and to push it forward to the new employees, to existing employees and to see the changes that have been taking place over the past few years. It's been very exciting to be a part of, and I'm excited to go forward with tech and see what else we can do. That's great. That's great. All right. Coming back to Margaret, if you could just in case some of the listeners aren't familiar with Tech Edge, if you could just sort of a, a general overview so they can understand what your specialty is, what you focus on, you know, how big you are, those sorts of insights would be great. Tech Edge is a manufacturer and we manufacturer a lot of different products. For aerospace, defense, medical, lot of medical products we make, what I'd like to say is we don't make the final assemble product. We make the parts that go in those products. So if you're looking at a part in a hospital, chances are likely there's a tech edge part into in it. Or maybe you have something implanted in your Body. Tech edge has probably made something that's going into that implantable device. And the way we do it is basically the corrosion that happens to like a car. We do that corrosion. Finally control the environment where we take sheets of thin metal, like aluminum fold thickness, and we process through the photo earth gravity process to remove bits of that sheet and leave the part for the customer. That's tech etch in a nutshell. That's great. That's great. Sort of the intel inside, if you look at your computer sticker and, and you, you say, okay, so tech edge is, is part of this, but not, not the whole piece. That's great. Yeah. That, that's how I understood your company to be. And I've, I met your, your co-owners at, uh, conferences is ultra fineing detail specialized manufacturing, so that's great. All right, so Margaret, with you being part of the ownership team, the culture team, which you're certain. Welcome to Elaborate on. We're gonna jump right in with similar questions. I like to ask the questions in, in a specific cadence to kind of develop the story. So I'm gonna ask about how you talk about employee ownership when you're out in the world, and then we'll do a round where you talk about your friends and family, and then how you help a new coworker understand ownership. So Margaret's out in the world somewhere, you're away from your community of other ESOPs, you're away from. Tech Edge team, how do you talk about employee ownership when you're around people who aren't jubilant fans, like many of us have been accused of being as owners it, it's, it's multi-factored. So usually the approach I take is either, well, it's a wealth accumulation tool, right? So I have. This. Yes, I have a 401k, but then on the side I have my esop, which at the end when I finally leave Tech Edge will be a little nice nest egg for me. But most people are like retirement. That's like 60,000 years away from me. I'm not really thinking about that. So the main focus I like to look at is how we as an employee owners are empowered. We're empowered to make decisions about what we're doing on a day-to-day basis to help make our jobs easier, help get product out the door, and, and help our coworkers out. Our fellow employee owners here at Tech Edge. So when I hear someone complain about my boss never listens to me, yada, yada, well, I'm not my own boss per se. I have more, I'm empowered more to bring up those things that trouble me to the appropriate per people to get addressed. That's great. That's great. Yeah. It's interesting to work at a place, and I think it can take a few years. We encourage new hires at Hether to take a few years to really get used to having people so engaged. And empowered for folks who can say they wanted something like that. Actually finding it can still take a little bit of getting used to, so I appreciate the insights to get us started. Paige, we'll come to you next. How do you talk about employee ownership when you're out in the world and not around other employee owners? Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but I don't talk about work very much outside of. I like to, it's very important for me to keep a work and home setting completely separate. Mm-hmm. But I do tend to encourage, you know, folks like Margaret had said, they're like, oh, I have a problem. I don't like the job. I, my boss doesn't listen. Some great examples that she's listed. I do agree with a lot of the statements that here at Tech Edge, everyone gets a chance and you are always reminded you are a. you have room to grow. That's great. Thank you. John, how do you talk about employee ownership? When you're away from employee owners? How do you, how do you describe it to folks? I've had a couple of occasions to speak to some friends, and basically for me it just described as having a major hand or part in what goes on in your company. Our actions, our decisions, our efforts, all plays a major part in how the company succeeds. If we do well, the company does well and the best way to. As far as I'm concerned to other people, that is your efforts shine through when you work hard, the company's success. If this company's successful, we all succeed as individuals. You do your best to help the team, and as a team, we make this company move forward. And you know, as Margaret said, in the end, you're working really to help yourself, your efforts. If we are doing well, in the end, the ESOP comes up. It's really benefiting us. The better we do and the better we are in the end when it's time to retire. And I'm getting close to that time. So I'm working hard to make sure we do well. That's great. That's great. And I haven't heard her put that way. I've talked to thousands of people about ownership. I've been obsessed with it and fascinated by it for over 15 years. And I like that. I could see that on a tech edge t-shirt. Your, your, your efforts shine through. I think that's, All right. So I wanna see, sometimes there's not a big difference on the next two questions, but I just wanna give that opportunity for insight from your personal view, when you're around friends and family, how do you talk about employee ownership? So you mentioned being empowered. You mentioned wealth building. You mentioned the day today. It's really nice to share. So again, the context for some of these questions are to share your experience and get to know you as a voice in the ownership community, but also by extension for new employee owners to listen in or new ESOPs to listen in that are trying to get their hands around this wonderful new potential that takes a while to get the hang of with employee ownership culture. So you bring it home, you're around friends or family. How do you talk about employee owner? Margaret, if you wanna start us off, some of the things I I've done recently that you probably heard of is I had to give a speech at the the New England Chapter conference. Right. And it wasn't just my speech, but Tech Edge as a whole had to give a presentation as we were in a company spotlight. So what I described to my family, to my friends on Facebook was, We basically got teamed together to put this spotlight together and we were gi we were empowered to basically come up with what we thought would, would work for the the company Spotlight. We were told it's, this is your requirements. It has to be about an hour, an hour and a half long, and you need the spotlight tech edge. And we were left to run with that. So it was really fun trying to put together a program to, to cover all aspects of who Tech Edge is, what we do, why employee ownership is important to us, that kind of thing. So I tell my family of friends, it's that kind of responsibility that's given to us that even though my other day-to-day functions, given the task, maybe a set of parameters. Get it done and I get it done the best way I seek that. That's great. And as soon as you started speaking, then you were the face and the voice and the reason of the brand and trusted to represent the rest of your, your co-owners, which is great. Paige, how do you talk about employee ownership when you're on friends or family? Oh, geez. How do I talk about it? I typically do share some, like, Hey, we're doing this really cool news thing, or I got to make, or I got to work on this brand new part for say, military or aerospace, and I'm like, It's amazing. It's great. It's awesome. I usually do like to share my highlights and some of the really cool things we get to do here at teca, but one of my favorite things here is this little piece of pride I love to own, is that we save people's lives from the background and that brings so much joy to my heart, and that's where I stand about. That's great. That's great. Thank you. John, how do you talk about ownership, employee ownership, when you're around friends or family? Well, it's pretty simple. Almost like being an entrepreneur. We are being our owners here. We're working for ourselves. I've had people ask, why do you work so many hours? Cause it benefits me. And again, yeah, I'm working for me. I'm working for the rest of my team. I'm working to put money into my pocket in the company's pocket, making a company successful. When you are a part owner, it's like being an entre. So you gotta dedicate the time and effort and in the end it pays off. That's great. And John, for you, like building on that, you, you have a new coworker and you're asked by your leader, Hey, could you talk to them about employee ownership and kind of what that means? How do you talk to that new employee that's new to Tech Edge, new to ownership? How do you talk to them about it? Well, basically I go by this pretty much what I just said with the, the. You know the effort you put forth pays off. In the end. You may not be able to see the dividends immediately and but it will pay off in the end. Being part owner. As Margaret stated earlier, you have a say so. You're not just a number, you're not just someone sitting in a chair doing a job. We encourage our employees to give us feedback. To give us answers, ask questions, and when you ask and as you get answers, sometimes those answers are a little different than what they're used to. And we encourage that. You know, when you've done something for a very long time, a certain way, and you ask someone new a question. The answer you get are like, wow, I never really thought about it that way. So we really encourage that. And so when new employees come in, and I always tell 'em the same thing, if you don't ask the question, you'll never get the answer. So if you have a question, yeah, ask If you wanna know, ask. And by asking, we're able to get an answer for you. And sometimes it helps us think outside of the box. Cause your question has pushed. To look for a different way of doing something or another answer, or another way of doing it a better way. But it's pretty simple for us. That's great. I appreciate that. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a good, sounds like a culture of fresh eyes are welcome and courage versus come in, listen and, and you know, raise your hand later. And that, that's exciting. And, and the workforce now, which goes across age groups, it unfortunately gets pointed just to at the under 30 crowd. And it's far beyond that. You know, people won't feel that they're making a difference right away. They matter, they're recognized. they're gonna be, you know, trained and taught and people have got their back. And so it's, it's great to hear that about the, the tech edge culture. Paige, moving to you, what, what do you say, like, I'm a new coworker of yours and I'm like, Hey, can you give me a little insight on this ownership thing? What would you share to see who's been at your company, you know, in the first couple weeks? What would you say about ownership? What would I say about ownership? So I always like to tell folks that their hands directly, our lives, our futures, our country, our planet, and it's a little piece of knowledge. I like to empower folks with say, if someone struggles, they're like, I can't do it. And I'm like, all right, no, let's work together. Let's get this on track and I'll help you grow in this company to the best of my abilities. If need be, I will get more folks involved. You are not alone. And that's what I like to encourage folks like John had mentioned. Ask questions, offer suggestions. It's not a don't ask, don't tell environment. You know, be e. Piece of knowledge or insight we can get. That's great. Thank you for that. Margaret, what about for you? How do you talk to new coworkers about ownership? Well, being part of the employee ownership committee here at Tech Hatch, we just actually instituted a 45 day checkback with new hires. So most people coming off the street, you tell 'em, oh, you're an employee owner, you're a member of an esop. And they go, what's an esop? So we have, we get together with the new employee owners and we explain to 'em what the committee does, what an ESOP is, go into a little bit of detail. And part of how I we end that meeting with them is as employee owners, bring your ideas to the, your supervisor here at it and you see something and it just doesn't make sense to. And the other thing we just instituted too, for all employee owners is an employee owner impact class where we go over financial statements. Most people coming off the street, they don't know what a p and l profit loss sheet is. You tell 'em, yeah, we're gonna look at the gross margins, or this is ebit, and they're like, gross margins. Is that something disgusting? Ebit, what? What are you talking about So the class gives them a little overview of. Financial terms, the finances. That way when we go over the finances as a company, they know what we're talking about. And also how they can impact those finances, which not only help them out because our profits will go up, which means their profit sharing will go up, but our share share price in long term should go up as well. So it benefits everyone. So those are two of the things that we're doing as an employee ownership committee to help get new hires on board with being employee. That's great. So I know you just started, I'm asking cuz we're about to start doing that. What do you find, you know, sort of the profit and loss conversation. Do you have a sense of how much tenure is kind of the sweet spot? What's, you know, not too soon, what's not missing the opportunity for that? Do you have a sense of that yet? Not yet, no. We've only given a couple classes and we started out with the supervisor level. That way when we go to the, the quote unquote rank and file the, the rest of the employee ownership here in the manufacturing floor, the supervisors hopefully can answer any questions that they have or they can feel free to come to us, but haven't really got a feel for that yet. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I'm working with Jenny from Praxis on finalizing that. I looking forward to getting that launched in January. And you, you work with Praxis as well with, with Molly and John, right? Correct. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, they do, they do a great job. They help Hypertherm Hypertherm in their, we're in our 21st year of ownership and they helped our founders, Dick and Barbara couch with the transition to partial and then to 100% ownership. So it's fun to, it's fun to talk to other companies, other ESOPs that are working with Praxis and. Getting the help. It's a fun group. All right. I want to go to kind of built towards a whole question. This can be a few words or or a longer statement. What does ownership mean to you? Margaret, if you wanna start us off, what does ownership mean to you? Yeah, ownership to me, basically, if I see something, I say something. So it comes down to if I see someone that needs. I'll help them out with something if they have questions or if I see something, say a piece of garbage in the parking lot, I'm gonna pick it up because I care about how the, the company looks, right. It's. I'm an employee owner. It's my company, so to speak, so, and if I can't do something myself, I at least know who to go to to get my concern addressed. If I see something, I'll say something. That's great. Thank you. Paige, what does ownership mean to you? Ownership to me means doing the right thing. Even if someone doubts you, no one is. We're all a team. We all own this place. And doing the right thing is, it can be hard, yes. But it is incredibly rewarding in the end. That's great. Thanks John. What does ownership, employee ownership mean to you? For me, employee ownership means teamwork and security. As an owner, if you're putting forth your best effort, you know, you're kind of securing your place here within the. you know, and it's job security, it's financial security, it's everything else you look for to help you get through life. And again, being owner kind of kinda gives a nice feel onto that. You know, you have a hand in what your future's gonna be like, and it's, it's a good feeling. That's great. So, John, if you. We're able to bring all of that down to three words, just to have a little bit of fun. If, if you described ownership in three words in this conversation, what three words would you choose? I would say dedication, teamwork, and I would say pride. To be honest with you, I'm really proud to be a tech Edge employee. It feels good to know that as, as Paige stated earlier, that we are. We have a hand in people's lives, whether you realize or not. Our parts go into a lot of different areas and help people, help our, help this country be great and help individual's lives, improve individual's lives. So I take pride in that. That's great. Thank you. Paige. Ownership, in three words, how would you describe it? Pride, community and teamwork. That's what we're all about here at Tech Edge. I like. Nice, nice. I had mentioned earlier, I carry that with everywhere I go. Yeah, you can hear it when all of you talk. You can hear your, your tuck heads and ownership pride. It's fun to get to know you today. Margaret. Ownership in three words. So the questions I had reviewed a little bit beforehand to, and I had written down my answer and empowerment, teamwork and empowerment. And I wrote down empowerment twice. I know you asked for three words, but I kept coming back to empowerment. It's. Being able to get my concerns addressed either by myself or someone else. And being able to come up with solutions for issues that are trouble in different people. It's pretty, uh, pretty good. That's great. That's great. That's a lot of people. And it's fun. I'm smiling cuz you're the first one to give two words to, to push back on the three and stick with two. And if you're gonna have a word twice, empowerment is a great one to have. We hope. Some more people, certainly workers going to work every day, would have empowerment high on their list. And unfortunately that's, that's not the, not the engagement where we find when we talk to other companies. So that's wonderful. I appreciate it. So I was curious to. Delve into a little bit about leadership. So if you have people that are highly engaged, highly ethical, highly empowered, active, definitely as you've all demonstrated, you know, there's strong camaraderie and sense of community at Tech Edge, can you share some in insights around leadership? You know, we could start it off maybe, Margaret, if you wanna start it off, is do you think the role of leadership is different at an esop? And if so, Wine and being the leader at an ESOP company is completely different from being the leader, at least from what I've found out at my time here at Tech Edge. I, to give you a little insight, I was in the military at one point. I was in the Army, so you can imagine there it's pretty much top down, right? So your sergeant gives you an order, you just do it. You don't think why, you just, you have to do it here at Tech Edge. It. Yeah, there's some instructions that come from the top and flow down, but just also flow from the bottom up or sideways Even that everyone has the say in what goes on. And if you see something, like I said before, you, you say something. So as a leader here at Tech Edge, I want to encourage the other employee owners here to bring something up to me. So if they come up to an I, an idea to me, I'm not gonna. poo poo it and say, that sounds stupid. We're not gonna do that. It, if it's looks like a good idea, we're gonna give it a try and implement it. If there's a reason why we can't implement it, either cost or maybe just time factor, I'm gonna give him a reason why we can't implement it at this time. But perhaps in the future we can revisit it if it, it warrants it. Great. Thank you. Paige, what about for you leadership at an employee-owned company? What are you, have some insights you can share if it's different, the same, what your perspective is. I mean, I like to look at it. Sure. We have a hierarchy here at Tech Edge, but ultimately we are all working for the same goal. Your title doesn't necessarily matter in a way. Yeah, it's just we're, we're all just working towards the same goal, which is growing as a company, growing out there in the world, doing our best, putting our best foot forward every day. Great. Thank you, John. Your thoughts on leadership at employee-owned company? Oh, kinda like what Margaret said, her military experience. I've worked in a place that I guess the type of leadership you could describe was fairly, uh, demanding. You just did what they said. That was it. They made decisions the employees had. No part in the decisions being made. I've been part of a few committees. As a matter of fact, Paige and I both were on a committee that established the values and to sit here and watch VPs and supervisors and managers, all of us coming together, deciding and making the decision on what was best for the company. And these isn't just one committee. There are several committees like that that go through. It's very easy for the president to say, yep, we're gonna. But instead of doing that, he gets a consensus. He gets people together and we talk about it, and then they say, okay, you know what? Going forward, we feel based on a decision that was made by the group, we're gonna do this. Now does it mean it's the right decision all the time? And he's come back and said, Nope, that one failed. Guess what? We're gonna try again. And we get a group together again. So that to me really makes a difference knowing that our decisions and our contributions to what we do matter when we say something, we have decisions, we have our comments to make and, and suggestions. He takes it to heart and, and it makes a huge difference when you start dealing with upper management that thinks that way. That's great. Yeah. If you aren't failing when you're trying to build and grow and innovate and improve, if you aren't failing, then you aren't doing it right. So the the, there can be a magic moment when somebody comes back and. Love the idea, thought we had, it didn't work. Let's go again. What can we take from and bring forward? What do we need to add? And so I think that that, that's a great culture insight that if you can have that and, and it's great for you and Paige to be on that committee and then have the, the, the high level leaders and the more public, you know, customer facing people that are really sharing what you and your committee came up with. That's, that's quite empowering to borrow. From Margaret. That's awesome. I wanted to start with you on this question is because you're a part of the ownership committee, what is something that Tech Catch does really well, and it's okay for John and Paige. If you just second Margaret's motions, that's okay. But I am gonna ask each of you, you know, if you've. Picked out one thing that Tech Edge does really well for ownership, culture and communications. What would that be? So Margaret, if you could start us off. Yeah, so one thing that Tech Edge does that I haven't seen before any a company was we have an all hands meeting by all hands meeting a quarterly meeting. It's. Everyone. So everyone in the company is invited to either attend in person or online, if they're either working remote or one of our other sites in the Fall River or Litchfield and not here in Plymouth. And it's basically where we give a financial update. So we literally show the, the profit and law sheet, the p and l is put up on the, the big board. and the cfo F or someone from finance will go over how we did last quarter to how we expected us to do. And not only that, they'll go into some reasons why we either hit our mark and went over or maybe, hopefully not, didn't hit our mark and what we can do better next time. And along with that, we go into like some of the, the projects that people are working on, that kind of thing. at the end, the ceo, which Camano will wrap it up and go, okay, it's question and answer time. Do you have any questions for myself? And he'll literally face the, the firing gun, so to speak, with some of the questions that come up, But he answers 'em all, and he's honest and straight right with us. And if he doesn't have an answer, He'll usually look over at one of the other executive team members that are there and go, Patty, do you have an answer? Or, Brian, do you have an answer or nurse stand up in, in the answer to the question? So this level of openness and accountability, it's nice to see. Yeah, it's. The powerful way to build trust and, and faith in leadership so that when things do get difficult, we're, we're potentially looking at a shared very difficult year, year and a half head. With the economy. If you're open and sharing the good times and accessible to the hard questions, it's amazing what can happen when things get tight or things get challenging. It's a great statement about, Leadership culture. That's great. Paige, is there something specific you can call out for Tech Edge around ownership culture or communications or like a yearly ritual that you really enjoy that other ESOPs could learn about? I mean, I'm gonna have to second Margaret. I am always ready and excited to go to an all hands meeting cause I wanna know how we're doing, what can we do to get. That's great. That's what it's all about. John, do you want a third? I don't think you can actually do that in Robert's rules, but if you want a third we can on our podcast, if you wanna third that or throw in something different that My favorite ownership culture thing at Tech Edge is Actually I'm gonna third that one. Margaret said it so well, and it's true. And I think in addition to that, I like the way the leadership takes care of the people. We have our get togethers, pizza parties. Summer cookouts or the, the winter, the Christmas cook, Christmas dinners or lunch that we have. And I just like the way the, the, the leadership takes care of us. Individuals takes care of us as a group. Uh, yeah. I'm I'm gonna go over that. That's great. Yeah. That's great. It's, it's one thing to, to hear that you're, you know, you're trusted and we have values and they're posted on the meeting room walls or we're very open. It's very different when you can have that kind of an engaging experience. So I think it's great that, that you all supported that as, It's the key thing. I think it it share it. It shares a lot and think it's something that new, other new ESOPs could learn from to go into the all hands open meetings and the q and a when they're ready to. All right. We like to ask our guests to share their EO aha moment if you've had one. So it's not the first time you heard of employee ownership or when you started to like it. If you had a moment that you were like, oh, hmm, okay, this is gonna be a game changer. We'd love to. Hear that Margaret, have you had an EO Aha moment and if you could share it, that'd be great. I actually had a couple of 'em, to be honest with you. The one I keep coming back, we'll take more than one. The the one I keep coming back to though is so in, I don't know if you heard Tech Hatch's story in late 2021. We had several things happen to us as a company that were. One was we had a cyber attack and our computer systems were down for a number of days. And another one was we had a power outage where the just hit the Plymouth plant. So the Minnesota plant and the Fall River plant were still up and running, but the main plant, Plymouth was down for, I can't remember, three or four days once again. And as we were working through this, and once we finally got to the end and December came around, and then January came around and we. All hands mean it happened. And we had the, the CFO standing up there talking to the p and l, the profit law sheet, and saying it was our combined efforts as employee owners. That got through. We got through those hardships and I went, actually, it was because what happened is we were invited to a give feedback and how can we help each other out so people were coming together. The, the computer outage to, yeah, let's, we don't need computers. We can use paper like we did back in the, the days, right. And we were taking paper notes and paper documentation and everyone was helping out with that. And when the computer systems got back up online, everyone helped everyone else and took some of the paper records and. Put 'em into the system. And then when the power outage came and we had to see how we can make up the lost revenue from that. Once again, we had an all hands meeting. It wasn't one of the schedule ones, but we all came together and said, what can we do to, to get through this? We have to, to get this revenue out the door somehow. So the survey was actually sent out to people and we all decided, let's do a little bit more overtime than we would normally do. Right. And it wasn't just, Coming from on top that, Hey, you are gonna do some overtime. Everyone was asked, Hey, do you wanna work Saturday based Sunday? what about holidays? So, we've pretty much worked every day from the start of November to the end of December, with the exception of Thanksgiving and Christmas. We were tech. Tech was open every day and we managed to exceed our revenue goal, even thinking with the pounded allergen and everything else that happened. So when the C F O was given his talk at the Doll Hands meeting that next quarter, I was, the only reason we probably did this was because we're employee owners. So we came together as a team to. What can we do to get it all together and get that money out the door for ourselves and for everyone? So that's when it just, the spark lit off in my head and went, wow, that's powerful, that we can do that together. That's great. That's great. Often, uh, people share moments of sort of, you know, early discovery of, you know, the culture or camaraderie or the wealth building, but what's interesting is a lot of the times people share stories of getting through something hard. And so if you're able to take two significant hardships, disruptive hardships, and finish the year with a smiling, uh, c f o that you like to keep those chief financial officers happy, so that, that sounds like gr a great comeback. Thanks for sharing that. Paige. Did you have an e email? Aha moment where you, you're just sort of like, whoa, this is, this is different. And if so, could you share it? I wouldn't necessarily say I've had an aha moment just yet. However, this is all I've ever known. Cause I started working here basically fresh out of high school. This is all I've ever known. I just kind of roll with the punches. That's just who I am as a person. But I'm sure that one day, should I leave the company for whichever reason. I wanna be like, man, I miss that Yeah. Thanks. Thanks Jonna. Have you had an EO Aha moment in your time so far? And what we know was, I describe it as Aha was more of a wow moment, I guess. When I first started working here 12 years ago, the building in Fall River was known as a sweat shop. There was no ac. The only place in the building that had AC was the cafeteria. During the summer, we had ceiling fans that wasn't doing anything and that was just moving hot air. The garage doors of bay doors would be opened up and all you'd get is just bugs and. Patio coming in very humid. Rich Camano was kind of new at that point in time. Well, when he started, he came down and he asked if you could have one thing, what would it be? And I was like, huh, well I know I can't ask for a Corvette in the parking spot with my van is, so I'll go with ac. And I said, if I could have one thing, I'd like to have a controlled environment for my group. My people are sweating. They're dying during the summer. He nodded his head and he said, okay. A few months later, we have some guys coming in taking measurements to the ceiling and. Putting in new AC units in the building and they, people have suffered in that building for years with the, with the heat and to know that this new c, this new CEO came in, asked a question, saw the need, and got it done to benefit the employees. Man, I, I was like, wow, this is cool cuz people have been asking for years. to get AC in there and every year was, Nope, nope, nope, nope. And now it's changed. The culture changed and here this person's coming in looking at it going, yeah, I can see where that could be kind of beneficial. I don't have to worry about calling for people, dropping out from fainting, from the, they're more productive, they're happy, and we have people coming in for the first time after that happened going, wow, I'm not actually dying at two o'clock in the afternoon. Now we actually have to have people go through the cafeteria with cold compresses on their foreheads. Stopping from overheating. Now they're wearing sweaters in the summertime because the ACS blasting on him. But it, to me, that's great. That was one of the moments Sunni that was like, wow, all right. This is good. This is good. He's actually looking out for us as a company, as employee. So yeah, that was my wow moment. That's great. I appreciate it. Well, let's, let's extend that a little bit. So in these times it is difficult to, And people are struggling with that. So I wanna give you a chance to promote your company. The hard reality is that we aren't even to the hard part of the, the hiring economy, it's gonna get a lot harder. So I'd like to do is give you an opportunity to lend your voice to why tech etch is a great place to work and why you would encourage. in the near future or long future to join you as, as a co-owner, just to give you your HR department talent acquisition group, a little bit more of a, you know, an additional tool potentially to help you stay, you know, stay owner strong. So what are your thoughts on promoting tech etch and what, what you enjoy most and why others should join you there? John, if you, if you wanna start us. I, I just think it's a great place to be, mainly because of the leadership and it's not just from the top up. As Margaret said, we are changing from the ground up, from the top down. Changes all the way in to be a part of that at at the level we're at each one of us, to seeing these changes, no matter what level you're at, it's very encouraging and you stated it, it's difficult getting people in times, you know, some people are looking at the short term goal. You know, this place is paying more, this place is doing this, but we. Employees and we are hiring managers, are hiring people. We are really pushing the benefits that Tech Edge pushes out for us and has for us. It's not just the pay, it's the culture. It's the attitude. It's the atmosphere. There's a lot going on here. You know, a lot of places don't have bonuses and we still do. There's a lot of places that don't. Have medical, you gotta pay more for medical. These are all the things to me that go along with the pay. And again, as I said earlier, the culture that's here to see the changes that have taken place in the 12 years that I've been here is tremendous. And knowing that we are part of it, to me is even better. And we really push that going forward. We want to be a part of a culture that changes, that listens, that cares for you. Join tech. Your voice matters. You matter and, uh, come join us. Be a part of our team. Great place to be. Awesome. Great start. Paige, if you wanna, wanna follow John with, you know, just why should people come join you at Tech Edge? Why is it a great place to work? Well, having started working here at a rather very young age, I started here fresh out of high school, and I have the opportunity to grow and to build a life. You know, you have the, there's room for growth. Experience you can gain. Most every leadership position here at Tech Edge has started from the ground up. They started as an intern or an operator and they've risen in the ranks through hard work and dedication, but it, no one's excluded from that. Everyone gets that chance. That's great. So that's great growth. Is it that. That's great. That's great. You went right at it. Because people, you know, with with, you know, people want that growth opportunity. They wanna be able to step into leadership and advance, and John talking about, you know, your voice matters. It's a pretty powerful thing for people looking around for a job. And again, I agree with John, it's certainly pay is important, but what are the benefits? What's the daily experience? What's the environment? So excellent. Margaret, if you wanna round out the Why Tech Edge and speaking to potential future co-workers, co-owners that may be listening to this podcast. Yeah, so my work at Tech Edge, I think we offer, it's, we offer competitive benefits and, and wages, right? I think every company has to do that nowadays. Need that, that extra thing for people to come work at your company. what Tech Hatch offers other than the first thing I like to toss out there is 100% employee owned, and then I go into what that means. But I'm probably talking to a bunch of employee owners here as well. What else do we offer? It's that feeling, that sense of purpose. We're helping people out by the, with the products that we make. I think Paige taught to that before and to a low extent, John, as far as the products we made, they're getting implanted into people. We actually have family members who have the parts we make inside them, keeping them alive. It's just, it's amazing to know that parts we make are also going up into space and seeing new frontiers up there. It's, I had a hand in that. Right? And it's not just me, it's everyone here at Tech Edge had a little bit, a little part in, in making that happen. And as John said, our culture is definitely changing since the new leadership came board in 2018. would be more inclusive. People are more encouraged to voice their thoughts and voice their ideas about what they can do different to help make us grow as a company. That's, that's great. Well, you've done a great job today. I appreciate the conversation. It's fun to meet you and be able to ask about your experience with ownership. So wanna. Say a thank you to the New England ESOP Company of the Year, tech Edge, and to Margaret, John and Paige for sharing your insights and your personal experience and a whole lot of tech edge, uh, kind of family culture pride. So really enjoyed the experience. Appreciate our listeners for the Owner to Owner Podcast. Thank you very much.
