Manufacturing Mavericks

Greg McHale, the CEO of Datanomix, kicks off the first episode of Manufacturing Mavericks by interviewing Rolar Products CEO Jack Russell. Jack shares his unconventional path from a kid in Muskegon tinkering on a homemade mini bike to buying a 3-person machine shop with his 401k. Jack talks about the importance of creating a great company culture, technology's role in his success, and how he empowers his employees to help grow the business.


Highlights:
  • Tinkering on a minibike (3:32)
  • Jack’s first job in manufacturing (8:41)
  • Igniting a fire in the belly (11:07)
  • Unexpected benefits of working 2nd shift (14:37)
  • Jack loses his job and pivots (19:38)
  • Getting back into manufacturing (21:02)
  • Learning the good and the bad of running a company (25:53)
  • Jack cashes out his 401k to buy a company (27:17)
  • How Jack grew the business (31:15)
  • Building a great company culture (36:15)
  • Investing in technology (42:39)
  • How to ask employees to help you make more money (54:31)
  • Advice for just starting out (59:02)

Links Referenced:

Creators & Guests

Host
Greg McHale
Greg founded Datanomix, a company delivering game-changing production insights and intelligence to manufacturers of discrete components. Datanomix was founded on the premise that the 4th industrial revolution would require turnkey products that integrate seamlessly with how manufacturers work today—not clunky workflows that depend on human input or complex data extraction. He brings enterprise data skills to a market ripe for innovation. Greg has held engineering leadership positions at several venture-backed companies and is a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Guest
Jack Russell
Owner, Rolar Products

What is Manufacturing Mavericks?

Manufacturing Mavericks aren’t afraid to shake things up and stand out from the crowd. They are embracing the best tools and technology to showcase world-class American manufacturing and grow their business.

Join Greg McHale, founder of Datanomix, as he sits down with these exceptional people to hear their stories and explore the important lessons they learned along the way. Listeners can gain valuable insights they can use in their own facilities to improve their bottom line.

Greg: Welcome to Manufacturing Mavericks, a podcast where we showcase and celebrate exceptional people from across precision manufacturing who are boldly embracing new ways to improve their processes, grow their bottom lines, and ensure American manufacturing will thrive for generations to come.

Greg: Welcome to this episode of Manufacturing Mavericks. I’m your host, Greg McHale. As the founder of Datanomix, I’ve had the privilege of visiting hundreds of shops all across the country, and in those visits, I’ve met some of the most incredible and innovative people in this industry. Our goal with the Manufacturing Mavericks podcast is to highlight those leaders, those mavericks of manufacturing who are innovating not just with technology, but with culture, people, and process too, so we can all learn not just what they do, but why they do it. We’ll dig into what got them into manufacturing, what fires them up to go to work every single day, and pour their blood, sweat, and tears into keeping the manufacturing dream alive in our country.

With that, I am honored to introduce today’s manufacturing maverick, a great customer of ours at Datanomix, I’m pleased to be able to say a very close friend of mine, too, through that relationship, Please welcome to the show, Jack Russell with Rolar Products. Jack, how are you doing today?

Jack: I’m good, Greg. Thanks for having me.

Greg: Absolutely. Always a pleasure to spend time with you, Jack. Jack has been a great customer of ours here at Datanomix for, I think, coming up on two-and-a-half, three years, so obviously, we appreciate that relationship and the friendship we’ve developed through that time as well.

Jack: Yeah, we’ve enjoyed it. It’s been fun to watch the improvements and as the product continues to grow and advance.

Greg: Because of great ideas from people like you. That’s what we live for. So, all right, let’s break the ice here, Jack. So, tell us about, you know, where did you grow up and what was life like as a kid for you? What are some of your formative experiences?

Jack: Well, I grew up and still live in now Muskegon, Michigan. It’s a medium-sized town on the shores of Lake Michigan. So, we always had time to go to the beach. There’s all kinds of wooded trails, et cetera, around. So, you know, as a kid, my dad was a painting contractor, so he was always fixing something in the garage, so I kind of got interested in the mechanical side of things, probably 8, 10 years old.

Greg: Wow. So, eight years old is where you first got a mechanical inclination, and that’s from helping dad in the garage on Saturday fix stuff? Or where did that come from?

Jack: Yeah, helping them fix things. And we lived in an older house. My dad was a painting contractor, so my mother always said, “If you’re looking for our house, my husband’s a painter, so we’re the only house on the block that needs paint.”

Greg: [laugh].

Jack: Because you never got time to paint your own house. But my dad was always improving and remodeling something, and I was always at his side. Whether it’s rewiring some outlet or putting a shower in the basement, you know, I was always right next to him.

Greg: Got it. And as you got older there, did you start to take on projects of your own, you know, as a teenager? Did that fixing stuff or tinkering with stuff translate to other activities for you?

Jack: It did. At one point, with the argument of my mother, my father bought my brother and I a minibike. And this was not a commercial minibike, it was one that was welded together from water pipe and it had Piper Cub airplane tires on it, so great big giant balloon tires. And it was kind of handmade, so the sprocket in the back was not concentric with the axle, so every time you rode it and got to a certain speed, it would throw the chain because the sprocket was out of round, so to speak. So, the first little project I started on that was to build a chain tensioner to keep that chain tight, even when that chain got loose and tight as that eccentric sprocket went around.

Found a couple pieces of steel, drilled a hole, found a bolt that fit the hole, found a piece of metal that—you know, a round piece of stock that had a hole through it. We put a piece of old hose on it so we wouldn’t chew up the chain, so it ran on plastic, tied a spring to it, added some links to the chain, and we had a chain tensioner. And my brother and I were thrilled we didn’t have to stop every three or four minutes and put the chain back on.

Greg: That’s a pretty significant undertaking. That’s not just baseball cards in the spokes.

Jack: No, we did that too. But yeah, that’s—it was really out of necessity and convenience, you know? And you just build on—you know, we didn’t have drill indexes or sets of drills; we dug through my dad’s garage and, you know, found what we could and found a drill that was close. We couldn’t measure it; we kind of eyeballed it and said, “Yeah. This’ll work, that’ll work.”

Fit it together and away you go. So, that was a really fun project. My brother and I still talk about that. So.

Greg: Do you still have the bike?

Jack: No. We sold it. I’m sure by the time I started driving the car, minibikes weren’t as important. My brother did get busted driving it across a, you know, a busy road, checking to see if our newspapers were on the corner yet. So—

Greg: [laugh].

Jack: It got impounded once. So.

Greg: Really? And what did it weigh?

Jack: Oh, it was fairly heavy. Water pipe, I would guess with the motor and everything, that thing went close to 200 pounds.

Greg: Wow.

Jack: Because those—the axles for that minibike were probably inch-and-a-quarter diameter, like, giant bolts with big nuts on the end.

Greg: Did your dad paint it for you?

Jack: Yep, he did. He had a warehouse and—

Greg: [laugh]. How did I know that?

Jack: Yeah, he did.

Greg: Lucky guess.

Jack: He had a, you know, a sprayer, right? We had spray guns and stuff, and I remember he painted it a, like, a metallic brown. And I think that was the color he painted one of the old cop cars that he bought that he was going to fix up and sell for money, which, you know, didn’t always happen the way he expected. So, that was leftover paint from that project.

Greg: Sure. So, you go from minibike refurbisher to what was your first job in manufacturing?

Jack: First job in manufacturing was running a turret lathe at a company called [Gardner Denver 00:06:45]. I think they’re still around.

Greg: Yeah, sure. How old were you at that time?

Jack: Oh, I was probably 21.

Greg: Okay, high school? College? Did you do trade school, anything like that?

Jack: Well, I had a unique, you know, opportunity. When I was growing up, vocational arts were still a thing back then, and the junior high that I went to had a full aluminum foundry, green sand aluminum foundry where we melt that aluminum, poured into green sand mold. There was a machine shop, a woodshop, a printing shop, and drafting. And our junior high was seventh, eighth, and ninth, so by the time I left ninth grade, I’d had time in a machine shop and a woodshop and a print shop, you know, hand-setting type. That’s how old I am. So, it was, you know, the California type case and, you know, all of that.

But, you know, that’s really kind of that foundational basis. Now, when I went to high school, everybody you know to wanting you to go to college prep and all that. So, I had all that curriculum. And I remember taking a calculus class or whatever it was, and I didn’t like algorithms and all of those calculating and logs and converting values back and forth, so I dropped out halfway through that class and took a welding class instead, right? So, you know, I’ve been welding since I was in high school. So, those are all, kind of, valuable skills to have, even today, if you apply yourself.

Greg: I bet you still find things to go weld when you need to, right?

Jack: I do. Yep. It’s not unusual to see me, if we have a fixture, we need to fix something. Even if I have, you know, business casual clothes on, I put the welding jacket on and gloves and helmet. You know, I’m not afraid to do that even now.

Greg: That’s awesome. So, you ended up running a lathe, first job. And what was that like? You walk into a shop for the first time, and instead of tinkering, now you’re getting paid to tinker, effectively, and to use your mechanical abilities. What are some of your, you know, your biggest takeaways of that first experience on a manufacturing floor?

Jack: It was third shift, right? I had two little kids at home and I was trying to get into the pattern trade. So, one of the things I needed to move up the list in the pattern trade—so they select you when apprenticeships open up—was a related job. I’d done all my college pattern classes, I already knew what the classes were going to be that I was going to have to take. I had virtually all of them done, but I couldn’t get any higher on the list unless I had a related job. So, I applied, went in on third shift. And you got to remember, I ran a manual lathe, you know, in junior high.

And this is the turret lathe, so this thing is, like, walking up to a five-axis [unintelligible 00:09:42] for me, compared to, you know, just a single-spindle lathe and, you know, the index thing and all of that. And I took to it very quickly just because of that mechanical—you know, you get a sense for, well I got to move that so that changes this and that changes that, that mechanical mindset. And on third shift—they typically have a setup guy. And he would come around, set it up, and then a guy like me would just, you know, crank that turret back and forth and make parts, cut them off, put them in a box. But on third, there was no setup guy. I was it. And I’d never set up a turret lathe before ever, right?

So, you get a box of tools and you get a print, and they go, “There you go.” So, that was a lot of figuring it out and, you know, asking for help from some of the other people around me. And then you had to check your own work because there was no—they had a quality guy that would come around, but he’d only come around when you said you had three good parts. So, you’d have to not only make the part, then figure out how to measure it. And I had been trained in that, but mechanically you can, if you can read a print, you know, you can figure it out. So, that’s kind of, you know, really my start into making, measuring parts on a fancy machine at that point.

Greg: Sure. So, you’re there, you don’t have a setup guy to help you. You’re looking around the shop. I got to figure this out or, you know, I’m not going to be able to make parts. And so, you start looking around and asking for help. Was it you know, “Hey, kid. Beat it, figure it out on your own?” Or did you have the good fortune of mentors and more seasoned folks that wanted to help you get up that curve?

Jack: There was some of both. There were some guys that were just super helpful and then other guys that they just did their own thing. And they’d graduated to automatic Warner Swasey machines, multi-spindle, so they’d just stand there and watch parts come off. And then when, you know, they see you working—you know, it was a [union shop 00:11:53], you know—what I did get from some of them, not all, was you got to slow down a little bit. You can’t work that hard. You have to slow down.

And you know, and that wasn’t how I was built, you know? My parents were hard-working and I only knew one way to work and that was, you know, work hard and pay attention. So, I listened more—let’s put it this way—to the people that were encouraging—

Greg: Sure.

Jack: —and I ignored the people who weren’t, right?

Greg: Valuable skill at that age, right?

Jack: Yep.

Greg: There’s always noise out there [laugh].

Jack: I remember, you know, I’d worked so hard, I still remember the supervisor I had. His name was Truman Jackson and we would get a setup sheet and then how long it should take you to run a part and all that. So, I’m working third shift. I’ve got little kids at home, I don’t sleep much, so I tried to keep busy and stay awake. And to me, it was a game to see how many parts I could make.

So, after a month of working my tail off, trying to make sure I made everything just as fast as I could, I went in to my supervisor and I said, “Hey, I want to know how my efficiency has been.” Even back then I was asking about. It’s like, “What’s my efficiency?” You know, because I know nobody could make those parts faster than I did. And he pulls out what was tractor feed—green and white tractor feed paper with dot matrix, you know, back in that day [laugh] and he says, “Well, you were like, 50% on this one. You got the 60, you got the 70%.” He said, “So, you know, not bad.” And then he goes, “Oh, wait a minute. That’s the rate to the automatic machine.”

So, the Warner Swasey checkers, that was the time that was on the sheet he was reading off of, so I was getting cycle times 50, 60% of what an automatic machine run and five spindles was. Because I only had one spindle. So, that was a little disappointing, but at least he was good to share oh, that rate is way different than you should be able to achieve. But that’s kind of my start, I guess, and I hadn’t thought about it until just now, that thirst for, “How did I do? What’s my efficiency? Did I get it done in time?” You know, sometimes there’s just a clock-in people that they can kind of hear that gong all the time, and if there’s a pause, it’s like, “Hey, we’ve got to get going. I hear a beat.” You know, you got to keep moving.

Greg: Fire in the belly, right? That’s—

Jack: Yeah.

Greg: —that’s why it’s there. So. So, you go from there. I’m guessing you started either moving up the ladder or maybe took, you know, higher level of responsibility at another company. Where did your journey go from there?

Jack: Well, I was there to get the machining experience for the pattern trade, right? So, I was only in that role running that turret lathe for probably six months. And the pattern trade get super busy and I got pulled into an apprenticeship. So, you know that kind of a broad, expansive, training ground in and of itself, I was the senior apprentice in the shop. So, I was, like, the first one that hired in that new phase of apprenticeship.

And when things got slow, they kept the oldest apprentice, right, the one that had the most time in. So, I worked off shifts in that job as well. So, I worked second shift. So, a lot of the apprentices who were first shift, they went on the [vent 00:15:23] side where they were polishing molds and hand polishing different things, working on brass gating and all that kind of stuff. And on second shift, I got to move around and run virtually every machine in the shop very early on in my apprenticeship. I had two weeks in and I’m running a, you know, a 12-head duplicator.

And I spent my entire, you know, career there on second shift and virtually could do all of what the pattern of trade requires from benching to, you know, plumbing hydraulics into core boxes, duplicating plates, drilling, tapping, machining compound angles, you name it, but all on manual equipment, right? So, we would sign ahead—and anybody that’s listening knows what signing ahead is, you know, tipping a Bridgeport head using the [signbar 00:16:17] and gauge blocks to, you know, indicate that in—you know you’re at 15 degrees or 7 degrees, or whatever it was. So, it was valuable. It was a 10,000-hour apprenticeship, so I spent 10,000 hours learning, you know, multiple pieces of equipment and methodologies and layout methods and all of those things. So, I was fortunate to have worked second shift. At the time, I didn’t want to work second shift, but looking back on it, it was a huge opportunity to learn compared to what some of the guys who were, you know, on first shift did.

Greg: Interesting. So, and is the reason for that because first shift going to be more staffed, more direct assignments for people to machines, and second shift gave you that room to experiment on other equipment types?

Jack: Yes. Because, you know, the skill guys want to work day shift and there was seniority and that kind of thing. And you know, that was a [union trade 00:17:16] as well, very well run because if you didn’t work, the shop steward would come around and go, “Hey, we make a lot of money for what we do. Get your ass to work,” which is unusual for a [union 00:17:31], right? But—

Greg: Right.

Jack: It was the exact right mentality, you know? Otherwise, you’re going to ruin it for everybody if everybody slows down. So, yeah, there were fewer people that had the skill set to run those machines on second shift. So, I was a warm body and they said, “Well, if he can learn it, here you go.” So, I’m just very fortunate. And you know, I had a mechanical background, and in a lot of that was to me, it was just logical.

Greg: Sure. So, I mean, what an unspoken advantage of second or third-shift opportunities is, it’s really just a bigger version of dad’s garage, right? There’s all these tools, all these machines—

Jack: Yep.

Greg: And there’s opportunities to figure out what they do, how they work. How do I become an expert at that?

Jack: Yeah, and you may never have had a chance to touch—I know guys that started a day behind me and none of them ever ran the same range of equipment that I did. They got stuck on the vent side and they spent their entire careers polishing molds—

Greg: Wow.

Jack: —even though the trade allowed—needed all of those skill sets. You know, if you’re on days and you got stuck in that bucket, you might stay there the rest of your career.

Greg: Yeah, no doubt about it. So, you know, you’re working the shift you don’t necessarily want to, but you see the glass half full and you see it as an opportunity to invest further in yourself. And I mean, 10,000 hours of apprenticeship, that almost sounds like an oxymoron. I think you’re an expert after 10,000 hours, right?

Jack: Yeah. Well, you get your journeyman’s card after 10,000 hours. So—

Greg: Yep.

Jack: —yep.

Greg: So, I’m guessing there’s somewhere in this journey, there must be a leap into management if you’re building up all this expertise.

Jack: [laugh]. I got to shorten this part up because, you know, I’ve got a long and storied career, I guess, [unintelligible 00:19:25]. You know, none of it spent behind bars, at least as of yet. But.

Greg: Yeah, that’s why you got through the pre-check to become a guest on the show.

Jack: Yeah [laugh] [crosstalk 00:19:35].

Greg: That felon report came back clean. That’s why you’re here.

Jack: Oh, good. All right. Before I got into the pattern trade, after I graduated from high school—this is kind of another parallel career path—but I’d worked for professional photography studio. And I did that on co-op in high school, and gradually after I graduated from high school, I started doing that full-time when I was 19. I was one of the top ten portrait photographers in the state of Michigan.

So, going down a totally different path in mechanical—in machining at that point. So eventually, in the pattern trade, as that trade slowed down, as it did, automotive would come and go and we’d be building engines and core boxes, and then for three years they don’t build a new engine, that slows down a little bit. So, in that slow time when I got laid off, I started a studio in the basement of my house, right, and grew that into, you know, an outside building and eventually quit the pattern trade, which nobody did in that day; it was too well paying. And so, that kind of started me on, you know, a different path and eventually I sold that, I moved to California, worked in marketing and some manufacturing of portable tradeshow displays, of all things. And eventually, that company was sold and here I sit in California, with no job and I go, “Okay, now what do I do?”

And I went, well, I know how to machine things. So, I had a friend of mine that knew somebody got a tier-one automotive supplier that were just getting in the automotive. And I always tell people the story. When I left California, I’ll tell you how much I had, because I could drive through the mountains with a single axle U-Haul trailer that had everything I owned, with a four-cylinder car. That gives you some perspective on where you were.

Greg: And the trunk wasn’t sagging, right?

Jack: Nope. No. So, I started a career basically as a sales secretary for a sales guy in a fledgling tier-one automotive company. And, you know, I knew numbers and I can understand the mechanical processes. It was a [roll form 00:21:59] company, welding, spot welding, stamping all that, so that was somewhat familiar to me.

So, I worked as that secretary for a while, and they said, “You’ve got some aptitude for this. Why don’t you try this? Why don’t you try this?” So, 21 years later, I was Vice President of International Business for a major tier-one automotive supplier. When I started working there, the company was 30 million; when I left it was a billion.

Greg: That’s some growth.

Jack: And I was in charge of the international side when we first started doing business with Honda and Toyota, and we grew that part of the business—me and obviously the people who worked for me—into a half-a-billion-dollar operation when I left in 2015.

Greg: Holy cow.

Jack: So, a lot of you know, broad, Lean experience. My customers were all transplants, you know, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, so multiple Kaizen events, inspections by touring Japanese plants, watching products get made. So, that kind of started to round out that Lean Manufacturing knowledge and the value of data, right, because the Japanese are big on tracking everything. Most people don’t know this, but the average automotive plant makes a car every 58 seconds.

Greg: Every 58 seconds?

Jack: 58 seconds, yep.

Greg: Wow.

Jack: A typical automotive plant makes—

Greg: Complete?

Jack: Complete. That rolls off every 56 seconds, there’s one rolls off the assembly line.

Greg: That’s unbelievable.

Jack: Yeah. So, that puts that manufacturing—and again, way different perspective from the hand-turning turret lathe. I mean, that’s kind of like on steroids. So.

Greg: Sure. So, you know, that—when you started to tell the story of your early career, it seems so obvious to me that there was going to be this straight line from, “Hey, I run one machine on third shift,” to, “I start broadening my wings on second shift, I graduate to journeyman. Next thing, you know, I’m a supervisor.” That wasn’t the case at all. You ended up getting hit with, you know, ebbs and flows of the economy and went off and experimented in those other areas. I mean, what was that like to go into something totally different? Like, what motivated that for you?

Jack: Well, need, you know? That’s the biggest driver for most of us. We have to eat and keep a roof over our head. So, you know, when I accepted that job, I’d owned a business and sold the business and worked at a—you know, I was marketing manager for a fairly good-sized company in California. And, you know, some humility to go back and say, “Okay, I’m going to be a sales secretary for a guy.” You know? And he’d drop off quotes to me on Friday night at 4;30 and go, “Hey, these got to be done before you go home.” And he’d go home.

Greg: And leave you there with the file?

Jack: Yeah, yep. And those spreadsheets, we’re doing them by hand, and then you had to bring them to somebody else to do, enter the data in a spreadsheet and prepare the quote and get it ready to fax, right? So, I’m that old. So.

Greg: [laugh]. But I’m guessing from that experience, right, so you’ve got the mechanical inclination. You know that. You’ve got the hands-on experience on the floor. You’re confident you know how to engineer things, make things, measure things, improve things. You talked about that fire in the belly for efficiency: how’d I do? How fast am I? But then you get this very interesting exposure to the business world, the sales and marketing side.

You got to grow your own business. Then you’re doing marketing. You’re a sales secretary, you’re processing orders, you’re crunching numbers, there’s got to be some thread there around that business side igniting another fire in you if I have to guess. What happened there?

Jack: Well, as you work at any place, you know there’s good and bad. And you know, the company worked for is a great company, still is a great company. I just met with some people from there yesterday and I had an opportunity to see some of the things they did really well. One of them was building culture. The management when I first started there really cared about their employees, you know, called it, you know, the family, and always did the right thing by their employees.

And then, you know, on the other side, you know, the same company made some, I don’t want to say business errors, but they went one direction and maybe they should have gone the other. And I’m not, you know, judging if they shoulda, woulda, coulda, but it happens, right? So uniquely, I saw what could be, and what could make a company great, and then I saw the things that could have taken them down. I said to myself, “I guess, well, I should be able to do this.” When I left that company, I said, “Well, it’s just simple to me. I know how to make things. I know how to sell things. How hard can it be?”

Greg: [laugh].

Jack: You know, I usually say a little different way. You know, I know how to make shit and I know how to sell shit, so it should be easy.

Greg: Yep.

Jack: Right? Just in a coarse way, you know? But—

Greg: Yeah. You’re allowed to talk like that on the show. That’s okay.

Jack: So, when I left that, tier-one automotive company, I took everything I had my 401(k)—which wasn’t much at the time because I wasn’t big on doing that. I was—how old was I? Well, I was 60. I still don’t have much, but I, you know, I had a house and all that kind of stuff. So, I took everything I had in retirement and bought a company with three employees.

Greg: Really?

Jack: Yeah. Why’d I buy that? Because I could afford to. The big ones that couldn’t afford [laugh] to, right? I probably could have run them well, but if you don’t have money, you know, you got to start from somewhere. So, I bought a small company, three employees, and I tell the story. We used to put our orders out on the manufacturing floor in an Excel spreadsheet with about six lines filled in and that was good for a week.

Greg: [laugh].

Jack: That was our order list, you know? And—

Greg: That’s like the four-cylinder with the U haul behind it.

Jack: That’s right. That’s right. And it wasn’t easy, you know? Even with the experience I had, you know, I made some missteps, most of it just in cash flow, not that I—I didn’t burn the cash, but inventory sucked up a bunch of cash, and all of sudden you go, “Oh, I don’t get paid. I don’t have cash.”

And you know, so that’s a rude awakening for a lot of, you know, business owners. You might have orders come in, but if you don’t have cash, you’re out of business. So, you know, those are lessons that, you know, I learned early on. And it was small enough that I could influence the culture and build a culture, you know? It wasn’t pre-canned. And everybody hated the old owner or this or that. It kind of had a clean slate. I had to earn my own way in to be in that leadership role. And that’s the way I look at it.

Greg: So, your entire 401(k)—

Jack: Yep.

Greg: —you take that, you go out looking for a shop to buy. What were you looking for?

Jack: Number one, I really seriously had to look for something I could afford, right? So, when I first looked at Rolar, I went, “You know, that’s just not big enough. I need something a little bit bigger, a little bit more in sales.” I think Rolar was probably, I don’t know, 5 to 600,000 in sales a year.

Greg: Okay.

Jack: And I thought, “Well, you know, I should look—” and then I kept looking and you find a company that’s doing 2 or 3 million, that’s a little more manageable. I was used to—you know, my business units—well, international when I left was a half a billion, and most of the individual clients were, you know, a hundred million or more. So, I knew I can handle that, but you start looking at the price tag on companies like that and there’s just no way you can even come up with a downstroke, even though, you know, I probably could have succeeded there as well. But that’s kind of why I [unintelligible 00:30:12]—

Greg: Something you can afford. And what was the nature of the shop at that point in time? How big? How many—I mean, three employees; handful of machines, I’m guessing?

Jack: Yep. We had four CNCs, three or four [path 00:30:29] machines, and then there were five screw machines, old style, six-spindle screw machines. Acme Gridleys. And Rolar had been built on—it was a completely a screw machine shop, up until about probably six years before I bought it, five years before I bought it. And gradually that work all went away, so there were still five screw machines there, but we left them set up because we only really ran three products and we’d run them maybe a week a month. And that was—so we started trying to build that CNC side, you know, find new customers, go out knocking on doors, making phone calls, referrals from people, you know, that kind of thing.

Greg: So, you realized that you needed to expand out the CNC side of the business and you literally just took a grassroots approach to that: pick up the phone?

Jack: Yep. Pick up the phone. We still don’t have a sales force or a salesperson. I’ve got some guys hunting for work that I’ll pay them, you know if they land something, but virtually all of the new orders are by word of mouth or connections through even competitors. I mean, I’m a firm believer in you can’t have too many friends in the business, so my biggest competitors, I know well and they know us.

They’ve been through our plant; I’ve been through theirs, and they say, “Hey, we can’t handle this. It’s a really good customer, we trust you guys, it’s not down our wheelhouse. Why don’t you call?” And you know, we do the same thing to them. So, you know, some work, you know, for those people starting a shop or whatever out there, sometimes call your competitors, right?

There may be things they don’t want that they’re doing, and if you’re just starting out and you go, I’d love to have that work, you might be surprised how many times people well go, “Well, I’ve got a job for you.” And it’s your competitor. So, that’s a good hint, you know, to people to another way to find work.

Greg: Right. And I mean, obviously in that case, you’ve got similar types of machines, if you can both handle the work, so on paper, you’d say, “Oh, you know, they’re [Swiss 00:32:40] house and I’ve got Swiss, and you know, they’re not going to want to give any work to me.” But it’s a gigantic market, right? That’s the point.

Jack: Right.

Greg: There’s so much work to go around.

Jack: There is. And you know, I visited a shop last weekend and the shop in its heyday, had done really well. And they never upgraded equipment, they’ve never changed their customers, they’ve been doing business with the same customers for years and years. And a lot of those products have aged out. And that company will just disappear.

And their comments were, “Boy our work is just down. How’s your work? Ours are just down. We’re, like, a third of what we were, and slowing down even more.” Like, I don’t wait for that to happen, you know? You have to always be out there looking for where that next job is or evaluating what customer is good and what customers are just overall—you know, there’s a [P&F 00:33:38] factor, right—Pain and Suffering factor—with different customers.

So, you have to be willing to get rid of some too, you know, or at least have a hard conversation to say, “I can’t keep doing it this way.” You know? In the day when I didn’t have any work, it was valuable, but now it’s keeping me from doing other more valuable things. So, that’s a decision everybody’s got to make on their own, too.

Greg: So, you start out those three employees, a few 100,000 in sales. How many employees today, Jack? What’s the size of the shop?

Jack: We’re right about 40 employees. The original building we were in was about 16, 17,000 square feet, one loading dock, you know, offices up front, kind of typical shop. And then along the way, I bought two other companies. My wife tells me you’re not doing another one, every time I say, “Hey, I’m going down to visit a company,” she goes, “You’re not doing another one.” Like, “Okay.” I guess if I want to stay married, I have to keep doing that. But.

Greg: But it’s worth asking every time, right?

Jack: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. It doesn’t cost anything to look, you know? So, the first company that I bought after Rolar was a company that actually was more advanced than we were. They had an Integrex, so it’s three plus two, five-axis dual spindle lathe, live tools, and a horizontal pallet machine.

And so, I had an opportunity to take the work first, and then the foundry that wanted me to take all the work said, “Why don’t you just buy the company?” And I went, “Uh…” Okay, so one thing led to the other and we took all that work that was in that company. The guy who owned it wanted to do some very—he had a good base of aerospace parts of exotic materials and he wanted to move and put it in his garage at home. The guy has a phenomenal business doing that. He didn’t like employees, he wanted to get out of, kind of, the rat race of the volume kind of stuff. So, we bought that, took on all the employees, but that was also a jump in technology for us from a capability standpoint.

We had just—you know, we had a couple of lathes and a couple of mills. That was pretty straightforward, and now we’re in the five-axis, dual spindle, and the talent to run it. So, that acquisition actually helped us up our skillset, too, by buying it and then making sure the employees stayed.

Greg: You were able to keep the folks that have that expertise.

Jack: Yes. Every one of them stayed. Yep.

Greg: And I know you’ve said it multiple times, you know, through this interview, and I’ve been to your shop, I’ve spent time with, you know, folks that you have on the floor. I know how important culture is to you, not just corporately, but personally. I’ve seen you pour your heart and soul into how, you know, your people feel and how they’re treated. Talk to us about what some of your best practices are for how you build the culture that you have at Rolar.

Jack: I mean, it’s pretty simple. I guess it’s a simple concept; it’s hard for people sometimes to execute that way, especially if they’ve come out of a management role where they’re the boss and people just have to listen to them just because they’re the boss. And I approach every one of my employees as though we’re equals, right? I’m here to make sure they have what they need to do to be able to make the products that we sell. I’m a support system. I’m not on the top driving it down. It’s like upside-down wedding cake: I’m on the bottom.

So, early on, when I first bought Rolar, the first thing the guys would say is, “We may need more trash cans around here. We don’t have enough trash cans.” You know? They got a new owner, so they’re going to go, “Well, we’re going to tell him all the bitches we had about the last guy.” And so, what did I do? I went out and bought, like, eight trash cans, you know, lids and all. And they go, “We don’t need those damn lids. Throw those away. We don’t ever use those.”

It’s like, “Okay.” But you know, that was the beginning of them understanding that I’m there to help and they can tell me what to do and that’s okay. You know, obviously, it’s got to be respectful, but if we’re out of whatever we’re out of, toilet paper, paper towel, you know, we didn’t have a company that delivered that stuff. I went and got it. And people would let me know when things are out, you know?

A lot of that still happens today. There’s some Kanban cards that still come to my desk because I ordered those fiber wheels. And I come into my desk and there’s, you know, the Kanban cards sitting on my desk, and I got to go [do it 00:38:22]. So, you can never lose sight of that. And a lot of people make the mistake of going through some of this leadership training where it says, you know, talk to your people about what they do at home and on the weekends.

And all that and I’ve seen it where guys just come by and say, “How was your weekend?” And they, you know, the employee starts talking about his son’s little league game. And you don’t pay attention. And pretty soon they go, “Oh, that’s nice. That’s nice.”

Somebody else walks by, the guy is in the middle of an emotional story of his kid hitting his first home run, and you walk away because you’re not listening to what he’s saying.

Greg: Oh no.

Jack: I would say don’t ask people what they did and what’s going on if you don’t want to know the answer.

Greg: Right. Right.

Jack: And then use those answers like you would in a normal conversation with a friend or relative. They say, “My kid, you know, hit his first home run,” I go, “Oh, wow. I bet he was happy about that. You get—was it ice cream afterwards?” Or, you know, dive into the conversation like you were there and what would it be like to be there. And, you know, just be human.

And I think a lot of people in management are afraid that people will think you’re weak because you’re not a tough guy and you’re not, you know, mean. And people only work and do things because people are mad at them and push them. And, you know, I’m the opposite. I’m going to lead them into doing the right thing. And I don’t ever have to yell at them. They’re way more efficient than if you yelled at them.

Greg: No doubt. I mean, there’s a lot of templates out there about, like you said, how to be tough and command and control, and you know, really, in my view, that’s folks that are trying to figure out how to play the part, but they’re fundamentally missing the empathy and that you want to be part of something bigger than just yourself where everyone’s contributing to the success of the company. And it’s not about you, it’s about everything together.

Jack: Right. Absolutely.

Greg: So, I’m going to guess you see fantastic reciprocity out of that approach. You see your employees in turn start to treat each other that way because you’re role-modeling that behavior. How do you see that play out?

Jack: Yes. Most of the guys here, in different groups, even though they came from different shops—and we can talk a little bit about how I attract labor, too, when we get to that, but, you know, they find out that they like to play disc golf or one guy has never done it. So, we’ve got guys that—I’ve never played disc golf, but the guys go out after work and play disc golf because it takes less time than real golf, and you know, you don’t have to dress up and you don’t have a lot of equipment and all that. So, there’s a lot of camaraderie and friendship with not just the original employees, but new people have come in that fold. And, you know, [Dillon’s 00:41:24] got some land on a creek, and earlier this summer, there were three or four guys brought their families up, parked their campers in his yard, and hung out at my plant manager’s house, you know, just because of they’re friends.

Greg: Wow.

Jack: You can be a boss, and you know, be kind and be friends as well. There always has to be some, you know, respect for—you know, a plant manager is going to have to maybe have a hard conversation about performance or whatever, but if you do it in a kind way, nobody gets mad. They just go, “Yeah, I get it.” Most people if they screwed up, and if you have a conversation with them, if you approach it kindly, they’re going to go, “Wow, I know it was me. I’m sorry.”

You don’t have to go. “Dammit, it was you.”

Greg: Right. Right.

Jack: “You screwed this up.” You know? They already know. And, you know, it’s the right attitude. And I never get mad when anybody screws up a part. Nobody’s seen me throw a part or get mad. It’s like, “Okay, how can we never do that again?” I’m not—you know, things happen. How can we put a system in to make sure that doesn’t happen again?

Greg: That’s more of that Jack Russell empathy that we hear so much about when we walk around Rolar. So, I know a big topic for you is technology and investments in your people. Not just investments in how they’re treated and how you run the company and the culture, but also tools to do the job. So, how do you see technology as a part of your culture?

Jack: It really goes hand-in-hand with my approach of, I firmly believe that everybody walks in my door to come to work, wants to do the best they can when they get there. And typically in machine shops, if you start to put a pacing board out, or any other thing that tracks the efficiency or part count or you start doing piecework—I won’t do piecework because that’s a slippery slope to get down, and it ends your process improvement. If you’re running piecework, you’re not running a part as fast as it is possible to run it. Because it can go faster. I don’t care what it is.

And you know, people will get their piecework done and be done with it. But as you know, Greg, when we put Datanomix in—and this kind of comes back from my time in the automotive world where I was responsible for manufacturing lines in plants that supplied a Toyota plant, or a Honda plant, that made a car every 56 seconds, right? And we only had two days of inventory between us and shutting the plant down, so if you had a line go down for a day, you’re within a day of shutting the plant down. And if you don’t make that next shipment, whatever OEM that is will have some people sitting in your plant the next day—

Greg: [laugh].

Jack: —and they’re going to say, “Okay, what are you doing about that?” You know? So, the efficiency that we need to have is—was not visible. Let’s put it that way. We all kind of think we know what we’re doing and you kind of keep your eye on where are you at today, how many parts have you run, you know? If they run 200 a day and it’s noon and they’re at 80, well that’s not too bad, you know, but there was no way to effectively gauge where you are.

And I came out of, obviously, that world, in automotive, where you had to make the right amount of parts every day or it was going to be a bad third day by the time everybody showed up. So, I had come up with this set of charts that—and, Greg, I’ve shared this with you, first time ever saw Datanomix—it was what the coffee cup report is today where I just want to come in in the morning, I want to look to see what went wrong, not what went right.

Greg: Mm-hm.

Jack: That’s the first thing I want to see is what’s not running. If it’s running, I don’t need to go out there and chit-chat with them. Although I might if everything’s running, right? But I needed to go to see where the least efficient, the least amount of part produced, where was it [red 00:45:49]? And, you know, that’s exactly what Datanomix does. You could very quickly know exactly where your manufacturing floor is.

So, the first—you know, people have to understand the psychology of their employees as well. If you’ve been an owner who kind of pushes people to make production, you got to listen to this next piece because if you put a system in like Datanomix where it’s going to track every minute of every day, every hour, every second, and your employees see that you’re putting that in, unless you address that upfront, you’re going to have a problem. And I would suggest that if you’re not going to address it with your employees, you might want to wait until your culture is ready for it. So, when we put Datanomix in, we hung the TVs up, and they guys are there installing all the boxes on every machine, and I brought everybody together and bought them pizza and say, “Why are we doing this?” I try to use the Simon Sinek thing: always start with why. Why are we doing this?

And what I said—my exact words were, “If you think we’re doing this to catch you pushing that green button as fast as we want you to push it, you’ve got another thing coming because I would have fired your ass a long time ago.” And I say it—

Greg: [laugh].

Jack: I say just like that. It’s a [shock 00:47:18]. You can say ‘ass’ once in a while. And then I say, “The next step—” the next words, I say—because everyone kind of goes quiet—and then I say, “I trust everybody standing here. That’s not the problem. I trust all of you.” You know, and that’s a big deal. Even [solving 00:47:38] it might [cost 00:47:39] a little more than others sometimes, right?

You trust them or they wouldn’t be working for you. Otherwise, you know, you would have got rid of them a long time ago.

Greg: Sure.

Jack: So, I’m a firm believer in that human beings, once they see their own performance in their own time, they’ll fix their own things without you having to say a word. And just by putting the data up, you know, it’s kind of like keeping score. I always say, you know, how—I asked my people when we put the system in, “How many of you go bowling and don’t keep score? Raise your hand.”

Greg: [laugh]. Yeah, we just throw the balls down there. We don’t know what happens.

Jack: Yeah, we just—it’s just fun. We just like knocking stuff down. I don’t know what frame it is and, you know. Everybody wants to know the score. That’s our—how human beings, you know, exist. I mean, everybody kind of wants to know the score.

So, there’s a time on the charts that say ‘first part made’ that are up on the TV screens. And that was the first question we got when we went to, you know, data acquisition and we kind of got over the hump that I’m trying to catch them doing something wrong, so I can go yell at them. They already kind of knew I didn’t do that, but it’s good to reinforce that and keep repeating that. And people ask, “What’s that ‘first part made?’ What is that? [unintelligible 00:49:04] what is that?”

You know, some of them are still little [uppity 00:49:05], you know? That doesn’t mean, everybody just hugged each other after we’ve put it in and everything’s hunky dory because you still have to work at this, right? But they started asking what that time was. And we said, “It’s just one the first part was run through in full auto.” And the system assumes that you’re done with warm-up and it’s ready to go. That’s the first part made.

And they went, “Well, we got to warm the spindle up.” I go. “Yeah, but that’s part of it. Absolutely. We want you to warm the spindle up. You’re supposed to do exactly what we’re supposed to do.” “Well, I got to step it through so that I know my sizes are all right because it’s been cold.” And it’s like, “You’re exactly right. That’s part of it. That’s exactly what we want you to do.” And our first part made was, I’m going to say half an hour into the shift, 45 minutes into the shift.

Greg: Sure.

Jack: And we never said a word to anybody, and gradually started seeing those times change. And what we found out is the employees—not my plant manager, not me—I didn’t go pull the manuals. My employees pulled the manuals—because they’re all sitting out there on each machine—and they realized that they were warming it up way longer than the manufacturer recommended. And the last time I think, Greg, you’ve calculated this for me, our first part made was reduced by 38.28%, if memory serves me, correct?

Greg: Yep. Yep. That’s worth a little bit of money, huh?

Jack: Yeah. And nobody said a word, nobody yelled, and it’s just posted, and it’s now just a way of life. So, that’s the continuation of the culture, you know? If you have a kind culture and a caring culture and you put data and people see what they can do, most people, like I said, will fix their own things first. So, if they started that spindle running, got a cup of coffee, and went and chatted about football or baseball or their girlfriend for the next half hour, those guys know they were doing that.

I probably knew some of them were. But I didn’t have to say anything. And when it’s up there, that’s when most people will just say, “Well, nobody knew that I did that. I’ll just take care of that now.” And once a week goes by and there isn’t any, like, “Well, what the hell were you doing before,” it just improved and we said, “Boy, this is just great,” then they go, “Okay.”

Because what will happen in that shift is when things start going wrong and they’ve fixed all their stuff, now they’re coming after you when their machine is down. And to me, that’s the holy grail of when your manufacturing people come to you and start talking to you about efficiency and they started the conversation, not you.

Greg: Yeah. That’s—you want—

Jack: That’s a turning point in culture.

Greg: Yeah. If you’re there, you’ve won.

Jack: Yeah. And then it’s a collaboration from there. So, “What do you think?” “Well, I’ve got some notes written down. I’ve been watching this and I think we can change this, and I think we can change that.” And problem-solving is a whole lot easier.

And then you can go back and review the data over time, you know? Does it happen in the morning? Does it happen in the afternoon? Does it happen if there’s one operator on it? Maybe we haven’t trained them right. Maybe they set a part down two feet away from where they should be setting the part down. You know, a lot of times, it’s just simple things like wasted movement that slows the cycle time down. It’s got nothing to do with the machine.

Greg: And that’s just—I think you used the word earlier: visibility.

Jack: Right. Yeah.

Greg: You couldn’t see it and now you can see it. And because of how you deployed the technology—and I think this is one of the most fascinating things is, you didn’t get out there and, you know, pointing at the TVs and say, “What’s going on here?” You really let your team make their own observations, ask their own questions, and you stood side-by-side with them and said, “Well, let’s figure out what that means.”

Jack: Absolutely.

Greg: “What do we think it means?”

Jack: Yeah.

Greg: “What opportunities does that create for us?” And that is such a different perspective than, you know, that top-down command and control, you know, why are we not at a hundred parts or whatever. You really—this is like buying the trash cans, right?

Jack: Yeah—

Greg: [laugh]. This is—

Jack: —absolutely.

Greg: You’re standing next to them and saying, “What do we need to do?”

Jack: Yep, and it will go way easier if you ask for help than you tell them what to do, you know? It’s just, it’s like having teenagers, right? You can yell at your teen to even tell them they can’t do something, but if you have a discussion with him—and, you know, my wife’s and attorney, so she would say to the teenagers, “So, I want to do this, I want to do that,” and it’s something she didn’t want to let them do, she’d go, “Make your case. Give me the facts. Why should I let you? Give me the data.” You know? And—

Greg: Are they writing full opinion briefs now of things they want to do?

Jack: No, but they kind of knew that, when they went and asked Mom they were going to be able to do this or that, that they’d better have a good argument for why it should be okay. It might be safer than Mom thought it was or, you know, whatever. So, you know, we all as owners want our employees to help us make more money. We all say that. Our employees—a lot of people talk about, our employees are the ones that make us the money and without them we can’t make any money.

And I’m a firm believer in this is, if you expect your employees to help you make more money in your business, if they don’t understand how your business makes money, why are you asking them to help you? Because the only thing they’re going to think when you say, “Hey, we got to do more. We got to make more money,” the only thing they think is that they need to just push that green button faster. And then they’re going to go, “I can’t go any faster. It’s as fast as it can go.”

And the value is not in making cycle; it’s in shortening the cycle or reducing the wasted motion. That’s where the value is.

Greg: Definitely.

Jack: You know, it’s taking that [touch 00:55:26] time out. So, we spend a lot of time trying to educate our people on how this company makes money. So, we put our POs out on our manufacturing floor and our employees know how much we charge.

Greg: You literally put what you’re making on every part out on the shop floor?

Jack: Yep. We put the cost, we put the deal right on the floor so people can look. When’s the PO due and they know the price.

Greg: Wow. That’s not something you see every day [laugh].

Jack: No. Most owners go, “Well, I don’t want anybody know what I’m making,” right? Or, “How much I’m charging for that part.” And I’m okay to let them know how much I’m charging for that part because what I’m charging is not what I keep. And that’s the piece they have to understand, right?

They realize that cycle time is money, you know, and shortening that cycle time and reducing the scrap and what is scrap costing, what is shipping costing, what is that material cost per foot, per pound, the more they understand that, the more they understand what control they have. And if they can improve their portion of the business, the business will improve. And without that, they just have a job. They just push a button and make a number. They’re not part of something.

Greg: They’re detached from the mission.

Jack: Yep. They’re not part of it; they work at it. And there’s a difference.

Greg: There’s a massive difference. Man that is—you know, this has been a fascinating discussion so far from, you know, career wasn’t anything close to a straight line, lot of zigzags, but you picked up unique skills along the way, which ultimately put you in the position to be broad enough to become an executive, to become a business owner. You know, you never lost sight of your care and core values for people and empathy for your people and wanting them to feel a connection to what they’re doing. Some parenting advice, you know? I’m going to use the, “State your case,” with my kids.

Jack: Yeah [laugh].

Greg: That’s fantastic. I mean, this is a full-service show now. We go from manufacturing to parenting.

Jack: There you go. Yep.

Greg: And then, you know, putting the POs on the floor, man, that’s an interesting one. That might be one that I have to ask every guest, you know, from here on out because I could see that one being an interesting, you know, hot button and what are the perspectives on that? But I think you said it perfectly: if you want your people to help the company make more money, don’t they need to know how the company makes money?

Jack: Yeah. It’s that simple.

Greg: Well, Jack, I really appreciate everything we’ve covered through this conversation so far. Like I said, I mean, I know you really well and I think half the stories were new to me—

Jack: Yeah [laugh].

Greg: —and we’ve spent a bunch of time talking. So, I really appreciate you sharing everything about your journey up to this point and what lit that manufacturing fire for you and how that ultimately, you know, inspired you and motivated you to literally take every dollar you had and pour it into carrying out your dream of having your own company and pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into your people to build a culture that I know that you’re proud of, I know that your people are proud of. It is so obvious when you walk the shop floor that what you guys are doing at Rolar is incredibly special, and that you are set up to continue to grow and continue to make a significant difference in the manufacturing world going forward. I have no doubt about that. So, the closing question on our show is, if you went back in time to that kid in the garage with dad, you know, tinkering with the motorbike, knowing what you’ve learned about having a career in manufacturing and the success that you’ve had and where you are today, what would you tell that kid?

Jack: I would tell that kid to continue to be curious, you know, that whole lifelong learning thing, you know? When you learn one thing, you look over there and go, “Well, how does that work? And how does that work?” And you know, it’s that curiosity that has led me to all these different careers and all these different experiences. You know, I speak some Japanese, and I remember when I first went to Japan the first time, I’m standing on a street corner and I go, “How did a poor white kid from Muskegon get here? Here I’m standing in Japan.”

And, you know, I was, you know, inner-city kid and never thought in a million years I end up in a foreign country, much less Japan, right? So, you can never rule out anything. And, you know, to continue to be curious about how things work and, you know, how other businesses work. You know, many times it’s a parallel path. It’s the same; totally different, but you can learn from it.

Greg: I think you’ve carried that out full scale, from mechanical things to people to business operations, right? You stayed curious on every one of those topics and you built out a stack of capabilities that, you know, defines the person and the leader that you are today.

Jack: And it’s still fun.

Greg: Most importantly.

Jack: I love what I do. I mean, I’m still working 50, 60 hours a week and it’s because I wanna, you know? I’m still trying to solve that next problem or make something easier or 3D printing a gadget. You know, I just printed a roller for that gear grinder that we have in the back that we automated. Remember you saw that where we took a—

Greg: Yeah.

Jack: —80-year-old machine and put a CNC controller on it to [grind 01:01:08] gears. I had to 3D print a roller to drive the indexer.

Greg: Wow.

Jack: So, yeah.

Greg: It never stops. Well, Jack, I deeply appreciate having you on the show here. I’m Fortunate to call you not only a customer, but also a friend, and always enjoy the wisdom of Jack Russell when we get to learn about how you think about culture, how you think about people, and how you think about technology, and what you’re working on next. Because there’s always a next for you. I think that’s—we’ve learned that in spades. That fire in the belly has never stopped and will never stop. So, once again, really appreciate having you on the show here, Jack, and continue to wish you the best of success going forward.

Jack: Well, thank you, Greg. And best success you guys, too, as you kind of take over the world in data acquisition. There isn’t a better company, in my opinion, that knows more about this than you guys do.

Greg: We really appreciate you saying that. And it’s customers like you that drive us to always be working on that next challenge, too. We’ve got the same disease.

Jack: Yeah [laugh], that’s right.

Greg: Awesome, Jack. Well, thanks again and take care.

Jack: All right. You’re welcome, Greg. Thank you.

Greg: Thank you for listening to Manufacturing Mavericks. If you’d like to learn more, listen to past episodes, or nominate a future Maverick to be on our show, visit mfgmavericks.com, and don’t forget to subscribe to and rate this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app.