Scaling a Family Manufacturing Business to $100M with Jenn Barlund

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Manufacturing Executive Podcast, where we explore the strategies and experiences that are driving mid-size manufacturers forward. Here you'll discover new insights from passionate manufacturing leaders who have compelling stories to share about their successes and struggles. And you'll learn from B2B sales and marketing experts about how to apply actionable business development strategies inside your business. Let's get into the show. [MUSIC] Welcome to another episode of the Manufacturing Executive Podcast. I'm Joe Sullivan, your host and a co-founder of the Industrial Marketing Agency, Gorilla76. Before we get into today's show, I'd like to take a moment to announce an incredible event that our team at Gorilla76 will be co-hosting alongside true marketing for the third consecutive year, this coming March of 2026 in Austin, Texas. It's called the Industrial Marketing Summit, and it's just for marketers in the manufacturing sector. Last year, over 300 manufacturing marketers showed up in person to learn, network, and bring back smarter, more effective marketing strategies to their organizations. And this coming March, it's going to be bigger and better. You'll see plenty of familiar manufacturing leaders on stage, as well as a wide variety of some of the sharpest minds in the industrial marketing space. Topics for this year's sessions include designing your sales enablement roadmap, building a framework for product launches, optimizing content for AI search, crafting targeted messaging for your niche audience, building a distributor benefits program, how to be successful on LinkedIn in 2026, marketing attribution in a long sales cycle, creating binge worthy webinars and so much more. Not only will this be an intensive learning event made up of speaker sessions and three intensive workshops, but will be hosting social events in the evenings with great food and venues for networking with other manufacturing folks who are trying to solve the same kinds of marketing challenges that you are. The event is being held from March 3rd through 5th of 2026 in Austin and seats are limited. So visit industrial marketing summit dot com to learn more and reserve your ticket. We hope to see you or whoever is responsible for marketing inside of your organization there. Now let's get into the episode. How do you scale a family owned manufacturing business to 100 million in sales without losing that family feel from building a culture where employees feel seen and valued to transforming the customer experience to raising the bar for operational excellence. My guest today shares what it means to focus on both people and profitability. You'll hear why choosing the right partners and sometimes saying no are critical. How transparency shapes trust and why innovation matters in an otherwise still industry. Let me introduce her. Jen Barland is a third generation leader in the plastics manufacturing industry guiding Falcon plastics with a modern people first approach with a background in operations and data analytics. Jen brings a fresh perspective to injection and blow molding. Known for breaking industry norms, Jen champions innovation integrity and inclusivity in a field historically led by men. Jen welcome to the show. Thank you. Well, Jen, it's not in your bio, but I know from our last conversation, your Packers fan and I always get excited. We have a Packers fan on the show. I'm a born and raised Milwaukee guy and so it's in the blood. So have to at least talk about the great win. We just had over the lions over Thanksgiving, given that we're recording this a few days after. But huge Packers fan super stoked about the lions when I come from a family and my husband is a huge Vikings fan as well. So in my sister's Alliance fan. So I'm kind of outnumbered, but anyone's we can get our awesome with Tucker craft being out for the rest of the season. I was a little bummed about that. Yeah, for sure. And we were talking about before we hit record, but we're cheering for the Bears to lose. I feel like we usually don't have to worry about that. Sorry, all the Chicago people listening right now, but you're usually not on our mind this time of year, but you are this year. Yeah, it's an odd thing, but we hope from here on out, the Bears just tank it. Yeah. Hey, well, we've got two shots. We got our two shots against them. So coming up. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, very good, very good. Well, Jen, let's hop into it here. You're a third generation leader of a family-owned injection molding business that has grown and evolved into what is now nearly a $100 million global operation. If I'm not mistaken, tell us a little bit about the company and just how it's evolved over time. Yeah, absolutely. So we're celebrating our 50 years in business this year, which is really exciting. It did not start out intending to be a family business. So Don and Carol, my grandparents started Falcon Plastics back in 1975. It started in one location, three presses, like one customer and it just evolved into this business that it is today. Like you said, almost $100 million. We have two global locations, one in Suzhou, China, one now in Monterey, Mexico. And then we have four US locations. And so yeah, it's just been, I think, exceeded all of our expectations. But now we're at this point of being this big competitor in the space, especially in global molding too, because there's less competition there. But so we're just pushing to be this world-class molder, I think, and provide our customers with a different experience than they can get at other molders, which is not easy to do because it's a pretty saturated market. So the team that I have here right now is just trying to push the envelope on a lot of different things. Yeah, well, congratulations on the success and growth. I mean, my business partner, John and I, we were talking about this just recently, how we've grown to a 34 person company. And we're sort of at this point of, I think, even Malcolm Gladwell mentioned it in the tipping point of one of his books, where it's, you hit the threshold of 30 to 40 people or something in there. And it becomes really hard to all the sudden maintain a sense of community without intentionality being a part of it. And you guys are well beyond the size of us, obviously, and we're just a small business. But it's something I'm sort of curious about because I know it's really important to you is, I know you guys have really worked hard to maintain that sort of modern, or that family feel while also modernizing the business. How do you balance those two things? Yeah, I mean, you hit the nail in the head. It takes a lot of intentionality. And I think for us, we've been really blessed with a lot of our employees. I think the average tenure right now, I don't think I know is 10 years of employment for Falcon plastics. We had someone retire last year at, he hit 47 years. And so we've had a lot of these employees come to Falcon and stay long term. And that helps a lot with that, right? Because you have people who have worked for Don, worked for the second generation, and now are working for the third generation. And so they've seen the business evolve. And I think, well, we all have the same morals and values. If your employee base embodies that as well, it makes it a lot easier to carry that forward. But we do. We take, we have a lot of intention around that. We have, we develop five year strategic goals. And this most recent one, we did last year, we refreshed it to go through 2030. And with one of those main goals being culture and communication, how do we continue to maintain that? We knew that acquisition was on the radar. And with an acquisition, it becomes hard to infuse your culture and your morals and values into a business that's already been performing. But it's not a task or it's not something that we are shying away from. And so this Monterey acquisition that we completed just this last month, that's our largest facility now. And it grew, it basically doubled our employee count. And so, and it's in a different country, right? And so there's a lot of challenges around that. So I think laying out the plans and hopefully we'll be successful in this. And really, we look at this in a way that's like we have to be successful in infusing our culture and our morals and our values here. It's a harder task than when you grow your employee base that you have and you continue to add one at a time. And you hire and fire to those values, right? Adding in 200 and some people just next day that you don't know what their values or culture is. Fortunately, their culture prior was very similar to ours, but it's going to take some work too. It's going to take some intentionality to your point. And so we do a lot that way. We really focus on employee well-being, whole life well-being. And I think that's what gets us a lot of traction in this space, right? Because when you really care about your people, everything else will come. And so that's kind of the approach we take to it. Let's stay on that topic for a moment. That idea of well-being, you and I were talking about that a little bit last time. What does that mean to you first of all, employee well-being? And then secondly, can you share some examples of some things that you guys physically do to love that? Yeah, absolutely. So when I talk about employee whole life well-being, it means that I don't just care about them when they clock in at 8 a.m. and clock out at 4 p.m. It's not just I care about your safety here. It's I care about do you have the tools you need to successfully budget? Do you have the tools you need to be healthy? We offer we do town hall meetings or shift meetings to help employees with tips on budgeting. We try to talk them through. Okay, 401k. What's your match? What are you? What are the benefits on the table here? Are you taking advantage of them? But outside of that, yeah, how are you budgeting your home? What are tips we can help give you there from a health standpoint? We cover a lot of our employees out of pocket costs for health insurance, not all of it. But we try to cover as much of it as we can. And we care. a lot we do tobacco program. So if you quit smoking, there's a monetary value that you can reward that you can get from that. We have an on staff. I'll call her a counselor. Someone that we provide our employees that, you know, I think everybody has an EAP program, but what a lot of people don't understand is that it's really hard to pick up the phone and call and make an appointment. And so having someone here that can walk around and talk to you where you can get time with during the day has been a huge benefit. I think for our employees, I've gotten a lot of really good feedback on that. I wouldn't have gone and talked to somebody, but since she was here and she made her rounds and talked to me anyways, I'm learning how to handle XYZ anger or alcohol addiction or whatever it may be, I think that's been a huge huge benefit for us. And we've seen, I've gotten a lot of personal feedback on the importance of that outside of that, we do wellness reimbursements, we do profit sharing. And so we share at the end of every year, we share the profits with the employees. So I think just outside of just, I care about your safety here, it's, I want to make sure that your home life is good too. And I'm giving you the tools and resources and doing everything here I can to help make you successful at home too. And I think it's so many like blue collar settings or manufacturing settings, it's just like everybody's a number. That's not what we want to be at Falcon plastics. Every single year, we do wage surveys to make sure that we're staying in line with where everybody else is in town and really trying to just make sure we're doing right by the employees in that space, both inside and outside of work. Yeah, that's really great. I mean, so many really incredible things you guys are doing over there. Imagine some manufacturing leaders see some of those things and just think dollar signs, more costs. You know, I need to be reducing costs, not adding more, but I would imagine on the flip side, it's when you look at your average employee retention and being able to avoid the cost of cost to turn over, it probably more than pays for itself over time and builds a culture where people really want to stay. Yeah, and happy employees are productive employees. I mean, you know, nobody wants to work for someone that they don't respect or it's this big family feel of we care about you and then they care about us and they care about our not only the family, but myself. I'm not going to walk out on the floor and not talk to employees or I actually get really anxious if I don't make it out on the floor or to every facility to see people multiple times a year. That's part of my job too is this concept of people's names are important to them. Me going up to ask, hey, I know your mom had surgery, how she doing, things like that. Like that is really important. Just the concept of getting to know someone beyond what they're providing for Falcon or anything else is just is really important and I wouldn't want to work somewhere that wasn't provided to me either. So I am by nature a relationship builder. Does that mean that everybody here wants to have a relationship with me? No, but that mean, but I'm still going to try and I'm still going to try to have an environment where people feel comfortable being able to speak up, right? Because so many times accidents happen or safety things happen and people will say, oh, I saw that. I didn't say anything. I saw that. I didn't feel comfortable saying something and I want to create an environment where everybody feels comfortable saying something. If I walk out on the floor and I don't have the right shoes on or if my safety glasses are on my head within five seconds, someone will be right next to me saying, Jen, your safety glasses are on your head. I don't want an environment where someone's like, I'm not telling her she's the president of the company, right? You better tell me and if somebody does correct me in that way or cracks one of the executive team members or somebody else that doesn't spend as much time on the floor as maybe an operator or production individuals, I give them gift cards because that is something that I'm rewarding there. They are helping keep our work environment safe and it doesn't matter who it is that's on the floor that's not obeying those rules intentionally or unintentionally. That behavior should be rewarded because it's we have a duty to keep each other safe and part of that is making an environment where they feel comfortable stating those things. Okay, we're going to take a quick break from the conversation here. Picture a world one year from now where the thousands or tens of thousands of design engineers, plant managers, project managers, operations folks, CEOs or whoever you need to reach an influence already knew who your company was, understood your value proposition, considered you the expert in your product category and believed you could help them solve their problem. In this world, your prospects would come to you with their guards down, already informed and genuinely excited to talk about how you could help them and your sales team could reallocate the time they spend the slinging product into facilitating deeper, more engaged conversations with right-fit prospects who actually have buying intent. So how do you get from here to there? Well, I can assure you of this, it doesn't start by dabbling in SEO or making your website look prettier or posting more social media updates. It starts with a strategic marketing plan rooted in the most important business outcomes that your manufacturing organization needs to achieve. I'm talking about outcomes like pipeline and revenue growth targets, or new market penetration, or customer diversification. Start with the outcome, then reverse engineer the marketing program that will help you achieve it. For well over a decade, our team of industrial marketers at Gorilla76 has been helping OEMs, machine builders, contract manufacturers, robotic systems integrators, and industry 4.0 technology companies strategize and implement revenue-focused marketing programs. If you feel like your company could use some guidance, please visit Gorilla76.com and consider requesting a strategy call. We'd love to have a conversation. That's Gorilla, like the animal76.com. Now let's get back to the episode. Jen, you told me in a previous conversation that a lot of molders get sort of stuck in the middle and that's a 20 to 40 million dollar range. What does Stalkin' Done? Maybe aside from acquisitions, obviously that's not a part of it, but what have you guys done differently that's let you break through that ceiling and continue to grow? Yeah, it's hard competing in this space because there's just so many molders and it's a constant competition with international, even international molders in this space too, but yeah, I think it's just the customer experience that we have, I believe that we give our customers. We will never claim to be the lowest cost molder, but we are going to partner with you right from the beginning to make a part that is help on your part design to make sure it's a part that's going to be moldable and you're going to be satisfied with it. We stand behind our work. That's something that no matter what we always want to stand behind our work and provide a superior experience for our customers. We've done a lot of work over the last years. I'll call it like Weed the Garden, where we really took this lens of we want to serve the people who treat us like partners too and who want to be in this for the long haul and who look at us with growth potential and those are the people that we give a lot to, right? All the R&D time and we're going to get competitive in that space with them and provide them a greater experience if we don't have all the noise of hundreds of customers, right? So I think we kind of narrowed our focus to say these are the people that we want to partner with and we want to continue to add partners and be diverse and serve different markets, but we have these filters. So we're not just taking the shotgun approach of we're going to be everything to everyone. We know what we're good at and we want to have partners that represent a certain profile and that's really what we're focused on and so we have our team we call ourselves edgy always happy and never satisfied. We're a really competitive group and so we take that to heart, right? We want to continue to be this world-class mold. We want to provide our customers with 99% on-time delivery. That's an expectation. You look at other molders and it's like upper 80s or maybe 90% and it's no, we take that seriously. We want to have 99% on-time delivery and we want our scrap rates to be extremely low. We want and that is something that's valuable to anybody who's buying a plastic part, right? Because I think a lot of people look at plastic as cheap and so it's like well you make a mistake just throw it away and we'll provide you new parts. We want those parts to reach you on time or before what your expected date is and we want them to be good. I think if you talk to a lot of our partners, the emphasis that we put on our key metrics and getting giving our customers that experience is why they weigh us above other molders because they know the product that they're going to get from us is good and it's going to be their on time and that's worth paying a higher price for. So we have a lot of really open book pricing with our customers and we're very transparent. That's something that we pride ourselves on as well. We want to be transparent. I think conversations can get deeper when you're transparent. Both with our customers and our suppliers and our employees even. We have a lot of transparency and I just think that has gone a long way for us in the trust department as well, right? When you're transparent, there's no surprises. Everybody's on the same page and we want our customers to be successful and when we're transparent, they understand what that looks like for us too and I think they buy into that theory as well. They need us to be financially sound so that we can continue to supply for them and that's something that I think we've done a really good job of. Yeah, one thing you mentioned in there that I'm a big advocate for as well is just the idea that Not every customer is a good customer and it takes a lot of discipline. And I think to have to say, hey, I don't think we're the best fit to be your partner on this anymore or to turn down somebody who's ready to write a check because it's not a good fit. I see that a lot in a, you know, we're a service-based business as a marketing agency, obviously. And so you really have to like make sure that there's a philosophical alignment and expectations are set properly, et cetera. And I find myself turning away. And thankfully, earned that sort of, the ability to do that in time because when you have enough people knocking on the door, you could start to be a little more selective. So I guess my question would be, how do you stay focused on making sure you're working with the right types of customers? Yeah, I think for us, there was a big turning point a few years back, our second largest customer. They were our first largest customer. Our second largest customer came to us, sat in front of us and said, if it means making an extra penny, I will step on my customers, I'll step on my suppliers, I'll step on my employees. And that does not fit our value alignment whatsoever, completely backwards from who we are as a company. And it was a really scary decision, but we basically said we're doubling your price until you decide to come get your molds and leave because that is not who we are. And that could have been, that could have drove us backwards, right? It was our second multi-million dollar customer, second in the company, and they had molds and multiple, I mean, I think at that point, all of our facilities. And really scary decision, but I would say what it did for our culture and what it did for our team members, seeing a decision like that being made to say, we will not sacrifice our values to make money was huge, was really huge. And I'm not saying that everybody is in the position to do that, but I think the more you can do on filtering your opportunities up front, right? Like, we just talked about higher slow, fire fast, higher to your values, fire to your values, type, you know, you always hear everybody say that. It's always easier said than done, they'll write as humans, we want to give everybody another chance, but that's the same way with customers. So if you have sales filters put in place that, and you understand what your ideal customer looks like, and your sales team understands what your ideal customer looks like, I think that's a lot easier up front to make that call. Even if you still want to quote the project and act like you're throwing your hat in the ring, you can, but it's just, it's so much easier to walk away at that point than it is when they're your second largest customer, they're multi-million dollars, and you're having to look at yourself and say, I hope we're still going to be a payroll after this, right? But again, it was, that was a pivotal point for Falcon plastics and kind of just the buy-in that we have from our employees and how we treat our customers and what we expect them to treat us like as well. And we're just, we're very clear about that in our sales, in our sales process too, of this is what we're looking for. We want growth, these are our filters, and you don't fit those filters, or we try to put things in place that can build trust with our customers or people that we see as potential partners up front so that we can continue to grow and develop with them. But I've had to have some really hard conversations over the years, even difficult conversations with customers who were not treating my employees right. And I've had to make the call and say, if I hear this happening one more time, you can come pick your molds up because I will not allow my employees to be spoken to or disrespected in this way. And it just continues to drive the loyalty and trust that I have with my employee base. And I just, I don't know. But it also, I think sets the tone for how we treat our customers and how we want them to treat us. It just shows and everything we do. And that should be apparent. So the more you can do up front with the sales filter side of things, I think the better chance you have of it being a successful relationship. Yeah, I applaud you for doing it. I mean, though, that's one of those really courageous decisions you have to make sometimes as a leader and it sends a message. You're absolutely right. It tells your team what you stand for, it reinforces that you're not all talk, that these core values that you say are what you're all about as a company are being lived by the leader. And those are painful decisions to make in the moment. I can think of two of those scenarios over the last five years or so where we've had to do similar things. Be the ones to initiate a breakup conversation with a client when I knew what impact that was going to have financially and my team knew it. And you look back on it and you think there was no other way. Like, absolutely, that was the right choice. But in those moments, when you're in that little bubble there to have to make those decisions and just trust that it's right and things will work out, those are the ones I think take a lot of courage as a leader. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, because you're the one thinking too. Like, I have to pay all these salaries. So if this doesn't pay an out, it's back on me to have that difficult conversation internally. But again, I think our employees see that and respect that. And to your point, that's living your values. That is living your values. Yeah, 100%. One thing that we've kind of touched on a little here, but you mentioned to me when we were talking last that you guys are very focused on bottom line. It's not just about growth at all costs. How do you talk about that as a company about what it means to not just be after every bit of revenue, but making sure you're working on things that are actually profitable? Yeah, that used to be our approach. I'd say, prior to me being in this role, we kind of always took a shock on approach. We wanted to be everything to everyone. And I think that at a certain level of business, that is just to your point earlier, not everybody can weed the garden or not everybody's in the position to be able to do those things. And so we just, I think, stayed in that space far too long. And I really wanted to make sure we were growing smart because when I say that we're focused on bottom line, it's not like we want to squeeze all of this money out of our customers. That's not the intent because I just told you as well, we have very transparent pricing with most of our customers. The point is we want to be able to, we've been in business 50 years and we have not lost money to this date, but are not going to what. But there is huge responsibility for me to my customers to continue to provide them good service and be financially sound to continue to do that and to be able to replace equipment when needed and to be able to add team members when needed and to be able to expand buildings when needed. And I think our ability to focus on the bottom line allows us to be able to infuse capital when needed if there's an acquisition that will benefit our customer base or paying out profit sharing every year to our employees to make sure that they get to have a piece in that too because they're the ones making this happen. And so that's why we focus on that because to us, that's what's going to allow us to continue to grow in the ways that we want to at a very steady rate, but we want to continue to grow steadily and be able to replace our equipment and be there for customers and be able to infuse capital when they come to our door and say, "We have a huge opportunity for you, but you're going to need to buy eight presses." It's like, "Okay, well, let's do it." So that's why that's so important. We talk very openly about it. We post our profit sharing numbers every single month so our employees can see it. We actually post actual profit sharing numbers and ideal profit sharing numbers. And so ideal profit sharing is if we had no waste, right? Like no parts falling on the floor, no customer rejections, no, we do really well in that space, but I always try to educate the employees on this every single year. There's always more that we can do to close that gap, right? We're never going to be perfect, but if we can make sure that we're taking care in what we do and not letting things like parts fall on the floor happen, that gap will close. And so everybody has a part in this and we are always trying to formulate ideas to be better. And so that gets posted every single month. They can see that. They can see the progress there. We talk about it openly. Our management teams have full visibility to the financials and they understand what our goals are and how they can contribute to that. It's really hard to change the score of the game if you don't know what it is. And so I think there was this mindset prior to maybe me being in this role of we can't share financials. It's very private, right? Dawn's generation. And I think Guy and Jay second generation did a better job of sharing. And I'm kind of like wide open. They're probably too far. They're like, oh, don't share all that. But it's nothing inappropriate. But it's just, I just get, you can't expect people to make a change unless they know the score of the game. And where we're going, right? And so we have a lot of conversations that lend themselves that direction of here's where we're at, here's where we want to be. And if they understand how they can change that or how it impacts them personally, our team, like I said, hyper competitive. So they will drive to those results very quickly. And I'm a marketing guy and I know you're a believer in the power of marketing, which can't be said for a lot of manufacturing leaders. Frankly, it's the one thing we've battled against or a decade and a half of working in the manufacturing sectors that B2B manufacturers tend to be very sales to an organizations. And C marketing is kind of this thing that you kind of have to do, but doesn't really necessarily have much impact. But I know for you guys as what in what ways is marketing up shape, falcons growth and what should other manufacturers understand about building visibility in a crowded space like plastics, for example? Yeah, Karissa Copecchi is our marketing manager. She's done a fantastic job and she really changed the game for us, came in and changed the game. But I do see a lot of value in marketing. Obviously it's, how do you make yourself stand out in a crowded space? And so there's a lot of, I think, unique things that we do on that front. to try to set ourselves apart and we brand visibility and is huge for us and so we're at a lot of these trade shows and we're half our brand and our name out there and you know we're doing like we do a post on LinkedIn all the time and a couple of other of our team members do as well and Kruis are really drove me to the spot of like okay I want you to start posting on LinkedIn and on more regular cadence and so she's helped keep up on me if I don't do my post she gets after me so but I think it's important just brand awareness in a space that's so crowded is so important and to be able to do things that set yourself apart is key and if a lot of manufacturers don't invest the money in having someone on site to handle that for them but it's people like you Joe that can step in and help and say you don't need a full-time marketing person but let me give you a quarter of my time or a tenth of my time or whatever it may be let me assign someone to your category and you can have that's those same results with working through a firm like yours and so it's hard when you're marketing to businesses instead of consumers it's a whole different ballgame and I know you know that better than I do so it's but it's something that can really up your lead generation and get you to a point where I feel like we are where we can be very selective on who we work with and it wasn't always that way but because of the efforts that we've done on the marketing front which takes a long time or takes consistent time I should say we're now at this point where we can be very selective and who we're working with and that's a really good feeling. Yeah, it's refreshing to hear that it's something you as a leader value and if seen impact your business because I know it's but until you experience it it's sometimes it's hard to think of marketing sometimes more as oh the things we do on our website or what we bring to our trade show if you're doing marketing the right way in the B2B world you're out there building awareness you're priming the market you're differentiating yourself and you're opening the door to more and better sales conversations which is a different thing than sales that's another sort of misconception that I see often as marketing is just another way to do sales but it's really not it's its own it's its own beast really so. Totally agree and to your point earlier you said I made the comment if there's kind of this cluster of molders and let's say like 20 to even 16 million arrange and it's the ones who market themselves well are the ones who go beyond that right and continue to win jobs and have the consistent growth up I think we've seen and it takes some I think a lot of people in our industry specifically like I'll relate this to plastics you're not making a whole lot of money in plastics and so it's how to spend this money on marketing but if you track it you can see that come back 10 fold and so I think it's just this launching point for most people that they're too scared to dive in and spend the money to do it but once you have it built up like to this point there's so much more that we're turning away than we're taking on and like it's just said and like you just said what a great feeling to be able to say we want to be selective in the partners that we choose and we want to grow in certain ways and it's just being able to market yourself and get yourself to that point is huge win very cool Jen before we move to a wrap up I notice in your bio you specifically called out the fact that you are a woman leading a company in an industry that is traditionally dominated by men tell us what that means to you I don't see that as a disadvantage so please don't take it in that way it's just something I'm proud of I guess I think yeah there's been a lot of doubt over the years or maybe I've experienced a lot of doubt over the years and coming from a family business and being a female in a male dominated industry I stepped into a leadership position at a young age I had kind of all those things working against me there've been a lot of comments in my career of oh that's why you're in the role you're in or things of that nature that I think I just added to my fuel tank we are competitive group I'm a competitive person and so I don't take any of that in a negative way it all just fuels us to be better and I'm really thankful for this team I have around me we have an executive team that's primarily females as well so really the only reason I say that is because everywhere we go if we go on a sales call or trade show or anything like that everyone always makes comments of wow really you know you have a big female team and it's like yeah it just is what it is and I think it lends itself to Don my grandfather's mom was of the Rosie the Riverter era and so his dad was never really around she was working full time to support her family at one point got all of her kids taken away and then worked hard to get them all back and so he always had this viewpoint of women in manufacturing or just working in general as like women need to be in the workplace and so if he hadn't had that experience I may not have he made out of the encourage me to come back and keep part of this and I may never have been part of this and so I think it's a unique aspect to my story that I'm really proud of and don't see as a disadvantage but I just think it's really cool and I get to work with a lot of really interesting people in manufacturing space both men and women and I'm proud to be kind of pioneering some of the stuff with some of the women alongside me especially in the plastic space we're just all of us together collectively men and women are taking a space to a whole new level and it's something that I'm so proud to be a part of let's take on and I'm going to see somebody like you modeling this in a space that really has traditionally been dominated by man I've had some really amazing women on this show that have been advocates in a very vocal way like Megan Zimba comes to mind and Nikki Gonzalez who speak about this stuff regularly and but I think that it's very cool and just to see some of these voices being a herd and being models especially for the next generation coming up because I think things are changing in a good way so yeah I hope we can encourage more females to choose this path but regardless a big thing for me too and we do a lot of tours and work with a lot of the local schools we also have an apprenticeship program is I want to change the fact that a lot of kids or maybe parents tell kids like manufacturing is dark and dingy don't go into that it's like oh man but there's so much cool stuff we're doing here there's so much automation and robotics and things that just I think a lot of kids would be really interested in so it's my goal to like change as many little minds as I can to see manufacturing is not dark and dingy there's a lot that goes on here and I'm a huge fan of the show how it's made and basically we get to live that every day here right so that's my goal is how do I change little minds to really have this perspective of manufacturing that's technology driven and just a really cool thing to be a part of so that's all I do that's good enough for me that's great well please continue to do it we need those voices for industry out there so very good well Jen great conversation today for anybody who's interested in learning more or figuring out if Falcon could be a good partner for them where should they go www.falkinplastics.com go to our website there's different various ways you can get a hold of us there but yeah happy to answer any questions doors are always open for tours absolutely reach out very cool well Jen thanks for doing this day thank you so much Joe I really appreciate the time you bet and go pack go pack as for the rest of you I hope you catch you on the next episode of the manufacturing executive you've been listening to the manufacturing executive podcast to ensure that you never miss an episode subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player if you'd like to learn more about industrial marketing and sales strategy you'll find an ever expanding collection of articles videos guides and tools specifically for B2B manufacturers at gorillas76.com/learn thank you so much for listening until next time this podcast was edited by resonate recordings