Manufacturers Make Strides

Inside a micro manufacturing business with Mike Adkins

• Martin Griffiths • Season 2 • Episode 25

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Micro manufacturing businesses operate in a constant balance between flexibility, quality, cash, and people.

In this episode, we sit down with Mike Adkins, President of Performance Results Plus, to explore what it really takes to run a small, highly specialised manufacturing business.

Mike shares his journey from mechanical engineering and the military through to leading roles in large organisations, before stepping into ownership and reshaping a micro manufacturing company in his own way.

He explains why resilience matters in smaller operations, how a focused team can operate with high standards, and what changes when you move from improving businesses to owning one.

This conversation covers:

  • What a well-run micro manufacturing business looks like
  • Why flexibility matters across both people and production
  • How fewer, highly skilled people can change the way a shop runs
  • The reality of cash flow in small manufacturing businesses
  • Why customers often misunderstand manufacturing costs
  • How to build process without losing skill and experience
  • The role of culture when reshaping a business
  • One practical way to get more from your team

Connect with Mike
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelleeadkins/
PRP Manufacturing: http://www.prph2o.com/

One Tip That Changes Everything

SPEAKER_01

I would say listen to your employees and find the employees that are interested in your success. Listen to them and empower them. Those guys are going to be the ones that are going to help you grow that business and make you successful.

Martin Griffiths

Hey, I'm Martin. Welcome to the Manufacturers Make Strides podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by Mike Adkins from PLP Manufacturing. Mike's had a really fascinating journey through manufacturing, from mechanical engineering and time in the military through to major organizations like Timkin and Alcoa, before eventually buying and reshaping his own micromanufacturing business. And we talk about what makes small manufacturers resilient, why lean only works when people trust the journey, and how Mike has built a smaller, highly skilled team focused on quality, flexibility, and precision. This is a really practical conversation about leadership, cash flow, people process, and what it actually takes to run and grow a niche manufacturing business. Now let's jump straight into the conversation with Mike. Hey Mike, welcome to the Manufacturers Make Strides Podcast. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01

Doing great. Great to be here with you, Martin. Thank you.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah, looking forward to this chat. So first off, just tell me whereabouts in the world are you joining us from?

SPEAKER_01

We're in Columbus, Ohio, in the heart of the Midwest, the, if you will, resurging rust belt.

What A Strong Micro Manufacturer Looks Like

Martin Griffiths

Great. Okay. That's that's interesting to dig into a little bit more about that. Where are you specifically? There's some kind of interesting kit behind you in the background there.

SPEAKER_01

We're doing this in our uh small uh fabrication facility. This is actually the uh where we build small pygmy meters. So we make very small flow meters that measure flowing water from two inches to 18 inches deep. And that's part of what we make for managers across the world that are responsible for measuring flowing water. And that's part of what we do. We help water managers across lakes, rivers, streams, people that are responsible for uh flowing water, which is probably one half of the water that we drink, drinkable water, the other half being in the ground, groundwater, and they measure it. So we make a pygmy meter, which is the stuff behind us, and then we make a larger version of it for obviously rivers, lakes, and larger streams.

Martin Griffiths

Cool. That's nice. It's it's nice to see a bit of the the kind of the reelection behind you for this. So we'll get to your background and how you got to where you are today over the course of the conversation. But first off, I'd just like to get your thoughts on when a small or a micromanufacturing business is set up well. What does that look like to you?

SPEAKER_01

What I think a really good micro manufacturer looks like, they have one niche market that they really execute well on. And then I think they have to have a second and a third one so that they can weather the storm of the first one and they can survive through the ebbs and flows of the economy. So the first thing is they've got a little bit of balance to their revenue streams and they can survive those ebbs and flows. The other thing I think that's important is flexible capabilities, both in manufacturing, but also flexible people. And there's a couple of ways that that you can go about getting flexible people, and there's a couple of ways you can go about getting flexible manufacturing. But I think the small micromanufacturers, the ones that survive today, I think the real important thing is you've got to build some kind of inherent flexibility, some kind of resilience. You've got to be able to expand when the opportunity is there, and you've got to be able to contract to survive when the opportunity isn't there.

From West Point To The Shopfloor

Martin Griffiths

It's a lot to unpick though. Hopefully, we'll be able to dig into that over the next kind of half an hour or so. But so first off, let's just go back to to the start. What originally drew you into manufacturing?

SPEAKER_01

Uh I grew up in around mechanical stuff with my dad. My dad was in the army, he was an air crew chief and a helicopter uh repairman, so he repaired cars. He'd buy a car, repair it, he'd sell it. So I just kind of naturally went out and worked with him in the garage and started working my way up and doing more and more of that. Became very interested in the on the mechanical side as a side hobby. Then when I had the opportunity to look at what I wanted to do in college, I was drawn to mechanical engineering. So we actually didn't have a mechanical engineering degree at the city that I was living in. I had the opportunity to go to the military academy at West Point. I did that, went through the military academy, graduated, and went to a heavy mechanized infantry division and was platoon leader, was a maintenance officer. And I think part of the reason I share that with you is that's just a continuation of being around heavy mechanical kit and doing things that are around heavy and mechanical stuff. When the Cold War ended, left the military and was attracted to manufacturing companies, spent 10 years at Temken, 10 years in Alcoa, and learned a lot in both those companies. Tempken was process and sales and marketing. Alcoa was really heavy in lean manufacturing. And that was the best lean manufacturing environment. And to this day, Alcoa had some phenomenal facilities in the UK. And you'd go to Kitts Green in Birmingham to see some of the best examples of lean manufacturing that the whole company had. When are you gonna go buy your own company and fix your own company? And I stopped and looked in the rearview mirror, and it was like, I fixed six companies. And she was right. Why am I why aren't I buying my own company? And about 2018, I started looking at it, and I was I found out about a program that we have in the United States called Rollover of Business Assets for Startup. And you could take your you could take your 401k or your pension plan, convert it into an equity, and then the SBA would match it at some percentage, and you can go and buy a company. And that's exactly what I did. That's how I was able to buy this company. And it's just an absolutely fantastic program.

Lean Requires Trust And Security

Martin Griffiths

Brilliant. I have a couple of follow-up questions then. So you mentioned about some of those kind of early roles. I was just interested, like more specifically about what you learned and what your takeaways from them. You said one of the organizations, you learned a lot about the sales process and then Alcoa a lot about lean manufacturing. So yeah, maybe just what were some of the key kind of lessons that you did learn and you took away from that?

SPEAKER_01

For lean in lean manufacturing, I was given the opportunity to run a pretty big business in Springdale, Arkansas. And the first thing that I learned is if you want people to follow you with lean, you have to show them to not be fearful of the journey. So 550 people, and they're all looking at each other, going, okay, if I'm gonna make continuous improvement, how many of us are gonna be gone in the next six months?

Martin Griffiths

Yeah. I'm am I kind of improving myself out of a job. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And so one of the first things I said was, we're not gonna lose anybody. We're gonna take those gains and we're gonna grow the market. And that's exactly what we did. We started the business at 150 million and we went to 250 million. And we did it because of the growth and because of the extra capacity that the lean continuous improvement projects afforded us. And I thought that that's the way to do it. Now, if a company doesn't have the ability to hit those kind of growth targets, maybe they can do that through retirements, they can do that through transfers to other divisions. There's different ways to try to not let people go. One of the toughest, worst things that anybody can do on a lean journey, make the continuous improvement and then let somebody go. You just killed the rest of your lean journey. Never gonna get another. It's it's done. You're you're done.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah, because everyone sees that and no one's motivated in any way at all to carry on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's exactly right. You're never gonna have another. So and the real simple mantra, Martin, is you can't answer a real simple phrase. And I use it all the time. It's called with them. W I f M. What's in it for me? If you can't answer that for the employee, done. So yeah, if they can't answer it, they're done. So that was one of the big things. The other one is you gotta create that culture and you gotta try to find places within that larger organization where you could light the match, where you find one lead that's super excited about it, and they're they're starting the continuous improvement board, they're starting a daily management, they're excited, and you could you see that working, then you encourage them and you show the rest of it the group, hey, look at how these guys are doing it, and you use positive motivation, not negative motivation, and you kind of encourage it. And I think that's the real strength and the power of lean manufacturing. And you know, I always talked about the four rules in use activities, connections, continuous improvement, and flow. I did the last two in reverse order flow and continuous improvement. You give everybody the chance to fix their activities, the place that they have a lot of fun in is the connections because that's where everything's always broken. And they're working on their connections between the departments, and you end up with some huge, huge improvements in the business. I I got to start, I lit the match, and then I spent a lot of time just letting it go, creating the reward structure, creating the system, creating the ways for everybody to be successful. And that was a lot of fun. That I it was one of the most exciting times of my life. And I did that with Alcoa for about three and a half years.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah, that sounds really, yeah, it sounds really, really good. It sounds like you learned a lot from that and had some great experiences. So tell me more then about the about the journey, then that transition from that to to a business owner. I imagine that must have been quite a complete big change. How did that tell me about that? How did that go for you?

Buying A Company During Covid

SPEAKER_01

I think I need to fill in a couple of a couple of other pieces to the puzzle before I go to the business owner because there's two other very important positions I had. So I worked for private equity for about three and a half years. The one thing that private equity taught me was the value of cash and how to manage the cash and how to take care of it, but not throw it away, but also to handle it very, very carefully, watching how the business did that. And that was really good to watch that, and that was really good preparation before being a business owner. The second thing is I want to give great kudos to a family business here in central Ohio. I worked for about five and a half years for a company called Englefield Oil, a family-owned business for about 50 years, and it's owned by two brothers. It's about a billion-dollar business. They they are still family-owned, and I worked directly for them and then for the COO, and they live their family values every single day, and a lot of their values and the way that they treat their employees, I just took that, and that's how I use and how I treat my folks here in the business. Because it it's the right way, it's the best way to treat your folks, to treat your your employees. And I love the way that they did that. So those two kind of pieces were fantastic right before I jumped in and took over the business.

Martin Griffiths

So you also almost had like the playbooks for all the different aspects of a business. You didn't really need to kind of learn that on the, you know, on the job. You you you saw that, saw what good look like.

SPEAKER_01

So it had the had the people part, had the cash part, the sales and marketing. This business is global. We sell internationally. We just got a$150,000 order from a company in Africa. So we're selling all over the world. That's amazing.

Martin Griffiths

That's good. That's good. It's interesting that you mentioned about the cash flow management, actually, because so I've, you know, I've been a business owner for well, so coming up to 20 years now. It took me about 10 years into that, maybe 15 years into that, before I re before I figured out that a cash flow management system is different from a financial accounting management system. You know, we now run the business with the cash flow management system separate to our accounting. And it has made, you know, it it made it it was a massive transformation from, you know, kind of running out of cash, you know, ups and ups and downs, you know, over time, and it being quite stressful to having that cash flow management system in place, being able to forecast, knowing what you have available for, you know, investment, for hiring, for training. Yeah, from I I I think it's you know, I think it's something that does get overlooked a lot, but it makes it can make such a massive difference, you know, to to small businesses. Well, you know, particularly when you have to, you know, you have different payment terms from different customers, some some customers paying late. You know, if you're living on those, you know, kind of small margins and without much of a plan, those things could be a massive impact, can't they?

SPEAKER_01

They they can. And then we do business with the US government, and they're famous for delivery, and then, well, after we inspect the goods, we'll pay 45 days later. So we won't see payment for 60 days. Which and they got the best terms and the lowest prices in the market. So it it's really, really tough to you've got to really look at the cash flow and you've really got to do some hard digging. What I do now is if I've got a government order, I'll go to my vendors and ask them, can you help me out? Can you help with preferential terms because this order is going to the government? Can you give me 60 days terms because that's what those guys are asking me to do? And and in some instances, they're they're amenable to it.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah, so so tell me a bit more about the the starting with this business. How did it, how did the how did the transfer for you go? How were the first, you know, how was the first 12 months or so pan pan out for you?

Building A Smaller Skilled Team

SPEAKER_01

So you asked the million-dollar question right there. Yes. So I bought the business in December of 2020, right at the height of the COVID pick COVID turmoil. And yes, it was as bad as everybody can imagine it would be. So right as I bought the business, I found out that my business partner was a little bit of a fraud. Yeah, there were some portions of the business that he purported that I had purchased, but didn't, and that's not the focus of this podcast that may be a future focus of another podcast on legalities. But we kind of went through all of that stuff and that's all done. But what I ended up what I ended up doing is I exited him after about 75 days, exited about half of the crew, had about 20 people in the business, let about 10 of them go. And it was a it was pretty obvious who didn't want to be here. And there's there's a process that I would say is self-selection, and it it's not hard to see who's selecting themselves to walk out the door, and I didn't have to do too much to help them out. And the the crew the crew that I had left over were the folks that wanted to be here, and then I started building a different team. And I think now's the time to talk about kind of what did I want the team to look like, and who did I bring in as I brought the team in. The the prior management wanted to have 20, 22 people, a lot of people working on the machines, not highly skilled, and just making a bunch of stuff, and we're gonna make 25 parts, and maybe 10 or 15 of them are gonna be okay. My way of working is I'm gonna have fewer people highly skilled, highly trained, highly qualified, making high quality instrumentation. So we're not wearing white coats, but the mindset is white coat, each part with precision, test, quality, mic in every part, making it to perfection. Everyone fits, everything is going out. We get we get the certs for material each and every order, etc. etc. And we've moved in that direction significantly. We're getting certifications for every single test of material, for every single bit of material that we get in now. That's just part of our mindset. So I went from having 20 people, now we've got 12. And I've got folks that if you will fast forward to what I have today, I've got a fusion 360 computer out on the shop. I've got guys that can walk up to the fusion 360 computer, start to do the drafting, make the part on the fusion 360, hit the button, get the code, put it on a thumb drive, walk out to the CNC machine, plug it in, start to download the code. They might make some changes to the code uh after it's downloaded. They'll put the fixture in, put the tooling in, grab the material, and start making the parts. I mean, that's beauty. And that's the way I want to run the shop. Very different than how it was run prior. So I've got a few people highly skilled, high quality, making great parts. And that's also kind of the mindset of how I'm the people that I'm looking for and how I'm treating the people. And I'm creating it, creating an environment where I'm giving them the flexibility to come in when they want to come in. They can come in at different hours. The shops open at six in the morning, stays open till about six in the evening. If they want to come work on the weekend, if they want to come work in the evening, they can. I have a one person who can run the shop policy. There's a way that they can do that. We had a guy that used to like to take advantage of that. They come in at two in the morning and work for half a day if he wanted to. When his wife was working the midnight shift, then he'd come in. You know, no problem.

Martin Griffiths

That's interesting because what I was going to ask you how you'd found, you know, because finding those highly skilled people can it can be quite competitive, and you know, sometimes to find those. So so that's your that's been your route, really, to give them that level of flexibility that they wouldn't get elsewhere. And responsibility, I suppose, and independence.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And then the other thing that I've found, and I don't want to give all my secrets away because some of the competition is going to be watching this.

Martin Griffiths

Sure. Sure.

SPEAKER_01

You know, we hired a gentleman who's a gunsmith, and he's a he's a licensed gunsmith in a neighboring state, and he says, you know, I'm an expert on manual lays and mills, but I don't know CNC equipment. We will teach you everything you need to know about CNC. In the state of Ohio, we have what the what Ohio calls tech creds. So I can send somebody to school, and then the state of Ohio will reimburse me for half of their tuition. And I could just keep sending them and sending them for more and more courses. And eventually they can become certified master, CNC machinist, whatever they want to do. So the state of Ohio is really big in those certifications. I'm also working with the local vocational school. We bring some kids in in the summer. We can have them work in the fall and the spring. And I've got two college kids that are working for me part-time right now as well.

Martin Griffiths

Okay. That's amazing. That's a really interesting journey. And I guess what you're saying there is that time that you spent were that company in your state, were values really important, really, Len, the transformation that's come about for you now was you starting off and saying these are the values, this is what the this company stands for now, and then building the team around those those values. Is that what you think's been most important?

SPEAKER_01

It was, and the other thing that I didn't mention in this journey, I did find a lead, a shop four floor lead. He didn't know the Japanese word for lean this or that, but he had the right ideas. He and I were talking once, and he said, you know, Mike, I don't quite understand what this means, but every time I take this part out, I want to make the cycle time 10 seconds better the next time I run the part than I did the last time. And I said, you know, Adam, I don't care what the Japanese word is either. Just make it 10 cent 10 seconds faster.

Myths About Low Volume Manufacturing

Martin Griffiths

Yeah. Perfect. Okay, great. All right, thank you for that. I want to switch gears slightly. We have a section called Myths and Truths. I'm gonna put a couple of statements out there. You tell me if you think it's a myth and a truth. Low volume work is easier to manage.

SPEAKER_01

I would say no, because the the challenge with low volume work is you've gotta find where to get the casting if you need casting. Nobody wants to make the casting. So you might end up having to make a make a big piece out of a slug. You might end up having to do some other things. So you've got to be you've got to be really flexible in some of the raw materials and how to get some of those inputs started and those kinds of things. So no people aren't necessarily interested in even helping you get some of that raw material started. I I don't think that's the case.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, next one. I feel you may have a strong opinion about this, but we'll see. But customers understand what goes into the cost of manufacturing parts.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely not. Okay, tell me why. Absolutely not. I think we've spoiled them with companies like Amazon and the instant gratification in the marketplace that we see in retail. So somebody calls me up and wants a unique 350-pound sounding weight that's gonna take us a long time to make and just to get the casting. And they're asking me, well, why can't you have it next week? Well, we can't have it next week because they're gonna be finding a place to put it in the foundry for the next month and a half. So I I think the I don't think the marketplace customers understand that low volume manufacturing process. Just don't really know what it takes to do that. And that's okay.

Martin Griffiths

That's why they pay us. Sure. Okay. Well, leading on from that then. So in the niche market, being the only supplier or one of the few suppliers in a niche market makes running a business easier?

SPEAKER_01

I don't think it makes running the business easier. I've run high volume businesses, I've run low volume businesses. The just it's different challenges. It's just different challenges, Martin. I think everybody running a manufacturing business now has some challenge. High volume, you're gonna have capacity and people challenges too.

Martin Griffiths

No matter where you are. Okay. Well, you're leading into my next questions quite nicely then. So smaller teams are more flexible.

SPEAKER_01

I do think smaller teams are more flexible, and maybe it's because of because of the size, it's easier to communicate, it's easier to to adjust, it's easier to pivot, and we can move faster and we're more agile. And I think that agility is one of our competitive advantages.

Growth Plan For 2026 And Beyond

Martin Griffiths

Absolutely. Okay, great. All right. Thank you for indulging us in that section. Think about now and the future then for you. What are you focused on at the moment? Like what's your focus for this year?

SPEAKER_01

For 2026, the big focus is uh continuing to establish ourselves in the North American market. The North American market has seen several years of stagnation because of the governmental activities, the doge, and then the quarter that the government was basically shut down last year. The Department of the Interior lost about 37% of their budget. So the government's been reducing their spending. I understand that some of that may be coming back, or it may be coming, some of it may be moving in different forms. So there's opportunities to maybe work with other folks and do some other things. And I think the need is still there. The tagline for the USGS, Science for a Changing World. And, you know, that's true. We always hear about hey, this is, you know, we're getting more rain here, more snow here, more this, more that. We need to be able to measure all those climate changes so that we can adapt ourselves and adapt the way we live and adapt the way we, the way we move and and how we're living on the planet. So so that's one of them. The other thing that we're focused on is we we see tru we continue to see tremendous growth in South America and Asia. So those are two areas where I'm focusing some international resources and getting some help from the Ohio Export Program. And then the third area, we're launching a precision components business. So we make our own, a lot of our own internal precision components. We've talked about that a bit. So I've started to offer some of those, some of that capability to the marketplace. And we're seeing some folks coming and asking us to make some of those parts. And I've got a few customers, and we want to continue to grow that. And that's one way that I can grow that second and third leg so that when the hydrological market dips, I've got something else to rely on.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah, so you don't have that over-reliance on one industry or one vertical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right, right.

Process Versus Skill On The Floor

Martin Griffiths

Sounds good. I wanted to just to recap back then on something you mentioned before. So you mentioned that your kind of vision is to build the team kind of focused on more highly skilled people. I was just wondering, do you ever see an issue where this could be with skilled people, this could be with unskilled people, where there's the balance between processes and skill or memory. Where do you think there is an issue where there's too much of a reliance on memory or skill, and maybe not enough on process across a manufacturing team?

SPEAKER_01

That's a really good question. We're we're continuing to build process into all of the CNC machines and all of our parts and all of our activities as we do them. So one of the things I talked to you about the parts and the G-code and the M code. So when we program a part and we put the G-code into the program or the M code, what our what our CNC machinists is doing is they actually put a title at the top of the G-code, and they're putting what the part number is, and they're putting what tools they've used, and they're putting, if they had to use a fixture, what the fixture is that they used. So all of that's at the top, so that if somebody else comes back and has to run that part, they know here's the tools, here's the program, here's the tools, here's the fixture. So we're building process into it for the next person to be able to do that. So we are building quite a bit of process into our manufacturing as we move forward. We've only begun that, Martin, in the last 18 months. That was not a practice five years ago. We just started that, you know, like I said, 18 months ago, when we really said, hey, we got the right people now. We got enough people that know how to program. Let's start putting this information into the programs.

Martin Griffiths

Go, yeah. So that's a great question. Yeah, it's a balance really. Right. What do you find most rewarding about what you do then?

The Case For Micro Business Support

SPEAKER_01

I love working with the the folks. I love working with people. I love winning sales, I love winning in business. I love it feels like I'm giving back to the community and I'm I'm doing some good for for humanity. I'm just I'm doing something good.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah, something positive into the world, it sounds like it, absolutely. So what would you like to say five years into the future, what would you like the environment or the situation to be like for in terms of support for micromanufacturing businesses like yours?

SPEAKER_01

That's a great question. And maybe a little bit of context. I feel like a micromanufacturing business, less than five million dollars revenue, less than 20 people, we're kind of under the radar. I would like the US government to acknowledge that that group of customers or that group of businesses, that size of businesses is important. And maybe there's some kind of a support system or a structure for that size business. You see large businesses getting all these loans and support and come and work on this project, come and do this, come and do that. But you don't hear anything for small business. Well, you you see stuff for the small business administration, but I've been trying to unlock that door for a while and I haven't been successful. And maybe one day I will, but just it's been it's been a harder slog than than I would want it to be. But maybe one day I'll figure that out. Yeah.

Martin Griffiths

But well, I guess one of the big challenges there is, you know, a micro business, the owner has got so many balls to juggle anyway. If you have to choose between, you know, closing customers and getting sales in versus struggling through, you know, a complex bureaucratic process, you've got to go with the option that's gonna that's gonna bring the the orders in, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01

Right. That's exactly right. Yeah. And, you know, today I work on a couple of customer orders and I work on on something that's gonna bring revenue in or it's gonna grow sales. And if I gotta go do this 10-page SBA report, I'm I'm not gonna do it. Or I'm gonna do it at midnight or whatever.

Martin Griffiths

Sure. Yeah, it's not gonna keep the the doors open. What would you like to see other businesses, other micromanufacturing businesses doing more of?

SPEAKER_01

I would like to see some somehow that we band together some way for us to get together to create a voice. I don't know what that voice would be like, but maybe there's a small voice of small, super small micro voice, micro business, micro business voice, you know, for manufacturing or s small, small business. I don't want to call it call it small business, but small micro business. Yeah.

Martin Griffiths

Who can kind of get together and who can kind of like lobby and put the case forward for for for micro and small businesses?

SPEAKER_01

Right. Right. Less than five million, because when you say you're less than five million, most of the bankers turn around and walk away. Yeah, they're not interested.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah. So how have you looking back over the past few years, you know, you've built this into a successful business. How how do you think you've got over those? What pushed you to get past those challenges and you know, carry on and make it successful?

SPEAKER_01

I love what I'm doing. I love the business. I love the people I work with. I love the challenges that we have. I wake up every morning and it's the challenges. The challenges that I had five years ago, there's less of them today than there were five years ago. And the magnitude of them is getting smaller. So every day, what do you want to call them? The magnitude is reducing. So it's getting better and better and better.

Martin Griffiths

That's good. You go and get in the right direction then.

SPEAKER_01

Correct. Yeah.

Listen To Employees And Close Out

Martin Griffiths

That's good. That's good. Thank you, Mike, for the conversation so far. It's been really interesting to hear your journey, really interesting to hear your viewpoint. Just before we go, I was just wondering if you could kind of leave one small thing that you think people maybe overlook that can make a big difference in the manufacturing business straight away.

SPEAKER_01

One small thing. If I could talk to any of the business owners that are that are walking in and they're gonna take over a business, I would say listen to your employees and find the employees that are interested in your success. Listen to them and empower them. Those guys are gonna be the ones that are gonna help you grow that business and make you successful. And I I was thinking about this in a little bit of a different way. I was thinking about creating the lean culture and how you kind of start that journey and you look for that person or you look for that group that that you can enable or you can you you see somebody that could start that spark and you allow them to start that spark and and you coach and encourage them and they start that journey with you. You look for somebody like that.

Martin Griffiths

Yeah. You can't do it yourself. You've got to have a good team behind you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And if you're a business owner, you've got enough EQ, you're gonna be able to see, you're gonna be able to figure out who that is.

Martin Griffiths

So if you're enjoying this episode, please give us a follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That would help us to keep bringing authentic manufacturing conversations with the people who are shaping our industry. Thank you. This has been a great conversation, really interesting. I think really helpful, lots of really helpful bits of information.

SPEAKER_01

And what can people go to find out more about you? Sure. We've got a website, www.prph20, not the number zero, but oh.com. And we're also at LinkedIn. I'm at LinkedIn at Michael Lee Adkins, and we've got a LinkedIn website, PRPH20, as well.

Martin Griffiths

That's great. Thank you, Mike. We'll pop links to those in the in the episode description. Yeah, really interesting to hear about your journey. Really interesting to hear about where you're at at the moment and your thoughts for the future. So, yeah, thank you for this conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Martin. It's a pleasure to be with you.