Terry Iverson on Why Parents Are the Key to Filling Manufacturing's Skills Gap
Manufacturing Happy Hour
Terry Iverson has spent 43 years selling machine tools and nearly three decades trying to persuade young people that manufacturing is a career worth considering. In this episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, recorded on the patio of the Vanguard in Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood, host Chris talks with Iverson about the new book Inspiring Champions in Advanced Manufacturing: Discover the Path to a Debt-Free Career. Iverson's central argument is that inspiring students is the easy part. The harder and more important job is convincing their parents, whose picture of manufacturing often comes from a version of the industry that no longer exists.
A Book With Two Front Covers
Iverson describes the book as an attempt to reach two audiences at once. Young people who know nothing about manufacturing are relatively easy to interest, in his view. Their parents are harder, because many of them remember the manufacturing of years ago. They want the best for their children, which Iverson says they should, but he argues they need an accurate picture of what today's manufacturing offers.
To reach both groups, the book has two front covers. One side is the parent edition and the other is the student edition. Each reader starts from their own cover and reads toward the middle. Each edition includes questions for the other reader, and there are about 20 or 30 QR codes that link to digital material on the topics covered.
The content is built from a series of interviews. Some are aimed at students, some at parents, and many appear in both editions so that families have shared stories to discuss. At the back of each edition, Iverson lists which stories are common to both and which are unique to each side. A parent and child can then talk about a story they both read, or ask each other about one only the other person saw.
Chris summarized the mission as changing parental perceptions of manufacturing. Iverson agreed but widened it. He wants to change how manufacturing is perceived across American culture. He believes manufacturers have done a poor job of bragging about their industry. He also thinks guidance counselors, the education sector, and government leaders need to know more about what manufacturing careers offer, along with parents and young people.
An Unconventional Path Into the Industry
Iverson comes from a family manufacturing business that will celebrate 100 years in about a year and a half. He says he had the capacity to be a good student and took AP Calculus and AP Physics at a strong prep school in Jacksonville, Florida. He got bored, though. The way he was taught did not connect with him, so he had to study harder than he wanted to.
He attended five colleges. He started at Florida State, which did not offer engineering at the time. He transferred to UW–Madison, which he calls a great engineering school but a very cold one. He then went back to Florida, where his girlfriend lived. They married soon after and moved to Wisconsin. There he worked for less than a year at his uncle's machine shop, which had about 200–250 people then and later grew to 750. His job was buying material from suppliers such as Central Steel and Bethlehem Steel. At the same time, he studied mechanical engineering at night at Marquette.
The night-school schedule kept him downtown until 12:30 or 1 a.m. three nights a week. By his third year of night school, his sixth year of college, he had reached thermodynamics. He says he genuinely meant to finish. However, his wife was raising the children largely on her own, and he realized that in the machine tool sales work he was doing, and has done ever since, he did not need more engineering. With his wife's agreement, he stopped.
From Speaking at Schools to Starting an Initiative
Iverson dates his advocacy officially to the mid-1990s. A friend, Harry Moser, then chairman of the Charmilles EDM company, was pushing to bring young people into manufacturing and urged Iverson to speak to high school students. Iverson did. He was glad to help the students, but he soon felt that talking to one group at a time was not making a big enough impact.
Moser later founded the Reshoring Initiative, which works to convince companies that had moved production to China or elsewhere in Asia to bring it back to the U.S. Iverson says he told Moser it was a phenomenal initiative but asked who would set up and run the machines and make the parts once the work came back. That question led him to think about starting his own effort. Its goal would be to convince people that manufacturing is not the "dark, dirty, dangerous and dead end" field they imagine.
Why a Second Book
Iverson's first book, Finding America's Greatest Champion, was published in 2018. It addressed four audiences: students, parents, educators, and industry. His wife had suggested separate books from the start. He recalls doubting at the time that he could write even one.
He eventually decided that a book aimed at just two audiences was needed. His reasoning is that if parents and students can communicate and sort out reality from perception, "then we can literally solve the skills gap." The two-front-cover format came out of that idea. The new book focuses only on students and parents.
What Germany Has, and What the U.S. Has
Chris raised the book's discussion of German apprenticeships, which have portable credentials, exams, and certified instructors, and asked whether something similar could grow in the U.S. Iverson cited Virginia Rounds of the German American Chamber of Commerce, who is interviewed in the book. She quotes her boss as saying that Germany has the system but not the people, while the United States has the people but not the system. Iverson notes that the U.S. has more than 330 million people and a very different culture. He puts Germany's population at around 30 million and says it is declining.
According to Iverson, apprenticeship in the U.S. was healthy in the 1970s and 1980s. During the recession of 1982–83, which he lived through in Milwaukee, many companies closed their apprenticeship programs. He also points to the idea, promoted around that time, that the U.S. would become a service-based economy. He calls that a harmful notion and argues that manufacturing has to be at the core of a prosperous nation. Apprenticeship is now making a comeback, he says, with the German American Chamber of Commerce active in the Milwaukee area and the Midwest. However, he believes U.S. culture has not yet caught up with Europe's apprenticeship mindset, even though it is improving.
Chris added that the German credentials make skilled workers' qualifications transferable. An employer knows what it is getting when someone moves from one company to another. In the U.S., he said, a claim of experience is often vaguer.
Engagement, Not Money
Chris paraphrased a line from the book that stood out to him: real success does not require money, it requires engagement with your child to help them choose the best path. Iverson agreed and expanded on it.
Some families can save for college and others cannot. Iverson says neither situation is right or wrong. His point is that saving the money and telling a child to go to school and figure it out is not how the process should work. In Europe, he says, the culture works hard to understand what each young person is passionate about and what their aptitudes suggest they will succeed at. Students enter apprenticeships at around 16 or younger and are ready to work at 18 to 20. He acknowledges that one challenge for U.S. apprenticeship is getting that information and mindset to 15- and 16-year-olds.
In the U.S., by contrast, he says many parents send their children to college to figure things out. The result can be a delay of two to five years before the young person finds success, or as long as seven years if they never finish a degree. During that time, he argues, they could already have been trained and working in a well-paid career.
Iverson is also vocal about student debt, which he says makes early success very difficult. He points out that many manufacturers offer "earn and learn" arrangements and pay for technical education for people who join them, but that many people do not know this. He tells young people that it is fine to look at manufacturing and decide it is not for them. What would be wrong is if industry leaders never put the option in front of them. If the option were presented widely, he estimates the industry would see two, three, four, or even ten times more people. Even if 40, 50, or 70 percent decided against it, he says, that would still be a large gain.
Reaching Kids Early: Makerspaces, Coloring Books, and Camps
Chris brought up children's makerspaces, which he had not heard of before reading the book. Iverson said he is not an expert. As he understands it, the makerspace movement puts young people in comfortable environments where they learn about building "almost by accident." He also mentioned an organization in Florida, rendered in the transcript as "Fleet," that produced coloring books showing manufacturing settings. He sees this as an example of what is needed: early exposure that makes children genuinely curious when they hear about manufacturing later.
He also cited Lego robotics and high school robotics teams. He mentioned the familiar parent story of a child who takes every toy apart and tries to put it back together, which he calls a sign of an engineer, manufacturer, or maker in the making. His own organization is trying to reach middle schoolers through camps. In the camps, students make a pen set with a case. At the first camp, which had just taken place, students also left with their names laser-engraved on a plaque.
Industry and Schools: The Hubble Wrench
Chris asked how a program like Wheeling High School's, which has made parts for NASA, comes about. Iverson said it does not happen without an industry member reaching out to the school. He described a late friend connected to a company called Numerical Precision. The transcript renders the name as Egon Yeagen. Iverson says Chicago-area listeners will remember him well; he was from Switzerland and was a strong advocate of apprenticeships. One part the company made was a wrench that Iverson says was used to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in space.
Iverson describes Wheeling and Elk Grove, Illinois, as manufacturing-centered communities. When companies there reach out to local high schools, the schools' programs make components for projects the companies are involved in, such as the space program.
Signing Days and How Far There Is to Go
Asked whether the country is getting better at celebrating manufacturing, Iverson described National Signing Day events. He said there are two kinds. In one, students sign on with a company they will work for. In the other, students commit to a technical college, much as others commit to a university. He said one of them started in Virginia, possibly at Henrico Community College, and that he spoke with the man who came up with the idea.
His overall assessment is mixed. Things are getting better, but they started from a very low point and there is much further to go. High schools are bringing back programs, which he welcomes. But he says too few companies reach out to educators to build partnerships. Most importantly, not enough parents are convinced that manufacturing is a real career option for their children.
Three Things That Need to Happen
Chris asked for the one to three changes that would most help parents see manufacturing differently. Iverson gave three.
Manufacturing Day. In 2012, Iverson says, Jeremy Bout of Edge Factor, Rodney Grover of the Champion Now board, and Iverson met at his office with representatives of industry associations including FMA and TMA. The group was advocating for a national manufacturing awareness day on which manufacturers could brag about their work. Pat Lee of FMA said the association's board was about to vote on something called Manufacturing Day. Iverson describes that meeting as preceding the initiative's launch and says the group gave feedback to encourage it. Manufacturing Day now happens every year. His first recommendation is that manufacturers sign up, invite parents and students from their communities, and show pride in what they do.
Parents focused on each child's gifts. Iverson apologized in advance in case this came out wrong. He said parents need to pay closer attention to what each child is passionate about or naturally good at. That may mean accepting that the college they would like to brag about among other parents, such as Carroll, Marquette, MSOE, or Northwestern, is not the right fit. He says that if you count the young people who go to college, finish a degree in four or five years, and then actually use it in their profession, you get less than 20 percent. College savings, he suggests, could instead go toward a home down payment, seed money for a business, or a less expensive education. He stresses that he is not against four-year degrees. They are right for the 15 to 20 percent he mentioned. His concern is the other 75 to 85 percent. Matching young people with what they are gifted at "has to be by design, not by accident," he says, and doing that can accelerate a child's success.
Industry, education, and families on the same page. His third point is the approach the book itself takes. He wants parents and children talking honestly, as he says European families do when children are 14 or 15, about the options available and what the child is good at and enjoys. He encourages early internships. If a student visits a manufacturer and decides it is not for them, that is still a useful result. He notes that many young people drop out of college, as he did, and then drift until they find a career. He considers himself fortunate: his father, grandfather, and two uncles were in manufacturing, and he was good at math and science. Most young people do not have that advantage.
What Excites Him About the Industry's Future
Asked which new manufacturing jobs excite him most, Iverson first said he does not know how AI will affect manufacturing. Chris noted that the podcast has discussed AI's early impact but that the long-term outcome is unknown.
Iverson considers automation a necessity. He is most excited by automation that leaves people with challenging roles rather than simply loading machines. When he entered the industry, computerization was just beginning, and it has since moved to the forefront. He writes in the book about gamers. He says he had not realized how big gaming is worldwide and believes many gamers are natural fits for computerized machining processes, something he thinks many people do not know. He also mentioned 3D printing. He did not expect it to get as far as it has, and he finds fully assembled printed mechanisms with meshing, working gears fascinating. He says he does not know how much further it will go.
Choosing the Stories: Staying Relevant and Correcting Omissions
Chris noted that several past Manufacturing Happy Hour guests appear in the book, including Drew Crow (episodes 46 and 124) and Nicole Walter (episode 128). He asked how Iverson chose whom to feature.
Iverson said he did not want to reinvent the wheel. His job lets him meet many people, and he tries to stay aware of social issues. While he was writing the first book, the #MeToo movement was underway, so he focused on why there are not more women in manufacturing. He says there is no valid reason for that. While he was writing the second book, what he calls the racial awakening was happening. Looking back at his first book, he felt he had done "a terrible job" of advocating for people of color in the industry. He says there are even fewer people of color than women in manufacturing, and he wanted to make that right. Chris described this as a self-reflection exercise with each book, and Iverson agreed.
Of roughly 100 interviews, Iverson estimates he had to introduce himself cold to fewer than 25 percent. Drew Crow was one of them. The first video of Crow's that Iverson saw was about a community college student who had been inspired and energetic and then faded away. When Crow asked why, the student said his mom had told him he shouldn't be pushing buttons all day. Iverson recalls Crow picking up a phone and replying, in effect, that everyone pushes buttons all day, so why not get paid good money for it. Iverson decided Crow had something to say and wanted to elevate his voice. In the year or more it took to write the book, Iverson says, Crow went from barely being on social media to becoming a major figure in manufacturing promotion.
Why Now
Asked why the book matters at this moment, Iverson laid out a timeline. He entered manufacturing 43 years ago, began advocating to young people around 1995, founded his organization in 2012, and started the first book around 2013, publishing it in 2018. People liked that book, he says, but it was not concise enough for the audiences who matter most.
He wrote much of the second book during COVID. During that time, he says, the American public began to realize the country should be making more goods at home instead of having them sit on any of 200 ships off Long Beach, waiting months to be unloaded. He admits he "kind of fell into" some of that timing, but he sees the book as part of a natural progression that goes back to 1980 or the 1990s. At every earlier point in his career, he says, he felt things were bad and would get worse. This is the first time he feels there is hope of them getting better, because awareness is growing. What is still missing, he says, is a real call to action.
Chris added some statistics he took from the book: 69 percent of manufacturers want to move production back to the U.S.; U.S. manufacturing on its own would be roughly the eighth-largest economy in the world; and the U.S. makes about 20 percent of the world's goods. Iverson confirmed the economy comparison. Chris noted that the U.S. has not stopped manufacturing but has moved away from it, and said he is interested to see it move back.
A Call to Action
When Chris asked whether anything had been left out, Iverson returned to participation. His organization is starting to run camps, and he invited manufacturers to sponsor one. He also mentioned a Kickstarter campaign set to launch on August 23, through which people can buy boxes of books for Manufacturing Day as a ready-made way to spread the message. His final point was that a call to action is needed, and "the more people the merrier." Iverson's organization, Champion Now, is at championnow.org.
Cheers. Cheers, thanks for coming to my neighborhood. Thanks for inviting me.
Well, when you wanted to do it in person in Milwaukee and you didn't necessarily have a spot in mind, I'm like, I know just the spot. So perfect, we're at Vanguard today, Vanguard in Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood, and I will reveal my biases up front: it is my favorite bar in the world. First of all, it's not too far from where I live; I live in this neighborhood as well. But as I was telling you inside, it's a house-made sausage joint. They've got a great whiskey selection, good craft beer selection, they serve food late night, so if you go to a concert, a Brewers game, whatever it is, you can come here for your late night fix: fries, cheese curds, various stylized sausages. That hits the spot at third night or so, but...
That sounds like Milwaukee. It is, it is. Though I'd say the unique thing that's maybe a little twist on Milwaukee is the two co-owners are big wrestling fans. So it is not a wrestling bar, but what I love about it and what I love about the vibe is they just have two TVs inside, and those TVs, if it's a consequential Wisconsin sporting event, they'll be showing what it is, so Bucks games, Packers games, things like that. But otherwise it's doing reruns on silent of old 80s wrestling, 80s game shows. So the co-owners are big wrestling fans, but it is not a wrestling bar per se, but it's a nice little nod to their house.
No, this is awesome, this is gorgeous. And I should say we're on the patio today, which is also a nice little beer garden tucked away, nice wooden walls, so serene spot. So thank you for coming here for this interview, but that is all I'm going to talk about things that aren't related to you today, because this is your interview, Terry. No it's not, we're here to talk about what you want to talk about.
Well, what I want to talk about is your new book, Inspiring Champions in Advanced Manufacturing. So this isn't theoretical, because we're hanging out at the bar today: if you're hanging out having a beer with someone, how do you describe your new book?
Well, my new book is intended to inspire young people that know nothing about manufacturing, and to be honest, that's the easy job. The hard job is inspiring and convincing those young people's parents. Yeah. Because a lot of the parents in our country, their yesteryear's manufacturing is not what manufacturing is today, and they want the best for their child, and I understand that, and they should. But knowing reality and what's possible in today's manufacturing space, I think that's important. So what I tried to do is I tried to make a book that appeals to the parents, that has the parent edition, yep, and then also has the student edition on the other side. Yeah. So it's meant for one to read and then flip it over to the other. Yeah. And so they both read from the outside in and then have questions for the one for the other, and then there's also QR codes to go to a digital element about the subject matter. There's about 20 or 30 QR codes.
Yeah. And the books are a series of interviews, and there's some overlap, there's a lot of overlap between the two different editions, but some interviews are geared towards the student edition, while others are geared towards the parent edition, is that correct?
Yeah, that is correct, but there is a lot of overlap so that there's commonality on certain stories. And then in the back of each book I actually have a list of what's common to both and what's unique to both. So if they want to focus on what's common, they can look at the list and say, oh, you had this story, let's talk about it. Yeah. Or if they want to say, all right, tell me about this story that was in your side of the book that I didn't read.
Well, if I understand correctly, a way to summarize your mission is you're trying to change parental perceptions around manufacturing. Is that a fair comment?
That's a very fair comment, but I'll expand it to say that I'm trying to change perception about manufacturing in our culture overall. In other words, I think manufacturers have done a poor job really bragging about their industry in this country. And I also think that from an education standpoint, guidance counselors need to know more about what's possible in manufacturing careers, the educational sector, those in government leadership need to know more about it. Yeah. And yes, the parents themselves also, as well as the young people.
We're going to talk about all that here in a little bit, but I want to get to know a bit about your background first, because you have a diverse, non-traditional background, I would say. Because you and I, I graduated from Marquette. I think the way you phrase it is you went to Marquette to study enough mechanical engineering to get what you needed, and then you moved into other things. But give me a bit about your background, because I think you come from a family tooling business as well, is that correct?
I do. In about a year and a half our family will celebrate 100 years of manufacturing. Hey, congrats, cheers to that. Yeah, cheers, we got to do that.
But to expound on my background: growing up, I was a good student. Well, I shouldn't say that; I had the capacity to be a good student. Okay. I was an AP Calculus, AP Physics student, and I just got bored. Yeah. The relevance and the way that I was taught didn't match, and things weren't clicking, so I had to study longer than I should have, even though I didn't want to. And so I did okay. But as I went into college, I went to a very good prep school in Jacksonville, Florida, so the education was awesome.
So I went into college and I went to five different colleges. Okay. And initially it was Florida State; they didn't have engineering at the time. Yeah. Transferred to UW Madison, which is a great engineering school. Yeah. And it's also very cold in the middle of the winter between the two lakes, if you understand what I mean. So I transferred back to where my girlfriend was, down in Florida, and eventually we got, soon thereafter, married and moved up to Wisconsin and settled in Wisconsin. Took a job with my uncle, who had an extremely large machine shop at the time, probably maybe 200, 250 people; it grew to 750 people.
And for about less than a year I worked for him buying material, did a lot with Central Steel and different steel manufacturing, Bethlehem Steel, and went to night school at Marquette. And so I worked during the day and then went to mechanical engineering school at night.
Well, what I realized is, first of all, I was downtown till 12:30, 1 o'clock in the morning, three nights a week. And then I got into thermodynamics my third year, sixth year in college, third year in night school, and I'm like, what am I doing? My wife is raising the kids by herself, I'm rarely ever home, I'm downtown to one in the morning; when I get home everyone's fast asleep. And do I really need all this engineering?
So the intent wasn't to stay in school long enough to get what I needed. Yeah. I genuinely wanted to finish. Yeah. But I quickly realized in the selling machine tool sector that I was in, which is the same job I've been in for 43 years now, that once I got to thermodynamics, I said, okay, I'm good. Yeah. And as long as my wife would agree with me, I would then stop going to school.
For all practical purposes, I haven't used much of my thermodynamics background since graduating, but it is one of my most common examples when I say, if I can solve a Thermo 2 problem, I can certainly solve this problem I'm facing in my career. Right.
Well said. So at what point, let's say, did your mission evolve beyond selling machine tools, being in that industry, to I'm gonna get more people in this industry?
Well, it probably officially started in the mid 90s. Harry Moser was a friend of mine. He came from Charmilles EDM; he was chairman of the Charmilles EDM company, and he was making a push to get young people into manufacturing. Yeah. And so he said, Terry, you really should go and speak to young high school students. So I did, and I realized pretty quickly that talking to one group of students was great, and I was glad to help the young people learn, but what I realized is that wasn't adequate. Yeah. I just didn't feel like I was making a big enough impact. Yeah.
So Harry pivoted and ended up founding the Reshoring Initiative, which is basically convincing companies that offshored to China or Asia to come back to the U.S. And I said, Harry, that's a phenomenal initiative, but who's going to run the machines, who's going to set up the machines, and who's going to make these parts when you bring everything back? And that's when I started thinking, all right, I need to start an initiative that convinces people that manufacturing is not dark, dirty, dangerous and dead end, as they think it is.
Yeah. So one question I have then is, this isn't your first book that you wrote on manufacturing. What did you cover in your first book, and then why did you feel you needed to write more after that?
So when I first started to talk about writing the first book, my wife had indicated, you know, you really should write separate books, and I'm like, honey, I'm not sure I can write one book, much less separate books.
That book is called Finding America's Next Great Champion, correct? It's called Finding America's Greatest Champion. Greatest Champion, Next Great Champion, I'm so close. So close, that's good. I'll blame the beer. No, this is a non-alcoholic beer too, so I don't have it as an excuse. I was actually proud of that.
So when I started writing it, it addresses students, parents, educators and industry, and so it kind of covers the whole gamut. But then I realized we need a book that speaks just to two audiences, and then I came up with the concept of two front covers. Yeah. And the parent and student component is, if we can figure that out in terms of communication and realizing what reality is versus perception, then we can literally solve the skills gap that we have. Yeah. So I decided to focus the second book more on students and parents specifically.
Okay, I appreciate that. And I'm gonna give people kind of a teaser to the book, but also try to understand why you included some of these things in the book. So one of the first areas, which was a bit informational for me: you talked about the apprenticeship program over in Germany, I believe it was, specifically where you have portable apprenticeships and exams and there's credentials for the individuals that are teaching that. Do you see an opportunity for that to start to rise here in the U.S. right now, versus how it's been done over there, where manufacturing, I think more people are becoming familiar with this, has traditionally been considered a more prestigious career over there versus here? Totally true. Yeah.
So to respond to that, in Germany, one of the comments that's in the book that I got from Virginia Rounds, who's in the second book, from the German American Chamber of Commerce, she quotes her boss, actually. She says that Germany has the system but they don't have the people; the United States has the people but they doesn't have the system. So we have 330-some-odd million people, but our culture is uniquely different. Yeah. Germany and Europe has the culture, as you said, but they have, I think, 30 million people. Yeah. And their population is on the decline.
So what's interesting is, is the apprenticeship model alive and well in the U.S.? It is; it's on a comeback. It was alive and well in the 70s and 80s, but during the recession of '83, '82, in that time frame, which I lived up in Milwaukee at that time, yeah, a lot of people started closing their apprenticeship programs. And so what has happened is someone made the really difficult or hurtful comment that we were going to be a service-based economy. Well, you don't have to be in manufacturing to know that that's not a good thing for a country that has economic superiority and is very prosperous as a nation, because manufacturing has to be at the core.
So they started closing a lot of their apprenticeship systems, and a lot of the apprenticeship programs, let's put it that way. So that being said, now the German American Chamber of Commerce, which is very alive and well in the Milwaukee area, in the Midwest, they have started to come back with a lot of apprenticeship programs. But the culture's still not different than it used to be. It's starting to get better, but the culture in Europe is significantly more in accordance with apprenticeship mentality.
Yeah. And what stuck out to me when I was reading the book was just how it makes the roles much more transferable. When you have those specific credentials as a tradesperson, when you're hiring someone, you know what you're gonna get going from Company A to Company B, versus here where it's a little more, yeah, I've got that experience, but it's a little vague. Yep. I have another question that maybe leads us to how are we going to continue to make this change. One of the quotes that stuck out the most in the book, I think I paraphrased a little bit, but I believe you said real success doesn't require money, it requires engagement, the success factor, if you will: engagement with your child to help them pick the best path. Does that ring a bell?
Oh, absolutely. One of the things that I try to talk about is, I was in a meeting this morning where I spoke of this, and one of the things that I said is that in our country a lot of us are fortunate enough to save money to send our child to school, but a lot of others are not able to. Yeah. So either way, there's no right or wrong way, but it's reality. And just because we save enough money for our child to go to college, just telling them, go figure it out and go to school, well, that's not necessarily how it should work.
Yeah. And so in Europe, what they do is they work really, really hard as part of their culture to understand each individual and what really makes them tick and what they're passionate about and what their aptitude says about them that they'll succeed in. So they go into an apprenticeship program when they're probably 16 years old, maybe even younger, and they come out ready to rock and roll at 18, 19, 20 years old.
In our country, first of all, that's one of the challenges that the apprenticeship model has: the education in getting that information and that mentality down to a 15-, 16-year-old young person, male or female. That being said, the fact of the matter is that a lot of us parents, we send our child off to school and we say, figure it out. Will they have a delay of success, whatever that may be, anywhere from two years to five years, and if they don't get a degree, maybe as long as seven years, when they could have already known what they want to do, gotten trained for it, and then be in a good paying role making a career out of it? Yeah.
So now on the other side of the coin, one of the things that I'm pretty vocal about is young people going into debt for education is extremely difficult, and it's extremely difficult to succeed early in the game. And so there's a lot of people in manufacturing that will allow you to learn and earn, or earn and learn, where they'll pay for your education in the technical sector to be part of their company or their industry. Yeah. But a lot of people, they don't know this, and so if we could just get the word out.
And I tell young people all the time, Chris, that look, if you look at manufacturing and it's not for you, there's nothing wrong with that. It's only wrong if our industry or our leaders in our sector don't at least put it on the table for you to know about and decide one way or another. And once doing that, there's going to be a factor of two, three, four, ten times more people in our industry. Yeah. Even if 50, 40, even 70 percent decide it's not for them, we're still incrementally making huge gains. Well, maybe I have some tangible examples then that showcase how
We're getting people more aware of manufacturing, because some of the ones that stuck out that you talked about in your book were children's maker spaces. I'd never heard about this before, but I looked it up on YouTube and there's almost, I'd say, a formula or like best practices for creating a maker space for a child so that they can exercise, let's say, manufacturing creativity while they're young. I'm just giving my perception on it. I'd love to hear what you know about these maker spaces.
Well, I don't claim to be a total expert on maker spaces, but the Makerspace movement in general talks a lot about exposing young people in an environment where they're comfortable, that they're almost learning about manufacturing or learning about building almost by accident. And so I think there's still a need for young people to be presented with... That was a part of an organization done in Florida called FLATE, and they were doing coloring books about manufacturing settings, and that's a good example of what's needed, so that when they talk about manufacturing or they hear something about manufacturing, that they're actually genuinely curious because they were presented with something when they were young, at a young age.
But they have Lego robotic teams that are outside of the maker space, but putting a young person in an environment where they can build things and understand the concept of building... I mean, how many times have you heard a parent say, you know, my son or my daughter went into engineering, and I'd give them a toy and they'd have it all apart, and then they'd try to put it back together? That's an engineer or a manufacturer or a maker in the making, so to speak.
So there's a lot to know about maker spaces. There's a Makerspace movie, there's Makerspace programs in communities, and then there's Lego robotics, there's robotic teams in different high schools. What I'm trying to do is try to get down into the middle schools and expose them to manufacturing through camps, and making a pen and pencil set or a pen set with a case. And we just did our first camp where we laser engraved their name on a plaque. When they leave, they've got that pen in that case with their name on it.
Well, I think people are getting more familiar with those robotic programs, but I've also heard you talk about, I think Wheeling High School, something like that. They've actually made manufactured parts for like NASA before. How does something like that play out? Because we're familiar with some of those school programs, if you will, but how does something like that work?
Well, it doesn't happen without an industry member reaching out and making a connection to that school. There was a manufacturer that was a dear friend of mine who passed away. The name of the company was Numerical Precision, and in fact Egon yeagen was someone that the Chicago audience will know very, very well and remember him very fondly. He was from Switzerland, and so he was a big advocate for manufacturing and for apprenticeship programs, and so he was very involved. One part that he made was a wrench that, when the shuttle went up and launched the Hubble telescope, the wrench that they built actually was used to repair the Hubble telescope in space.
Now, Wheeling is a very manufacturing-centric community. Elk Grove in Illinois is a very manufacturing-centric community. So when different companies reach out to Wheeling High School or other high schools, Elk Grove High School, they make connections, and they actually want the high school program to make components for something that they are involved in, i.e. the space program.
There's one other example I want to talk about, then I've got some general questions outside the book. Do you feel we're getting better at celebrating manufacturing? Like, you talk about National Signing Day, where, if I'm familiar with it, high school students sign to the companies they're going to go work for. Is that how that works?
Yeah, there's actually two different types of National Signing Days. One is when a young person goes into the industry, and another is when the young person goes into like a technical college, you know, more conventional, like you would when you're going to a school, university or so. So there's two different ones, and I didn't realize that they were both going on simultaneously out there. But one of them started out in Virginia, I think it was Henrico College or Henrico Community College, and I ended up talking to the gentleman that actually instituted and came up with this concept.
But yeah, our culture has a long way to go. So to answer your question, are we getting better? We are. Did we start at a very low point? We did. Is there a lot further to go? Yes. And the reason I say that is you have high schools bringing back programs, which is awesome. Industry still has a long way to go reaching out to educators to make connections and have partnerships. Are there enough people doing that? No, not at all. And then the big caveat is, are enough parents convinced that manufacturing is an option, a career path for their child? And the answer to that is no.
So then, you just wrote the book on it. What are maybe one, two or three things that need to happen for parents to be more aware and start presenting this differently?
Oh boy, good question. Well, first of all, there's something called Manufacturing Day. Jeremy Bout from Edge Factor, myself, Rodney Grover on our board for Champion Now, and I had a meeting at my office in 2012, and we had FMA there, TMA there. These are all acronyms for associations, which you probably know and I know, but some of your listeners may not. And we were trying to advocate a national manufacturing awareness type day where manufacturers could actually brag about what they do. And Pat Lee from FMA held their hand up and said, well, hold on, hold on, our board is going to vote on something called Manufacturing Day within the next week or month ahead. And so we said great. Well, that was the birth of Manufacturing Day, that initiative, prior to that meeting that we talked about, and we gave feedback to encourage. Now we have Manufacturing Day every single year.
So manufacturers have to sign up for Manufacturing Day. They have to invite their communities, parents and students alike, and show off and be proud of what manufacturing is. That's probably number one.
Number two, and this is going to be hard to say without coming off the wrong way, so I'm going to apologize in advance if I say it wrong: parents need to be more informed and more focused on what every given child shines at or is passionate about, or has the natural God-given ability to do well. That may mean that when you're sitting in a group with other parents and you're trying to brag about your son or daughter going to Carroll College or going to, trying to think, Marquette University or MSOE or Northwestern, okay, maybe that's not the right fit for them.
The reality is, if you take the number of young people that go to college, the number of young people that get a degree in either four or five years, and then the number of young people that actually use that degree in their profession, you're talking less than 20 percent of the market. So this message has to reach parents so that they understand that they should be proud of whatever their child does. That yes, it is nice, and even if they've saved the money, which they've worked their entire careers to save, that money can be used for a down payment for a home, that money can be used for seed money for their own company, start their own company. So that money can be used for a lot of good things for the betterment of their child, and a less costly education too.
But the match of our young people with what they're inherently gifted at and what they're passionate and really interested in, that has to be by design, not by accident. And you're going to accelerate your child's success, and it may be a four-year degree. I'm not against a four-year degree. I think that 15 or 20 percent, that's perfect for them. I'm concerned about the 75 to 85 percent. That's what I'm concerned about.
And then lastly, we need to get industry and education on the same page, just like I'm trying to do with the Inspiring Champions in Advanced Manufacturing book. I'm trying to connect parents, and the parent and the child have conversations, honestly more like what they do in Europe when they're 14, 15 years old, about: here's all the different things you could do, here's what you're good at, here's what you enjoy. Get involved in internships early on. Find out, if you go to a manufacturing company and you're like, I do not want to do that, that's not a bad thing. You looked at it, you thought it was for you, and you were glad to know about it, but you decided no. Nothing bad about that.
And so, point being, let's get the process going so much quicker. There's a significant number of young people that either drop out of college, I did, I decided, okay, I'm done, I've had enough, and then they kind of stumble around until they find their way into a career. Well, I was fortunate. I had two uncles and my father and my grandfather that were in manufacturing, so I was good at math and science, so that was easy for me. Well, that's not the same for everybody else. So those are at least three concepts that I think would go a long way to help our culture change.
Yeah, so if I heard you correctly, number one, show up and be proud of what manufacturing is. Two, it goes back to your comment earlier where the real success factor, it's not money, it's engagement with figuring out what the best path is for your kid, and looking at what are their talents and making sure manufacturing is part of that. And then the third thing I heard was, hey, you've got to get industry, parents, students, these champions all on the same page as well.
We need them to engage, so that when there's engagement, when there's engagement with your child or when there's engagement between partners, say an industry member and an educator, man, really cool things happen when that's the case.
So that was, I think, the big call to action in this. We'll get more as we start to wrap up the interview, but we're in the twilight of our interview and probably the twilight of our beverages as well. So, more of a fun question: what new jobs are you most excited about right now in the manufacturing space?
Oh wow. Well, the one thing I don't know anything about is how AI is going to impact manufacturing.
Sure, we've been talking about that on the podcast a little bit, and it's more, how do we think, or where is it making an early impact? That's been the discussion, but we don't know necessarily the long-term outcome yet.
Yeah, so I think the automation game is a necessity, and I think any type of automation where the task or the job, the role of the person in that career, is a challenging career and you're not just loading a machine or feeding a mechanism. So the automation component for sure is the future and is exciting. When I got involved initially in manufacturing, computerization was just at the beginning stages, and so computerization has rapidly come to the forefront of manufacturing.
So young people, I talk in the book a lot about there's a lot of gamers, and I don't think I realized how big gaming is worldwide, and a lot of gamers are inherently perfect matches for computerized machine processes. And a lot of people don't know that as well.
So as far as other things that I'm most excited about, I mean, 3D printing. I didn't think 3D printing would be where it's at today when it first came out. I thought, you know, subtractive manufacturing is actually what machining used to be. We didn't call it subtractive, but then additive came along. So I think 3D printing, it's interesting how far it's come. How much further it'll go, I don't know, but when you see a mechanism that's totally assembled and you have a working assembly with gears that mesh and actually operate, that's pretty fascinating.
Yeah. I have a question about the book writing process itself, because one of the things that I enjoyed as I was listening to the audiobook version was some Manufacturing Happy Hour alumni were in there. Drew Crow from episode 46 and more recently 124, Nicole Walter from episode 128 were some of the featured stories in there. But I'm curious, how do you go about picking the stories that you feature in a book that really compiles a lot of examples to showcase, hey, here are some reasons why we need to bring more awareness to manufacturing, and here are some people that are also doing it in their own unique ways?
Well, I think reinventing the wheel has always been a bad idea, right? So in my job I get to meet a lot of people, and I try to be socially aware in a lot of ways, both in social media and in social issues. When I wrote the first book, the MeToo movement was going through its process, and so I really focused a lot on why aren't there more women in our industry? I don't understand that. And there's no good reason, there's no valid reason for that. And so I put some of that focus.
When I started writing the first book, Chris, I realized that I knew a lot of really interesting people, and that if they were willing to talk and engage in an interview, I could include their thoughts that I was interested in. When I went to the second book, I realized that at that point being relevant is very important to me, and being current, because that's what people want to hear, right? And I'm sure as a podcaster that's important to you.
Well, during the writing of the second book, the racial awakening was going through, and I reflected on my first book and I'm like, man, I did a terrible job about not being an advocate or a voice for people of color in our industry. There's not enough female workers and employees in our industry, but there's even less people of color. So I thought, all right, I have to make this right.
It's been like a little self-reflection exercise each time you go through it, for sure.
Yeah, for sure. And so when I noticed, throughout the industry and throughout the different platforms, I think when I first learned of Drew, I didn't know Drew. And probably the people that I had to reach out to introduce myself to, out of 100 interviews, was probably less than 25 percent. So a lot of people I already knew, but Drew I didn't.
And I noticed that he was talking about a young person. It was one of the first videos I ever saw, where he's talking about the student at the community college that all of a sudden was real inspired and energetic and then just kind of faded, faded to black, so to speak, and just kind of disappeared. And when he approached him, he said, well, my mom says I really shouldn't be pushing buttons all day long. And I'll never forget this video. He says, dude, what are you talking about? And he picked up a phone and said, you push buttons all day long, and why not get paid good money for it? And I thought, all right, this guy has something to say, and I need to try to elevate his voice.
Well, in the time that it took me to write the book, which was probably a year or more, Drew went from just barely being on social media to all of a sudden becoming the mega, mega star that he is in manufacturing promotion.
Yeah, and for those out there, episodes 46 and 124, if you haven't listened to those and want to hear more about Drew's story, that's where you can find him. I only have one more big question for you, and that is, we've talked about this a little bit, but why write this book now? Why is it critical to write Inspiring Champions in Advanced Manufacturing at this moment in time?
Okay, well, first of all, my journey in manufacturing started 43 years ago. Secondly, I started being an advocate to young people in about '95. I started the organization in 2012.
And I then started writing the first book in probably 2013, but didn't really publish it until 2018. Okay, so I got to the point where I'm like, all right, the first book's great, everyone that reads it thinks it's really cool and has a lot to offer, but it's not concise and succinct enough for the audience that it's going to matter the most.
And so all of a sudden COVID happens. I wrote a lot of this during COVID, and now there's an epiphany while I'm writing it that the American public is realizing, man, we should be making more in this country. Yeah. Why do we want all our goods sitting off Long Beach or California on any one of 200 different ships, waiting to get on the dock, not to mention it's sitting in port not being able to be unloaded for months?
And so some of this timing I kind of fell into, but I'll go back and say that it started either in 1980 or in the 90s, and it's been a progression, a natural progression. I always felt that at any given point in my career it was bad, that it's going to get worse. This is the first time that I can actually say that there's hope of it getting better, because awareness is key, and people are starting to have an epiphany about awareness. What's lacking has not really been the call to action that there needs to be.
Yeah, I mean, you had some stats that kind of answered the question maybe a little bit for me while I was reading the book, like 69% of manufacturers want to be moving production back to the US. And there's almost an element of us doubling down on our strengths also, because I've seen different versions of this stat, but U.S. manufacturing alone represents, what, like the eighth largest economy in the world? It is. And we make 20% of the world's goods. So it's not like we're not doing it anymore, but we certainly started moving away from it, so I'm excited to see how it starts moving back.
This has been a great conversation, Terry. Is there anything you wish I would have asked you that hasn't come up in this discussion yet?
Wow, we've covered a lot of ground. You know, I just think maybe people reaching out to try to get active. We're starting to do camps. If a manufacturer is listening to this and they want to sponsor a camp and get involved, that would be helpful. I have a Kickstarter campaign about to start on August 23rd. All right. People can buy a box of books for Manufacturing Day and have a ready-made passion project to carry their message forward. Yeah. So I think the main thing is, I think a call to action is needed, and the more people the merrier. I think that's the important thing.
Yeah. Well, championnow.org is your website, I believe, and also I'll make sure to have links to connect with you, like on LinkedIn, for anyone that's listening as well. Any other spots you want me to share, I'll make sure those are included in the show notes at manufacturinghappyhour.com. But in the meantime, I feel like our beers are getting light. It's probably time, since we're at Vanguard, you know, currywurst is probably the next order of business. But I do have to say thank you for taking the time to jump on today's show, Terry.
Chris, I can't thank you enough. It's been awesome, and I can't thank you enough for inviting me.
Well, cheers. Cheers. Skål.
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