Walker Mattox on Curiosity, Hiring Problem-Solvers, and Building Gray Solutions
Manufacturing Happy Hour
In this podcast episode, host Chris talks with Walker Mattox, CEO of Gray Solutions, a systems integrator that Mattox founded as a sister company to Gray Construction. The conversation covers how the business began, why Mattox treats curiosity as the defining trait of the company's people, how they hire, what Mattox sees as the pressing challenges facing manufacturers, how to manage the risk of new technology, and the thinking behind the company's recent rebrand around the slogan "let curiosity lead." Mattox's recurring position is that the company's growth came from finding curious people and pointing them at hard problems, not from anything Mattox did personally.
An Origin Story That Started on Vacation
Asked where this conversation would happen over a drink, Mattox named a waterfront spot in South Florida they like to visit. It is also, they said, where Gray Solutions got its start "in a very weird way."
In September 2017, Gray Construction was in the middle of a large pork processing startup for Clemens Food Group, a multigenerational family-owned business in Pennsylvania. Mattox joked that all startups go perfectly and offered a "million dollar check" to anyone who has the solution to a flawless one, but this startup had real challenges. Mattox got calls from several people at Gray, finally including Stephen Gray, asking them to leave their South Florida vacation and go work in a freezer on an AS/RS (automated storage and retrieval system). Mattox said no four or five times, then went up on the Monday.
According to Mattox, the Clemens project tipped the scales for the Gray family. The industrial customers Gray had served for decades needed automation expertise to run their operations more efficiently, and the family decided this was too important to leave to someone else. They wanted to "control our own destiny." About two months later, Stephen Gray asked Mattox to start a business doing this work. Among the names considered was "Grayntegration," which Mattox is glad did not survive.
The story came full circle the following Christmas. Mattox was back at the same restaurant with family and saw a Hatfield pork chop on the menu. Hatfield is one of the Clemens brands, so Mattox ordered the product made at the plant they had helped start up. They described this as the best part of working in food: seeing the product in the world, and taking it as a sign that some things are meant to happen.
What "Let Curiosity Lead" Means
"Let curiosity lead" is the company's new slogan, part of its rebrand. Mattox explained how the company arrived at it. As the business grew and brought people in, leadership tried to define what makes a "Solutioneer," the company's name for its people. Mattox kept producing complicated answers and long lists before settling on something simple: they are all curious about the industries the company serves and the technologies they can provide.
Mattox argued that curiosity is what makes those people special, why customers come to Gray Solutions, and why the company does good work for them. The team is not satisfied with "it's always been done this way," and asks what else could be done instead. Letting curiosity lead, in Mattox's words, means following a thread, pulling on it, and running it down, even when that means going down a rabbit hole. Mattox added that rabbit holes can be fun, and joked that "curiosity killed the cat" may be backwards, since cats get nine lives.
A "Recovering Serial Entrepreneur"
Mattox describes themself as a recovering serial entrepreneur. They grew up around a small family business, since their father was an auctioneer and real estate broker, and had the business "bug" early without knowing what to do with it. They tried IT work and started a marketing firm before falling in love with automation and controls.
The "recovering" part, as Mattox explained it, is that they found a home that lasted. Gray Solutions had started five years earlier, and Mattox had worked around the automation space in some form for almost nine years, which for them counts as a long-term job. At the time of recording, Mattox was on site at a customer startup with the team, which they called the fun part of the work.
Why a Standalone Company Instead of a Division
Asked what finally made them say yes, Mattox gave several reasons. Having worked with Gray Construction on projects for years, Mattox had seen the need firsthand. Stephen Gray also did not want a division inside the construction company. He wanted a standalone business that could serve customers before, during, or after a construction project.
Gray, founded in 1960 in Kentucky, offered a stable, mature, family-owned partner with a good reputation, which Mattox could pair with their own ambition. The values also fit. Gray Solutions adopted Gray's three core values: putting safety and quality of life first; being customer and relationship driven; and treating others the way they want to be treated, where everyone is welcome and respected. Mattox said the simplicity of those values was a big attraction.
Mattox also admitted a "selfish" reason. They did not have to build health insurance, retirement benefits, or payroll systems from scratch. When the company started, Mattox told Gray's chief people officer, Sue, that they might grow to about 10 people in five years. Two years in, Sue called to say they needed to talk about those projections.
"I Didn't Do Anything": Growth Through People
Chris noted that Gray Solutions had become one of the 20 largest systems integrators in the U.S. according to Control Engineering, in roughly five years. Mattox's answer was that they "didn't do anything." Instead, they found a lot of smart people to do the work. Mattox called this a lesson many people learn too late and that they were lucky to learn early.
Mattox acknowledged that hiring smart people and empowering them sounds easy but is hard in practice, because leaders also have customers to serve, payroll to make, and a business to keep healthy. They described their job as two things: finding smart people, and finding interesting work for them. Engineers, in Mattox's view, are "degreed problem solvers," and the leader's job is to keep those two sides in balance by continually recruiting curious people and finding complicated problems for them.
Hiring Without a Paper Ceiling
Mattox is a high school graduate with no associate's or bachelor's degree, and said the company tries hard to tear down the "paper ceiling." They are passionate about people taking non-traditional paths into roles. The company looks for people who are driven and curious.
The company's hubs use open offices with no dedicated private offices, and Mattox's desk sits in the middle of the floor. Mattox said you can tell which people will thrive with that level of transparency and collaboration. Engineering skills, degrees, and training are essential, but what makes a great Solutioneer is a willingness to keep trying things and get creative.
Mattox gave an example from that week's startup. A locked-down, custom skidded system had software that expected a temperature sensor. The software believed a sensor was there, but it wasn't, and the team had been chasing the problem. Then someone suggested simply getting a temperature sensor and plugging it in so the machine would run. Mattox said that kind of thinking is what they try to find in interviews.
Preferring Outcomes Over Spec Binders
Curiosity also shapes which projects the company pursues. When a customer hands over a binder of specifications and asks for exactly what is written, Mattox usually says it isn't a good fit. The company prefers customers who bring a problem and a desired outcome, which it then writes into the scope of work.
Mattox stressed that this doesn't mean the company ignores specifications or engineering standards. The problem, in their experience, is that on too many projects the specification becomes the focus instead of the goal. Nobody writes a specification for its own sake. Customers have business needs, and when the team truly understands and solves those, Mattox said, the projects go best and customers tend to be happiest.
Spotting a Willingness to Learn
Mattox admitted the company is still working out how to tell whether someone is willing to learn and doesn't always get it right. One signal is a "sparkle" in a candidate's eyes when they hear about an unsolved customer problem, followed by questions like "tell me more," even about working in a freezer with pork.
Mattox also said willingness to learn applies at every level. The most senior engineers can learn from interns, who may not have seen a problem before but might have a wild idea that works. They want the most senior people to also want to learn something new.
As an example, Mattox recalled interviewing the company's very first engineer in the Atlanta airport. She had spent several years on a government project and, as Mattox recounted, wanted a new challenge and something different every day. Mattox warned her to be careful what she asked for. That same week, Mattox had called her about a new problem they needed help with in a couple of weeks.
The Superpower Question
Asked for a favorite interview question, Mattox hesitated to give it away, then offered a deal: they would share it if Chris answered it. The question is "What's your superpower?" Chris said storytelling and helping others tell their stories.
Mattox said they look at everything in the response, not just the words. Sometimes it is the surprise, or whether the person has ever thought about it. Their point was that most people have a superpower, and understanding your own strengths helps you see where you fit on a team.
Mattox's own answer was communication, specifically finding simple ways to explain complex problems and fitting something complicated into one sentence. The company provides training to help technical people explain things to non-technical audiences, which Mattox considers a skill set in its own right.
Leadership as a Journey
The best leadership advice Mattox has received is that leadership is a journey, not a destination, and that the leaders you look up to are still working on themselves. Mattox believes too many people see leadership positions as a destination.
A moment that made this concrete came in a conversation with Brian, the CEO of Gray Construction, whom Mattox admires. Brian talked about struggling with how much time to spend on strategy versus tactical execution. Mattox found it eye-opening that someone they looked up to wrestled with the same questions.
One of the Gray family of companies' guiding principles is that everyone is a leader. Mattox wants people to see that they lead whether they are running a project, a team, or guiding customers toward solutions. Leadership, they said, is an action rather than a title, and like any skill it has to keep improving.
Advice on College and Career Paths
Chris asked what Mattox would tell parents whose children might not go to college, and hiring managers who weigh degrees heavily. Mattox joked that hiring managers who screen too hard on degrees should keep doing it and forward their rejections to Gray Solutions.
More seriously, Mattox described a friend and customer who was deciding whether her son should go to college, culinary school, trade school, or straight into the workforce. Mattox used to be shy about their own story and felt like an impostor. The friend scolded them over dinner for not speaking up more. Her point, as Mattox recounted, was that people constantly hear about Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, but those are a tiny fraction of the world, and more people like Mattox telling their stories would make parenting decisions easier.
Mattox's advice had two parts. First, you have to like what you do every day, and they cited the saying that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Second, on education, follow the path that feels right. Mattox said they have immense respect for people who complete many years of schooling, including doctors, and called their own lack of patience for it a shortcoming. The world needs diversity of thought and people from different backgrounds. What you love can also change over different parts of your life, and finding it makes you happier.
Manufacturers' Challenges: Speed, Stability, and Human–Machine Trust
Chris asked about challenges facing manufacturers in 2023, explicitly setting aside the workforce shortage. Mattox named two, with an emphasis on food.
The first is that consumer demands are changing faster. Mattox pointed out that information moves at a completely different pace, and that this is changing both how people buy and how manufacturers produce. Customers want to evolve faster, make more changes, and offer more personalized, premium products. At the same time, they must produce more products, both in SKU count and in volume. Mattox sees a tension here. Manufacturing requires strong, stable physical and digital operating platforms, which can conflict with the push to be fast and flexible and keep launching new products.
The second challenge, which Mattox called emerging, is the changing relationship between humans and machines, including robots, autonomous vehicles, and self-driving cars. Mattox framed this as a societal problem: how to get people comfortable with these machines. They compared it to the shift from horses to automobiles, when people moved from dealing with an organic animal to trusting a machine that "blows up on purpose to propel you forward," and even climbing inside it. In Mattox's view, a similar change is happening in manufacturing now, but at the pace of modern technology. That is creating real challenges in how people and companies think and invest. Mattox said they are excited to help figure it out.
Innovation Versus Invention
On why companies should embrace innovation rather than fear it, Mattox first distinguished innovation from invention. Innovation, for them, means bringing together two ideas that haven't been combined before, so it doesn't need to be new.
As an example, Mattox described meeting with a coffee customer a couple of years earlier. They explained how pet food is flavored with a particular machine and process, then asked whether the same approach could work for ground coffee. An engineer said it wouldn't work because of how coffee behaves, but added that no one had ever asked them a question like that. Mattox's point was that the engineer could have dismissed the idea, and someone else might never have raised it. Mattox's attitude was: maybe it would work, so let's see.
Mattox also acknowledged that innovation leads to failure as often as invention does, and that you can go too far. People have been burned by "bleeding edge" technology, which is why it's called that instead of cutting edge. Still, Mattox pointed to how smartphone camera technology has propelled machine vision in manufacturing. They said they meant specifically cameras, not connected workers or tablets. In their view, without investment by Apple, Google, and others in smartphone cameras, factory vision systems would be lagging, and instead they are accelerating. The warning: if you aren't innovating, a competitor is, and they'll take your shelf space tomorrow if they can.
Managing the Risk of New Technology
Mattox's first answer to managing technology risk was "test," repeated several times, both physically and virtually. Use simulation software, trust engineers to run models, and pay for a proof of principle that tests the idea at a smaller scale. That may take longer, but a partner willing to try things with you improves your chances of success in the field. Mattox noted Gray Solutions does proofs of principle for customers but said they weren't just pitching the company, since other industry partners do this too.
Mattox also cautioned against overdoing it, because excessive testing slows down the improvements you need. Proofs of principle are always small, and things change at scale. Their rule of thumb for when to move forward: find the uncomfortable moment when you think you could test more but also think you've tested enough. That, Mattox said, is when to go.
The Rebrand: Telling the Whole Story
Gray Solutions marked its fifth anniversary in January and recently rebranded. Mattox explained the evolution. In its first chapter, the company was closely tied to construction and large projects, and its logo was the sister company's logo with "Solutions" added and the colors flipped. A modified version followed later. Mattox was emphatic that the company remains closely tied to Gray. They were recording from a job-site trailer with the Gray Construction team in the next trailer.
The goal of the rebrand was to keep that connection while returning to the reason the company was founded as a standalone business: serving customers at the beginning, middle, and end of their projects, and over their lifetime. The company realized its branding didn't tell the story of what its teams do every day. The rebrand took about a year and was not a sudden decision. Mattox noted that, like any tech-minded person, the first thing they did was pick a new web platform before finding partners to help. Even in the rebrand, they said, technology came first.
On standing out among many integrators, Mattox mentioned the CSIA community and the Automation Alliance Group the company belongs to. Part of the challenge, they said, is not standing out too much, because the industry "is not ready for the Tesla of systems integration yet" and maybe never will be. The aim was to tell the story of the company's work backed by technical credibility, focusing on customer outcomes. "Let curiosity lead," Mattox noted, naturally sets up telling people what curiosity led to.
Mattox said word of mouth between customers remains one of the company's best referral sources. Many customers have secretive projects the company can't discuss, which makes storytelling important. Public-facing stories also reach potential hires who are interested in the same work, so they have to serve both audiences.
How to Get Comfortable Telling Your Story
For people who want to tell their personal or company story better, Mattox advised first understanding the story and spending time thinking about and practicing it. Instead of rehearsing in a mirror, record yourself on a phone or iPad and watch it back. Mattox joked that they would now have to listen to this podcast and critique themself. With engineers, the company recommends practicing important customer presentations with a colleague, which helps you think through the process and get feedback.
Mattox also stressed dedicated thinking time, something the company's COO, Drew, pushes them on. They shared a story from a mentor whose daughter asked for a hot dog. The mentor thought the answer was no but didn't want to say so right away, so he told her he'd think about it for a minute. Mattox's takeaway: if you can take time to think about a hot dog, you can take time to think about something complex, like telling your personal or company story.
Partners and "Customer and Relationship"
Asked what hadn't come up, Mattox added partners. Employees are critical and customers are important, but Mattox also looks for partners who help the company deliver. These include the vendors you'd expect for an integrator, such as Rockwell, as well as companies Gray Solutions partners with on project delivery and marketing partners. Mattox advised anyone building a business to find partners and invest energy in them.
Mattox pointed out that the second core value is "customer and relationship driven," not "customer relationship" as a single phrase, and relationships with partners count too. They admitted that in the past couple of years the company hadn't invested enough in partnerships, then changed course. Mattox said the dividends pay off when you "put calories into that."
Where "Solutioneer" Came From
At the end, Chris asked about the origin of "Solutioneer." Mattox described COO Drew's role as the bridge between Mattox's two jobs: making sure the company can deliver on the problems it says it can solve. A couple of years earlier, the two were thinking about how important an identity for their people would be and joking about Disney's "Imagineering." Drew suggested "Solutioneer," possibly by text message. Mattox first thought it was cheesy, then decided that it described exactly who their people are.
Every year, everyone at the company gets a baseball tee with the year on it at the company meeting, with "Solutioneer" on the back. Mattox acknowledged some people find it cheesy but said it gives employees a shared identity and helps build a team atmosphere. Mattox also enjoys it when customers ask what the word means. Mattox closed by pointing listeners to LinkedIn and the company's newly launched website, graysolutions.com, adding that as a systems integrator, the one thing the company does not accept is faxes.
Walker, if we were having this conversation in person over a beverage today, where would that be? Tell us, paint the picture for us.
We would be, this time of year, we would for sure be down in South Florida, probably sitting on a waterfront watering hole I like to go to called Koo, enjoying some water, relaxing by the breeze. And one of the reasons I enjoy going there is they happen to serve Hatfield Farms pork chops, and it's also the place where Gray Solutions kind of got its start, in a very weird way. And one of my favorite places to go when I'm taking a break, so that's where we would for sure be.
Okay, so I have to ask then, what is the story of how Gray Solutions got their start at Koo?
This is absolutely the type of conversation that would take place at the bar, you know. So it was September of 2017, and our sister company Gray Construction was in the middle of a large pork processing startup for Clemens Food Group, a family-owned business based in Pennsylvania for many years, several generations now leading the company. And the startup, as most startups go, you know, all startups are perfect, they always go exactly according to plan and there's never any problems. If anybody has the solution to the perfect startup, I've got a million dollar check in my pocket for you. But they had some challenges, and I got a call from several people within Gray, including finally Stephen Gray, asking me to leave my vacation in South Florida and go work in a freezer on an AS/RS. And I said no four or five times because I was on vacation, I was having a great time. Ended up going up there on Monday, and the Clemens project is really what kind of tipped our scale to say, you know, the industrial customers that Gray has served for decades, one of their greatest needs is automation expertise so they can help make their operations run and be more efficient.
And the time the Gray family realized, hey, we need to have this in house, this is too important to our customers to let someone else do it, we want to control our own destiny and do this. And at that time, about two months later, was when Stephen asked me, Stephen Gray asked me if I would start a business doing this for them. We came up with a lot of names. The one that fell to the ground was Integration. I'm glad that one died because that would be just a really bad name to live with today.
Yeah, I like the play on words though. It's fun for a podcast like this, but I think it's good that you went a different direction.
Yeah, so that was kind of the origin story, right? It started with me taking some calls sitting right there. And the interesting thing, so I went back, I mentioned, right, Hatfield family, the Hatfield pork chop, that's one of the brand names of the Clemens product. So I was there the next Christmas having dinner with my family and looked down at the menu and had to order the Hatfield pork chop off the menu, to really watch the world come full circle. That's the best part about working in food, is you get to see stuff all the time. Seeing the product that we made at that plant in that location was pretty special and cool, but it definitely is a sign from the universe that some things are just meant to happen.
Fantastic origin story. I'm all about theoretically having this conversation over pork chops. I'm from St. Louis, Missouri originally, where pork steaks are kind of a blue collar delicacy, if you will. So okay, so we're having pork chops, we're having a beverage. The other question I have for you is what does it mean to lead, or what does it mean to let curiosity lead? Describe that as if we're having a drink.
You know, I think that people will often talk about, what's the saying, curiosity killed the cat, but cats get nine lives, so I think we may have that a little backwards. I think curiosity is what leads to a lot of really interesting ideas. And we've spent a lot of time, as the business has evolved and grown and we've brought people in, to really try to define what makes a Solutioneer a Solutioneer. And you know, like any good problem, I kept coming up with all these complex answers, complicated lists, long lists, all kinds of stuff, and eventually just came back to, well, they're all just curious, right? They're very curious about their space, the industries that we serve, the technologies they can provide. And so at the end of the day, what we learned as we studied it more is that curiosity is what makes those people special, and why they come to us and why we do great things for our customers. We're often not satisfied by what if, or it's always done this way. We really look at what can we do. And so it means for us to take curiosity and let it take you all kinds of places, follow that thread, pull on it and just run it down. Sometimes that means going down a rabbit hole. Rabbit holes can be fun.
And for context for our audience, Let Curiosity Lead is, very apparently, your new slogan as part of your rebrand at Gray Solutions. We'll get into more of that later in the interview, but we want to get to know you a bit more first, Walker, before we keep going. And I have to ask the other if-we're-having-a-drink type question: what does it mean to be a recovering serial entrepreneur? That's how you describe yourself. I'd love to dig into that a bit more.
You know, so I think for me, I've always been intrigued by different things, learning new stuff, and I've always had a bit of a business twinge. Grew up in a small family business, my dad was an auctioneer and real estate broker, and so that has always been something that I've been attracted to. And I couldn't figure out for the first little part of my life what I wanted to do with that bug, and so tried a bunch of different things, tried some IT stuff, started a marketing firm, then fell in love with the automation and control space. And so I think what I mean by that is, I think a lot of times you hear stories of serial entrepreneurs, probably the most famous one today is Mr. Musk, right, just constantly starting and evolving things. But for me it was pretty special to then find a home that lasted a while. So, you know, five years ago we started Gray Solutions, and I've been working ancillary to this automation space in one way or another really for almost nine years now, so going on a while. So for me that's a long-term job, and it feels good to have a place to land once you realize, hey, I've fallen in love with this work. I love it, it's fun to do. I'm on site at a startup with my team right now, and this is the fun stuff to do. We get to go in a facility and help our customers make some products.
And that is a bit of a precursor to the next question I want to ask, because you gave us a bit of the origin story around Gray Solutions, but I want to know a bit more about why did you finally decide to found it? Right, you mentioned you turned him down like four or so times. What was the thing that ultimately pushed you over the edge to say yes, let's do this?
Well, you know, a couple things happened. I recognized the same need. I'd worked with Gray Construction, our sister company, for several years on various projects, and so the need was there. And when Stephen Gray approached me to start it up, he recognized that we didn't want to start a division within the construction company, we wanted to start a standalone business that could serve customers before there may be a construction project, after, during, et cetera. And a very stable and mature company based in Kentucky, and Gray was founded in 1960, a family-owned business with an excellent reputation, would allow me to take the ambition that I had and partner it with somebody that had, you know, really the business savvy, the machine. But they also aligned with our values, right? They live by three core values. We adopted them when we started the business. You know, we put safety and quality of life first, we're customer and relationship driven, we treat others the way we want to be treated, where everyone is welcome and respected. And the simplicity that came with that was a big attractor for me.
And then selfishly, Chris, I didn't have to go set up the infrastructure: health insurance, retirement benefits, payroll systems. All that stuff existed. And when we started the business, I remember telling the chief people officer at Gray Inc., I told Sue, I said, yeah, we might grow to 10 people in about five years. And she called me two years in and was like, yeah, we need to talk about your projections for a second.
Yeah, I have to ask you about that as well. And I can certainly see the benefit of, you know, kind of, let's call it, starting a startup within an established company. But you said, I mean, this happened in like 2017, 2018, I believe, is the official date. But I've got to hear, how did you turn this into, I think it's somewhere in the range of one of the 20 largest systems integrators according to Control Engineering? How did you do that in such a short period of time? I mean, we're really talking like five years, basically.
Well, I learned a very important lesson that a lot of people learn. Sometimes we learn it too late in our lives; I was lucky to learn it pretty early. So the answer, Chris, is I didn't do anything. I instead went and found a bunch of really smart people to do it on my behalf. And it's really important. It's very challenging, right? It sounds great as a leader to say I'm going to hire smart people and empower them just to go do their work. It's way easier said than done, because we have customers to serve, we have responsibilities to, you know, make payroll and make things happen and keep the business healthy. But if you can unlock that and have a strong team around you, they do all the hard work. I mean, so my only job, I say, is two jobs on a daily basis: I have to find smart people, and then I have to find cool stuff for them to work on. Engineers love to problem solve. They're essentially degreed problem solvers. It's what they go study and understand, is how to solve problems. And so it's our job to do both of those two things and keep them in balance. That balance is not always easy, but that's what we strive to do, is constantly look for smart, intelligent, curious people to join us and then go out and find really complicated things for them to work on.
So let's talk about your people a little bit more then, because you talk about getting smart people, you talk about folks that are curious. What do you personally look for then in the people you hire? Right, because I'm sure it's not always a degree or something like that. I'd love to go into that a little bit more.
Yeah, the degree piece is interesting. And you know, so I'm a high school graduate. No associate's degree, no bachelor's degree. College was not my thing. And so we try really hard to keep that open mind and really try to tear what they call the paper ceiling now, right, to say that you don't necessarily have to follow that path to get in. So I'm very passionate about people taking a non-traditional path into a role. So we look for people that are driven, people that are curious. We have open office environments for our hubs, so there's no doors, no walls. So my desk is out in the middle of the floor with everybody else's when I'm in the hub. And you can tell people that want to thrive in that environment; that level of transparency and collaboration is really important. And I would say, you know, being here on a startup this week, the important thing that the team needs to do every day is collaborate with each other and get creative to solve a problem. Their engineering skills, their degrees, their training, that all helps with that. That's an absolutely essential skill. But what makes a great Solutioneer is somebody that's just willing to keep trying, try new things, go solve a problem, get creative.
We had a fun little bug this week of something that wasn't working because, long story, but a piece of software on a locked down, kind of custom, you know, skidded system needs a temperature sensor. The software thinks there's a temperature sensor there. We didn't know the temperature sensor, and they've been chasing this out, and somebody just said, what if we just go get the temperature sensor and plug it in? Then it'll be there and the machine will run. And it's kind of like that thought process for people to solve those problems is what we try to find and hash out in an interview, in a conversation, so that we can bring them onto the team.
How do you see, you talk about creativity, you talk about curiosity, and that was a great story right there. How else do you see curiosity and creativity manifest itself in the projects you do? You gave an on-the-fly example. I mean, what does that look like when you're planning for a project or figuring out, hey, are we going to pursue this or not?
Well, I think the one thing I look for is if a customer comes to us and they have, they usually say, the binder of specifications that they hand us and say, here, please go build exactly what we have written down in a specification book, I'm usually raising my hand and going, guys, this is not a good fit for us. We like problems, so we like people to come to us with outcomes, say here's a problem, and we'll put in the scope of work, here's the outcome we'd like to deliver for you. The technical details are super important, right? I never want to come away from a conversation like this, Chris, and somebody think that we don't care about specifications or engineering standards or everything else. But I've been on too many projects where that becomes the focus instead of what we're trying to accomplish. Nobody ever writes a specification to just sit down and do that and then do nothing with it. And we're always trying to accomplish something for our customers. Our customers have business needs. When we can truly understand those and we're helping them solve that, those are the projects that we do the best on, and then I think our customers are typically the happiest on.
So I'm going to talk about your people a little bit more, and this kind of gets into hiring a little bit. How can you tell if someone has a willingness to learn when you're talking to them?
That's a fun one that sometimes we're still trying to figure out. We don't always get it right. But I think you can almost see a sparkle in people's eyes when they hear that we're in the middle of trying to sort out a problem, what do we do, what are we trying to solve for a customer. When they can have that lens and say, tell me more about that, what do you mean, went and worked in a freezer with pork and pigs, tell me more. That kind of conversation you can have in an interview will tell us a lot about whether a team member's ready. And as people also grow in their careers, I think it's also important for us to point out that our most senior engineers can learn something from the interns all day long, because they've never seen this before, but they may have a wild idea that just might work. And so it's really important that no matter where somebody is in their career, no matter which level we're interviewing for, I want the very most senior people in our business to also want to go learn something new.
One of the first engineers we hired, I remember interviewing her in the Atlanta airport. Actually, the very first engineer we hired at Gray Solutions, and she'd been working on a project for several years. It was a government job, so we'll just let you make the assumptions you'd like to about the level of specificity, et cetera, that was there. And she said, you know, I'm kind of tired of this, I want a new challenge, and I'd like to work on something different every day. And I remember warning her at the time, be careful what you ask for, I might be able to deliver on that. And I called her
this week and said, hey, I got a new problem for you, I need some help, can you help us out here in a couple weeks? And so it's those kind of conversations in an interview where you figure out, okay, yeah, this person really wants a challenge, they want to learn new stuff.
Do you have a favorite interview question, while we're on this topic, that you like to ask candidates?
Man, if I give it away, then I'm afraid that people are going to know when they come into the interview with us.
Oh, okay, okay. I have had guests use this as like a precursor for their interviews. It's like, hey, listen to this podcast, see what we're all about. So maybe you can give away your second best one. Your pick.
Well, I'll make you a deal. I'll give away my best one if you'll answer it.
Okay, I'll take that trade.
What's your superpower?
Storytelling, and helping other people tell their story as well. I could go on and on about that, but honestly, it's kind of meta since we're talking about this on a podcast right now.
Yeah, no, that's the kind of thing, right? When I ask that question, I can learn a lot about somebody real fast.
Are you looking for the answer, how quickly they respond, their thoughtfulness, or do you look at all of it in that scenario?
Oh, I'm looking at all of it, because it's never the words. Sometimes it's the surprise. It's just an interesting question, and it's interesting to see whether people have ever thought about it or not. Even though Superman and Superwoman already have jobs, we all tend to have a superpower, and understanding your own strengths can really help you understand where you fit in a team.
Well, Walker, you're the podcast guest today, so I've got to return the favor and ask the question back to you. What is your superpower?
You know, I'm gonna twist yours a little bit. Mine would be, I'd say, communicating, coming up with simple ways to explain complex problems and boiling those down. That's what I always love doing for our customers, is taking something really, really complicated and fitting it in a sentence. And that's a unique skill set. We actually provide training for our team members to help them work through that, right? Helping technical people boil things down so that we can explain it to non-technical people. That's a skill set in and of itself.
That is really cool that you have a training for that, because I agree, being able to take a complex topic and simplify it. I think back to professors I had in college, folks that have been really good at that throughout my career. Excellent tip, excellent thought right there.
A couple more questions on this topic before we move into some, let's say, industry-specific stuff. What's the best piece of leadership advice you've ever received?
This is a tough one. You know, I would say that probably the best piece of leadership advice that I've ever received is to understand that leadership is a journey, not a destination, and to look around and realize that people you may look up to as leaders are still working on themselves and on their skill sets as a leader. I think too many people that we put into leadership positions, they kind of see it as a destination, and they don't understand that it's a constantly evolving journey.
I've been lucky, especially over the last couple years, to be part of the Gray family, and we've got an amazing team of leaders that operate across our business. And one of the more eye-opening moments for me was a conversation with the CEO of Gray Construction, where he was talking about struggling with how much time do we spend on strategy versus tactical execution and all kinds of stuff. And I was like, man, Brian's somebody I really look up to. He's an awesome leader. I wish I could be as good as he is one day. And understanding that we all struggle with those things, and we're constantly evolving as leaders no matter where you are in the organization.
And we say that leadership is not a title. One of our guiding principles at Gray, as the Gray family of companies, is that everyone is a leader, and we really want people to see that they lead. You know, they may be leading a project or leading a team, or, you know, we talked a lot about curiosity and leading customers into solutions. Leadership's not a title, it's an action. It's an activity that we have to perform. And yeah, you've got to constantly work on it. It's like any skill, it's always got to get better.
You and I are 100% on the same page there. I've said that for years, that leadership is not a title, it's an attitude. It manifests itself in your integrity, the things you're doing every day.
You've provided a lot of great advice for the audience in these answers, but one other piece of specific advice I'd love to hear from you is, there are parents out there listening to this, people that are hiring, and you mentioned that, you know, you have a high school degree, you're not looking at that on résumés or in the interview as much. So what advice do you have to people that are parenting kids that are making career decisions, that, hey, maybe college isn't the route they're going to go? Or maybe, you can pick whichever way you answer this, what advice would you give to the people that are hiring that may be looking at that too closely as well?
Well, for those of you that are hiring and looking at that too closely, please continue, and I'll accept all of your rejections at info@graysolutions.com. You can just auto-forward those to us. You know, but more importantly, I think, to the people that are out there trying to make that decision.
It's funny, I actually had a friend who's a customer of ours. She was going through something with one of her kids and was trying to decide whether he needed to go to college, culinary school, or trade school, or just go straight into the workforce or whatever. And I used to be very shy about my story. I used to feel like an impostor. And she gave me a dressing down one night over dinner for not saying more. And her point was, you know, we hear about Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and those guys all the time, and that's a great story, but okay, they're literally the half of a percent of the world. And she was like, if more people like you would tell your stories, then it would make my life a lot easier as a mom.
And Chris, it's funny you ask. I actually had a conversation with somebody about that today. We were talking about it, and I said the most important thing that you have to do is like what you do every day. Jim Grace says if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, and that's a very true statement. That's what it's got to be about.
Secondarily, from the education standpoint, follow the path that feels right. I have an immense amount of respect for people that have either four, six, eight, you know, doctors, 12 years of education. I didn't have the patience to do it. It's a shortcoming of mine. I have a lot of respect for those people. So you also should not devalue that experience and that degree. We need diversity in the world to make it a better place, and that doesn't always mean the diversity that we think of when we say that. That means diversity of thought as well. And so you need people from those different backgrounds that go do that. And just find something you love and do it. And that can change as you go through different parts of your life, but if you find stuff you love, you'll be a happier person.
Walker, I'm not going to lie, that's a more holistic answer than I expected. You covered a lot of ground, from advanced degrees, high school degrees, everything in between. And you know, I have an incredible amount of respect for what you've built at Gray Solutions. I appreciate you sharing your story here today. I know the audience is learning a lot from you.
The other thing I want the audience to learn from you is just some of your industry insights as well, because you're out there, you're doing a startup this week, like, you're in the day-to-day, literally. So you're a systems integrator for, like, food and beverage, CPG, life sciences, chemical. Here in 2023, what's a common challenge, or maybe even a new challenge, that most manufacturers are trying to solve? And the one caveat I'll say to this is, we know there's a workforce issue out there right now. What's a different answer? I hope I didn't take your answer away, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's involved in that.
You're familiar with the workforce challenge? Wow, you must have, you know, come up for air in the last 10 years.
Yeah, you know, I think that a couple things are happening, particularly in our industry with a heavy focus on food. Consumer demands are changing faster. We're doing a podcast right now that people can listen to in their cars, at home, wherever they want to. I'm recording it from, you know, a job site. Information moves at a completely different pace, and one of the things that we're seeing is that that's changing how customers buy, and it's changing how manufacturers are producing their products. And many of our customers are trying to figure out how that can evolve faster, how they can make more changes, provide more personalized premium products. At the same time, they're challenged with providing way more products, not just from, like, a SKU count, but also the quantities of those things they need to produce. And that's a real interesting mix that people are trying to get to.
Manufacturing requires stability. We want strong, stable operating platforms, both from a physical and a digital space. And that's sometimes at odds with fast, flexible, I want to do a bunch of new stuff, I've got to put new products on the market. And so our customers are always trying to solve that.
I think the other challenge that they're facing, that I think is emerging and newer, you know, you talked about the workforce issue, but I think what we overlook with that is, I think we're in the middle of, we want to say, whatever Industry .0 version we're on today. But the reality is, what's also happening is the relationship between humans and the machines we interface with, whether it's robots or autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, right? This is a societal, social problem that we have to overcome, and our customers are facing it as well. How do you get people to be comfortable with that?
Right, I mean, I think I've said before, and I think still, that it's one of the biggest changes we've seen since the automobile and the human merged. We got off horses, right, or out of carts. We went from interaction with an organic thing to, hey, trust this thing that, like, catches on fire and blows up on purpose to propel you forward. And not only do we want you to trust it, we want you to get inside of it. You know, that evolution is happening in manufacturing right now, but with the pace of modern technology. And that's presenting some real challenges in how people are thinking and how companies are thinking and investing and how we're looking at stuff. So that itself is going to be, I think it's fun, I'm excited about trying to help figure it out, but that is a challenge that is in front of us right now.
So you're excited about it, but we know not everyone out there is excited about it. Some people are nervous about it. You could even say they're scared about it. A lot of people just don't know what to do about it. Which, another question I had for you is around innovation. Why should you embrace innovation and not fear it?
Being afraid of it doesn't do anybody any good, first off. And I think I'll double back and make sure we all have the same definition of innovation, right? Invention and innovation, I think, often get confused. We think of them sometimes as the same thing. Well, they are very much not the same thing. I view innovation as the idea of bringing two ideas together that have not been brought together before. So it doesn't have to be something that's net new. And you look at innovation as, you know, hey, what if we did that?
I was with a customer a couple years ago and was talking about coffee flavoring, and I said to the customer, I was like, well, here's how we flavor pet food. We put it in this machine, we do X, Y, and Z to it, and then this happens, we dump it over here, and it helps make the flavor stronger, blah blah blah. And I asked the coffee guys, I said, what if we did that with ground coffee? Like, would that help, would that work, would that solve a problem? And the engineer looked at me, and he was like, no, that won't work because of how coffee works, but no one has ever asked us a question like that before.
So, you know, at first I was afraid he'd be like, you idiot, no, that won't work. But no, instead, and somebody might not bring that idea forward, but I was like, I don't know, maybe it would work, sounds interesting, let's see what happens. So innovation leads to failure just as many times as invention does, too. And you can go too far, right? People have been burnt by bleeding-edge technology. That's why we call it bleeding edge instead of cutting edge. You can go a little bit too far.
But in today's cycle, if you think about the impact that cell phones have had on manufacturing, and I'm not talking about connected workers and tablets, I'm talking about the evolution of camera technology that's embedded in cell phones and how that's propelled vision system technology in the manufacturing space, right? Those two are very tightly linked. If we hadn't seen the investment by the Apples, the Googles, and others in the smartphone technology to make cameras better, our vision systems in factories would be lagging. Instead, it's accelerating. And so those two things are related. And if you're not staying on top of it and innovating, one of your competitors is, and they'll take your shelf space tomorrow if they can.
Well, one of the things that you just brought up that I'm curious to get your perspective on as an integrator is, you talk about leveraging bleeding-edge technology, cutting-edge technology, something I think you do very well at Gray. What are the ways to mitigate the risk of leveraging new technology? Feel free to answer this from the context of an end user or what you do at Gray personally.
Test, test, test, test, test, test, test. And not just physically, virtually. You know, use simulation software. Trust your engineers to run models and check things out. Spend the money on a proof of principle. Bring something in on a smaller scale and test the theory that you're playing with. It'll take longer, maybe, to get to what you need, but if you can find a partner that's willing to try that with you, and I'm not just pitching us, we do proof of principles for our customers all the time, but we also have industry partners that do that as well, and you can find folks that will engage with you like that, and that's going to accelerate your chance of success in the field.
The other thing I'll say, though, is don't go too crazy, because then you'll slow down what you might need to improve. And at the end of the day, those proof of principles are always at a smaller scale. Stuff changes when you go at scale. And so, you know, kind of find that balance, find that uncomfortable position. You know, and if you're trying to figure out when is the right time to take your proof of principle and start moving it forward, I would always suggest, find that moment where you're not sure if you've done enough testing and you think you've done too much. Be in that uncomfortable space where you're like, I think we could test more, but I also think we've tested enough. If you can find yourself in that spot, that's the moment to go.
What a great litmus test. I mean, I appreciate all the specific advice you've given. You're not just giving general answers. You're saying, hey, leverage simulation, you can check these things out virtually before you're doing it physically. A lot
...of great advice across the board. I mentioned this at the start that we'd get back to your rebrand, and maybe not coincidentally, it's very story-centric based on the question you were asking earlier about superpowers. So Gray Solutions recently went through a rebrand, and aside from looking very cool, for anyone watching the video, you got the logo on the shirt today, it's a slick, slick new logo. But I have to ask, how did you know it was time to change or evolve the story that you were telling to your customers, partners, the industry in general, that warranted a rebrand?
You know, so we had our fifth anniversary in January, and we've been through massive growth and changes as the business has grown. We started out in the beginning with our first chapter as a company that was very tightly connected to construction and some of our large projects, and at the time our logo looked just like our sister company's logo with the word Solutions tacked onto the end and the colors flipped. Worked out great. As Gray evolved, we needed to change that up a little bit, and so we launched with a slightly different twist on that logo at the time, but we're still really connected to that industry, or to that business. I want to be crystal clear: Gray is in our name, like we are still very much tied to that. I'm in a job site trailer today and I got Gray Construction right behind me in the next trailer with our team.
And so what we wanted to really express is we wanted to make sure we kept the tie to that original business. But if you go all the way back to the story of why we started as a business instead of a division of the other company, it was all about how we could serve those customers beginning, middle, end of their projects, and really for their lifetime. And we realized that the way we were branding did not tell the story of all the awesome stuff that our teams do every day. And so last year we realized that, okay, it's time, it's time to get started, and that this is a very serious endeavor that we're going to go after. So this has been a year-long journey for us. We didn't wake up a month ago and decide to do this. And like any good techy-minded person, the first thing I did was pick out our new web platform and then went to go find partners that could help with it. So even in our rebrand we put the technology first.
What do you do to make sure your story stands out? Because as I've gotten to know Gray, I always think of you as an innovative company. When I think systems integration, you're one of the first people that comes to my mind. So what do you do to make sure your story stands out in a sea of plenty of other meos?
Yeah, it's, you know, and there's a lot of great system integrators out there, the CSIA community, and we're part of a group called Automation Alliance Group where we connect with those folks. And so part of our challenge was you don't want to stand out too much. Our industry is not ready for the Tesla of systems integration yet, and maybe never will be. What we wanted to do was really make sure that we could tell the story of the cool things that we did but back it up with the technical chops. And so we really try to focus on those outcomes that our customers are after. "Let curiosity lead" has a great segue, so we can tell people what it led to and really help emphasize that story on what those outcomes we can deliver for our customers are.
You know, Chris, the biggest thing for us, we're excited about our new marketing and about it launching, but the word-of-mouth conversations between our customers is still probably one of our best referral sources for work that we get. And a lot of our customers have very secretive projects that they don't want us talking about, and so what's important for us is to tell that story. And one of the unique things about our industry is the storytelling that we're doing, you know, with our public-facing stories, we're communicating not only to our customers, but we also happen to hire people that are also interested in that stuff too. And so, you know, it's important for us to tell those stories in a way that works for both audiences.
What advice do you have for folks, whether it's their company story or their personal story, because you've hit on both of these today? What advice do you have for people to get more comfortable telling their own story?
I think first off, understand it. Spend some time thinking about it and practicing it. I think they used to say stand in the mirror in your bedroom and tell the story. I got great news, you don't have to do that anymore. Set your iPad up or your phone up and tell it, and then go watch yourself. I'm now realizing I have to listen to this podcast at some point in the future and critique myself, but that's the best way to do it, is to get that practice. We share the same thing with our engineers when it's like, how do you present to a customer? Sit down with a colleague and practice it if it's a big enough thing, and run through it. It'll help you think through your process, and it'll help somebody else give you that feedback.
And there's no substitute to spending time sitting and thinking about it. We talked about leadership earlier. One of the things that our COO Drew emphasizes a lot and pushes me on is to make sure we're all spending time thinking, dedicating thinking time. One of my other mentors tells a lot of stories and told me a story once about how, you know, it's okay to take a minute and think. He was telling me that his daughter asked for a hot dog, and he thought the answer was no, but he didn't want to tell her she couldn't have a hot dog. So he realized, he's like, I'm going to tell her I'm going to think about it for a minute. And that if he can think about the hot dog, he can definitely spend some time thinking about really, really complex stuff, like telling your personal story or telling your company story. That's a really important part of getting your message out for folks, is letting them know who you are and what you do and why you do it.
Great hot dog story. You definitely do have a knack for simplifying complex topics. As we get to the end of our conversation, I have to ask, is there anything in the breadth of stuff we covered today that you wish I would have asked that still hasn't come up?
I think you did a pretty good job of covering most of it. I would think the only thing I would maybe sprinkle in there when it comes to branding or executing or looking at our work is our employees are absolutely critical to what we do. Our customers are very important there as well, but the other thing I always look for are partners. Who are our partners that can help us deliver that? And that's everything from the partners you would think a system integrator would have, Rockwell and the like, but that also could mean other companies that we may work with that we partner with for delivery on projects, and marketing partners, etc. All those things, when you think about building those partnerships, if you're building a systems integration business, or I mean building any kind of business, go out and look for those partners and put energy into them.
When we talk about our second core value of being customer relationship driven, sometimes people hear customer relationship and they kind of hear it as the same word. No, no, I want to be clear, it's customer and relationship. Those relationships with partners can also be really critical, and something that I've had experience on in the last couple years that we didn't spend enough energy on. And we've changed and pivoted and spent some energy on it, and I can tell you that the dividends pay off when you put calories into that.
So customer and relationship. I like the emphasis about partners, not only from you, but it's been a theme on the show we've been hearing more and more lately. So one of the nice things about doing this is I get to kind of digest some of the trends that I hear from guest after guest. So I appreciate everything you've shared today, Walker. I do have to ask, and maybe this came up on a bar napkin at kooo or something like that, but where did you guys get Solutioneer from, right? Is there a story behind that? Obviously it's Gray Solutions, so I get where that could come in, but is there a good story behind that as well?
Yeah, I mean, so I mentioned our COO Drew, who leads our operations team, right? Like I said, I have two jobs: find cool people, sell work, find cool problems for them to solve. Drew fits in the middle. He makes sure that we can figure out how to deliver on all those problems that we say we can fix. And he and I spent some time a couple years ago thinking about how important it was going to be to have an identity for our people and how important that was. And we were kind of joking about, you know, Imagineering and how that had sunk in and what that was. And he, I don't know if it was an actual bar napkin, but it may have been like a text message or something very similar, and he just threw out Solutioneer. And I stared at it and I was like, well, that's cheesy. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, no, that's what it is. That's what it is.
And if you check out some of our stuff, we actually have a baseball tee every year that everybody gets with the year on it. It's part of our company meeting, and on the back it just says Solutioneer. And it's just a reminder, and I think, back to that storytelling, it's an identity for our people to share. Some people think it's cheesy, whatever. It helps give people an identity, and that helps really create that team environment and atmosphere. And I love when customers ask me what it is, so it's a lot of fun.
It is a conversation starter. It's not necessarily something I thought I was going to ask in this conversation, but I do feel it's a perfect way to end our discussion today. Walker, what's the best way to connect with you and Gray Solutions?
You can find me on LinkedIn online. I usually say you can reach me by email, phone. Check out our new website at graysolutions.com. Being a systems integrator, the only thing we don't take are faxes, so do not send us a fax, we will not get it. But yeah, you can reach us at graysolutions.com. It's our new website, just launched here recently, very excited about it. Go check it out and you can find a myriad of ways to reach us there.
I'm excited for you and your team too. After over 150 episodes, this is the first time we've gotten a "don't fax me" disclaimer on the show, so love that we've got some uniqueness here at the end as well. Walker, thanks so much for jumping on today's show. Thank you.
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