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Starting a Business at 50: Patti Nowak on Mid-Career Entrepreneurship, Mentorship, and Making Yourself "Bigger"

Manufacturing Happy Hour · ▶ 1:00:31 · 31 min read
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Overview

Patti Nowak owns Control+M Solutions, a consulting firm built entirely around Plex, the cloud ERP system owned by Rockwell Automation. Nowak started it at almost 50, after losing a job. In this episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, recorded at 3 Sheeps Brewing in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, host Chris Luecke asks what made that late start work. He also asks how Nowak approaches mentoring women in manufacturing, and what small manufacturers get wrong about ERP and operational improvement.

31 min read

Nowak's answer to the first question sets the tone for the whole conversation: a business that seems to appear overnight usually rests on a decade of groundwork. As Nowak puts it, "You start it 10 years before you want to open it."

A Mainframe at Home and a Knack for Translation

Luecke opens by asking whether there is a common thread in a career that has covered running businesses, IT, information systems and cloud implementations. Nowak traces it back to childhood. Nowak's father kept a spare Univac mainframe at home and ran a side business managing skeet shooting, bowling and archery competitions. He taught his child to program and do data entry, which earned some pocket money and, in Nowak's words, made computers "very not scary."

Nowak's first professional role was as a cost accountant at OshKosh B'gosh in the 1990s. In that job Nowak found a knack for explaining what IT people were saying in terms business people could act on. Nowak notes this is the natural role of a business analyst, but says they lacked the formal education for that title and enjoyed accounting anyway. An opportunity in networking led into IT.

Gender played a part in that move, by Nowak's account. Accounting, which Nowak jokingly calls "the world's second oldest profession," was hard for women to advance in, at least in the '90s. IT was a newer field where getting ahead was easier. Nowak built PCs, swapped circuit boards and added memory, then moved into software. That, Nowak says, is where the career "bloomed," because it showed what software could do for a company. Eventually that turned into a niche: helping companies succeed with one specific software package.

The common thread, as Nowak sums it up, is understanding that IT is a tool, "no different than a hammer for a carpenter." Used well, it helps a business thrive. Used badly, it causes anxiety, costs a lot of money and creates risk. Luecke reframes this as IT being a communication tool, with Nowak acting as a communicator throughout.

The "Happy Accident" That Was Ten Years in the Making

Nowak describes starting a business as "a happy accident." After finding themselves without a job, Nowak decided to "hang up my shingle" as a Plex consultant. The first customer came within five minutes of sending an email announcing the new company. Within a week there were three customers, and within a month a contract of about $150,000 was signed.

Nowak insists this was not overnight success. It came from the previous ten years of work. Nowak had gone deep into Plex and did outreach through user groups and community education. Nowak also completed an MBA, on the reasoning that helping people with technology required understanding all aspects of business, and earned a PMP project management certification, which Nowak calls a key requirement for executing projects. Accounting, the PMP, the MBA and deep Plex knowledge were all in place before the company existed. That is why the step felt natural. Nowak warns that anyone starting without that kind of foundation will need to acquire a lot of the same knowledge to succeed.

Running Three Companies, and Knowing Whom to Ask

Luecke asks how Nowak manages multiple companies. Nowak explains that Control+M runs as three separate entities: the original LLC, a ULC in Canada, and a third company that runs the annual Plex user conference, Plexapalooza.

The Canadian entity exists because, as Nowak puts it, Canadian clients like to work with Canadian people and want to feel comfortable dealing with someone in their own country. Setting it up meant learning international business.

The conference entity has two reasons behind it. The first is insurance: coverage for a user conference is different from errors and omissions insurance for a consulting LLC. The second is collections. If a client's accounts payable department falls months behind on a consulting invoice, Nowak does not want to tell that client they cannot attend the conference. That "feels really punitive." Keeping the entities separate made things simpler.

Nowak admits to not knowing at the outset that three companies were needed. The broader lesson, Nowak says, is that the key to running more than one company is knowing whom to ask. Business owners can give the impression they have everything figured out, but "what they really have is a strong network of people" to reach out to. Nowak credits a number of mentors for business advice. Control+M even employs two CPAs who do not do the company's accounting. That is handled by the accountant who has been there since Nowak was a one-person operation and who knows all three entities.

Why Starting Later Can Be Easier

Luecke points to the myth that founders start in their twenties and asks when Nowak realized business ownership was possible. Nowak describes the moment candidly. The family was going through a very difficult period. Nowak lost the job and, at almost 50, was "pretty bummed" and somewhat worried. A former boss suggested giving self-employment a try. Nowak also called the software company to ask about a job, and was told there might be something, but not for a couple of months. Nowak had a good severance agreement and did not need money right away, but is restless by nature. So the question became what to do for those months. The answer was to see what would happen. Nowak calls the severance "the world's greatest safety net."

Nowak argues that starting a business can be easier when you are older. Younger people's attention is divided among finding a partner, finishing school and paying off student loans. At the time of launch, Nowak was married, owned a home and had grown children who had left the house. A one-week trip or a 12-to-16-hour workday was fine. Nowak jokes that their husband "knows how to make a sandwich." Parents of young children don't have that freedom. Younger people, running around "in your Ferrari body," may also want to spend their time on surfing or running.

Nowak's advice to young would-be founders is to keep thinking about it and ask what they will need ten years from now to succeed. Nowak says they never sacrificed family for business, and stresses that children need to know you are there. Nowak admits to probably annoying both sides at times, and says that is life for every parent. When Nowak was younger, childcare fell more to mothers. Now co-parenting is more common, and couples make joint decisions more effectively. "There's always time," Nowak says.

Firing the Customer Who Was 75% of Revenue

Control+M is built on a single software platform. Luecke asks what advice Nowak has for small and mid-size manufacturers who get most of their business from a few big clients. Nowak calls this "probably the hardest thing that I ever had to do."

At one point, one customer accounted for about 75% of Control+M's sales. Nowak knew the standard business rule that this level of concentration means high risk. Although the company was growing, Nowak concluded: "I got to get rid of this customer." Nowak's husband thought the idea was crazy. Nowak's reasoning was that if that client left first, the company would be in trouble. When they started discussing it with the client, it turned out the timing suited a "mutual breakup," because the client was coincidentally heading in a different direction.

Nowak says the result was striking. As soon as Control+M did less with that one resource-hungry client, "explosive growth" began. The company went from five employees to a dozen in what Nowak recalls as about two to two and a half years. Nowak's explanation is that the team had been so focused on keeping that one company happy that they weren't looking for new business.

COVID, Free Webinars, and a YouTube Channel Nowak Thought Was Ridiculous

Nowak links growth to being known, which in consulting is "the best way to get ahead." Besides the conference, Control+M has a YouTube channel, which Nowak first thought was "the most ridiculous idea ever."

The channel came out of COVID. Company presidents began calling Nowak in a panic. Some were in essential industries and needed to go from one shift to three. Others needed to shut down three days a week. All wanted to know how to expand or contract their workforce quickly in Plex. After building this for a third client, Nowak "started feeling icky" about charging people during a worldwide pandemic when "the world could end tomorrow." Nowak ran a webinar explaining what Plex users needed to consider and do to expand or contract, and reversed the charges for the three clients already billed. The thinking was that it was time to "pump some goodness into the universe and see what happens."

Nowak's business operations manager then suggested a YouTube channel. Nowak's reaction was that no one would watch. The manager persisted. Nowak eventually agreed, pointing out that staff had time during the COVID slowdown. Nowak told employees there would be a webinar every two weeks, on any topic they were comfortable with and passionate about, as practice in presentation and configuration skills. The channel built a following. Nowak says it now holds more than 80 free videos, and the company knows they are used by salespeople, competitors, customers, and Plex users who are not Control+M customers. Nowak is fine with that.

Nowak says the principle behind it, learned in their thirties, is that "you can never really give anything away"; what you give to the community comes back. Nowak credits this for the company's success and reputation, saying, "We don't market. We just do a really good job." It also led to a policy of letting employees "no charge" work. Nowak tells staff to think about when they were customers themselves: if they wouldn't be happy getting a bill for something, they are authorized not to send one. "Nobody wants to feel nickel-dimed," whether at a grocery store or a consulting firm.

Becoming a Mentor Despite Doubts

Luecke turns to Nowak's work supporting women in industry and asks when mentoring became part of it. Nowak says it first meant getting past internal resistance. One part was impostor syndrome. Nowak wondered who would want to be mentored by someone who didn't yet consider themselves very successful. The other was ambivalence about women's groups. If there were a men-only group, Nowak reasoned, women would be up in arms, so why have a women-only group? "We say we want equality, but then we … treat each other as special." Nowak says they genuinely struggled with that.

What changed Nowak's mind, after starting to support such events, was recognizing that younger women need to see older women in successful positions to know that route exists. Nowak recalls working in manufacturing in their early twenties and noticing that the outside offices were all filled with men, except for one woman. She would sometimes take younger women aside and point out behaviors they needed to stop in order to get ahead. Meanwhile, male colleagues talked about going to play basketball, and a lot of business happened on the basketball or racquetball court. Without access to that, Nowak missed the inside scoop.

Nowak couldn't find a way around those barriers in accounting. In IT, the personality fit better, the business knowledge stood out more, and there was a strong mentor. About five years ago, some twenty years later, Nowak met a woman who turned out to have had the same mentor: when Nowak left that company, he began mentoring her. The two are now close friends, and Nowak describes that mentor as a real champion for women.

The $10,000 Raise

Nowak realized that personal stories resonate. Listeners come back saying they told their daughters about them. One of Nowak's favorites dates from their mid-thirties at an electronics company. Nowak started the same week as a man named Jeff, and the two co-managed IT, with Nowak on hardware and Jeff on software. They were the same age, with the same education and experience, and got along well.

Then the boss, Dave, assigned Nowak a project that exposed everyone's salaries. Nowak discovered Jeff earned $10,000 a year more. At the time Nowak was a single parent in their thirties, and that was a lot of money. Nowak finished the project and then raised the issue: same experience, same education, same start date. Because Dave's wife was a professional, Nowak said, it probably wasn't about gender, but Nowak needed a $10,000 raise that day. Dave asked for an hour, then offered $5,000. Nowak called it "a great place to start" but said they needed all ten. Dave said he didn't have authority to give that much, so Nowak asked who did, and suggested going to see the president, who surely wouldn't want the inequity. An hour later, Nowak had the full $10,000.

A few weeks later, over a couple of beers, Nowak asked Dave why the gap had existed. Dave explained that he had offered them both the same salary. Jeff refused it and asked for another $10,000. Nowak didn't. "You didn't know your worth. You didn't ask for it. That's why you didn't get it." Dave added that he bet Nowak would never make that mistake again.

Nowak had never told anyone the story until mentioning it casually to a successful friend, Jean, who said every woman needed to hear it. Nowak didn't find it especially interesting, but after first sharing it with a women's group, people still come up to say it gave them courage. The lesson Nowak draws is to go into a negotiation based on facts rather than emotion, because "that's what men do."

Nowak also says mentoring runs both ways. Younger people contribute ideas too. The YouTube channel, after all, was a young woman's suggestion that Nowak would never have thought of.

The Buyer Who Whispered From the Next Room

Asked how Nowak builds confidence in women through less traditional means, Nowak first describes different kinds of mentoring: peer, flash, short-term and long-term, official and unofficial. In one formal relationship, the woman being mentored was very good at her job but had almost no confidence. Nowak calls confidence work the easy part.

Then Nowak describes a more unusual case. On an operational excellence engagement, Nowak arrived with two male employees to meet a leadership team of three men and one woman. The woman, a buyer for five plants, said she didn't have time for the session that day. Nowak found that odd, given the client was paying three consultants "a fairly stout rate," but accepted it. Later, while the team was filling whiteboards and sticky notes, Nowak asked about the buying process. The buyer came in, whispered in one man's ear and left. Nowak assumed a family emergency. The man explained that she was sitting in the next room listening and feeding him information. Nowak calls it the oddest thing they had ever seen a woman do.

Later, Nowak stopped by the buyer's office privately (Nowak uses the pseudonym "Betsy") and asked why she didn't feel comfortable. She said the men she worked with didn't make her feel welcome. Nowak's response was to point out the size of her role. As buyer for five factories in a $500 million company, she controlled more cash flow than almost anyone there, including the plant managers, and material cost is a huge share of gross profit. But she wasn't acting like a leader, Nowak told her, and that was why she didn't feel she belonged. Nowak urged her to come sit at the table.

Nowak's general reply to women who say the men around them won't let them advance is: "Every man that got ahead had to beat out every man ahead of him to do it. … You're just another runner in the race." Nowak's advice is to act, dress and work as though you already have the position you want, and share your ideas. If the environment won't accept them, leave: "If you can't change the machine, find a new machine."

Luecke notes the balance between acknowledging that conditions haven't always been equitable and holding people personally accountable. Nowak adds that informal side conversations, such as trading secrets about balancing work, parenting and marriage, are valuable. Nowak thinks women may be better at that and more willing to share.

Comfortable Networking, and What Men Should Take From Women's Events

Nowak describes an informal session at Plexapalooza held with Rockwell's group Women Electrifying Business. It was guided by Nowak's event coordinator, Jessica Williams of Whimsical Celebrations. She split about 30 participants into groups of ten and got them talking about their professional and personal experiences. By the end of the night, Nowak says, everyone had become fast friends and made networking connections that could help their careers, in a relaxed setting. Nowak believes creating conditions like that helps women get ahead.

Men are always welcome at these events, Nowak says, but Nowak dislikes a tendency to preach at men who attend, along the lines of "you need to give women a chance." Nowak wants men to learn how to communicate effectively with women, not to be told they are "a naughty boy" keeping women down, which Nowak says they no longer see happening.

Handling Disrespect Without Emotion, and Protecting Brainstorming

Luecke asks for examples of more equitable environments today. Nowak shares a story heard the night before from a woman who runs a factory Control+M works with. During a safety blitz, she went onto the floor in a cap and safety gear, not dressed as the executive she is. She told a quality employee he was breaking safety policy. He ignored her, kept doing it wrong, swore at her, and said he would go complain to his boss. She laughed and told him to go ahead, because his boss works for her. She waited until he had finished ranting in his boss's office, then walked in and politely asked the manager to come see her when he was done.

In her office, she told the manager she could have fired the employee on the spot but hadn't. She didn't know whether he was a good worker and didn't want to fire him for one mistake. But he needed to learn that you don't speak to anyone that way, whether they are a shipping clerk or the person delivering coffee, and she had the manager deliver that message. Nowak admires how unemotionally she handled it. Nowak adds that if someone two levels down spoke to them that way, Nowak would be quick to say "I don't need you," and calls the young man lucky to still have a job.

Nowak also sees men making sure women have a seat at the table and are heard. Some women without "a big strong booming voice" have ideas that go unheard, or shrink at the first criticism. Nowak's favorite response is to ask, "Aren't we brainstorming here?" In brainstorming there is no such thing as a bad idea. Nowak's example: drunk driving is obviously a bad idea, but what if talking about it led to Uber or Lyft? A bad idea can lead to a good one. Nowak also reminds people that in a boardroom everyone wants attention, so if you have a good idea, "shout it out." There's nothing wrong with competing.

"Be Bigger Than Your Current Position"

Before recording, Nowak had talked about "making yourself big," and Luecke asks what that means. Nowak says the idea started at the previous year's Plexapalooza. Along with technical sessions, the conference offered professional topics like project management and organizational change management. Nowak told attendees that whatever their job (IT, purchasing, quality), they should go back and tell their bosses what else they had learned and bring it to the table. People who hadn't noticed them before would notice now, and they would start what Nowak calls a "flywheel" of value.

The origin is personal. Before consulting, Nowak watched about six men at their company get promoted to director. Nowak was in the same position and salary range but was passed over. When Nowak asked the president why, he said he just didn't see Nowak as "director-level material." It stung, and Nowak admits to pouting for a while. Then Nowak asked what the president saw in the others and realized the good work Nowak was doing wasn't visible to him. The solution was to become bigger within the organization.

Nowak's advice applies regardless of gender or age: map your own "supply chain." Who feeds you information, and who do you feed information to? Learn both ends, understand your customers and the people you are a customer of, and find ways to make their lives easier and reduce their work. They'll appreciate it, and you'll be considered for more. Nowak calls this "building your own organic growth."

Drawing the Next Generation In

Asked how this connects to attracting new people, especially women, into manufacturing, Nowak describes a client that opened production jobs to women with school-age children. If school runs from 8:00 to 3:00, these workers came in from 8:30 to 2:30, a six-hour day. Nowak says their attendance records were remarkable. They arrived on time, focused intensely, left at 2:30, and were happy while there. Nowak says they were in a way more productive than 40-hour employees who weren't as happy. Those workers then started to see other career possibilities. "It is amazing what visual context can do," Nowak says. Luecke remarks that similar schedules exist in Scandinavia.

Nowak gives another example of visual context. A nephew in college, a state high school wrestler who now wrestles in college, is studying business but unsure about accounting, supply chain or purchasing. Nowak brought him to work at the trade show, carrying totes and meeting people in every kind of business role. Nowak says it was eye-opening for him, because college makes jobs sound theoretical, and it reinforced Nowak's belief in the value of letting people see the work.

Nowak also points to job fairs, high school internships, and tech schools inviting local manufacturers. A former employer, Jagemann Stamping Company, brought in high school students and technical college students, trained them toward mechanical engineering, treated them well and offered tuition assistance. Nowak stresses encouraging creativity early, citing a five-year-old grandson who builds LEGO sets rated for ages nine and ten. Nowak also wants to teach young people how relationships help you get ahead, and wants women to see successful women in business.

Nowak adds that in factories with only one or two women, those women are usually the ones Nowak would most like to have a beer with, because "they can hang" and won't break down in a meeting. Many women who didn't fit into high school cliques, Nowak suggests, later realize they were "meant for bigger and better things," and Nowak wishes someone had told them as an awkward teenager that their time was coming.

"It's Not Your Father's ERP"

Turning to shop talk, Luecke asks about the biggest misconceptions around ERP for small manufacturers. Nowak says people think of SAP and Oracle, which Nowak calls terrific systems that are customizable but expensive and overhead-heavy. Plex, by contrast, is configurable, so Nowak says you don't need an IT staff to run it. One of Nowak's best system administrators was a former French teacher at a Catholic high school, who understood manufacturing and organization. Plex needs "logic lovers," not "IT nerds."

Nowak says implementation can take as little as 90 days, and describes customers ranging from $8 million to $1.3 billion in annual revenue. "No one's going to cry, there's not going to be any broken bones." Nowak adds that cloud applications turn ERP into a recurring expense instead of a large capital expenditure, so there is no need to ask a bank for something like $14 million.

Control+M aims to make clients self-sufficient: "Plex birds" who can run the system themselves. Nowak's "greatest compliment" is getting a customer live and saying goodbye, while staying available. Nowak would rather have that customer refer others than keep sending weekly checks.

Nowak's message to small manufacturers is for those running on spreadsheets, color-coded folders for new product introductions and engineering changes, or quotes and purchase orders typed in Microsoft Word. For a reasonable price, Nowak says, an integrated system can show at order entry which materials will be consumed, what needs replenishing, what capacity exists and what shipping needs, without someone in accounting retyping shipping paperwork page by page. Nowak stresses this isn't about cutting staff. The AP clerk who used to retype data already knows the company and can take on cash management and more responsibility. "It's not big and it's not scary, and you can do it."

Telling Clients They Have an "Ugly Baby"

Luecke asks how Nowak helps clients make tough decisions. Nowak starts from the premise that clients are already successful, so the priority is not to break anything. But sometimes clients have to hear that they have an ugly baby.

One client's two leaders took Nowak to lunch before the project and described a "deep state." Everyone was rowing in one direction, but one person had "a 25 horse motor" constantly pulling the boat off course, and that person had the president's or the board's ear. They wanted help turning it around. Other times the issue is a manufacturing process that was needed five years ago but no longer is. Nowak describes the job as shining "a light on that cockroach" and making it run away without making clients feel bad about having one in the kitchen.

That takes respect and humility, Nowak says. Nowak can't walk into a company that has made "chili sauce for the last 30 years" and say they're doing it wrong. Instead, Nowak says other successful companies have tried an approach and asks whether it could work here. Then the team models it, identifies inputs and required outputs, looks for a configuration that achieves both, and lets the client see the results.

The Crossed-Arms Exercise

Nowak also reminds clients that change is hard, and demonstrates with Luecke. Luecke crosses his arms, and Nowak asks what Luecke thinks the gesture is meant to convey. Luecke says crossed arms read as closed off. Nowak says that's the first lesson: people assume resistance when that isn't what's happening. Then Nowak asks Luecke to switch which arm is on top. Luecke agrees it feels unnatural. Nowak's point is that if something as small as folding your arms differently is uncomfortable, operators who have written everything by hand for 30 years will feel the same when a computer appears in front of them.

Nowak recalls Raleigh, a worker of 25 to 30 years who ran four 40-ton presses at once. Raleigh came to Nowak afraid he couldn't use a computer. Nowak told him he'd be fine and that Nowak would be there. He became Nowak's biggest cheerleader. Without that reassurance, Nowak thinks he might have left out of fear.

Nowak frames this with Tuckman's forming, storming, norming and performing model. When consultants join a group that was working well, bickering follows as problems are pointed out, and then the group builds back up. Knowing that curve is coming and telling people "it's okay to be scared" makes the "white water rapids" easier.

Empowering People Means Trusting Your Own Hiring Decisions

Returning to the no-charge policy, Luecke asks for advice to manufacturing leaders on empowering their people. Nowak's answer: "Remind yourself about why you hired them." That person came in with knowledge and a strong resume, or was promoted for a reason. Not trusting them means not trusting your own decision. Nowak admits to sometimes struggling to let go of control and having to remind themselves who the expert is.

Nowak also stresses teamwork. Nowak tells staff no one person can know everything about Plex, just as no one person can run a manufacturing company. Nowak openly says they aren't strong on the quality modules and can't set up inspection modes or control plans, so as project manager Nowak brings in a subject-matter expert and trusts them. For employees who are being empowered, Nowak's advice is that it's fine to ask for guidance and periodic checkpoints to confirm you're on track. "Start small, get bigger."

Operational "Flexcellence": Seeing What You've Stopped Seeing

For the closing question, what Nowak wishes had been asked, Nowak picks operational excellence, which Control+M calls "operational flexcellence" because it works only with Plex users. For Nowak it comes down to visibility: take an objective look, stabilize, improve, sustain. "It is funny what you don't see."

On gemba walks, Nowak's team sometimes finds the production-reporting computer around a corner, under heavy shelving, past obstacles, 15 feet from the machine. The operator walks over every time, and neither he nor his supervisor notices anymore. Moving the computer would make his life easier. Nowak asks similar questions about safety: if glasses are required, do leaders check who is wearing them, and is the president wearing them too?

Nowak's longest example concerns KPIs. At a steel processor, "tons per shift hour" made sense for cutting coils. But in laser work, if you cut one piece from a one-ton sheet, put it back, then take it down again to cut another circle, you get credit for about 1.9 tons in an hour, even though common sense says cutting both circles in one handling is better. After Nowak implemented Plex for one customer, material utilization rose, labor costs fell and efficiency improved, yet corporate was calling the site on the carpet. Nowak, condensing what was actually a two-week engagement into a short story, had to tell people who had run the business for 50 years that they were measuring the wrong things. A fab shop and a toll processor care about different things, and because the organization had grown organically, no one had rethought its KPIs.

Luecke ties this back to newcomers, who are often the first to ask why someone walks across the floor for a task. Nowak adds that it applies at home too. Nowak's husband periodically announces it's time to "5S the kitchen" and asks why an air fryer used once a month is taking up counter space. Nowak once thought 5S meant drawing outlines on a desk so the coaster goes in the right place, but now sees it as about efficiency, not control, and "not a fad."

Nowak ends by calling the chance to spend a career visiting factories, watching things get made, helping companies make more money and keeping manufacturing in the United States going "probably the greatest blessing that a woman could ever have in her career. Or anyone could ever have in their career, for that matter."

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