Jim Carr on Rebranding a Machine Shop, Leading Through 2008, and Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone
Manufacturing Happy Hour
Jim Carr has spent decades at CARR Machine & Tool, the shop their father founded in 1972. On this episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, recorded at the company's new facility in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, host Chris asks what it means for a contract manufacturer to "look and act differently than a typical machine shop." Carr's answer runs through their early job as a bartender, the 2008 recession, an early bet on social media, and a new building designed from the ground up. Throughout, Carr keeps returning to two convictions: people advance by stepping slightly outside their comfort zone, and they succeed by finding work they are passionate about.
Chris opens by noting that Carr was one of the first manufacturing podcasters they ever listened to, back when Chris was living in San Francisco and listening in a climbing gym's weight room. Carr jokes that listeners heard "all my tears and all the problems we were having" at the company, and adds that they are still living it.
From Printing Presses to Aerospace
Asked for an elevator pitch, Carr describes CARR Machine & Tool as an aerospace contract manufacturer whose work typically serves space and exploration, aviation, medical, and emerging technologies. Carr calls this "quite a reversal" from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Back then the company served the commercial printing industry, making new and replacement parts for the presses that printed major newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe. Carr describes that work as "pretty lucrative." When Chris suggests the company diversified because Carr could see where the printed-newspaper market was heading, Carr agrees "100%."
Carr's father founded the company on December 2, 1972. A photo in the conference room shows him racing stock cars at Soldier Field in the 1950s. According to Carr, their father was working full time as a machinist then, and he and his friends would buy new cars and modify them for the track. The car in the photo is, Carr believes, a 1958 Ford, and the picture shows their father taking a victory lap with the checkered flag out the window. Carr describes him as a driven man who liked to put in long hours and who had the mechanical aptitude the industry needs. He liked working on cars and could take an engine apart.
What a "Typical Machine Shop" Used to Mean
Before explaining how CARR tries to be different, Chris asks what a typical machine shop looks like. Carr says it depends on who you ask. A younger person might picture a high-tech operation. Carr grew up as a baby boomer seeing manufacturing treated as a second-class industry and a second-class career choice for people without an education, and generally regarded as low-paying.
Carr says that picture is completely out of date and wants to "lead the charge" in telling the world so. In Carr's view, parents especially need to learn that the industry is now high-tech and well paid, and that someone can support a family for an entire career working for a manufacturer.
Designing a Building to Match the Customers You Want
The new facility, Carr says, was deliberate. The company was running out of room in its old building and its capabilities were growing. Carr's son Ryan had joined the business, and they wanted a significant change. Carr saw the move as their one remaining chance to make the company their own. The old building had been their father's, and Carr says they always felt they were living under his shadow.
So Carr set out to build what they imagined a first-class aerospace manufacturer looks and acts like. The company hired an architect, an interior designer, and a separate designer to work out the most efficient layout for the machines on the shop floor. Carr calls it "an endeavor," but says they knew there would be only one chance to do it right and believes they did.
The goal was to appeal to higher-end OEMs and aerospace companies that Carr thinks could take the business to the next level. Carr names Tesla, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX as examples of high-end, high-tech companies. Carr's reasoning is that matching your brand to the companies you want to attract creates good synergy. Chris notes that the front of the building has the same intentional feel: offices and a conference room, then a lounge down the hall for entertaining customers, so the layout follows the natural flow of a customer visit.
The Bartending Lesson: Touch It Once
That lounge reflects a background most shop owners don't have. In their twenties, while working full time at CARR, Carr tended bar in the evenings and says that is where they learned what hospitality is about. Carr sees their career as combining that hospitality background with a lifetime in manufacturing, and adds a third interest, marketing.
Chris asks for the most tangible lesson from bartending that helped in manufacturing. After thinking for a moment, Carr recalls a manager's advice during training. A cocktail waitress arrives with fifteen drink orders: an extra-dry vodka martini, an old-fashioned, a Manhattan, an Old Style, a rum and Coke, a Bacardi and Coke. If you pick up a bottle, the manager said, pick it up only once and pour every drink that needs it before you set it down.
Carr turned that into a principle: if you are going to do something, do it once, and touch each item only once. Carr gives shipping and receiving as an example, where the aim is to do as much as possible in a single pass. Carr still remembers the row of fifteen iced glasses, with a two-ounce pour for a Bacardi martini next to a Bacardi and tonic. Chris points out that the lesson could easily have been about hospitality but turned out to be about process.
Expanding the Box: The Pong Metaphor
Chris notes that Carr has made several big moves recently, including the new building (just down the street from the old one, but much larger) and a new podcast, My True Position. How do you know when it's time for a change like that?
Carr says you have to feel it. People get caught up in daily life, living inside a bubble or a box, and eventually they get tired and need a spark. Carr's metaphor, one they say they've shared on many podcasts, is the old video game Pong: a ball bouncing back and forth inside a simple rectangle. Most people, Carr says, live their lives and careers inside a box like that, and it stays the same size for decades.
Carr's advice is to push the sides out by an eighth or a quarter of an inch. A change that small won't be painful, only a little uncomfortable, and the discomfort doesn't last. Once the bigger box feels comfortable, you push out again, and the box keeps growing. Carr frames this as an ongoing practice: stay outside your comfort zone until it becomes comfortable, then move into the uncomfortable zone again.
Chris asks whether the spark could be superficial rather than strategic. Carr says that sometimes you just have to go for it. Failure is fine because you learn from it. The important thing is not to overextend so far that failure would be fatal. "Baby steps forward," Carr says, "baby steps into the uncomfortable zone." Chris adds that as old discomforts fade, new ones appear with each new thing you try, and Carr agrees.
2008: Layoffs and a Turning Point
Chris asks when Carr first realized they needed to expand the box, especially given that a family company can feel set in its ways. Carr took full ownership of the business in 2004 and says they remain its sole shareholder and president. Then came 2008, which Carr calls one of the worst recessions the industry has seen.
Carr had to lay off 65% of the workforce, one employee at a time, roughly one a week, telling each person there was no more work. Carr says the emotional strain nearly made them sick. But Carr also found that dreading each conversation was worse than having it. Employees often responded with something like "I get it, Jim, it's okay," because they watched the news and knew how bad the economy was. Carr concluded they had agonized more than necessary.
The recession convinced Carr that the company needed more networking, more marketing, and more sales. In Carr's assessment, that was what had been holding the business back: it wasn't global enough, and people didn't know about it. Carr says they have always been drawn to creative people, including marketers, and through friendships with marketing people discovered both a love for the work and a natural talent for self-promotion. Carr never looked back.
When Ryan joined in 2014, Carr saw a chance to put that passion to work. Ryan would run operations while Carr ran sales and marketing. Carr says this is the right seat after an entire career. Carr still has the mechanical skills (running CNC machines, GD&T, programming), and Chris says the shop tour showed Carr "still got the chops." But Carr's passion is leadership, branding, and marketing.
Building a Personal Board of Directors
Chris asks what advice Carr would give someone who will have to lead through hard times. Carr's answer is networking, and tells how their own network grew. CARR had belonged to a local manufacturing association for decades without really getting involved. The association then hired a marketing manager, Kent Gladish, to help members market themselves. Carr and Gladish were about the same age and had similar interests, and they started talking about marketing. Gladish kept urging Carr to join committees and attend events.
Through those activities Carr met like-minded peers in the industry. That led to a seat on the association's board of directors, then its executive team, and then chairmanship of the board in 2016. Carr says the result is a "solid personal board of directors" built over the past ten to twelve years: a small core group Carr can call about a business problem and meet over a beer, a glass of wine, or a martini to talk it through. Carr says this advice applies at any stage of a career, noting, "I started late, but I did it."
Rocks and Accountability
Chris mentions My True Position, noting that it gives listeners a transparent look behind the scenes of Carr's shop, sometimes about something that happened on the floor an hour before recording. On that show, Chris heard Carr talk about quarterly "rocks."
Carr explains that as part of building a roadmap for growth, the company read Traction by Wickman, which lays out EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Within EOS, "rocks" are quarterly and annual goals. You commit to one, and you are held accountable for whether you achieved it. When the company knew it needed to move, Carr's rock for one quarter was "find a building." Once that was done, the next quarter's rock was "buy the building." Pointing around the room, Carr says, "Here we are. This is a rock." For Carr, the point is setting goals, telling the team about them, and being accountable to the team, because "everyone needs accountability in life."
Chris admits that despite being goal-oriented, they sometimes realize late in the year that a goal from three quarters earlier never got done. Carr says that's okay. If you genuinely tried, and you are the only one who knows how hard you tried, you have gained experience and resources for the next similar goal. Chris says that as a new solo entrepreneur, they are still looking for the right accountability group.
Where the Branding Instinct Came From
Turning to marketing, Chris notes that branding doesn't come naturally to most manufacturing leaders. Carr's father, after all, was known for mechanical skill and drive. Where did Carr's focus on brand come from?
Carr says they eventually realized "you get what you pay for." Carr uses Nordstrom as an example: most people have a clear impression of what shopping at an upscale store like that is like, and that impression is its brand. Carr's father used to say, "Jim, for 10 cents more you can go first class." It was said half in jest, and the gap is no longer ten cents, but the message was to spend a little more and get something nice. Carr says they took that idea further.
For Carr, branding means asking what people think of when they think of CARR, and then being relentlessly consistent. The way a company presents itself to the public has to be the same every time.
An Early, Skeptically Received Bet on Social Media
Chris points out that Carr adopted social media, LinkedIn, and podcasting well before most of the industry. Carr traces it to about fifteen years ago, when their kids were in high school. Carr watched them on the family computer using MySpace, and then Facebook as it was emerging, and saw how absorbed they were. Carr sat and watched over their shoulders, trying to understand it, and decided it could be a great way to promote the business, since companies were only beginning to appear on social media.
Carr remembers that peers in the manufacturing association thought they were "nuts" for posting about the company, because it was new and different. Chris adds that when they started in 2016, people could at least write it off as a young person using social media. Carr was already a seasoned executive. Carr's attitude was, "What the hell have I got to lose?" and calls it an example of making the box bigger. In Carr's view, what holds most people back in their careers is worrying too much about what others think. Carr says you have to do what feels right for you and live authentically, and calls that realization a big "aha moment."
Why keep going without immediate results? Carr's reasons are that it's free marketing, free branding, and the fastest way to get the word out. Carr compares it to newspapers, the industry CARR once served: by the time a printed paper reaches you, the news is old. Carr remembers learning that Michael Jackson had died from an obscure person's Facebook post.
Does It Pay Off? Thought Leadership More Than Attributable Sales
Asked whether social media has brought in new business, Carr says they can't say for sure. What Carr is confident of is that it built thought leadership and promoted the brand. Carr's hypothesis is that a prospective customer who is on the fence might see Carr's presence online, conclude "this guy knows his crap," and that might tip them over to CARR and "seal the deal."
Chris agrees and says they can point to a few specific relationships and clients that came from their own podcast. But Chris thinks consistency matters more: a steady voice and posting schedule add up over time. Chris calls it a form of storytelling that others can't replicate overnight. Chris says they followed the story of CARR's move through Carr's posts and podcast without knowing exactly where they learned it. Carr says they enjoyed posting video teasers of the building's progress.
Carr admits to posting less than before, citing time, but keeps a steady schedule for the podcast. "More is more" on social media, Carr says, but consistency matters most. If you post only two or three times a week, do it on the same days and at the same times, just as a podcast releases on a set day, because inconsistency "confuses people, and people don't like to be confused."
Why Other Manufacturers Hold Back, and Carr's Posting Formula
Chris asks why more manufacturers don't approach marketing this way. Carr says they don't really know. One guess is that manufacturers tend to be reclusive and introverted, and Carr sees themselves as an exception. Another is that people get scared of what they don't understand. A newcomer worries about getting a post right, but Carr says a post doesn't have to be perfect, just good.
Carr's own approach focuses on the image, because you have "a millisecond" to catch someone scrolling. Carr keeps the text short, since they personally don't like reading a lot: picture, idea, what's it about, and the reader either stays or moves on. Chris notes that long written posts work well for others, so the takeaway is to find your own style. Chris adds that a bad post simply disappears within hours, while a good one might help even one person, which Chris compares to making a sales call.
Carr adds a caveat: social media isn't everything. If marketing is a pie, Carr puts social media at close to 25%, but not quite. The rest includes a good website, good video, good imagery, and a strong brand, meaning "the feeling," not just a logo, with everything consistent. Carr says the logo still has to match the brand, because many people don't realize how much a logo defines it. Chris notes that CARR's logo has an aerospace feel. Carr confirms that's intentional and points out how simple it is, just the "A." When the graphic designer presented it, Carr knew within about 30 seconds that it was right, because it evoked the right feeling.
Staying Young: Passion and the Right Seat
Chris asks what keeps Carr young at heart, energetic, and still trying new things when a baby boomer this far into a career could be coasting. Carr says someone asked the same question two nights earlier. The answer is that Carr likes to work, is passionate about it, and is in the right seat, leading the company's vision, and happier in their career than ever before.
Carr gives employees the same message in performance reviews: it's not about Carr or the company, it's about them. Without passion, Carr tells them, they will never be fully happy or reach their highest level or income. Carr encourages them to find that passion, whether at CARR or elsewhere. If it's at CARR but they're in the wrong role, Carr asks them to say so, and offers to create a new role or move them into one where they will thrive.
Preparing for the Next Generation
In the final question, Chris asks how Carr is preparing the company to reflect the vision of Ryan and the rest of the team. Carr's answer is brief: think strategically about succession, plan for the long term rather than the short term, and share that vision with the whole team. Carr sums it up as "transparency."
Asked whether anything was left out, Carr repeats the two beliefs from a long career. First, pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is essential to advancing in both personal life and career. Second, passion for your work is critical to growth, promotion, and success.
The episode ends with the question it began with, about drinks. Carr's wife drinks almost only white wine, so the couple drinks a lot of Chardonnay. Their current favorite is a high-end Napa Valley Chardonnay from the Carneros area. It's not an everyday bottle, Carr notes, adding that once you start drinking wine in that category, it raises your baseline for what an everyday wine should be.
[Music]
Good afternoon, welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour, Jim. Thank you, appreciate it. Pleasure to have you here as one of the first manufacturing podcasters I ever listened to. Well, thank you for that.
It was back in the day in San Francisco when I was first getting into this. I would listen to your show while I was at the rock climbing gym, mostly in the weight room. I would get on the wall a little bit towards the end of my tenure in San Francisco, but yeah, that's where I got familiar with you.
Listen to me and all my tears and all the problems we were having at the company and just my journey through manufacturing for all of these decades. It was a nice behind the scenes to hear you talking about what it was really like in the manufacturing space as someone that was running a machine shop. And I'm living it, baby.
Yeah, you still are, and that's one of the things that's going to be fun to talk about today. In fact, before we get into that question, the first thing I have to say is we're here at your new shop in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Beautiful spot, we'll talk about that in a second. But let's say we were having this conversation over drinks at a local bar. Where might that be? Paint the picture.
Okay, well, I'm not a tavern guy anymore because I'm a mature adult now, right? So I like a first-class restaurant bar, nice TVs, dimly lit, good drinks, good wine, good appetizers. It would be Perry's in Schaumburg, Illinois. That is my go-to fine dining restaurant and lounge.
Okay, tell me, what makes Perry's special? The service is great, the food is good, and the vibe is equally as good. All right, so dimly lit, great service, good options for wine and food. Going there tomorrow night, as a matter of fact, to celebrate my wife's birthday. Excellent, well, congratulations to your wife. Thank you. Sounds like a lovely time.
So we're here hanging out at Perry's, the vibe is right, the wine is great. When someone asks you this question over a glass of wine, I want to hear how you answer it: what does CARR Machine & Tool do, as if you're having wine with someone? What's your quick... What's my elevator pitch? Yeah, what's your elevator pitch?
We are an aerospace contract manufacturer, and we typically do work for space and exploration, aviation, medical, and emerging technologies. Quite a reversal from where we were in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, when we were servicing the commercial printing industry at that time. So all of the publications that were printed, i.e. the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, all the major newspapers, we made parts for all the working printing presses out there across the country, new parts and replacement parts. It was pretty lucrative.
Is it safe to assume that one of the reasons you started pivoting or diversifying was that you saw the way the printed paper newspaper market was going? Is that correct? Yes, it is 100% correct.
Well, I want to hear a little bit more history about CARR Machine & Tool, because this is a second generation company now. Your father founded it, I believe, in 1972. You're correct. What you were saying: December 2nd, 1972. And there's a picture behind me here in the conference room of your father racing cars at Soldier Field, is that correct?
That is. So in the 50s my dad was working full time as a machinist in manufacturing, and a group of him and his buddies, their hobby was racing stock cars. So they would buy new vehicles. I believe in that picture it's a 1958 Ford that they bought brand new, modified it so it would be ready for the race track, and he's racing it. And that picture, quite frankly, is of him with the checkered flag. He had just won that particular race, and they take a lap around with the checkered flag out the window.
Very cool. And his mechanical inclinations were one of the reasons this company started, correct? I would have to say yes. He was a driven man, he had a lot of drive, he liked to put in a lot of hours, but he certainly had the mechanical aptitude for this industry. He liked to work with cars, he could take apart an engine, he was susceptible to that, so yeah.
Well, we're going to explore a bit about CARR Machine & Tool a little bit more, kind of looking at where it is now. I think one of the things that jumped out at me when I was doing my research for this conversation was I heard you say that you want to look and act differently than a typical machine shop. Really do. And I want to hear what that means, but first let's set some baseline. What does a typical machine shop look like?
Well, it depends on what you think it is. A younger person, a Gen Xer, might think of it as a high-tech machine shop. However, being a baby boomer, I was brought up working in and being subjected to manufacturing as kind of a second-class industry, a second-class career choice for people that weren't educated, and it was mostly looked at as a low-paying job.
It's completely different now, as far as I'm concerned, and I want to be the one that's going to lead the charge to tell the world that it's not like that anymore. People, parents, need to be educated to know that this industry is just the opposite of what they think it was back in the 70s or even the 60s. It's completely high-tech, it's a very well-paid job nowadays, and you could certainly work for a manufacturer and support a family for the rest of your life in this industry.
So I like that you talk about the nature of the work, high-tech, well-paid. You were talking about the vibe at Perry's. Let's talk about the vibe when you walk into CARR Machine & Tool, the new CARR. The new CARR Machine, yes. You have a new facility as of just a couple years ago.
Really, so it was deliberate, Chris. When we were getting crowded out of our old facility and we were starting to get a lot of horsepower, right, we knew it was coming. Ryan, my son, came into the business. We knew we wanted to do something different, we wanted to make a significant change. And I said, well, if we're going to do this, I only have one more opportunity to make it my own. The old place was my dad's facility. I always felt like I was living under his shadow, so this was my opportunity to put my own brand on my business.
So when we knew we wanted to move, I thought, I need to make it reflective of what I envision a first-class aerospace manufacturing company looks and acts like. So again, we hired an architect, we hired an interior designer, we hired a designer for the shop floor to actually figure out the most efficient way to put the machines on the shop floor. It was an endeavor, but I knew I only had one opportunity to do it right, and I believe I did.
And the objective was to be attractive to a higher-end OEM, to the aerospace companies that I think can take us to the next level: Tesla, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX. They're higher-end, high-tech, and I believe if you match your brand to the companies that you're trying to attract, it's good synergies.
Yeah, and I felt it just walking into the facility. You kind of pointed it out, you talked about how you designed the shop floor, but there's also some intentionality to the front of house as well, where you go, you see the offices, you got the conference room, and then down the hall you have a lounge where you can entertain customers as well. And it's kind of a natural flow of how a meeting might go here as well, and you don't see that everywhere in this day and age.
Well, I would like to say that in my 20s, while I was working full time at CARR, in the evenings I would go and I would work as a bartender. So that's where I learned what hospitality is all about. So I kind of have a hospitality background, which I like, and I have the manufacturing background that I've been doing my entire career, and I've kind of brought them together. And I'm sure you're going to ask me about my marketing savvy as well. Definitely. Because that's another innate thing that I just absolutely love.
Well, I want to get something for the leaders out here that are listening. What is the most tangible lesson you learned from your days as a bartender that has helped you in your manufacturing career? That's a very good question. Can I just think about it for a couple seconds? Absolutely. Repeat the question. What is the most tangible lesson you learned from your time as a bartender that has helped you in your manufacturing career, or your role as a leader as well?
So I have the answer. So I remember when I was being trained as a bartender and my manager came up to me. This is crazy that you're asking me this question, this is going back quite a few decades, Chris. It is Manufacturing Happy Hour, what other podcast is going to ask? I loved it. I mean, I had my whole setup, I could feel my right here.
And my bartender says, so the cocktail waitress comes up to the bar and she's got 15 drinks for you to make, right? There's an extra dry vodka martini, there's an old fashioned, there's a Manhattan, there's an Old Style, and there's a rum and Coke, a Bacardi and Coke. Yeah. She told me, if you're going to pick up that bottle of booze one time, make sure you only pick it up once to fulfill all the shots in each different drink.
So how that's translated into my career is, if you're doing something, you only want to do it one time. You only want to touch something one time. And I try to, like in shipping and receiving, for instance, you want to be able to do as much at once.
You know, I remember the like 15 iced glasses I had in front of me. Yeah. And one was a Bacardi martini, that would be a 2 oz pour, and then the next one would be a Bacardi and tonic. Those are all kinds of takeaways that I remember. So I think that in life, this small lesson was: only do something once. If you're going to do something, pick it up only once and utilize it.
Yeah, I like the direction you went with that, because you very easily could have gone a hospitality lesson with that, but it's funny that it's actually, in many ways, a process lesson, a manufacturing lesson that came from that. So no, I love that.
One other thing I want to ask as we kind of go through this: we were talking about how you're in a new facility now. I mean, I've been seeing a lot of very tangible changes in your career as of late, between the new location for CARR Machine & Tool, all things considered down the street from where you were before, but a much bigger spot that's allowed you to make it your own. You also started a new podcast, My True Position. You've been doing a lot of changes. So how do you know when it's time to make a move like that? I'd love to hear your take on this and what folks can learn from that, whether they're leading a department, leading a company, or they're just starting their manufacturing careers.
Well, I think you have to feel it. I think that we sometimes get caught up in the day to day with our life, and we're living inside our bubble, and we're just inside our box, and we're just bouncing around. And after a while you get tired and you need to put a spark in your life.
And I often talk, and in many podcasts I've shared this, I imagine a rectangle. Years ago, in the 70s, 80s, before the video games came out, there was an Atari game called Pong. And I remember it would bing, bing, bing, and you'd go back and forth, and it was a very simple platform, right?
And when I think about expanding our boxes, our careers, I think about that Pong game, and I think about that thing bouncing inside that rectangle. And most people in their life and career live inside that box, and it's just binging all, you know, and it's that size for decades.
But if you expand the sides an eighth or a quarter of an inch, guess what, your box is going to get bigger. And for you to only gain an eighth or a quarter of an inch is only going to make you feel a little uncomfortable. It's not going to be painful, it's just going to be a little uncomfortable.
So I always tell people: expand the sides of your boxes that you live in and work in, and bring yourself out to the uncomfortable zone for just a little bit. And I guarantee it's going to be a short-lived uncomfortable zone, and then you're going to end up having a bigger box. And then you go back and you go outside of your comfort zone a little bit more, and your box gets bigger and bigger.
When did you first realize you needed to expand your box? I just think of this from the standpoint of you're working at a family company. I'm curious when you might have had that moment, because, tell me if I'm wrong, I feel like at a family company you might feel like you're in that box to begin with. It's like, hey, this is a company my dad started, this is the way things are done. I'd be curious to hear your story on when you started doing those box expansions, because a big thing I heard from that answer is it's not just a one-time change to the box, it's something that constantly makes it grow.
You need to put yourself outside of your comfort zone all the time until you're comfortable, and once you're comfortable, you need to expand it into an uncomfortable zone for a little bit until you feel it.
So 2004, I took full possession of the business, and I still today am 100% shareholder. I'm the president of the company. 2008, we had one of the worst recessions in our industry. It was very painful. It was, emotionally, I almost got sick having to lay off employee after employee after employee.
So I knew I had to make a change. The change was I needed to network more, I needed to market more, and I needed to do more sales, because that, I felt, was the thing that was holding us back. We weren't global enough, and people didn't know about us.
So I tend to be around creatives. I like creative people, I think they're interesting, and marketing people are those type of people. So I'm attracted to people in the marketing industry, and I gained some good friends, and I was able to learn from them on marketing. And what do you know, I happen to like that, and I happen to have an innate ability to market myself as well. So I did that back then. I never looked back.
And when Ryan, my son, joined the company in 2014, I said, now is the time that I can take my passion, which is marketing, and really develop this business. While Ryan runs the operations, I can run the sales and marketing portion of it. And I'm really in the right seat right now in my entire career.
I have mechanical aptitude. I know how to run CNC machines, I know GD&T, I know programming. I could tell from our tour today, you still got the chops. I got it, I know all that. But my passion is really in leadership and developing the business, branding, marketing. I love it, I really do.
We're going to get to branding and marketing very soon. Couple other things on the leadership front, and actually part of your initial answer here a second ago: you talk about expanding the box, you need to feel it, there's got to be that spark. How do you make sure that's not a superficial spark, that there's some strategy behind it?
Sometimes you just got to go for it. Sometimes you just got to go for it, and you know what, who cares? If you try and fail, that's good, because you learned, and the takeaway from failing is going to be great. You just don't want to put yourself out there too much, so if you fail, you die. You don't want to die, right? You just want to feel a little uncomfortable.
So always put yourself out there just a little. I always say baby steps forward, baby steps into the uncomfortable zone, and then it doesn't become uncomfortable anymore. It becomes very comfortable, and you've expanded.
Yeah, the things that used to be uncomfortable become comfortable, but there's obviously discomfort in other new things you haven't tried before. There is definitely discomfort in other new things, for sure.
One other thing that stuck out in this part of the conversation was you mentioned 2008 with the recession was a time where you realized, hey, I need to network more, I need to do more sales, and I need to do more marketing. I feel like those are some things that were like, okay, if I do that, I'm going to be ready the next time this comes around. 100%. Chris, how did you
lead through that immediate moment, because I've heard what it was like working at machine shops during that time, like just an insane amount of canceled orders. It's like a majority of business dries up overnight. I don't know if that was the case here, but those are just the stories.
I had to lay off 65% of my workforce. Wow. Yeah, and it was one by one, one a week. I just had to tell them, I'm sorry, there's no more work, you're going to have to go home. And the agony that I felt in advance of telling them that I had to lay them off was actually worse than once I said it. It was like they were like, I get it Jim, it's okay, we watch the news every night, we know what's going on, we know the economy is horrible. So I learned that I was agonizing more than I should have over it. But what was the question that we were leading up to?
I think that was a good answer. I think I'd want to go a bit further and say, what advice would you give to someone out there that's listening that inevitably is going to need to lead through a hard time in their career?
So what I did, the networking. So we were members of a local manufacturing association that we really weren't engaged with for decades. Okay. They hired a new marketing manager to help the members market themselves, and I engaged with this person, his name is Kent Gladish, and we got along. We were nearly the same age, we had similar interests, and we started talking about marketing, and he said, Jim, you need to join this committee. Jim, you need to join in this committee. Jim, you need to come to this event. And I started to meet like-minded, industry-specific peers in the industry, and I started growing my network that way.
It led into board of directors service. From the board of directors of this association, they asked me to come on to their executive team, and then I ended up being the chairman of the board in 2016. So right now I have a solid personal board of directors from all of these people that I've engaged with for the last 10, 12 years. So building that personal board of directors, building that: if I have a problem in my business, I know I have a core handful group of people that I could go to and say, hey, I have a problem here, I need your help, you guys, let's get a beer, let's get a glass of wine, let's get a martini, and let's talk it out. And this is applicable advice to anyone at any age level in their career, to start building that or to refine. I started late, but I did it.
So one thing, I'm going to bring up a different topic here, and I'll throw a quick plug in for you as well on your podcast, My True Position. I was listening to that in preparation for this interview, and I always like pulling some of the topics that come out. This is My True Position. This is Manufacturing Happy Hour today, but it's going to feel a little like My True Position here for a second. By the way, if you like Manufacturing Happy Hour and you're out there listening, check out his show. I mean, honestly, all ships rise with the tide if you like one manufacturing podcast. And yours is really cool because you go behind the scenes with what's hot on the shop floor. You give a little visibility into how your business is running, in addition to having a topic du jour of the day that you address.
Literally, I mean, what's out on the shop floor could be something that happened an hour before I record it, so I just let it go.
It's a very nice transparent look into the business. And one thing that stuck out that I wanted to ask you more about was you have rocks every quarter. I think you say something like you have a rock every quarter. I might be getting it slightly out of context, but tell me about that. I want to learn a little bit more about that.
So one of the big changes we decided to tackle to create this road map, this vision for corporate success, to grow the business, was we decided to read the book Traction by Wickman. It's called EOS, it's the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Within the operation, the Entrepreneurial Operating System is a process called creating quarterly and annual rocks. Rocks are goals, they just call it rocks. Sure. And you commit to a rock every quarter, and then you're held accountable to see if you've achieved that rock or that goal for that quarter. So when we were having our weekly and quarterly EOS meetings, we knew we needed to move. So my rock was find a building. Yeah. I did that, I achieved it, I found a building. And then the next rock for the next quarter was buy the building. Yeah. Guess what, here we are. This is a rock. Yeah. So it's all about setting goals, it's all about goal setting and telling your team that this is my goal, and you had to be accountable to them. It's all about accountability. Everyone needs accountability in life, right?
Totally. Well, I was going to ask you, how do you hold yourself accountable? Because at this stage in my career, I'm a goal-oriented guy. I get stuff done that I set, but I can tell you there are plenty of times where, you know, the year goes around and it's like, oh, that was my goal like three quarters ago and I did not do it. I think that happened.
And it's okay, Chris. Here's the thing: you set a goal and you really tried. I guess you really tried, I don't know, you know how much you tried. We all try on different levels, but if you don't make it, you can say at least I tried, and you've got experience now that if you set another like-minded goal, you're going to have more resources to achieve that goal for the next time.
Well, I think one thing I'm learning as a young entrepreneur right now is finding that right accountability group, because I'm running a very different business than you do. It's a solo LLC right now, brand new, you know, dipping my foot in the entrepreneurial waters. But you'll be fine. The accountability message was a helpful reminder for sure, and hopefully helpful for all of you out there as well. So anyway, let's bring this back to a big topic that we've been hinting at throughout this conversation, and that's marketing. You know, I've heard you say it on the podcast and in other conversations, and you said it right when I walked through the door as well: you are very focused on brand, and it's very apparent, just again going back to the vibe of what it feels like to walk into CARR Machine & Tool. Where did that come from? That doesn't seem to be the inherent thing for most manufacturing leaders. I mean, you gave your father as an example, mechanically inclined and driven, those were the things that he excelled at, but you're a branding guy. Where does that come from?
Well, I realized at some point in my career, in my life, that you get what you pay for. Mm-hmm. And I realized it in the simplest of terms, like shopping, like the Nordstrom brand, right? Everyone knows, or maybe not, what it's like to shop at an upscale brand like Nordstrom, and when you think of it, everyone has an idea of their brand impression, their brand perception of that store. Yes. So I thought about that, and my dad would always say, Jim, for 10 cents more you can go first class. Well, back in the 70s it was 10 cents, nowadays it's not, right? Can't even comprehend. You can't even comprehend. And you know, he was making fun of it, but at the end of the day he was saying spend a little bit more and really get something nice. Yeah. I took that to the next level. So I understood what that meant, and I felt it, and I liked it, and I got it. And I get what people say when they say, what is your brand and what is your brand impression? When people think of CARR, what do they think about? And when you're developing a brand, you have to be really consistent about retaining that brand image, and you have to keep hitting it, and the information and the way that you're presenting your brand to the general public needs to be consistent.
Yeah, I like that answer a lot. I want to ask you about something else around it, because there are so many elements that go into branding and marketing, there's a lot, one of them being social media, because I feel like you adopted this a lot sooner than a lot of other people in our industry did. You were running the podcast a lot earlier, you were on LinkedIn a lot earlier. Yep. Why did you decide to try that out back, I don't know, maybe, I can't remember, I think you said your kids were in high school? My kids were in high school. Okay. That would have been about 15 years ago. Okay, right. Okay, so you saw it from their eyes a little bit.
I saw them on our family computer. What was the thing before Facebook? Myspace. Right, Myspace, right. I saw them on Myspace, and then at that time Facebook was just coming out. Mm. And they were so enthralled with this social media, and I didn't really understand it, and I sat with them, just looking over their shoulder and trying to absorb it and understand it. And I thought, hey, this is a great way to promote my business, because businesses were just starting to expose themselves on social media. So I thought, what have I got to lose? But I remember early on, Chris, people in my manufacturing association that saw me on that platform, me putting CARR Machine out there, sure, they thought I was nuts. They had no idea, because it was new, it was different, and sometimes people are afraid to do something a little different, right?
Well, and I remember when I started doing it back in 2016, I at least had the excuse of people looking at me being like, oh well, he's basically a kid, of course he's using social media for his business. But you're like a seasoned executive at this point.
Yeah, I thought, you know, what the hell have I got to lose? I've got nothing to lose, let's try it.
That's a great lesson right there, just in general, in the context of anything: pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, right?
Yes, that was me making my box bigger, just pushing myself out of it. Who cares what people think? And I think what holds most people back in their career is that they're too concerned about what other people are going to think. You know what, you have to do what you feel you have to do, what you feel is the right thing for you. You have to live your authentic self, right? You can't be held back by what other people are going to think, and that's a big aha moment for me.
Yeah. So what made you decide to stick with it then? Because I can tell you one of the reasons I stuck with social media at first was just because it was fun. It was kind of fun, I was having a good time with it. I wasn't getting immediate business results from it. I was seeing some little inklings of, okay, people are paying attention to me that might not have been before. High on, you know, you get a couple hundred likes, you get a little, the endorphins go off, right? Sure, yeah. But what made you keep going then? Because it's very easy to be like, I tried this, it was fun, but I didn't really see a lot of immediate results. You could have very easily thrown it on the back burner and not done it again.
It's free. Yeah, it's free marketing, it's free branding, and it's a really immediate way to get the word out. Yeah, it doesn't get any more immediate than that, right? Very true. How do we get our news nowadays? How do we get our political, we're bombarded by it, right, from like 10 different angles. I can go on my Instagram feed and I can tell you what's happening right now, you know what I mean? Because that's where the news comes from, my social media feed, you know what I mean? In the old days you'd pick up a newspaper, right? By the time that printed piece of paper gets in your hands, that news is way old. Yeah. Now we're getting, I mean, I remember when Michael Jackson died, I logged onto my Facebook page and I saw it. A really obscure person had posted that he had died, and I'm like, wow, that's
This was like 2009, 2010? That was a long time ago, I don't remember. That was probably when Facebook and social media were becoming more of those news sources for people, a little more mainstream than they had been before. Yeah. So then how has your strategy with it evolved over the years, now that you've had 10 years of runway with it and you've gotten to see, or how have you seen it pay off in your career?
I don't know. You know, people always say, do you think it's awarded you any new business? I don't know if I can say exactly, but I know it gave me thought leadership. I know it really promoted my brand. And if somebody was on the fence about going to CARR, mm-hmm, to have us do their machine parts, but they saw my social media presence, and my brand on social media was high, and they thought, hey, this guy knows his crap, he's a thought leader in the industry, that might have tipped them off to go ahead, and it would have sealed the deal. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I do, because I kind of think of it as, and I do think there are some tangible times where I can point to it where it's like, yes, my podcast resulted in this new relationship, this new client, whatever it is. But I feel like it's the consistency. You talk about having a consistent brand, but that consistent voice online as well: the fact that your podcast is coming out at the frequency that it does, the fact that you're on LinkedIn on a regular basis. I just feel like that part is additive. If I think of all the stuff that I've put online now, I know that's driving a ton of the business, the brand that people see around me. At least that's some of my perspective around it, that it's just been so much over time that there's no way to ignore it, that it's been something that's been there.
I mean, it's not going away. I wish I could do it more, it's just a time thing. I'm probably not doing it as much as I used to, but I'm doing it for the podcast consistently for sure. I think consistency is key. Of course, I always say in social media more is more, but consistency is really, really important. If you're only going to post one or two or three times a week, make sure it's consistent on the days of the week and the times that you post, because people get used to seeing that on a regular basis. Just like we release our podcasts on a certain day of the week, right? Yep. There's consistency in that. People don't want some days it's on a Wednesday, some days it's on a Friday, some days it's on a Sunday. It confuses people, and people don't like to be confused.
Well, one thing I think I saw with what you've done over the years is I feel like I've been able to watch the Jim Carr story during this time. Interesting. I think all the insights add up over time, right? And I'm learning a lot from you along the way, but it wasn't new news that you had moved facilities. I had heard this through, whether it was the podcast, whether it was from LinkedIn, I don't know where I got the information, but you know, I was watching your business evolve during that time. It's almost like a narrative.
That was fun, that was a fun time. I was really enjoying promoting it, I was enjoying giving teasers, little video teasers of how the building was going. It was fun, it was fun.
Yeah, it's an idea I've been throwing out there, that I feel like a consistent social media presence, podcasting, whatever it is, is a consistent form of storytelling that other people can't touch overnight, right? That's something that develops over time to be part of that person's career and business story that's going on. So another question on this topic: why don't other manufacturers think of marketing the way you do, then? I think you're an obvious success story at it. People that are watching your story can see it. Why aren't other people jumping on board with this idea?
I have no clue. I don't know, I don't know why. I was hoping you had an answer. I think that typically manufacturers are a little bit reclusive. You know, they're not, they're introverts rather than being the opposite. I think that's
Norm, again, I'm a little different. I don't know, you know, I think you have to be passionate about it. And I think if people don't really understand it, they get scared about it and then they don't want to do it.
Yeah. You know, if you're new to social media and you create a post and put it out there, you're probably wondering, am I doing it right? And let's face it, we all know as veteran social media users, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a perfect post.
Right, right. It's got to be good. Yeah, it's got to... I always focus on the image because I figure you've got a millisecond to attract that person as you're scrolling through your newsfeed, right? Yep. So I focus a lot on the image quality, and the text in my posts, I try to keep it as short and sweet as possible because I personally don't like to read a lot. I need it really quick: picture, idea, what is it about. If it interests me, I stay; if not, I keep scrolling.
And I like that you have a formula that works for you, because there are other people that do the long-written posts and it works great for them, right? And I think one of the big takeaways from that is come up with your own style for doing it. And I tell people this all the time: if it's a bad post, it's just going to get lost in the ether of social media within like an hour or a day anyway. No one's going to look at you funny and be like, I can't believe you shared that, right? No one's going to. It's just going to disappear.
Exactly. If it's not getting any horsepower, it's not going to show up on people's news feeds. Right, and on the flip side, it might help out even just one person if it's a good post. And I think we get lost in the whole, hey, a lot of people have to see it. It's like, hey, if that impacts one person in an incredible way, whether it's helping them in their career, whether it's new business for you, whatever it is, it's kind of the same thing as making a sales call.
Yeah. I don't think it's the end-all for marketing, but I think it's definitely, when you're looking at marketing like a pie, and there are slices for all the different components of marketing, I believe it's a significant slice of the pie. I don't think it's quite 25%, but I think it's close. Mhm. And I think it's important, but I don't think it's the end-all. You have to have everything else together.
Yeah. Since we're in the middle of a marketing conversation, what are some of the other core components of the pie, for someone out there that's like, okay, I know media is part of it, what are...? You've got to have a good website, you have to have good video, you have to have good imagery, you have to have a good brand. Brand in the context that we talked about today, not just the logo; it's the feeling. And is everything consistent? Well, the logo's got to be consistent with the brand, right? Agreed. Because people don't understand that logos really do define what the brand is all about.
Right, I like that, definitely. I'm looking at your logo right out there. There's an aerospace vibe to your logo, and I know that's not an accident. You got it, you got it. It's not an accident, but look at how simple it is. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's just the A. Yep, it's just the A. And when I saw that, when my graphic designer presented that to me, I knew immediately, within... it just hit, 30 seconds. It goes back to a feeling. You knew it was it. That's it. Yeah, that's it.
And by the way, everyone out there listening, there are going to be links to connect with Jim. You can see them firsthand, for most of you that are listening to the audio podcast today. We're nearing the end of our interview. I've got a couple more. We are? I'm having fun. Well, you've got a party to throw after this, so I know we can't go on forever tonight. I actually have a Christmas party to go to as well, because we're recording this around the holiday season. This will come out, it'll still be cold for most people when they listen to this, but anyway, don't want to get too far off track here.
One thing I have to ask you is, this is something I've always kind of admired about the way you run your businesses: what keeps you young at heart? You're always trying new things, you have high energy, and you said it yourself, you're a baby boomer. You've been doing this a long time. You could easily be phoning it in right now at this point in your career. So I feel like one of the best pieces of advice we could get from you is...
That's a good question. That's a very good question. Somebody just asked me that two nights ago. I like to work. I'm passionate about what I do. I am in the right seat in my career right now, so I'm most happy in my career right now, leading the vision for this company. Yeah. That is why I think I have all of this hyped-up energy and passion for what I'm doing.
Mhm. So one other... I always tell my employees when I give them performance reviews: listen, it's not about me, it's not about Carr Machine & Tool, it's about you. And if you are not passionate about what you're doing, you're never going to be 100% happy in your career, and you're never going to achieve that high level, that high income, or being happy. So whatever that passion is, you need to find it, whether it's here at Carr, whether it's at another company. If it's here at Carr and you're not doing what is making you happy in your role, talk to me. Let me know what you're passionate about. Maybe I can create a new role for you here at Carr or move you into a different role at Carr where you're really going to thrive.
Yeah, yeah, I like that. And I think it feeds into one final question. You know, you talked about the things you wanted to accomplish with Carr. You talked about the rocks you moved, the shop, you created a facility that felt more like one of your own versus the one where it had been before. What do you do to prepare your team... you said Ryan came on in 2014... what do you do to prepare this spot for the future, so that way their visions are coming to life as well? That'll be the last question for this one.
Well, I think they have to find their own passion. Is that what the question was? Say it again, Chris. Yeah, how do you prepare Carr Machine & Tool for the future, so that way it's representing the visions of the next generation, the team, the leaders here? Being strategic in how I set up the succession, and not making it short-term, making it long-term visibility, and sharing that vision with my entire team. I like it. Transparency. Transparency.
Well, hey, this has been an excellent conversation. I always like to keep it open at the end, though. Is there anything you wish I would have asked you that didn't come up in today's discussion? No, I think you hit it all. You know, being that I am a veteran in the industry, I've seen a lot in my career, and I know I've said it during this interview already, but I genuinely believe two things. Pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is important for you to advance in your life, your personal life and your career. Two, being passionate about what you're doing. I think that is really just a critical component for evolution and promotion and being successful.
I think those are two great ways to wrap up the conversation, put a ribbon around everything we've talked about, Christmas pun intended. As we do that, I did have one more question for you. So you're a wine guy. What wine is your go-to wine? What wine are we going to be drinking next time we have this conversation?
Well, my wife and I both drink wine. My wife only drinks white. Okay. She very rarely drinks red, so I drink a lot of white. We drink a lot of Chardonnay. Right now we're enjoying Rombauer Chardonnay. It's out of Napa Valley. It's really a good representative of the Carneros area in Napa, which, you know, they have all their sub-climates in. Oh, I used to live out there. I would go up there frequently. Yeah, it was great.
So we're drinking... well, we don't drink it every night, because it's a high-end Chardonnay. The thing is, once you start drinking wine and you get into that category, it sets a higher baseline for what everyday wine is. I know. So, but Rombauer is what we're drinking nowadays. All right, enjoying Rombauer Chardonnay the next time we have a conversation. Jim, thank you so much for jumping on today's podcast. You're welcome, my pleasure. Cheers. Cheers.
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