Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by Mitre Brands University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sheri Conner and I am your host,
[00:00:19] Speaker B: the team Member Experience. I think if we make it the best place to work for our team members, everything else will come along with it. So our profits, our creativity, the integrity, the safety, just overall improvements are all gonna come with it. So once again, that's listening. It's making improvements for them and making their life easier on the production floor.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and we are recording in Gratz, Pennsylvania today.
And I have two operations leaders sitting in front of me. There was a third who chickened out, and that's okay. We will not call him out. Dan Whitman.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Perfect.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah, Dan Whitman.
So I have Brian, Richie and me at Clemcheck with us. And so thanks, guys.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Great to be here.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, looking forward to it.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us. Getting off the floor, getting away from your computer screens for a few minutes, doing something fun.
[00:01:13] Speaker C: Yeah, this is gonna be fun.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: First time we ever did it.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I got a lot of rookies on the podcast, so you're not alone. So before we dive into the questions, I would love for you guys just to do a brief introduction of yourselves as far as, like, your tenure, your background, and maybe what your journey's been coming up through the company and what you're currently doing.
So we'll start with you.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: All right. So, yeah, my tenure here has been about four and a half years, so being the operations manager kind of oversee all things within the Higgins campus. My background is really an engineer, so I've done a lot with process engineering, done a lot with continuous improvement throughout my career, and then got into supervising leading plants, and then took a step backwards and did some project management things. And then saw that there was an opportunity at MI here through an individual that I used to work for. Jason Wolfgang kind of let me onto that and put my name out there. And it was an interesting time in my life because my wife and I were having our first child.
So whenever you change jobs, there's always a lot that goes on with that. But then we introduced a baby boy into the mix all at the same time.
So my oldest son was born six days before I started at mi, and it's been really, really great working with the team here. There's a lot of tenure, but that's kind sort of my background in leading this team here.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And you gave us an excellent plant tour the other day, so appreciated that.
Learned a lot about the Higgins operations and just the massive amount of production that goes out of there every day was very impressive. Very clean, very organized, very bright. Very impressive there. So thank you for that.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: All right. So, Brian, Richie, I don't know you at all.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: I'm actually a newbie if you consider all the other people here in the Higgins plant. So I always say I have to go in months to keep up with everyone in a year. So 40 months.
I've been with the company for about three and a half years.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Went to school for chemistry, got into kind of continuous improvement in quality in my previous career. Did a bunch of different stuff. Lived in Arizona, Colorado, traveled the world doing different things in those roles, CI and quality roles. But currently, so I have the quality team underneath me, training and continuous improvement. So have my hands in a little bit of everything. The production floor, you know, supply chain stuff. With Matt, anything he has to do and anything else that kind of comes along. The Higgins plant. So I think being new, I can ask a lot of questions and kind of be the dumb person in the room and just kind of ask those questions and challenge those that have the tenure, you know, in a meaningful way. So, yeah, that's kind of my background right now.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Okay, so you're like the utility player, maybe.
[00:03:51] Speaker C: Yeah, well, yeah, I guess Brian's definitely got his hands in a lot of different aspects, and I think the whole team in Higgins definitely gets involved with different things here, but we definitely have a lot of tenure within the organization. I think we have close to 10 team members with 40 plus years of experience just in the Higgins campus, you know, let alone the Valley that we call it here, which encompasses the Higgins, the Gratz, and the profiles location.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: So there are five pillars in the guiding principles that really dictate how we operate, what our focuses are, what our priorities are. So I thought it would be fun to just kind of mix it up today.
And so there are a bunch of different questions that we've put together around these five different pillars. And so the first pillar is safety. And so, Brian, I'm going to let you answer this question. This is the one that you said would be the best one for you to answer. And that is, what does a strong safety culture feel like on the manufacturing floor?
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so a lot of my questions are focused around team members. So I think it's when other team members are looking out for each other, when we get down to that point of it. And I'm looking out for you, and the next person's looking out for you as well, it just kind of multiplies through the whole plant. So to me, that's kind of where I think when we get to the point where everyone is willing to speak up and say something around that, like, hey, watch what you're doing there, or, you know, being able to come to a supervisor and speak up about a situation that they feel may be unsafe and things like that. So I think that's really kind of where, as a culture, when you get down to that point, and we do have that in spots, I think, but there's always room for improvement on that side of things. We have new people coming in, so getting them comfortable, they'll speak up. And then to top it all off, I think when you take some of the things you've learned at work, home, and you do things safely at home, I think that's where it really has an impact as well. Like you see your son or daughter or cousin or uncle doing something, you're like, hey, hey, hey, put safety glasses on, or, hey, let me hold the ladder for you.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Something you learned at work. So I think that's really when those things begin to happen, it just kind of goes down the line and helps a lot of different people. So.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: So that's kind of where I thought on the safety culture thing, you know, where that would land. So it's really about speaking up and being able. Feeling comfortable to speak up.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Right, exactly. And not feeling like you're going to get the big sissy award for saying something. Right. Okay. And, Matt, you wanted to talk about how safety's evolved in the manufacturing. And I know the Higgins plant is a VPP site.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: It is a VPP site, and we've been recertified once already. And then in 2027, we'll be up for recertification again.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Okay, and. And that's every five years, right?
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Three to five years, depending on kind of the cycle that it goes through.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Okay, and so what does that involve? What does that entail? To have that certification and to live up to that.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: Yeah. So going through the certification, they interview our team members. And not just one or two, it's at least a third. Close to a half our team members go through an interview, and there's a person there that asks, you know, so do you feel safe here? Tell me about the safety programs that you have. There are walkthroughs throughout the plant looking for different hazards. And then, yes, there are things that, you know, osha. And this is an OSHA program.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Sure, sure.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: Right. That not a lot of people want OSHA in their facility.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:13] Speaker C: We're inviting them in to go look at our stuff. There's things that come up, but we get them addressed. And as long as those get addressed, then that gives us the opportunity to be recertified in the future. There's.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Is that typical for a manufacturer, do
[00:07:26] Speaker C: you think, for OSHA to come in? Absolutely not. No. I mean, when you hear osha, well, those are bad, bad people and we do not want anything to do with them. So there is a very limited number of companies in the whole United States that are VPP certified and we are very fortunate to be one of those. I think it's somewhere just north of 1,000.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Wow. Overall. Yeah. I think there's a roadmap for every single facility to receive that designation, which is not a.
And that requires a huge investment of time and commitment from leadership to put those practices into place and to provide all that ppe. So it's not something that we take lightly around here, is my understanding.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Absolutely. And I think from a Higgins side, our safety program has evolved over the last two and a half to three years. So we had an incident in the plant where we as a leadership came to a decision of like, there will be no more of this type of behavior. Like, we just put our foot in the sand, said we, we need to be different. And it started us on a journey of going out and looking at the hazards that are out on the line. And it turned into a program where different production lines or departments competed against another department based off a set of criteria questions on a given quarter.
And then everybody got evaluated of what you found wrong and how many wrongs do you have in the person or that group that had the least amount of wrongs, at the end of the day, they won a trophy and they got T shirts and they got a meal and all these things, which was really good. And it helped us identify a lot of things that could turn into an injury.
The unfortunate part to that is it's always going out and saying, you're doing this wrong and you're doing that wrong. It's a very negative perspective on what you're doing. And then it started to evolve into, hey, let's talk more about the positive things that we are seeing. Like, no, I didn't see this. No, I didn't see that. I saw team members with all the right PPE on or they're doing Team Lift. And we've actually evolved that again into a behavioral based safety program.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: So as Brian was talking about, you know, peer to Peer conversations with people. That's what we are doing now. So we actually do a watch and engage in our process. So we have what we call a thanks card. So it is a team member out on the production floor going up to another team member and saying, hey, can I observe you and watch you for five minutes? And what they're doing is they're looking at the tasks that that team member is doing and then they're asking and having a conversation with that other team member of. So tell me about what you're doing. Talk to me about the hazards that you are incurring.
Talk to me about what you, as an observer noticed. Hey, I noticed you're doing this, I notice you're doing that. They're talking about the concerns that are coming up as well.
And then the best part is solutions.
So the more that we get our team involved from the floor, the more that we're gonna be able to impact their lives.
So this is all a data driven program as well. And it is not a leadership driven program, but it is team member led program.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:10:47] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: I love that. I know we felt very safe when we were there, when we had the vests and the sleeves and the glasses and the earplugs.
So anyway, thank you for that. Those were great answ. All right, so we're going to talk about integrity, which is the second pillar.
So, Brian, how do you encourage employees to speak honestly about problems or mistakes?
[00:11:07] Speaker B: So it kind of, I think, ties into what Matt was saying with the safety program we have going on with employees talking to each other. So to me, just the act of listening, asking them questions and trying to understand where they're coming from and then taking some action after you listen to that employee whether, even if it's not the answer they want to hear, like, hey, I think I want to do this. And you kind of come back and say, hey, we can't, or here's why. I think kind of getting down to that why piece to make them understand that we actually listened to what they said, we took some action, we tried to do something.
It's either yes or no. And we go down that route. So I think just engaging with the employee, opening up to be able to ask them questions and trying to understand kind of their perspective. So I came from kind of a operations type thing, so I understand what the impact is to the people on the floor. So I think just engaging with them on a regular basis, being there, that you can be someone they can come talk to.
And once again, I always bring up being the new guy, I can be the person that says, I really don't understand why you're doing this. Can you explain that to me? So I think just being able to engage with them and sometimes not having that tenure allows me to have a different set of eyes on things.
I think this open and honest conversations with employees and being able to follow up with those conversations, yeah, that makes
[00:12:21] Speaker A: a lot of sense. All right, Matt, so here's your question about integrity.
What is one leadership behavior that instantly builds credibility?
[00:12:30] Speaker C: So I would say it's probably not just one, but listening, right. To piggy off of what Brian's saying.
You know, there's a lot of people that have a lot of ideas and things there, but if you're not willing to listen to what they have to say, then they're really not going to trust you in the future.
And then conversely, just because you've listened, you also have to have follow up and actions that come out of it. That's what builds the credibility and a bond between you and said team member
[00:12:56] Speaker A: and not forgetting about it. Right. You know, like if somebody goes on vacation because they went to their class reunion, when they come back in the following week, you're like, hey, how was your class reunion? You know, those kinds of things, that's not really necessarily around integrity, but that kind of behavior, but it builds the
[00:13:12] Speaker B: trust that you really want to have with employees.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: So yeah, that's important. One of our guiding principles is creativity. And Brian, this is a question for you.
People don't always think about creativity with manufacturing.
And so where do you see creativity showing up in a day to day?
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Well, it's funny this question was on here because Matt and I just went through an MLI class at a manufacturer's resource center down in Allentown. And one of the areas, one of the days of the class was creativity. I'm like, I'm in manufacturing, I'm not a creative guy. I can't draw, I can't do cartoons, anything like that. But then after being through that part of the class, I was like, ah, you got to look at it different ways. Are you thinking about things differently?
You know, you're trying to do it, come up with a new idea, things like that. So that's all creative things that are occurring with you. So really when I think about, I keep going back to kind of team members, they will find a way to do something different that's maybe easier for them. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
So when you look at creativity like once again engaging with those team members on why they're doing things a certain way, you know, they're being creative in their own mind to come up with a better way to do it for them.
Now we have to understand why that's occurring and do we want to replicate that throughout the rest of the plant. Is it a best practice, things like that. So I think just having them kind of come up with ideas and then the other piece I think is around just trying things, letting them, hey, I want to do this, and giving them an avenue to try something and kind of going back to them and once again, it could be good or bad on why that occurs. So I think just once again allowing them and build the trust like we talked about in a previous question, as they're being creative, if you keep, keep pushing their ideas away and not listening to them, they're going to stop coming up with ideas. So once again, we've talked about the follow up and even if it's a no, at least you followed up with them.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: You found out how the reunion was and things like that. So it all kind of ties together in that sense.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: So you said mli, what is that?
[00:15:07] Speaker B: So Manufacturers Leadership Institute. So it was a eight week course.
Something to that fact.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: It might have been longer.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it might have been even longer than that.
One day, like every two weeks for a couple months.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: So, yeah, really insightful program, especially the creativity part of it. You know, they actually walked you through about little kids when they're 2, 3 years old, how creative that they really are. And then the world says you have to play within these bounds and we try and break those bounds or barriers within the facility.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: We are sharing our expertise around all topics relating to the window and door industry.
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No, that's very good. I love that you guys are continually improving your own leadership skills. Right. So continuous improvement is another one of our guiding principles. And so, Matt, I'm going to ask you this one first. So what does continuous improvement mean beyond just straight up productivity metrics?
[00:16:19] Speaker C: Yeah, so I think that we in Higgins are looking at productivity in a different light.
So typically whenever you talk about productivity, it's always just about how much production can get better. But that's not how everybody is in the plant. We have a lot of other departments that are out there. We have a shipping department, we have supply chain, we've got quality, we've got maintenance We've got human resources and we look at holistically. You know, we do set goals for what we want to save in a given year, and then we also put stretch goals out there. But everybody is contributing to that dollar amount, and everybody comes with multiple projects throughout the year that we are measuring against so that it doesn't all really rely on one person's or one group's shoulders like other people may be out in the world. And I think that has brought not only us together as a collective, but it's also spurred on some different conversations, not only within our groups, but as we go out to other facilities and do COG assessments, we're sharing those best practices of, well, this is how we're doing it. And maybe you guys should think about looking across the board for other areas.
And it's been pretty impactful for those assessments that I've been part of. Right.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: What is a cog?
[00:17:41] Speaker C: So a COG is an internal assessment of how you are performing against certain criteria, whether it is cost, delivery, safety, quality, quality and people and soon to be supply chain.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Okay. I didn't know if it stood for something like cog. There are cogs in the wheel, and
[00:18:05] Speaker C: all of them have to function together and everything's surrounded by people being the core function.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Okay. I have seen that in the guiding principles. All right. And so, Brian, your question around continuous improvement is how do you help employees feel ownership in improving processes?
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Well, I think a lot of this comes down to if we as managers or supervisors come out and say, this is how you're going to do it and tell them they have to do it that way versus getting them to involved in the solution. So I think, to me, even if we know kind of where we want to go, getting the team member involved up front, as we're going through the process to get to that end goal, I think they have ownership in it. Then they've had their input along the way. So. But getting the people kind of in that area, you know, bringing them into a room for 15 minutes, a half hour to say, hey, here's what we're thinking, or, you know, what ideas do you have? And even kind of take them through the CI process. Like Matt mentioned earlier, we have a bunch of teams, we have probably 10, 15 areas where we're tracking the improvements for the year. So, you know, trying to get those team members involved in that and on the why, you know, why are we doing it?
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: And just having them part of the process.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: You know, when I tell my wife what to do versus asking her what to do. It all changes the whole perspective.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, I can't. Yeah, I. Yeah, my husband doesn't do that to me. He knows better. He's learned. All right, so profitable partnerships. All right, so, Brian, I'm going to give you a back to back. What do customers value most from manufacturing partners today?
[00:19:33] Speaker B: So the whole theme in what I'm saying, so listening. So we try to do a lot of customer visits. Very engaged with our sales team as well. But we'll go out to customers, just stop in for the day, help unload a truck, talk to them about issues that they're having.
Once again, just active listening to what their feedback is.
So to me, that's kind of what they value most from a lot of the Higgins team is we're actually engaging with them. You know, we'll do a whole trip where we go out through Ohio, down through and hit a couple different customers and bring that back. And to be honest, that helps all the customers because now we're improving our processes within the plant. You know, I'm sure if one customer's saying it, the other one's probably feeling it too. They're just not saying anything.
So I think that's really helped develop the relationship too. They feel like they can come to us. We've done a bunch of stuff on quality with CAPA programs. And, you know, we get complaints coming in and it's that follow up. I mean, we had a lot of complaints in the system and we've done a lot of work to kind of knock those down. But all part of that was the communication back to the customers. Here's what we're doing. And we have a whole tracking sheet on customer complaints when they come through and they do tours, stuff that they're talking to us about. We have a meeting after the tour and we document those things and then we talk about, okay, yeah, engineering's already working on this, or, hey, this is being done in shipping already, or, you know, things like that. So one of the things that led to was the West Chicago customer team. They were getting slider issues, water coming in, they didn't like it. It was part of the design.
We actually took that, took their feedback back to the engineering team and we made about three or four improvements on that product.
Different weep holes, different tracks, and we were able to kind of follow up with them. We had a meeting and say, hey, here's all the things we're doing. We listened to what you said and here's the things that we're doing to improve our product for you based on your feedback. So we changed.
There was engineering changes, there was a lot of stuff done to the product. New equipment we brought in.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: Yeah, new equipment. And it's not just only for Higgins too, because Texas and Temperance, they also do the same products. So when we built equipment, it was for all three locations. So again, we're standardized across the board, right?
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that's good. And then you have an. Then they know that when they have something that you're going to really take them seriously and then, I mean they're going to be loyal to you. To us.
Yeah. That's excellent.
Matt, can you share a partnership story that's had a meaningful business impact?
[00:22:04] Speaker C: Yeah. So we primarily use JB Hunt for our customer delivery and we are very, very closely connected with that leadership. They aren't in our building, but they're just an adjacent lot to us. But the working relationship that we've had with them has made a lot of improvements that I think that they've taken across some of their business. But you know, we've had customers call in, say I'm missing this unit or I'm missing that unit. And that affects them from an install perspective. Where we have been working with J.B. hunt of trying to scan product off at a particular customer location. So they've gone through lots of different evolution as far as technology and processes there and a really understanding of it's really easy to just say go remake the unit. But the amount of people that that involves is numerous and you don't think about all the behind scenes things. So with us working with them, we are helping each other out because now we're not having to backtrack and deliver another unit to the same location the week. And the customer is able to go out to, you know, that homeowner install product that week that they said that they were right. So that has been a relationship that keeps building day after day, week after week and making both of us better.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, that's excellent.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: That's part of our continuous improvement tracking for last year. Shortages was one of our main focuses.
I think it was over $100,000 we ended up saving based off of some of the off scans and working with JB Hunt. So. So like Matt said, it doesn't just impact the end customer, it impacts production. Because now we can make more product. We're not remaking product. So there's a knock on effect that we didn't even count in that $100,000. We just counted the cost to redo A unit, sure.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Matt, what advice would you give someone who's just starting out in manufacturing?
[00:23:56] Speaker C: So I think there's a couple things that I would say to them. First one is listen to the team members out on the floor. I can speak from my own personal experience that as a young engineer going through different.
I really was really good at focusing on how to change equipment and different things out on the floor. But I did a really bad job of how to change the team member out on the floor and getting them to buy into the change until I got some training to really understand that that is 50% of the equation, actually, if not more so. Again, that just is a big topic with Brian and I is listening to the team members out on the floor and then not being shy, I would say, is another key thing. You have ideas, you have a different perspective than team members that have been through the. Whatever you want to call it, you know, the last 10 years, 20 years, 30, 40 years of. Well, we only know it this way.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:55] Speaker C: So, you know, part of our DNA is get comfortable with being uncomfortable, challenging the norm. And that's something that Brian and I have an easier time of doing again just because we're not tenured MI or MITRE people.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. You haven't been doing it that way for 25 years, so you're not married to it. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, so, Brian, what keeps you excited about the future of manufacturing?
[00:25:18] Speaker B: I mean, you walk through the plant, you can see there's opportunities everywhere, and that's how you kind of have to look things as you're being in our roles. But to me, I think that the main thing for us, and Matt's kind of just touched on it again, is the team member experience.
I think if we make it the best place to work for our team members, everything else will come along with it. So our profits, our creativity, the integrity, the safety, just overall improvements are all going to come with it. So once again, that's listening. It's making improvements for them and making their life easier on the production floor. So I think if you can get to where the people are knocking down a door to work in. Higgins. I think everything else will come along with it if we improve that team member experience.
And we try to do that every day. I mean, we have all kinds of meals and things like that, but there's lots of areas that I think we can work on every day for them to make it easier on themselves.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: And I think technology is always, ever evolving.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:26:14] Speaker C: You know, and I think that's what's kind of exciting, too, is like, so what's going to be the next thing you know, we were actually just talking about, hey, we. We're anticipating a lot more volume here over the next couple years. Well, how are we going to do it? Is it new production lines? Is it brand new technology?
So I think the unknown is also a pretty exciting part of. We get to shape what that looks like. Somebody isn't out there just telling us what it will be. And I think that's the creativity, the blank canvas that we get to paint.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Right. And, Matt, if I remember right, you rattled off some stats before we went on our tour. Cause you were our tour guide the other day. Isn't the Higgins plant, like, rated top in the company?
[00:26:56] Speaker C: Yeah. In 2020, in 1995, Higgins had the honor of being named Plant of the Year. And that wasn't just Plant of the Year for the Eastern business. That was across all of the manufacturing plants. And that was us out of a total of 19 facilities.
So pretty prestigious event. Something we are extremely proud of. Where we met a lot of our goals, achieved them because we came together as a collective. And it was great that the leadership recognized us for that. And I think one of the really unique things that this group has is challenge coins are really a big thing within mitre. The team members in Higgins will only be the ones that have a challenge coin that's related to Plant of the Year. Nobody else will have that.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:27:42] Speaker C: So it's pretty prestigious. That's awesome to be named that.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Congratulations.
[00:27:46] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And there were a bunch of metrics around that. Right. It was around safety, profitability, delivery on
[00:27:52] Speaker C: time, complete being, and, you know, the highest in the company, our quality. We met that. So, yeah, a lot of things. And the other thing is, we helped out numerous locations throughout the year, whether it was in Prescott Valley or Temecula or out in Temperance. We sent our team out to go help facilitate and assist them.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Nice. All right, so we're going to wrap up with some DNA questions. So I want to know what your favorite Miter DNA point is.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:22] Speaker C: That is something. You know, again, we challenge what we've done from the last year, the 10 years ago, even yesterday. Right.
We have to push ourselves past what we think is possible.
So you've got to get outside of that norm.
And that's where you get into the really cool stuff.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that one, too. All right. How about you, Brian?
[00:28:45] Speaker B: We are never too proud to ask for help. So I think. I think Just once again, lesser tenure. I had to ask for help or I wouldn't have survived. And I won't be here right now. So I think just showing that vulnerability opens others up to be able to come to you and talk to you and confide in you and things like that. So I think being in that role and having to do that now, I think team members do feel comfortable even coming to me and just asking for help as well. Like, hey, I'm having this problem here. As soon as we can get team members to once again open up, that's where you're gonna find, you know, the issues and solutions and opportunities, whatever we want to call them along the way. So I think just don't be shy. Ask for directions. Right? You know, you're driving down the road, you don't know where you're going. Ask for directions. Yeah, we all have maps on our phones now, but in the.
I'm older, so.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Anyway, gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate your generosity and sharing your thoughts and ideas and feedback around the production. I mean, obviously Higgins has won the award last year, so you guys know what you're doing and we're all better off for.
[00:29:46] Speaker C: Well, appreciate you having us.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Sherry. I really appreciate it. It was fun.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: And you get to tell Dan he just missed a great time.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: He did.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's all right.
[00:29:54] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: That's all right. I'll get him next time. Maybe. We'll see.
[00:29:56] Speaker C: Nah, you cut him out. You get a one and done.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: One try.
[00:29:59] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: That's okay. Anyway, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
[00:30:02] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: All right, take care.
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