The Value of Trade Publications for Manufacturers

40:58

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

manufacturing, product, people, david, manufacturers, talk, dotnet, trade publications, linkedin, publication, article, absolutely, partnering, professionals, scott, call, story, brands, little bit, find

SPEAKERS

Damon Pistulka, David Mantey, Curt Anderson

Damon Pistulka  00:00

Dave can get on the stage. Yeah, he should be able to they probably just have to turn on the camera mic again.

Curt Anderson  00:05

Turn the camera. Alright. 132 dan bigger 132 32

Damon Pistulka  00:10

we’re going live on LinkedIn. Everyone knows what we’re doing there. We’re going to be quiet for a couple seconds. Well, I guess never quiet but we’re gonna do this and get rolling over there. And then we’ll get started here.

Curt Anderson  00:21

Well, Happy Friday, everybody. Yeah. And what we’ll do is we’re going to drop some information in the chat right?

Damon Pistulka  00:29

Alright everyone, Welcome once again to the manufacturing ecommerce Success Series. I am one of your co hosts Damon Pistulka. We’ve got an awesome guest here today with me and my brother from another mother. Kurt Anderson. Take it away, Kurt.

Curt Anderson  00:46

Hey guys, Happy Friday, everybody. This is such a huge day, Damon man, I’ve been just you know, this is a repeat we have a really we’ve only had a couple of repeats on our show. One of them right here. So David, Manti from manufacturing dotnet from Madison, Wisconsin, Happy Friday, my friend. Welcome to the program.

David Mantey  01:06

Hey, it’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me again. I had a good time last time so we had time man,

Curt Anderson  01:12

we had an absolute blast. So guys, I dropped David’s LinkedIn profile, I dropped manufacturing dotnet. And David it I pulled out that wonderful promo video that you did for us back in January. man that was a gem. So all of those are in the chat box. Guys, jack, your LinkedIn profile your website, let us know where you’re coming from today. If you’re on LinkedIn live, welcome. Happy Friday. So David, let’s just jump right in. Man.

We’re here for manufacturers, we talk about manufacturing ecommerce success, you and I’ve worked a lot this past year together, have a great time, share a little bit about what’s going on at manufacturing dotnet. And we’re going to dig into the value of trade publications for manufacturers.

David Mantey  01:50

Yeah, so last time, we basically just kept the conversation around video, we’re doing a lot of that right now. And it’s really working. But I wanted to talk about the value of trade publications, because I think it’s one of the lesser known benefits, you know, for people to read for manufacturers to reach, you know, clients and new customers.

I mean, I don’t fault anybody for not knowing about it. I mean, when I tell my parents that I still work for a magazine or a you know, a trade publication, they still think it’s, you know, like rolling stone or something you can pick up in the grocery store. But no, it you know, I, I’ve been in this trade publishing industry for about 15 years now. And I think I’m just starting to understand it,

Curt Anderson  02:32

just trying to figure it out. And I’ll tell you, what, just scratched the surface here, if you don’t mind. You know, we went deep into this last time you were on the program, but you guys took a big leap of faith. I know when you made the transition here for manufacturing dotnet. Can you just talk about that little Trent, you know, the, you know, a great entrepreneurial spirit and just share a little bit about that transition that you guys went through to get where you are today?

David Mantey  02:53

Yeah, so it was about five years ago. Very soon, it’ll be close to six. I think we were we were all we were all looking for something new. It kind of all happened at a Christmas party. We all got fired the same day. No.

Curt Anderson  03:09

That’s a Christmas party.

David Mantey  03:11

It was Well, I mean, it would have been the crazy Christmas party afterwards. No, we, we were all looking to we were a part of a much larger publishing company used to be called advantage business media transition to advantage business marketing. And we were kind of like stuck in a bureaucratic rut, you know, like, we wanted to, we’d like to move fast, we like to launch new products. We also like to serve our readership. And we were just kind of getting really hamstrung in our old career.

So we had the opportunity to move on. That’s the eloquent way of saying we were all served papers within 12 hours. And um, we formed a partnership with Thomas that to create industrial media required industrial equipment news, which is a legacy brand that goes back to 1933. Then three years of success with AI n, relaunching it completely digitally, we actually had the opportunity to buy the group that we used to work for, because if you can believe it, they went under and but so we acquired those brands, now we have a portfolio of, you know, eight different brands that cater to the design engineering and manufacturing professional market. That is

Curt Anderson  04:27

awesome. And so you guys have a nice family of brands. I know you have like food manufacturing, and as you mentioned, industrial equipment news. Talk about the family brands that fall under your umbrella and what’s going on with with those

David Mantey  04:41

there. Absolutely. So I kind of like to talk about how goes the entire spectrum, right we have design and development today, which is specifically for design engineers. Then we have manufacturing dotnet which is sort of a bigger picture of manufacturing dotnet used to be called like the C cnn of manufacturing is a new sight that caters to a lot of manufacturing professionals.

We have industrial maintenance and plant operations which is specific for MRO professionals, industrial distribution, food manufacturing, manufacturing business technology, which is for IT professionals in the manufacturing industry. And we recently launched a new one, but that one’s a little bit. You know, that one’s that’s a passion project for me. Okay, nice. Awesome.

Curt Anderson  05:25

So hey, I want to give a shout out man we have a bunch of New Yorkers on the program today Damon so we’ve got Vail my buddy scott walker in Rochester. I think Gary woods and Raj we got a couple Rochester folks we got Dave up in Buffalo. Dan bigger Don’t you feel left out he you know, he left New York and went down to Hilton Head. So you know, you have your beach and ocean, whatever. So we got our friends at Gen alpha right in your backyard. David, we have Kevin we have my dear friend Chris Harrington, president of Gen alpha.

So let’s dig into I love what you just said there cnn of manufacturing and I feel compelled Guys, please check please connect with David first off check out if I it’s hard to imagine anybody’s not familiar manufacturing dotnet. But I love what you what you’re doing.

Your team and and Jeff have been on our on our program before. They’re wonderful. You guys do a weekly podcast today in manufacturing. And what’s awesome is you take up stories off of manufacturing dotnet. And then you’re going to talk about them on your podcast. But you’re also like, we were talking before the program you guys are actually doing like news bits on certain topics. Can you share a little bit about what you guys have going on there? Yeah, so

David Mantey  06:29

our content strategy is driven a lot digitally by our newsletters. And on our newsletter, every day, we have two original videos, as well as about like 14 to 20 different news items, new products and technical information. The program program that you’re talking about is we do a daily video called either I and now or the manufacturing minute, depending on whatever brand you’re on. And that covers, you know, basically one of the top stories in manufacturing that day. And as I said in the previous time recharge video just happens to be the most popular thing that we do on our sites.

So every every week on Friday, we do it live typically on Friday, we did it yesterday because I’m here with you guys today. Um, but I appreciate that. Yeah, we take the top five stories from our website, and we do a little bit more of a deeper dive on the podcast as to the implications they’re gonna have on the industry going forward, you know, as well as our predictions as well as like, you know, sometimes we get a little deep into the conspiracy theory and depending on the lack of information with the story, yeah, yeah.

Curt Anderson  07:24

I you know, and I’m glad you mentioned that, because I want to share like you daymond you would love this conversation. I think maybe Anna was often and you had another gentleman on with Andy. And you guys are talking about e commerce and the possibility of buying cars now direct from manufacturer, correct. And I know Chris, that’s music tears at Gen alpha. Damon, you talked about that.

Yeah, that was an awesome conversation between the three of you and you guys were digging deep and like, you know, where’s this going to go? distribution channels for us as consumers buying cars. And this is a very frequent conversation. We just did a great program webinar with Jennifer this week. And that exact conversation came up. I’m a traditional manufacturer, I go through traditional distribution channels, and things are getting a little a little messy now what’s going on? And I love that conversation you guys had this week with about the auto industry.

David Mantey  08:14

Yeah, no, thank you very much. I appreciate the feedback. We really I mean, I think we’re gonna see a lot more of it in the automotive industry. We’re seeing companies like Tesla and other upstarts that are just really kind of skirting the traditional dealership business model and re actually I found it to be an interesting an interesting perspective because you know, Jeff is more of the traditional I want to go to a dealership I want to drive a car and I want to be happy with it and and he’s just like not I clicked like five buttons and I bought a car was great.

So it’s, that’s one of the things I like about our editorial staff is that we’re also able to give like a wide perspective right you know, multiple perspectives on what’s going on in the industry

Curt Anderson  09:00

again, and so before we jump into like our deep dive into trade publications that you know, I just want to touch on this one more step again, like I love when you said like conspiracy theory so like you guys do a great job and it’s just a delight. And you’re talking like Lockheed Martin just unfortunately close a plant for one of their helicopter units.

And so you guys you know, you had a it was a great article, and it did like a whole piece on it and then the three of you went into a deep dive and and you guys did a lot of research and you’re like you’re going from this stat to this stat. And you know, was it justified? Is there growth in helicopter so mean again, you guys do a deep dive and it was a really fun entertaining, and like you said, like, almost like a newscast on manufacturing.

David Mantey  09:40

Yeah, no, it’s uh, what we like to do is that I mean, because all of us are kind of, you know, research nerds anyways, so yeah, a lot of times when you write a news story, you’re just writing the story with the facts that you have in the moment. And with the podcast where we do is like to do a little bit of research to figure out maybe why that plant closed. What Yeah, that plants alive. I mean, really we wind up uncovering some incredible stories this podcast that we have coming out that we shot yesterday for Monday. I don’t know if you guys know the story of David Candyman Klein, the guy behind Jelly Belly.

Curt Anderson  10:11

Yeah, I was just that was on my list of bring up to you. So a 39 year old one candy plant is that what it was? Yeah,

David Mantey  10:18

yeah like basically they did a Willy Wonka style, a Willy Wonka style like scavenger hunt where they hid golden tickets in every stage. And the last dates to find the golden ticket. The guy who found it won a candy factory in Florida. So yeah, it was a

Curt Anderson  10:37

4000 square foot. A guy was in Kokomo, Indiana 39 year old guy and he was like the founder of Jelly Belly. And and so this guy, the winning ticket, he found it like a yard or something. And he pulled out and he won a factory. So how

David Mantey  10:51

cool is that? Yeah, and it’s Wow. So it’s those kinds of stories that we like to cover bring people in, you know, guy. I mean, with trade publications, it’s it’s a home for professionals, right? Everyone that is on our websites are manufacturing professionals, depending on where they’re on on the spectrum there and if they’re in food manufacturing, they’re in that newsletter, right? And so we bring people in with the stories like the 39 year old winning a factory, but then once we have in there, we’re serving them new product information, which we always find to be the most popular, like whenever you survey a readership that’s what they want new product information.

And we also give them technical articles, best case sort of best practices sort of stuff. The only thing is that like you know, if you had a newsletter that was titled you know top five things to do with AARP software, you just don’t get the click through to open rate you don’t get the open rate but if you say 39 year old wins the factory and then right under that you have the top five things for AARP software, they both tend to do a lot better. Okay.

Curt Anderson  11:51

Like you had a great you know, bottleneck recession in Germany but the supply shortage and that’s you know, that’s a that’s such a hot topic is you know, with parts and supply chain disruption, I mean, we’re talking about it everywhere in LinkedIn, everybody’s bringing up in every conversation and so you know, you start thinking man, this could actually cause a recession so again, phenomenal topics great guys you know, please check out manufacturing dotnet just a wealth of of extremely valuable helpful and like you said, entertaining information.

Let’s dig into like the benefits of trade publications again, like you know, David and I were we’re not young men anymore, but so digital immigrants we remember, you know, our trade publications talk about why is that print still an important piece of that of your component, as well as at minute with that digital piece? Well,

David Mantey  12:39

we still, you know, we still talk about how much you get out of that print publication, we put a lot of work into it, it goes to a lot of people like 180,000 people, and we talk about how you know, you can spend 20 minutes with that publication and still get a lot of new product information news, you know, our job is to make it easier or to make it so manufacturing professionals can do their jobs better. Um, I guess we’re gonna show some of our IGN shirts as well. Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, no Hey, just reach out afterwards we’ll set anyone that wants one just send me your your address and we’ll send them out thanks for attending. Um, but no like so it is what we did with prints was we had a highly engaged curated audience with a dedicated readership and we just Trent like transition that to also find that audience digitally through video and you know, interactive web content a lot of things that I had that we like to bring with all of our other brands and brand loyalty and recognition you know, with that print product sitting on somebody’s desk they recognize it and not just because it’s enormous you know, it’s still a tablet.

Um but so there is still value in that print product but you know, we like to pair that with the value that we bring digitally like God having daily a daily conversation with these people

Curt Anderson  14:00

and that’s what I love you know, you guys are on the cutting edge where again, you know, legacy brand from 1933. So my goodness, you know, flirting with a century year old, you know, legacy product, and then your tag team in it doing cutting edge, you do a ton of, you know, like we talked about in our last program, tons of video, we’re talking now about how you really almost become like a little bit of a CNN for manufacturing.

So talk about you know, so from a manufacturer, we have folks that are manufacturers on the call, we have marketers, we’re what’s the benefit and the value of T of partnering with folks like you know, the family brands that you have, what are the benefits there over some of the other online opportunities for marketing.

David Mantey  14:38

So, like, ever since ever since I became a thing 1933 people have always been hungry for information on how they can do their job more efficiently. I mean, and now it seems like people are hungry for that information, are hungry for that information more than ever. So what we do is we like to partner with people to offer things that they don’t Get like on social media, you know, on social media, you know that you can find your audience, but they’re not necessarily in a professional environment.

Like when I’m on Facebook, and I’m getting marketed, you know, like, vulgar socks and loud t shirts, and stem toys that don’t work. I mean, they got me narrowed in, they got my demographic information, and they know what I’m gonna buy. But, you know, it’s not professional editing software, you know, I’m not, I’m getting served ads from like, a transcription service to help me do my editing job a little bit better. And I’m like, this is not the place for that.

So the other thing that we’ve heard a lot is like, or we haven’t heard it as much lately, as people that, you know, simply invest marketing dollars in Google. And it’s just, uh, you know, we like to say that because of us. people already know what they’re looking for when they go to a search engine. And it’s because of that exposure that you’ve had elsewhere. So we like to say that if you spend 20 minutes a day with us, it’s like, you could spend 20 minutes a day on social media, 20 minutes a day surfing the internet, but you’ll get more value out of 20 Minutes with Us than you will with the other two combined. Right?

Curt Anderson  16:09

It’s right. And that’s a fantastic point where it’s just so noisy, you know, and again, Google’s a, you know, a critical marketing tool for many companies. Social media, obviously, however, with what you’re saying is it’s a captive audience where you know, like food manufacturing, well, if I’m manufacturing a food products in like, I’m in the right place, for one quipment News, I’m in the right place.

So that you know, so when we do our training sessions, we talk about, you know, I that ideal buyer, you know, Scott, Gary, anybody on the call here, it’s gone through our training, we call them our soulmates, you know, so like your soulmates are hanging out and reading these publications go

Damon Pistulka  16:50

in there, and they’re on there, too. I mean, this is this is the the people that are looking at manufacturing dotnet, or your printing publications, I mean, I can remember when I got I looked through these things, as a manufacturing engineer to figure out is there an idea in here that can help me, you know, have the next great thing that we’re going to do?

Or is there a product in here we should really be trying in our company to, to help us go forward or improve what we’re doing. And I think that’s the real thing for you know, if you’re in the industrial space, and not working with someone like you guys that have multiple platforms, multiple ways that you can touch somebody with your, with your message with your products, whatever it is, you’re missing out, because as you as you said, You alluded to, with people coming to manufacturing got net, they are there for a purpose, it is talking about something and they’re seeking information and manufacturing. And if you’re in that in that space,

David Mantey  17:47

you should read it yet, I guess I didn’t I guess it kind of talked around your previous question or like how people really benefit you know, and it’s not just our trade publications, their their trade publications, everything I mean there is there are boutique locksmith trade publications out there you know, that go to a very niche audience, like I mean, but we have the way we help some customers. So say we have component suppliers that are looking to reach specifically aerospace manufacturers. And so we can identify the people in that industry and target them with their message.

We have people that sell tech software specific to manufacturers, bearings that go and specific machines, the machines that are built for specific industries, whether they be for food and beverage or the cannabis industry. I mean, one of the people that we’ve talked about previously was the person you’ve worked with with at voice Express, you know, trying to find other toy manufacturers that he can get that little speaker embedded it you know, yeah, it’s in trade publications are such a good and unknown way to find a captive and very relevant audience rather than just kind of spraying it into the ether.

Curt Anderson  18:58

Absolutely, that’s a fantastic point and we got to give a shout out john from jerseys on the show from attesa john Happy Friday brother and I want to give a shout out to Vail our dear friend Villa at mana fracture fracture he just put out you know I’ve had so David I’ve I’ve had the honor I’ve had a couple articles. I think I’ve probably other folks either on the show or folks that are in our LinkedIn network Sam Gupta he’s gonna be our guest next Friday.

He’s contributed Greg misu Vail just put out an awesome awesome article you know in a little bit out of her wheelhouse comfort zone, and value did an awesome job now on to that in the chatbox but again, guys, it’s an opportunity. So again, anybody that’s come to our training Scott, Gary Vail when we talk about it’s about backlinks, right. We talked about that, that quality backlink juice, you know, teaming up with somebody like David Manti manufacturing dotnet in his family brand of products you can put out there always looking you’re always looking for quality content, right?

David Mantey  19:52

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It is. And I don’t want it to sound like it’s an ad message, right? Because I’m on the editorial side. I’m looking to partner with thought leaders that I know, I mean, whether or not it’s a blog post about something that they’re experiencing generally in the industry, or if they want to do a very specific case study, you know, our readership comes to us because they want to see how people are doing it.

Well, yeah, how they can replicate that, or even improve upon that. So we’re always looking for contributors. And I mean, I know Kurt, I still got to edit the one that you just sent me. It’s going up on Monday, it’s going up. But you’re right, like, yeah, Sam, Chris, I mean, have contributed really good contents, that not only helps serve our readers, but also, you know, provides links to their sites, and gives them a little bit of a thought leadership piece as well.

Curt Anderson  20:39

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s so so let’s take it let’s let’s get down and dirty. David, let’s get it’s, you know, I always like to say, you know, it’s around lunchtime, Chris, you know, when we did your program, like, hey, let’s save some of this information right now. So let’s talk about the ROI. know, everybody that, hey, this is great, you can do this, you can do this, that we’re talking about the benefits. Let’s talk about the ROI of partnering, digging deep into like trade pubs, as a strategic play for manufacturers,

David Mantey  21:08

right. So the biggest pain point for any marketer is the ROI. And so what you want when you find a trademark, or trade publication partner, is you want transparency, and you want the metrics that can back it up. So you want to make sure that you have the right audience. Like we said before, if you’re manufacturing a machine that can only be used in food and beverage, why send it to 100,000 people that aren’t in that industry, you know, you want to make sure also you want to get guaranteed results. You know, a lot of times people will just say we sent it out to a list of 20,000 I feel like some Reddit felt good to me.

But like, you want to be able to back that up with data and there’s so much data available now that you can before a campaign even guarantee results and then it can be backed up by those stats. I mean, that way it kind of takes all the mystery out of those campaigns when you’re signing up. When you’re signing a contract to run a campaign sometimes you you don’t even know how you’re gonna justify it to your boss.

Whereas when you have guaranteed results it’s just like Hey, I know I’m gonna get a document and just forward it over right like and I just that’s one of the things that drives our company being like very stat analytic we like to back everything up you know, mostly I mean and part of it is selfish it’s because I want to know exactly how many people are reading and watching my stuff and for how long right and figure out Yeah,

Curt Anderson  22:35

yeah it’s it’s a thing like if we were to uh, you know, I was using expression like you know, hey, you know, we call it you know, those that buyer persona your avatar, again, we call them those soulmates. If your buyer soulmate, you know, if I’m like, hey, David, you know, we’ve got 100 soulmates in the room next to us, man, we’d be all knocking that wall over to get there. And again, like you’re saying, you know, so like, you know, Val just dropped her her awesome article about, you know, very specific, very niche product that she offers, getting food manufacturing, you have the business manufacturing technology, I think, is that

David Mantey  23:07

is that your newer? Yeah, manufacturing, business technology? No, the new one is cannabis equipment news, but we’re gonna talk about that later. Okay, well,

Curt Anderson  23:15

well, it is it is almost happy hour here. So but you know, as you’re, again, as you’re digging into these specific niche that speaking to that ideal buyer, those soulmates. So again, you’re you’re resonating, you’re hanging out, you’re communicating, you’re engaging in that, I love what you’re saying, I like to I like to dig into a little deeper, if this is new to folks, and again, Val just dropped her article.

And if this is new, for any of you guys, Scott fan, you know, if you want to, you know, put out a nice article, and get it into your trade publication, you’re building that expertise, that authority that trust, Google’s looking for that your buyers are looking for that. And again, by coming by partnering with you, you just enhance that that opportunity.

David Mantey  23:58

Yeah, and it’s I mean, depending on, I mean, some of the more broader interest stuff, I mean, it can a lot, you’re gonna get a lot of eyeballs on it. It’s a one thing that is difficult is, you know, you have to reach out, you have to identify the editorial staffs reach out to them, and sort of, you know, have a good idea, like I want to write about this, I should write about this, because I’m an authority in this. And this is what I want to have it by. It’s a I hate to say it, but like there’s a lot of noise out there right now. And so establishing relationships beyond the email inbox, like on LinkedIn, that really goes a long way with kind of like creating a part on editorial partnership. Right, exactly.

Curt Anderson  24:41

And this so my friend in Rochester Scott, so they have a great company wax energy. So again, you know, they’ve this cool cutting edge product, especially if you’ve invented you know, for the manufacturers that have that proprietary product. They’re not just a custom job shop or custom manufacturer, if you have that proprietary product, but I don’t know what to type or to Google to look for.

You know, again, getting into that trade magazine is a great way to educate folks on you know, how do you crack a market with a new product, we’re like, it’s not a commodity, I can’t type shoes or running shoes. And that’s going to pop up. If you have a product or solution. Getting partnering with that trade publication can help you move the needle a lot faster in, you know, what a great opportunity. Let’s talk a little bit about from different brands like crossover, do you have companies that will like crossover and the different, you know, different entities that you have?

David Mantey  25:33

Oh, absolutely. Like, I mean, some of the ones that are on the ends of the spectrum, like industrial distribution, or design and development today, some of that stuff is specific to that audience, you know, but I mean, food manufacturing. Some of that stuff’s written for food, but I mean, we all eat. So it’s of interest to to everybody.

25:49

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah,

David Mantey  25:52

we’re working on that. Oh, yeah. No, I’d like to say I’m working on it. But I’m actually I’m going the other way. No. But so there is a lot of crossover. Um, and I don’t know, I think one of the things that worked well for us is, when you’re talking about launching a new product, or something that people don’t know, when you do, like, sort of, even if it’s a simple product release, like, this is a new product, it will do this, like no one has ever done it before.

And that’s like, the initial exposure there, then maybe we do a product release. And then we write more of a long technical article about it, about how it’s used, how its installed, how its maintained, something like that. And it’s about the ongoing conversation, not just like, Alright, we posted the product. It should be we should sell a million now. But yeah, it um, oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Curt Anderson  26:41

No, it’s it’s a marathon. It takes time. I was on a call this morning with our dear friend, our beloved Ellison to Ford. And we’re just talking about you know, sometimes, you know, you’re nurturing, nurturing, planting those seeds, and you know, all sudden somebody knocks on your door, and they’re like, hey, I’ve been following your social media, or I’ve been following your articles that you’ve been writing and publications. And it’s, it’s not, you know, it’s not overnight, it’s six months, nine months, a year goes by Damon, I know in your world, it can be yours of planting those seeds in, but what you’re doing is you’re just replicating, it’s putting in those reps.

You know, Dave and I were big baseball fans, we were still you know, if you guys played sport, when you’re a kid, how many ground balls Did you feel over and over how many five balls over and over? It’s like, you just have to keep putting in those reps. It’s not going to happen overnight. David, we have a question. My buddy Scott in Rochester. He said he saw unclear manufacturers like us can work with David to post articles on his site. So just Can you just share a little bit about you know, take a little step further there, what you’re looking for?

David Mantey  27:41

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we’ll use your article as an example current, right? So, uh, you know, teaching manufacturers how to fish. Like, we talked about how you serve manufacturers, how we take your perspective, and you write basically a thought leadership letter leadership piece for our readers. And then we kind of continue the conversation from there. So without what, Scott? What is Scott’s business do? Awesome. So

Curt Anderson  28:11

Scott is he has a, it’s called a window skin and Scott type in the chat box. And it’s so the president of the company, he has a PhD from Cal Berkeley, bachelors from MIT, the guy’s absolutely brilliant, Dr. Ron Wexler, he’s invented it’s a it’s a piece that goes over a window for energy efficiency, interior mounted window insulation panel. So it’s a panel that you can just pop in. So they’re who they’re speaking to, are like, property managers, you know, so say, in Madison, where you are, say there’s a 20 storey, condo unit or whatever. And so they’re going to, they’re going to put in these panels and other windows.

David Mantey  28:50

Okay, so the story that I would want to tell of Scots is how the products made, how the products made it without giving away any of the proprietary information on who it serves, you know, like, why they decided to make a little bit of the story I like, I mean, part of the reason I got into this was I like the storytelling aspect of it, you know, I like everything from the napkin sketch to how it’s made. But what you’re probably looking for Scott, is you want to find trade publications in the, you know, commercial building space.

So like, I used to work with a company that had a publication called, like, qualified remodeler. And that would be the publication that you would want to so you would want to find the publications that serve these commercial building professionals. And then you would want to contribute an article with them about how and why they would want to use your product and how it will not only improve their buildings, but the lives of the people that live in them or working. Yeah, I mean, if there’s an angle though, where we could use them in manufacturing facilities. Now we could shoehorn it in

Curt Anderson  29:53

work or distribution or cannabis or any of the other products Right. I mean, right, those food manufacturers. They have Windows So again so there’s a man dropped the mic on that wasn’t that good or what David? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  30:05

it was I was like, laying right out there. Right. So again,

Curt Anderson  30:09

like, again, let’s savor that. Let’s kind of regurgitate that again, you know So guys, if you’re out there you are, each and every single one of you are subject matter experts in some capacity, right? We know something more than somebody else, right? Why we kid around like a customer’s they’re just they’re not the sharpest tool in the shed. Why? Because you know, something more that you know, something that they don’t. And this is an opportunity for, you know, even if you’re like, man, am I going to type this out?

You know, I always say, hey, my eighth grade English teacher, she’d be shocked if she knew that I wrote an article for David Manti, right? If I can do it, anybody can do it. You can talk to tax, it doesn’t take a lot. Just put out that article piece. You know, we’re all passionate about what we do share your passion, information, educate and teach your folks on the benefits of your product. Man, I absolutely, absolutely love that. David, what do you find are some of the best I know, like, you guys cover a lot with Tesla, you know, a lot of the bigger sexier companies, what are some of the other exciting headlines or content topics that you see that really resonate? Well with your readers?

David Mantey  31:13

new technology? Yep, yeah, anytime they make a robot smaller, or a robot without electronics, new technology always does well. But you know, what, I talked about how popular new products are, right. So you can create a revolutionary new products, or you can come out with a new pair of pliers, and the new players are gonna have more clicks every time.

Like, it’s I mean, you know, we have, we could cover a hand tool, and we could cover eirp software that will help transform a business, but you know, they’re gonna buy like everyone wants to read the Hand tool that I’m so really, outside of the big companies, a lot of the cool new, like, a lot of the economic stuff was hot earlier this year. Anything COVID related was very hot a year ago, and now anything post COVID despite whether or not we’re post COVID that’s very popular, right?

Yeah, no, any, like the new tech products, I kind of mentioned case studies and technical articles. Those might not be the most popular thing day to day, right over the long haul, they will be the most popular because they’re gonna send the most people back for referring traffic and organic search traffic.

Curt Anderson  32:32

Right? And I guess this is more of a question from me, where you, you know, inspiration, you know, people love hearing, you know, the underdog or see, like, you know, our friends at watts energy, like, So Scott just dropped a note. Thanks, Dave. This is very helpful. Um, we have a story about the founder, Ron who went to dozens of contract manufacturers before they found one that was wanting to solve the manufacturing problems.

You know, a lot of people like hearing that Underdog Story, those inspiration, you know, hey, I built a better mousetrap in my garage, you know, and then I brought it to market. What does that look like? Because I’m, you know, there’s another dreamer out there that has an idea in their head. How can I bring that to life? So I mean, do to do see a lot of inspiration type stories? Are those do those resonate with your readers?

David Mantey  33:14

Absolutely, absolutely. Especially with three, like, some of the inspirational stuff that I’ve seen were stories of like 3d printed limbs, or prosthetics for people. Yeah. A lot of the life changing stuff. I mean, there’s a lot of inspirational stuff out there. And really, that is popular.

But I mean, it’s a sad, it’s a sad reality of the business that like, the happiest story is never going to be as, as popular as the sad story. Right? When we do something like the podcast, we always do the top five stories of the week. And then we always do three or four of the stories that you might have missed, because there are a lot of stories out there that people don’t read. But were just like, Hey, you missed this one. But this one’s important, right? Yeah.

Curt Anderson  34:06

In Chris our friend Chris Harrington at Gen alpha. She just dropped a note here’s a great new article, a great new article video about Harley Davidson launch launching the E bike. Yeah. And I’m Chris I’m glad you brought that up because again, you know what, as we you know, in our favor, folks who are from our training sessions, and what we’d love to talk about is you know, and we can and I know we need to wrap up got David, we could talk all day and I know you’ve got kids and we got to get your kids going, that’s fine. I’m fever is gonna break.

Take care, we’ll take care. So we got desean Aiden, so he’s proud father, two amazing young men. That I love that you brought up Harley Davidson, again as manufacturers or you know, anything that we’re doing in our walk life. Well, we love preaching about what David here what he’s talking about, think about not only just your customers, we talk about this a lot in our training our customers, customer, and so on.

You know what David’s doing is he’s trying to help you to, you know, satisfy not just your customer, but how can we get to the next step of that customers customer. And with Harley Davidson. What’s great is like when you think about Harley Davidson, what’s their big thing? It’s like, it’s how they make their customer feel. They’ve, you know, we could go into whole thing, and I know I’m being Captain Obvious with Harley Davidson. But you know, my goodness, how they have a company where people are going to put a tattoo on their body of your logo, you know, what a great thing.

But think about as entrepreneurs and business owners, as we’re trying to help our ideal clients our soulmates, move the needle and achieve their goals. What do how do we make them feel? You know, would they I don’t, Damon, I don’t think anybody’s gonna put a tattoo of me. But anyway, but we’re certainly trying. So David, let’s, um, I know we need to wind down here, I’m going to get back to the table. So everybody has a chance to talk to you. Let’s, let’s, let’s wrap up on this couple of things. How to, first I’m going to drop your LinkedIn profile back in the chatbox. Again,

David Mantey  35:56

okay. Before I do that, though, I also wanted to say to Scott’s point in case we didn’t talk after this, the story about finding having trouble finding manufacturer or contract manufacturers, that would absolutely be a story that we’d want to tell. That’s

Curt Anderson  36:10

awesome. Awesome. So again, guys, for each and every one of you, john, you know, you have an amazing product and service that you deliver, you know, think about how this could be a value and connect with Dave, again, with David, we have his LinkedIn profile, we have the website. David, let’s take it home. So what do you expect in for fourth quarter would like you’re on the cutting edge of latest, greatest, all the news, you know, you guys are posting things on what’s going on in Europe and Asia? What do you seen for the fourth quarter? What can we expect? Or any surprises? Or what do you see on the horizon?

David Mantey  36:43

I don’t see any surprises, I think that we’re, I think that a lot of the things that we’re kind of forecasting already. Like, I think the supply chain issues that we’re experiencing now are only going to, I don’t want to say get worse, but we’re gonna feel the impact of that a little bit more.

I think that’s I’m interested to see how some of the vaccine mandates work with manufacturers or companies that have 100 or more people, just because anecdotally, people that I’ve talked to, you know, they don’t necessarily want to get vaccinated for themselves or their family. But when a company says they will, they’re okay with it. That’s a separate conversation. Um, so I think that as we kind of tried to stay, you know, get back to business as usual, we’re gonna have a lot of issues with materials that still kind of stall things. But kind of just gonna keep scratching forward, you know, climb forward.

Curt Anderson  37:40

Absolutely. And our dear buddy Dan, bigger man, he’s uh, he’s what a dear friend, he had an awesome post this week on LinkedIn. And I Dan, if correct me if I’m wrong, you know, big word, patience. You know. So I think wonderful thing, if we’ve learned anything from COVID is like, Hey, we’re all in this together, we can work in our basements, we can do things virtual, we can create amazing, wonderful friendships and relationships. And if supply chains disrupted, we’re gonna have to, you know, what’s Plan B, let’s keep pivoting. And let’s keep moving. Keep just keep charging forward.

So David, what I’d like to do is we’ll we’ll wrap up on this, I want to give a huge, huge thank you to you. I know. So, again, we have our training sessions that we’re offering, huge thank you, to you for your support with us, you know, for our folks, you know, the manufacturer and we’re trying to help our clients, you know, with e commerce and make this digital transformation, we want to give a big shout out to your entire crew, Jeffrey, I’m sorry. Yeah, Jeffrey and Anna, and everybody else at manufacturing dotnet. any parting words that you want to share with us as we close it out?

David Mantey  38:44

I think Dan crushed it with patients and patients, not just professionally, but patients personally because everyone is everyone’s in such a rush. To get back to normal, and patients is going to do everybody a lot of good.

Curt Anderson  39:00

patient will kindness and again, we’ll just give it our So David, yes. Appreciate you appreciate your friendship. Thank you for all of your support. Thank you for what you do for the manufacturing community. Again, we’d like to say our manufacturers are truly the heroes of our economy. They make you know, the careers that they build and such enormous opportunities.

We have Manufacturing Day coming next week. Basically, it’s a whole month of October. We’re talking about putting together a little fun program for you guys. We’ll keep you posted there. So David, I want to thank you for every everything guys. Thank you for joining us today. God bless each and every single one of you go out and keep crushing it. Have an awesome weekend, Damon, take it away. All right.

Damon Pistulka  39:40

Well, thanks, Kurt. Thanks, Dave. This is awesome having you on because I tell you what, that manufacturing dotnet your publications, your digital work, if people haven’t checked out they really should also want to just thank you for that. And I also want to then talk about Gen alpha. We got Chris and Kevin in house and they’re there.

Helping us put on our our weekly e commerce training as well you know, we have that every Wednesday at three o’clock eastern, if you haven’t checked it out yet, you can just contact Kurt or look at his or my LinkedIn, we can show you that and come in and enjoy that and see what you like about that. But just wanted to give them a quick shout out as well. If you’ve been listening on LinkedIn live, you can join us here every week on Friday, same time, same to, you know, 130 to 1030. Moving to people on the screen, you get your opinion from whether you like it or not.

But we’re here with great guests like David every week talking about manufacturing and other things that are important to the manufacturing industry. So we just love to be able to do this. Thanks so much for listening us here on LinkedIn. You can join us on remote if you want and then you can actually talk to the speakers as well. We’re going back to the tables now and we’ll be able to talk. Thanks a lot, everyone. Thanks.