Business
Capitalist Sage: Laron Walker Scaling IoT Technology from Education to Commercial
Today’s kids are learning advanced technology thanks to Mantis EDU and our special guest, Laron Walker. Join Karl Barham and Rico Figliolini as we learn how our children will fill the tech jobs of the future. Laron talks about the real-life implications of learning tech-skills young and how hands-on learning is the way to a brighter future.
Resources:
Mantis EDU
Website: www.MantisEDU.co
Twitter / Linkedin: LaronAWalker
Sciberus
Website: www.sciberus.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sciberus/
Phone: +1-404-478-2050
Podcast Transcript:
Karl [1:11]: Welcome to the Capitalist Sage Podcast. We’re here to bring you advice and tips
from seasoned pros and experts to help you improve your business. I’m Karl Barham with Trans
World Business Advisors and my co-host is Rico Figliolini with Mighty Rockets Digital Marketing
and the Publisher of Peachtree Corners Magazine which is due out soon. Hey Rico, how are
you doing?
Rico [1:29]: Hey Karl. Really well, thanks.
Karl [1:32]: Fabulous. Well let’s start off by introducing some of our sponsors for today’s show.
Rico [1:37]: Well, we gotta say thank you to Atlanta Tech Park for letting us use their great
podcast space. They’re located here in Peachtree Corners. They’re a tech accelerator here in
Peachtree Corners. A tech hub offering work space, event space. In fact, yesterday and the last
two days they had Thin-Tech here. Really big financial, technology, that had former KGB Agents
here talking in one of the panels. Quite a few things going on here, it’s an excellent place where
a small companies can grow. We love being here. Our other primary, if you will, sponsor is GMC
Primary Care and Specialty Center. They just opened here in Peachtree Corners. And they’re
originally part of the Gwinnett Medical Center that’s been bought out by Northside Hospital now.
They’re part of the greater Northside Hospital set-up, so we wanted to welcome them. They’re
primary care and they have specialty centers right in the mix. They have their own X-Rays and
Mammography and other technology that they can refer within the center.
Karl [2:40]: Oh, fabulous, fabulous. So as the community continues to grow, we’ve got a town
center, we’ve got medical, we’ve got Atlanta Tech Park. Incubators as the town keeps it up. But
following along with the theme of how Peachtree Corners is growing and technology in general,
today’s guest is Laron Walker. He is the CEO of Mantis EDU. Here to talk about taking IOT, the
Internet of Things, and related technology and applying it from the space of education all the
way through commercial applications. How are you doing today Laron?
Laron [3:15]: Doing well. Thanks for having me.
Karl [3:17]: Fabulous. Well why don’t you start off by telling a little bit about yourself and your
background and what led you to play in this field.
Laron [3:24]: So I’m a native Atlantan. I grew up in South-west Atlanta within a ten mile radius of
the downtown area. As a kid I was always kind of the tinkerer. You know, I had businesses
where I was cutting grass and working with things. I remember a story once where I had an old
Cable-box. This was before we had smart-homes, but I had a remote control, and the family had
no cable. So what I did was I found a bunch of lamps, I found an old fan, and I plugged it into
the back of the cable box because I knew that when you turned it on the power came on. And
thinking back around that I had one of the first smart homes. Like out of my bed, I pressed a
button and my lights came on and in the morning I turned it off. So I was always tinkering and
doing things. I attended a lot of public schools. One of the earliest memories I have around
engineering was that when you were in Middle School on the way to high schools, magnet
schools, you had to choose a career path. And so my brother attended Frederick Douglas High
School, which happened to be an engineering magnet school. Really good school. Back then,
the choice was, ‘Do you want to choose electrical or mechanical?’ And I chose electrical
because I knew how to play with wires. Had no clue that electrical engineering was a totally
different source. I got there, engineering magnet school, then one day somebody came by and
said “If you have a thousand on the SAT and a 3.0 we’ll give you a scholarship.” And that’s how
I ended up at Tennessee State. So it was all those kind of happenstance-type scenarios moving
down this path. But in doing so I got exposed to a lot of interesting people. So bringing it home,
Tennessee State in a very entrepreneurial date, this is the late-nineties, our department got a
grant. The idea was that they had to teach students how to build HTML. So I literally got paid to
learn HTML and out of that project, we built the first website for the Electrical Engineering
Department in our school.
Karl: [5:12]: Wow.
Laron: [5:14]: And the rest is history. I learned about code. I realized that building and having
tech skills was a way forward, and since that time I’ve been really focused on; how do I take
technology and tools to build businesses around that, that enable others to have a very similar
pathway.
Karl: [5:28]: You know, back in that time in the nineties, the Cold War ended and people started
shifting out of Aerospace and mechanical engineering. The internet wasn’t really a big thing
there but people were going to electrical engineering and it was more traditional. But quickly, all
of the sudden; the internet, electrical engineering, sensors. These technologies started
exploding. So if you were in that industry at the right time you were at the beginning of it when
they were just coming out with the first website like; Netscape, Mosaic, was back in eighty-nine,
those browsers. And look where it’s come to.
Laron: [6:08]: It’s funny man, like, I went to a summer pre-college program. This is ninety-six.
We went in, the physics teacher was a pretty forward thinking guy. And the assignment that we
had was to go to the internet and print out the five-day forecast for our city. Just to force us to go
and think about the internet and how it can be used and what you can do with that. So just
thinking about, even in the late nineties, some people had not been exposed to those
technologies.
Rico: [6:34]: You couldn’t just google it either.
Laron: [6:37]: You couldn’t google it. But the ironic part is this though and that brings us to
today’s conversation: Those divides are growing like crazy today. And this tech is not being
exposed to our kids. They’re in school learning things that are not applicable to today’s jobs.
People don’t understand that’s the case and I think that’s a really big issue.
Karl: [6:55]: Give me an example of some of the technologies that you’re seeing now that you
would say young people should really get comfortable with mastering early on.
Laron: [7:04]: Yeah, so right now we all know there’s huge talk about autonomous vehicles,
machine learning AI. And those sound like really interesting buzz words that are very
complicated. Truth be told, even in industry now, most of that technology is being outsourced to
providers like Microsoft, Google, etc. They’re ending within web services right? So not many
companies have a true cognitive ability within that. But knowing that the trend is to outsource
those functions you have to understand how to ingest and use that. There’s no reason why a kid
in elementary, middle, or high school now can’t learn how to ingest or call a web service to get
data. Because if you have that simple construct you’re now able to work with these people that
you can outsource data to. The point of black-boxes existing, I have an input, there’s an output.
Data goes from here to there, that’s a very generic concept that can be easily digested. And
then once you understand that as you go from elementary to middle to high school, over time
you may develop your own algorithm. Those are the type of things that are happening now. We
aren’t telling people like, “This is what the cloud really is. That’s how that works.” So kids now
when they’re aspiring to start their business or to build a product, they’re out trying to build
things that in real life that I would just go pay one cent for. But nobody’s ever shown them
practical ways to do those things so they can start solving these issues.
Karl: [8:18]: Got it. When you think about kids in school now, how can they learn and start to
grapple with some of this. What have you found that pieces it together?
Laron: [8:29]: That’s what we’re doing here. So the cool thing about it is that on our side, our
focus is this: There are two issues. Most of the companies that are building tools and tech and
hardware and things like that, they’re primarily focused on consumer-type markets. So recently
for instance, Sphero is a real interesting company. Robot that everybody got exposed to made a
lot of money selling Star Wars-themed robots. You know when a movie dies down the buzz dies
down, you can’t really sell those products and then they’re pivoting the education. But there’s a
different thing when you’re selling to schools. Teachers want to know about curriculum
standards and have professional development and standards alignment. The people who make
devices aren’t coming from that vantage point. So on our side, what you do is that, we say well
great. First of all, the purpose of these tools that we’re describing is to teach math and science
and physics. So then how do you take those scenarios and route real-world examples around it.
So as an example, we did a couple of camps this summer over at Clark Atlanta here in Metro
Atlanta area where the kids are learning about intro to coding, computing precibles, sensors,
and then the use-case combinated with an aquaponics system.
Rico: [9:34]: What’s this for?
Laron: [9:35]: Aquaponics is using water and contained environments to grow plants and
vegetables. So that’s a real world issue, food doesn’t exist. So I can teach you about a climate
sensor that can measure environmentals. I can teach you about a plant sensor that can
measure plant health. I can teach you about how to measure pH and things along those lines,
so you have these core concepts. While you’re learning how to use those sensors I can teach
you about things like plots and graphs and cloud, which has those standards. But to get you
excited about it, I’m not gonna leave it there. Let’s go and put some goldfish in a bin that are
peeing, making ammonia. Then ammonia creates a nitrate, nitrates create nitrites, the nitrites
are being taken in by the plants and the plants are now going to produce a vegetable. And this
is happening in real time. This is being done in a way to where a middle school kid can program
a tool called Scratch, which is the prevailing tool in the market, to make that happen.
Rico: [10:24]: You know that’s interesting. We were just listening to something about Google X.
The X Company. How they are experimenting right down to the plant. They’re talking about
farming and almost exactly what you’re talking about. Sensors down to the plant level, not just
the field level. And knowing every single plant, like plant number two-thousand-thirty-eight.
Laron: [10:45]: Listen to what you just said though. Right now there are staffs out there saying
that most of the jobs that will exist in 2030 are going to be from out of today’s pipeline. There
are staffs out talking about how our kids aren’t excited and motivated. The challenge is this:
Most people that we’re describing that actually are building tools and things that are being put
into our schools and programs aren’t aligning to what companies care about. Now imagine
when the person that google leaves, the program manager that you just described. Imagine
what happens when he or she goes to a school district and you say “Hey, this entire school,
these kids know these concepts. Here is a miniature version of what you’re doing in real life.”
You don’t think they would get behind and support that?
Rico: [11:24]: They probably would.
Laron: [11:25]: They would, right? Because for the first time ever you’re not taking a company
and saying ‘Support this program,’ and give them a bumper sticker that says ‘I support kids.’
You’re actually authentically connecting what they’re doing to what’s happening. And that’s the
piece that I think is missing.
Karl: [11:39]: And feeding their pipeline for talent. Because they can’t find enough people that
have the skills to invent the future that they’re imagining.
Laron: [11:51]: That’s it.
Rico: [11:52]: Well and you know, I think that’s why stem schools are popping up everywhere.
Because the idea is now, they’re shifting to the idea that you don’t need a four-year college
degree. You can come out of high school knowing programing, knowing these things, and you
have that skill.
Laron: [12:03]: The disdain of not having a four-year degree is disappearing.
Rico: [12:06]: It’s moving away.
Laron: [12:08]: Right. And even people with four-year degrees. I always joke about it man. So, in
my history I stopped at Tennessee State, but I left Tennessee State and went to Purdue.
Because I was told that, get the highest degree you can get. So back then I went to
USAToday.com and I looked. University of Michigan and Purdue and Georgia Tech were the
top engineering schools. Somebody told me, I could’ve gone to Ann Arbor, I could’ve gone to
West Lafayette. Michigan was past Purdue, so I stopped in Indiana. I joined the direct PhD
program because that was the best degree. I spent five years in a PhD program and I got an
MBA. But at the end of the day when you think back on it, I got a lot of theoretical skills in the
classroom. My lab-work was what got me the hands-on skills. But truth be told, knowing what I
know now, I would’ve been much better suited going to Devry for a couple of years. Just to get
some actual hands-on skills and then supplemented that with some business. Because people
don’t get the hands-on. I keep saying with our kids, if we could expose to them the ‘how,’ that
would help them get intrigued and figure out the ‘why.’ And to me that’s why I focus on things
that are tangible, real-world, to get you excited. Then more importantly we are, unlike some of
the more industrial or commercial companies, we are building programs that can sit within the
construct of a school. Because ultimately this has to be something that can be taught and that
can be expended as a program across the board.
Karl: [13:30]: So tell me a little bit about some of the projects that you’ve developed and kids at
work, how it’s helping them learn skills.
Laron: [13:38]: So a couple of examples. So our spirit of influence today is really focusing on
things that can happen within an after-school program. A stem camp or summer camp type
experience, because I think that’s really interesting. If you look at the space today; anybody with
young kids, elementary, middle school kids, who are doing after-school or summer experiences.
Truthfully most of those programs, even if they are stem based programs, are glorified
babysitting operations. And I think that’s an issue, so we started there. And then we also play
within a space of some corporate partners who are engaging kids. So a good example would
be, Microsoft has their band program, which is like their backs of Microsoft employee research
group. So every year they bring in a bunch of kids from high-schools, expose them to tech. We
have a session with Microsoft and we bring our environmental sensors for this use-case. We
say, “Hey guys, let’s do a use-case around co-chain logistics.” Something shifting through the
supply chain. We gave them an environmental sensor, we gave them a package. And they had
to write some code to be able to determine like, pull off the sensor data things like temperature,
humidity, and pressure. And the idea was that, if there was an outlier. We gave them a hair
dryer or blower to raise the heat, and the thing was like; “Hey, let’s write a program so if this
thing gets this high above a threshold, it has to alert you.” So that we give them a STK that
sends text messages. So every group had to sit back, think about it, write some code,
experiment with that. Before that they got a whole talk around cloud and how it worked. Like
“Hey guys, how do you send SMS’s? Well that’s an STK. That’s a company called Twilio. They
just went public. They make a lot of money just selling cloud services.” At the end of the event
every group comes up, they talk about cloud, how it works, IOT, control systems.
Rico: [15:13]: How old are these kids?
Laron: [15:15]: In this case, these kids were ranged. Like high school and up in that scenario.
But we’ve done the same thing below. Here in Gwinnett, we had a scenario with the elementary
school interestingly enough, there was a teacher at the school that had a kid that went through
the program fifteen years early. He’s a really smart guy. We would come by everyday now,
doing a weekend teacher’s crash course. The school had invested in a Hydroponic /
Aquaponics lab that was fully instrumented with plants growing. And we did a session with the
kids to show them how to use the sensors. So then what happened was, once they understood
how to connect with the sensors in Scratch, the school went and bought an LCD screen, hooked
on a Raspberry Pi, and the kids wrote code on the Pi. Learned how to read data from the
sensors and make a real-time dashboard.
Rico: [16:01]: Nice.
Laron: [16:02]: So now when the superintendent came by or visitors come by, you have
elementary kids talking about how they’re collecting data and how its being leveraged. The point
there is that, I know adults who’ve never seen a real-time dashboard or can explain how data is
ingested on a dashboard. So to me it’s like you take these tools, no matter whether its
elementary school or high school, the kids all use the same sensors and the same ecosystem.
But what you do is you graduate the tool sets over time as they get more exposure to expose
them to different parts of the equation. I think that’s the thing. So me trying to graduate a
progression that goes from upper-elementary to, actually I keep saying high school but it’s really
more K-20. Because to me this ends in the collegiate course or at technical school. You’re
basically saying, “Hey man, when you were at elementary school we didn’t really tell you that
sensors have dirty data you gotta run an average on, we just kind of did it for you.” You get to
high school and it’s like “Hey man, this is dirty, you have to go run an average.”
Rico: [16:57]: You know that’s funny. That’s almost like history. They teach you basic history but
they never teach you about the stuff, the really down and dirty stuff until you get towards high
school and college. You know, just the basic stuff.
Laron: [17:07]: So throwing the real stuff in there. So now when you finally graduate you get a
job at Google or you’re working on this program you’re describing, you’re like; “I’ve been using
this Google Cloud since I was in middle school.” And you already have the main context to dig
deeper. To me, that’s the holy grail that I’m chasing. I think the intersection of education with
industry and the proper community partners. That trilogy is something that I think is exciting that
can be expanded without a lot of strain on either part of the ecosystem.
Karl: [17:33]: So it’s an interesting model that you have. You develop a business, based on
technology, that’s having an impact on the community. So when you chose to go that pathway,
what made you choose that and are there things that you would do differently knowing what you
know now then what you started along this path.
Laron: [17:52]: So going down that path is really because I come from very humble beginnings.
Technology changed my life. Really. Because I was able to get a skill, like at Tennessee State,
where I was learning how to write code. I had a laptop, and because I had a laptop I started
building websites. I was able to monetize that. Without question, that’s the great equalizer. If
you look at the trend now, the wealthiest people in the world, most of those guys made their
money in tech. So tech is a great generator of wealth and legacy on the business side. But to
me, I also realized that the work I do like the non-profit, we support and give out scholarships.
That’s not sustainable, that’s just an outbound process. So my opinion is that, by having these
tech-enabled businesses our motto is this; I survey schools that are using tech as a part of their
process. Most companies that sell tech, particularly hardware, it’s not very profitable. Because
most people don’t make it themselves. So they take something they bought from somebody
else, they market it like crazy, and they sell it at the high end of the market. So what that means
is that the people that really need it don’t get access to it. Our approach here is can we build a
business where we can actually design hardware that’s best in breed, but informed by design.
That way, we can find ways to get it out there at scale. But then by doing that if I can expose
that to these ecosystems of undeserved people, even people who have connectivity to it, I can
influence and get them those skill sets to help them change their lives. Which means that,
they’re gonna pull back and pull people forward. So that’s kind of the theory behind it. The third
piece of that is the thing I would do differently, which I’ve been working on recently is that a lot
of people don’t understand the importance of education technology or the ability to do good and
do well at the same time. So it’s very difficult to raise capital or raise investment. Hardware in
general is an industry people don’t really invest much in, most vc fonts focus on software. And
then you go and have this education and kind of community slant and people think you’re a
nonprofit. So we’ve been trying to form this to show people that, ‘hey man, this is a real
business that we can scale.’ So to that point, the tech we’re using in these classrooms as I
described earlier is real world tech. So we now have started to work on institutional partners
where we can launch consumer products that take that same tech in a different vein to show
people that, not only is it used in schools, but it’s in this big retailer. There are a lot of ways to
make it happen.
Rico: [20:09]: You know the best part is, is that I think because of the way the market here is in
the United States and probably in a portion of the world. What you’re doing is saying, “Don’t just
do this because it’s just for the kids,” you’re saying, “We’re gonna show you commercial
application that can actually make money in the marketplace.” Because if it can’t make money, I
mean in the long run, you lose anyway because it’s just gonna fall by the wayside. No one’s
going to invest in something where it’s just altruistic and stuff. That’s such a short term thing. But
if you can prove to them that there’s money to be made here, this is a commercial application,
then people will definitely get involved in that.
Laron: [20:49]: So definitely before it was more of the mind instead of, we’re doing this work that
has great value, running these programs, and it was really purely about the kids. That’s still the
case to this day. But I have had to change my hat and just make sure that I’m making people
realize that this is a way to try revenue that can scale. This is a growth market not only
domestically but internationally. And the way in which we’re thinking about this is completely
different from everybody else. And if you’re in this space, you know Microsoft, Google, not only
are we supporting and helping you build pipeline. We are building solutions and products that
marry very well with things you sell in the schools. So my solution paired with your Chromebook.
My solution paired with your Surface Tablet. It’s a way to drive consumption, to drive cloud
computing, to get consumers hands in front of your products in a natural way that fits into your
strategic plan. And so that’s the way that we’re framing the conversation.
Karl: [21:43]: So one of the things I noticed is, you know IOT and these technologies can
change with time. I’m gonna ask you to put on your hat and look into the future a little bit, what
are some of the areas where you think the IOT smart technologies can have the most
transformative impact on businesses, specifically, and in communities.
Laron: [22:04]: So in the business side, what’s interesting about it man. People talk about IOT,
the big market in IOT is the IIOT. The Industrial Internet of Things. There are a lot of factories
out there and disparaged systems that have been around for years and they can’t just go out
and buy the new Apple Watch whenever the new version comes out. And that’s the interesting
thing when people are looking at innovation they go and hire kids that just graduated from
school and those kids are trying to make Apple Watches. That’s sexy. And it’s from lack of
understanding, they’ve never worked in these dirty jobs. Think about that show Mick Rowe used
to have, Dirty Jobs. Think about all those dirty places he went into. They need sensors too. And
so those little things that can’t be connected or if you go and connect this thing you can’t go
change out the ERP and it can’t use 5G but it’s still has a signal on it. Those ground filled
applications, that’s an interesting spot. There’s millions and millions of those out there and
nobody’s thinking about it. They’ve still gotta get connected. So things like that are very, very
interesting on the industrial side. On the consumer side, again these titans out there controlling
the ecosystem, so the Apples of the world are very forceful of what you can do. And how you
can do it. So I think as we find ways to get more connectivity as cities are employing WiFi and
things the varied connectivity disappears, you’re gonna see a lot of those applications happen. I
think in the home. Look at what Amazon is doing now. Amazon acquired Ring. Amazon
acquired Ero. That tells you that the home is a place where a lot of stuff is happening, so I think
you’re gonna see a lot more stuff happening within the constructs of a home. I think what’s
gonna happen in the future is that this notion of having to rely on an outside third party to give
you all these things. It’s gonna be just like in the enterprise there was this BYOD type approach.
I think you’re going to start seeing that. I think frameworks are going to start to exist to allow you
to more plug-and-play stuff to create your own experience around it.
Rico: [24:11]: Do you see the, I mean I see it and I’m not sure if maybe I’m wrong. Do you see
the closed environment that they want to create. I mean AWS, the cloud.
Laron: [24:23]: I think it’s a problem though. I’ll give you a good example. Actually the other day.
So, I’m a pretty technical person. I can write software and I have a hardware company. But even
right now, I can’t go home and take one of my systems my company produces and put it on my
network at home without going crazy. All the major players, they have taken a traditional
approach. They’ve invested in some technology that they chose in that technology plan seven,
eight years ago, ten years ago. They’ve already advertised the cost of it and they’re forced
everything they do to go down that path. And they’re keeping people from getting involved with
that. And see what that does? So now you go into the home and there’s already connectivity
there. You have a security company there. You have all these connected people and Amazon
comes with an Alexa and jumps on your hotspot, takes over the whole house. Because the
other pieces were closed in that forward thinking. So you have to open that piece up because
there’s no one-size-fits-all.
Rico: [25:13]: But do you see Amazon wanting to open that piece up?
Laron: [25:16]: I think those guys are opening up connectivity to try and force you towards their
cloud.
Rico: [25:21]: Okay. That’s what I was thinking.
Laron: [25:23]: And so you have to be careful in terms of if that’s part of your business or not.
But the fact that there is an Alexa there that has a bunch of users that I can plug into. That’s an
interesting value proposition. It’s just a matter of what happens with the data that you have to be
careful about.
Rico: [25:34]: Do you think education can work well with it too. I know AWS allowed it because
of their AI. They’re saying that you could use their AI to develop your own.
Laron: [25:44]: But that is the Playdoh, so that is the opportunity. And that was my point earlier.
So now let’s go back to the scenario of now we’re growing food. This food has a myriad of
sensors. So imagine now would I want to go in and deploy this to an impoverished
neighborhood who doesn’t have the skillset. And I can now go and have them collecting data
going back to the cloud. Now, we’re in Georgia so what do we have? We have UGA. They focus
on some ‘Agg’ stuff. There’s probably a PhD there who wants some data. You don’t think we
can build a system using AWS or Azure or where we can feed this person all this data. They
can tune their algorithms they can tweak it, they can test it in these neighborhoods and now
we’re getting yield. It’s those kind of things that I think are going to change the education
concept. The second thing is that, there’s a huge push now toward online and virtual learning.
But it’s still a very traditional construct there. Let’s go take a class where we’re throwing
information at you where you’re watching some videos. In our case what we’re working on is
imagine a day where I could have a remote science class. I’m gonna send you a sensor, you’ve
got to go outside, collect some data. You’re gonna submit something digital with that. We could
have a digital lab experience. We are we not doing that? And so I think that’s to me, as we
identify the right cloud partner and I could take that to scale, now we can export the stuff across
the country. Across the world and have a common experience around it.
Rico: [27:10]: I can see. I mean having Amazon as a partner and being able to do that. Then
deliver this stuff within hours, if not the next day anyway. You’ve got that whole environment.
Laron: [27:21]: That’s it. So what I’m trying to do is show that, we have done an amazing POC
around ways to engage kids within tech that’s aligned to teaching. And now that we’ve had this
five or six year MVP that we’ve been cranking out by ourselves. We’re at a point now that with
the appropriate partner who’s a philanthropic capitalist, we’re going to go and scale across the
globe overnight. Because we’re properly aligned and our synergies are right in line with that.
That’s what I’m chasing.
Karl: [27:58]: Wow. Fascinating. Well I’ll tell you, you know we’ve learned a lot today about how
technology is being brought from schools into commercial apps. And what I like is, one, there’s
folks out there that are listening and this might spark an interest in them to pursue. How can
they get involved. How can they reach out to learn more about what you’re doing. What are
other resources in the community where young people and their parents and also business
owners can start changing their business model to capitalize on some of the stuff that’s out
there.
Laron: [28:30]: Well I’m pretty easy to find. So on social LaronAWalker is where you’ll find me.
I’m more of a Twitter and Linkedin type of guy. So you’ll find me there. As relation to the
business, the website is Mantis, like the spider, EDU, as in education, .co (MantisEDU.co) is our
website so go there. We’re launching a new website very soon. A lot of interactive blog content
there. For the different people you mentioned there the different constituents types we have a
lot of forums there to be involved with. So if you wanted to be a part of one of our stem camps
or summer camps, let us know. If you’re a company who wants to not only engage with kids but
you’re interested, say “Hey, can you help me pull together some content around this domain
that lines what I’m doing so I can present around things that I care about.” We’re making it
happen so find us online, connect with us, we’d love to partner.
Karl: [29:21]: Oh fabulous. Well, I’ll tell you. I love when we get to talk to a different kind of
business. Most people wouldn’t realize that you can take a technology business and have an
impact on people in the community with a vision towards the future that’s feeding the pipeline of
industry. The folks that are out there doing what you’re doing I think are setting the groundwork
for different generations. So when you hear Silicon Valley say they can’t find people to fill all
these tech jobs, I think that help is on the way. I’m glad that people like you help in leading that.
Laron: [30:00]: Thanks for helping me share the story.
Karl: [30:01]: My pleasure. I’d like to thank Atlanta Tech Park for hosting the Capitalist Sage
Podcast and thank Laron for your time today sharing some of the stuff you’ve done. That’s just
the tip of the iceberg of some of the things you’ve done and you’re working on to help in the
community and help transform the way people look at business. Atlanta Tech Park is a great
place to kind of help nurture that further. Find other like-minded individuals, take hardware and
software and apply some business sense to it, find good applications and ways to do that. It’s
really important. I’m Karl Barham with Trans World Business Advisors I get the pleasure of
working and meeting with great entrepreneurs and business owners out there. Helping them
figure out their strategy to grow and when they’re ready, how to exit their business. So you can
reach me at KBarham.TWorld.com or visit www.TWorld.com/AtlantaPeachtree . Reach out. And
Rico, why don’t you tell me a little bit about what we’ve got going on. I feel like there’s
something coming in the near future for us to go take a look at.
Rico: [31:07]: There’s so much out there. You can find me, Rico Figliolini, on LinkedIn or
MightyRockets.com. I do social media marketing, content marketing, and video. Especially if you
need products explained in video I do that. I’m also a publisher, as I mentioned before, of
Peachtree Corners Magazine here in the city of Peachtree Corners. I am also the host of
several podcasts, a family of podcasts, including this with Karl who does the heavy lifting on this
show. So he’s done a great job here. I also do Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager and
Peachtree Corners Life. So we’ve done quite a few things coming up and the magazine will be
coming out. I think it’s hitting the mail, the post office next Friday. We are doing technology in
schools so we’ve covered several of the schools in Peachtree Corners let’s call it, like Paul
Duke Stem High School, Wesleyan Cornerstone Christian, Picnicville Middle. So there’s a few
schools that are being covered and what they’re doing in technology and how that helps them in
their education process. So that’s one of the stories, of course we’re doing Pets and their
People. And we’re doing a few other things including the Voices of Football, covering a few of
the announcers from Norcross and Wesleyan so that’s kind of cool. So just a lot of stuff out
there and we just went through that grand opening with the…
Karl: [32:26]: Lot of fun. Got to ride in a car without a driver and lived to tell about it. And so it’s a
lot of good things going on in the community. We really encourage people to get involved and
go out and see what’s happening in the community all around and participate. Be an active
participant. See what differences you can make. Well thank you everybody. Stay tuned for our
next episode of the Capitalist Sage Podcast. Thank you everyone. Have a nice day.
Rico: [32:58]: Thank you guys.
Laron: [32:59]: Thank you.
Business
Expanding Horizons: How KGM Technologies Balances Defense, Medical, and Precision Manufacturing
Kyle Grob on innovation, diversification, and the future of skilled trades
In this episode of UrbanEBB, host Rico Figliolini speaks with Kyle Grob, CEO and founder of Peachtree Corners-based KGM Technologies, a precision manufacturing company specializing in firearm suppressors and expanding into medical device production. Kyle shares insights on growing a business during COVID-19, navigating ATF regulations, and how Georgia fosters innovation in manufacturing.
The conversation also explores the future of skilled trades, the challenges of hiring motivated workers, and KGM’s commitment to workforce development through partnerships with vocational schools. Whether you’re interested in business growth, advanced manufacturing, or the evolving job market, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
Key Takeaways & Highlights:
- Adapting to Change – How KGM transitioned from automotive and defense contracts to firearm suppressor manufacturing and medical devices.
- The Impact of ATF Regulations – Digital processing has drastically reduced wait times for suppressor purchases.
- Workforce Challenges – The decline of skilled trades and the difficulty of hiring motivated employees in manufacturing.
- Medical Technology Expansion – KGM’s role in producing stroke rehabilitation devices and scaling medical manufacturing.
- Networking & Diversification – The importance of industry connections in finding new opportunities.
- The Value of Trade Schools – How partnerships with Maxwell High School and other vocational programs are shaping the next generation of skilled workers.
- Patents & Innovation – KGM’s goal of filing at least one new patent every year.
- The Role of Suppressors – Their use in law enforcement, hunting, and protecting hearing health.
Transcript:
00:00:01 – Rico Figliolini
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Urban Ebb here in the city of Peachtree Corners, just north of Atlanta. I appreciate you joining us. We have a great guest today, a Peachtree Corners-based business, very different and unique industry, Kyle Grob. Appreciate you being with me, Kyle.
00:00:18 – Kyle Grob
Oh, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
00:00:19 – Rico Figliolini
It’s going to be a good discussion on a bit of company, a bit of work, and manpower, the lack of. But before we get into that, I just want to say thank you to two of our sponsors, EV Remodeling, Inc., and the owner, Eli, who lives here in Peachtree Corners also. His family does. And he does great work from design to build. Whole house renovation, or if you need an extension on the house, he’s the guy to look for. They’ve done over 260 such renovation work. So check them out, evremodelinginc.com. And then also Vox Pop Uli also family owned, also in Peachtree Corners. And they’re a company that if you have a brand and if you’re a business and you need to bring that brand to life, pretty much you can do it. 1,600 vehicle wraps I think this past year anything you can want, imprinted, embroidered, silk screen, whatever it is. If you have a logo and you want it on an object of any sort, challenge them. I can’t tell you how many different things they’ve put logos on. So all great stuff. Check them out, voxpopuli.com, where you can find them. So, now that I’ve taken care of the sponsors who support us for our journalism and podcasts. Kyle is the founder and currently CEO of KGM Technology. Yeah. So, based in Peachtree Corners, tell us just quickly a little bit about what the company is.
00:01:42 – Kyle Grob
So, the company started in 2012 as a kind of a fabrication, job shop, machining fabrication. And we kind of evolved out of the automotive space and got into the defense world and slowly grew over years. And then we moved into this building in 2019 and have been growing ever since.
00:02:03 – Rico Figliolini
2019, COVID.
00:02:05 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, so COVID was actually very good for us. It was wide open, running multiple shifts. While many businesses were shut down, we couldn’t hire enough people, we couldn’t build enough products.
00:02:17 – Rico Figliolini
We’ll get into that because it may be a bit of what you’re going on now. So your business is military suppressors, which is the biggest part. You told me once at one point when I took a tour earlier, a week ago, you said we’re precision manufacturers.
00:02:34 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, so the back end, the wholeness of the company is precision manufacturing. Our forward-facing product is suppressors. That’s mainly what we sell to commercial, law enforcement, military, overseas, all kinds of stuff like that. But we’re in all kinds of stuff. Contract manufacturing, medical device manufacturing and supply, all the way down to machining and research and development. And it’s just a little bit of everything. But again, forward facing is the product line, yes.
00:03:02 – Rico Figliolini
Sure. And you’ve done this since 2019, right? Actually before that.
00:03:07 – Kyle Grob
Well, no, no. Yeah. So we started suppressors in 2015, 2016. And then, but it was kind of a side product to what we were doing. Really grew in 2019. And then really kind of just kept growing through COVID. And this is kind of where we are now.
00:03:22 – Rico Figliolini
Interesting. So your family is steeped in military? In all branches, I guess?
00:03:25 – Kyle Grob
Yeah. Army and Navy.
00:03:27 – Rico Figliolini
Army and Navy. And you hire veterans?
00:03:29 – Kyle Grob
We hire a lot of veterans. We have a lot of veterans that work for us. I try to hire as many as we can. They make very good employees. But, you know, it could probably be a whole nother podcast in itself, what happens to veterans when they come back from service. And so we try to search them out and give people a chance.
00:03:34 – Rico Figliolini
Getting involved in this type of market since, you know, you started, has it changed in the way you do business?
00:04:03 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, because we are so highly regulated from, you know, the ATF regulates us pretty heavily. The ability for consumers to essentially purchase the product and all the paperwork and background check that goes in it has evolved since we started. It used to be nine months, 12, 15 months to get a product. So you buy it, wait for your paperwork for a year or more. You’d almost forget about the product. And then all of a sudden it’d pop up one day. Well, last year, everything went digital. And so now everything’s digital. You go from months or years wait time to days, hours, weeks.
00:04:38 – Rico Figliolini
So you can order this stuff online and get it shipped to you?
00:04:41 – Kyle Grob
No, so you can’t really ship it to your house. So you still have to go to a dealer or go like that. You’re still submitting fingerprints. You’re still submitting your photos. But the process is now all digitized. There’s no manual entry on the ATF side. Everything goes through much faster. And again, we’ve seen, you know, three hour wait times. Where you fill out your paperwork, go to a long lunch and all of a sudden your suppressor is approved.
00:05:04 – Rico Figliolini
So if you have a gun permit or a carry permit, does that make it easy?
00:05:08 – Kyle Grob
It doesn’t really because it’s a completely separate background check. So this, every suppressor you purchase is its own background check. So you treat it like a firearm purchase every single time, except it goes through a kind of a different, it goes through the FBI on the NIC side, which is their background check service. But it goes through separate checking on the ATF side as well. So it is a little bit more involved process than buying a handgun or a rifle or something like that. But similar agencies touch it, I guess.
00:05:38 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. This being the state of Georgia, other states have different ways of doing things. You’ve been to trade shows. You’re involved in the industry a bit. Do you see Georgia being a good place to do business here in this market?
00:05:52 – Kyle Grob
Georgia is a very friendly state. And even just manufacturing in general, you’ve seen all the companies that have moved here. You have, you know, most major automotive companies are either building or about to build here. You got SK batteries. You have some big companies that are moving to Georgia. And then film. I mean, film is massive here now with all the tax breaks. And so you see a lot of stuff coming to Georgia from an industry standpoint, but it’s also very firearms friendly. There’s a lot of big companies here in Georgia. You have Glock here in Georgia. You have Daniel Defense. You have a lot of really big companies. I think Remington’s got a place here. So it is very, you know, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina. There’s a lot of very friendly states when it comes to manufacturing and firearms.
00:06:35 – Rico Figliolini
So how do you go about selling your product then? I mean, if you go to trade shows, RFPs?
00:06:40 – Kyle Grob
So on the military side, it’s more RFPs, it’s more contract basis. We partner with a lot of firearms companies because a lot of submissions for weapons systems require, you know, we’re viewed as kind of an add-on to a weapon system. Yeah, it’s an accessory. And then on the law enforcement side, we go demos, we have dealers. And then on the commercial side, we have distributors that distribute to dealers. And then we have dealers that essentially are walk-in brick and mortar stores. And we sell directly to them as well.
00:07:07 – Rico Figliolini
So for most people that may not know, why would someone want a suppressor on the gun? Why would a police officer, let’s say a SWAT team, want to suppress it? What makes it?
00:07:17 – Kyle Grob
Really the biggest one is health and safety. It’s the biggest one. So from an officer-involved shooting, or say if he shoots without ear protection, every shot is permanent hearing damage. So if he shoots one in his entire career, he’s permanent hearing damage, he’s on disability from an auditory standpoint. You look at, you know, what you could do, and then you look at, you know, God forbid all the school shootings we’ve had and school resource. When you shoot inside of a building, it’s even magnified. So it’s very, very loud in general, and then you put it inside of a building and it gets worse. So there’s been cases where you’ve seen lawsuits where, you know, a SWAT team or someone’s gone into a house or a building and essentially, you know, saved someone, but they discharged their short barrel rifle inside the house. And then everyone that’s not wearing ear protection, i.e. the family, they’re all deaf or hearing damage, and they end up suing the city. And we see it a lot. And so from a health and safety standpoint, there’s that. You could look at accuracy. And then you look at, on the hunting side of being more courteous to neighbors. It allows you to hunt closer to, you know, other people and stuff like that. Yeah, so there’s so many things that add to it. And then you add, you know, on the military side, it helps with being able to, you know, hide your location and just be more effective. Suppress flash and stuff like that. So a myriad of uses, but really the bigger one is the health and safety side of things.
00:08:40 – Rico Figliolini
I was speaking to a person today that on his old farm he used to shoot his rifle and stuff. And he told me he said, this ear? Pretty much gone. He says now hearing aid. Because he didn’t think that he needed a, you know plugs or anything. A suppressor probably would have helped him. Well at least the plugs might have helped a little bit. But no one thinks about that.
00:08:59 – Kyle Grob
You don’t, you don’t. And you look at the law enforcement side and kind of the heat of moment, you don’t think about it. It’s not something, you’re either fighting for your life or, you know, your split moment decision. Like you don’t think about putting your plug on or throwing a plug in or something like that. It’s a split second decision. So with suppressors, you can really mitigate a lot of that risk. Now, does it make it the Hollywood movie side? No. The only thing that gets even close to that is 22. And it’s because the subsonic is very quiet like that. Any centerfire rifle cartridge you’re never going to get away from supersonic crack. It’s only so quiet you can get it. It is a suppressor, not a silencer. And that’s a probably a very heated topic. It’s a movie thing, yes. But in practical application they do a lot of work for the size of the product and what you use it for.
00:09:50 – Rico Figliolini
So now going from suppressors to the medical industry. You know when you showed me around and you talked to me about mechanical therapeutic systems for a company you’re doing work for inside the perimeter. That you almost had to double the size of your floor space, essentially.
00:10:07 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, so it’s kind of an interesting story. We go back to, we’re a precision manufacturing company. We make contract stuff. We do defense. We do a little bit of everything. And it was kind of a friend of a friend. Their business was scaling and really needed help scaling the manufacturing side of their product. And it was really a right place, right time. It kind of fit in our warehouse. While it’s not exactly what we make, precision assembly, scaling, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, all that stuff. That’s what we do every day. So I’m just building something a little different versus what I have been building. So it was a great opportunity. Again, the right side of the perimeter is Atlanta company. And it was just a really good right place, right time. Good fit for what they were looking for. Good fit for us on the diversification side. So it’s just it really worked and we’re growing weekly. Yeah, we’re blowing walls down and yeah we’ve tripled the space twice now since we yarded in like October of last year. So it’s very very quick.
00:11:07 – Rico Figliolini
When I walked through and you gave me the tour, I mean there were quite a few people just in that place doing the assemblage. I think you even told me, you said well, how far down can you? Millionth of an inch? Precision?
00:11:21 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, so it’s like our EDMs and some of our stuff, we calculate microns, millionth of an inch.
00:11:27 – Rico Figliolini
So that’s an industry, obviously, you want to get more into.
00:11:30 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, it is. It was interesting. I had kind of heard about the medical manufacturing side, and the more we dug into it, the more I realized how many companies like the company we’re helping are out there. And they have a great idea, a great concept, but they’re either doctors or they’re pcs or biomedical. You know they’ve developed great product but they don’t know the manufacturing side or they don’t know how to scale the logistics. Yes, scaling. So it’s, there’s so many good ideas that maybe never ever come to market or never could reach the potential they could because they don’t know the back end. They don’t know the manufacturing, they don’t know how to. Make five of something is very different than making 500, is very different than making 5,000. And it’s just a different skill set. It’s a different knowledge base. And we’re very good at it. And it was a really, really good fit. And it’s something we believe in. We believe in the medical stuff as much as we believe in the defense. Every day we’re building something to help someone else.
00:12:29 – Rico Figliolini
And to get people to understand a little bit, this particular thing was a therapeutic.
00:12:34 – Kyle Grob
Yeah it’s a, without going into too much detail, it’s a stroke therapy device. It’s used for rehab of stroke patients so that they can actually rehab at home versus having to go into a therapy office. And so it’s just grown immensely and that’s, the product’s done well.
00:12:50 – Rico Figliolini
So how do you go after that market? You know, so if another business person, you know, when you, when you diversify, it’s not easy, right? You’re all set in one way. You have 100% of the direction going one way. How do you do that? If another company was listening to this, how would they be able to diversify? So what challenges did you see?
00:13:10 – Kyle Grob
The challenges, like I said, we very much stumbled into this one. Not saying we weren’t looking, and that’s kind of how we did it, but honestly, it was network. And the guy that owns this company, owns another company and he’s an investment group with another other. So a lot of it is networking and being open and willing to take on a challenge that you may not. Be like, oh I have no business in that, well if you’re good at what you do over here and you can see you can cross the lines you can compare, you’d be surprised what you can do. And then you go to the trade shows. Like there are medical device trade shows. Go to those and walk around and say, hey I’m a manufacturer, or I’m this, I’m looking at getting into this market. Do you have a need for X, what I do? Putting yourself out there and going like, look, this is out of my market, but I’m good at this. I would like to try this and just be open and willing to, A, to fail because you’re going to fail more than you succeed, but be willing to try. And that’s the big thing was the leap. Like we took a leap to do this. I had a good feeling that we could do it. But at the end of the day, like you still have to take the leap.
00:14:17 – Rico Figliolini
You’re a CEO now and you were a founder, but you were on the board. You were chairman of the board?
00:14:22 – Kyle Grob
No, no, not chair on the board. I was more on the technical side. So as we were growing the business, I was CTO. And so we were heading kind of down a different path and it was just a the board kind of wanted to see a different change in the way the company was run. And again, my background, why I said, I wasn’t running the day to day, most more on the manufacturing side and technology and patents and stuff like that. And so, board made a shift and I took back over the company. You know, I go from running it many years ago, to running again. Which happens a lot in small companies. And it was a, we wanted to head down the manufacturing path and that’s what I know. So we made a change and I stepped back in last year and been riding the train ever since.
00:15:11 – Rico Figliolini
Good, good. It’s great to have a company expanding and doing well in Peachtree Corners.
00:15:13 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, yeah. Happy to be here.
00:15:17 – Rico Figliolini
Being an employer of veterans, being steeped in family military and stuff, you do outreach, you do community fundraising in that field, in that area.
00:15:29 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, we do, again, more in the defense space, but we do some charity work with several organizations. And again, we donate product. We do stuff for raffles and fundraisers, and we do a lot of stuff like that. Because I really do believe in giving back to the market and giving back to those people. So it’s something we do a decent amount of. I would like to do more this year. That’s kind of what we’re trying to find some other organizations that do stuff with. But we try to do as much as we can. There’s one group, and I’ll be happy to say the name, but Guardian Group. And it’s Guardian Long Range. And they have a precision rifle series. It’s a shooting competition, but it’s for fun. And they have four or five stops all around the U.S. And we outfitted all their rifles that they let people use for trials and stuff like that. We outfitted all the suppressors. So maybe their first competition experience is with a suppressed rifle. So we do stuff with them every year. A guy named Gary is the one that founded that. So great group. But he has a lot of, most of his stuff is for foster kids. He’s a foster kid himself, and he does, every single dime of that goes right into helping foster kids, helping place foster kids, and stuff like that.
00:16:41 – Rico Figliolini
Wow, that is neat. That is cool. I didn’t think about that. So, you know, leadership, company, what comes to mind when you’re, you know, when you’re looking ahead for the next few years?
00:16:55 – Kyle Grob
Really, my biggest push is diversification. Is trying to grow the medical side for sure, grow my contract manufacturing, and really try to build some stable streams around. Everyone knows the firearms industry goes up and down. It’s always cyclical. And so trying to build a larger company where I can have some overlying pathways and diversify and stuff like that so that I can clip the waves and be able to grow the business without relying as much on a very cyclical market. So that’s really the big try. We’re pushing a lot of technology. We’re trying for a patent a year, or a patent every two years. Yeah, we’re four deep already, with two more applied. So we do a lot on the patent side, a lot on the testing and development side. But yeah, growing the medical is really the big one I’m focusing on in the next year or so.
00:17:45 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, one of the things you have in the house is a firearm range. You told me, and you can put a .50 caliber?
00:17:52 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, so we shoot up to .50 caliber indoors. Yeah, so we have a, it’s a lab as much as it is a range where we can do all of our instrumentation and we develop based on data. So we use it. We shoot it in almost every single day. We’re doing testing and development. We do, you know, demos for customers and stuff like that. But yeah, we’ve, pretty extensive room back there.
00:17:54 – Rico Figliolini
Yes, it’s amazing. Small. Smaller than this conference room.
00:17:58 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, yeah. It’s not, it’s not very big. It’s not a big long range, but it’s heavily instrumented.
00:18:22 – Rico Figliolini
I can’t even imagine shooting a 50 caliber in there, how that would sound.
00:18:25 – Kyle Grob
Oh it, unsuppressed it’ll lift the ceiling tiles. It’ll pressurize the room, yeah so.
00:18:31 – Rico Figliolini
So lots of work yeah expanding you’re looking towards the future and stuff. One of the biggest problems I guess, and we’re going to go right into that is finding employees. Finding skilled employees or motivated employees. Maybe not even skilled, maybe motivated. How does that?
00:18:49 – Kyle Grob
I’ll trade motivation for skill. I’ll trade because what we do is kind of unique. Even on the manufacturing side, we have very nice machines. We do things to a very, very high tolerance. And even with machining background, we’ve found that some people have either preconceived notions or bad habits or stuff like that. We’re getting to the point now where I would rather have someone that has a little bit of mechanical aptitude, some basic knowledge, or someone out of trade school, and I’d rather just teach them. And finding someone that’s willing, even on the medical side, I’d rather have someone come in that wants to just come in and work every single day, take pride in the product they put out. You don’t have to even be that knowledgeable about what we do. I’ll train you and do whatever we need to do, but someone to actually come in and do it is one of the biggest struggles we find. We’ve had you know, multiple staffing agencies and all stuff like that. And we have people, we had some people the other day that came in for four hours, just left during lunch, never came back. And yeah, just it’s, the workforce is, it’s been disappointing, I guess. And seeing, especially on the technical side, I mean, the craves, the trades, the crafts, like a lot of that stuff is dying. Like people are not, you look in the like tool and dye. Oh, that’s enough. That’s no, so most people don’t know how injection mold stuff works and like that. The craftsmen that build those tools, that is a dying art. There’s only one or two schools in the U.S. that do it. I don’t know any of those guys that make less than six figures. None of them. And, you know, you look at plumbers and electricians and welders. I come from a welding background. I knew plenty of welders in the nuclear field that have multiple houses in multiple states. They never wanted for money. They always had plenty of money because it’s such a very small niche thing and there’s not many people that go into it. And so what we found with the growing, we’ve had to do a lot of automation because we cannot get the people. So we’re putting robotics in, we’re putting automation system in just because I have a certain number of parts that I have to make a day and we’re not hitting the numbers with the people we have. And it’s really hard to find people that want to come in and work. And we have a climate control facility, the nicest machines, our oldest machine, CNC machine is from 2018. It’s the oldest machine we have in the whole building. Most stuff is within two years old. So we work highest machines, highest quality product this, and just having someone come in every single day and want to work. It’s been very difficult to find. And that’s it. It’s been. I guess upsetting a little bit of how hard it’s been.
00:21:25 – Rico Figliolini
I think we talked a little bit about that when I was here last time. And you’re on the board of Maxwell High School Technical, I think?
00:21:33 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, so Maxwell High School, it’s a vocational high school, essentially. It’s a trade high school. They’re over in Lawrenceville, I think. So high school kids in Gwinnett County, if they want to go to that program, I want to say it’s junior and senior year. If they are heading down that path, they essentially will get bused to Maxwell for half their day and come back. And they have machining and welding, hvac, nursing, culinary, carpentry, all kinds of stuff. And you can get some vocational certificates in high school over there. And so I sit on the board over there and I help advise of curriculum of what do kids need to learn if they want to head down this path? They want to head down, I don’t care if it’s machining or engineering or anything like that. Like what are basic skills. I mean we have people that come in their 20s that don’t know what a screwdriver is. I mean, it’s like, that sounds crazy, but until you meet people and you know, I don’t think the school systems are doing people favors. And so I’ve been really trying to help where I can and you know, try to like, look, let’s try to teach people young. I didn’t have that when I was in school. Like I had to learn everything the hard way.
00:22:42 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. And you were talking about this. You started at 15, I think.
00:22:46 – Kyle Grob
Yeah. So I started machining in, you know, high school. I started welding at 12. I grew up on a farm.
00:22:51 – Rico Figliolini
12.
00:22:52 – Kyle Grob
And so it’s one of those that, you know, I had a very good upbringing. Like I was shown, my great grandfather was a master carpenter. Great uncle was a master machinist. Like I grew up in a trade family. And so like, I got exposed to that stuff very, very young. I was very lucky. A lot of people aren’t like that. Most of their parents are maybe in IT or finance, and they want to go be a machinist or be a welder or something like that. So there’s no, you know, maybe the parents don’t know how to get into that. And so the kids find out at a later date. Well, what if they could start finding out in high school? They start learning, you know, your STEM schools, your vocational schools, that kind of stuff.
00:23:31 – Rico Figliolini
I think like Paul Duke STEM, for example, they’re a hybrid school, right? So it’s, you have kids that are technically STEM kids, but then you also have other kids who are learning CAD and 3D printing and stuff like that. So more of technical stuff that they can actually leave the high school knowing that stuff and then find the job doing it. So that’s the only place I know that’s like that, short of the Gwinnett Science and Technology High School. I forget where that is now. But when I grew up, I mean, granted this, you know, my high school was 50 years ago. Half a century. That’s horrible. Okay. But when I grew up, we had shop classes. So metal class, printing class. In fact, I took printing. I should have taken the auto class because that really works now. But I took printing. And when I was going to college, I worked at the print shop right around the corner. So I made good cash because there weren’t that many people that knew it. And I literally could run two or three presses at the same time. They were small presses. But there were even people back then that would be like, well, what are you in a rush for? Why are you doing what you’re doing? And I’m like, because I’m getting bored running this long run in this one press. I could do this other one while this is going. So it is to some degree motivation, some degree technical knowledge.
00:24:50 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, but a lot of it still drive. Strive.
00:24:53 – Rico Figliolini
Yes. For sure. To be able to make that money. I mean, most parents think, well, I don’t know about most parents. What I think is people got into this four-year college degree thing. Which is way more expensive now than it used to be. And you’re looking at people, who was it, the head of OpenAI, was essentially saying you don’t have to go, the head of NVIDIA was. It was like you used to want to be able to send your kid to do computer programming. And he’s essentially saying, you know, you don’t need to be doing that anymore because it can be done in plain english on OpenAI, essentially. So where are they going?
00:25:36 – Kyle Grob
Good question.
00:25:37 – Rico Figliolini
I see signing bonuses for 10 grand on HVAC here in the metro area sometimes. How do you solve that? I mean, you’re on the board of the high school, but how do you?
00:25:48 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, but it’s one high school. And it’s one high school in a state. And I know there’s other vocational schools in other states. A lot of it just seems to be the state has to look at it holistically in the whole state. And go like, look, this is worth putting money into. This is not football. This is not baseball. This is not your support sports like that. It is an alternative path that is not your commonplace. So it really has to come. And I’ll give the state of Georgia and even Gwinnett County very, very good accolades of, you know, taking the leap on that school and funding that program and pushing it and keeping to push it and grow it. And so, but it has to start at a state level. The state has to be able to go,this is worth putting money into to future. Because you have to do it now for the kids that are coming up. You know if you want to get, if you want that kid that’s in elementary school right now to look at that that program, it already has to be in place so that he will know about he or she will know about it by the time they get into middle school and then by the time they get in high school they can apply for it.
00:26:50 – Rico Figliolini
I think the stigma, but the stigma needs to go away also, right? Because there’s a stigma of like, you’re not going to college?
00:26:57 – Kyle Grob
Yeah. You’re not going to amount to anything if you don’t go to get a four-year degree.
00:27:02 – Rico Figliolini
And it used to be okay if you knew computer engineering and programming. You’d come out of school. Some people, some leaders in that industry would say, don’t waste the four years. We’ll train you during the four years.
00:27:13 – Kyle Grob
Come work for me now.
00:27:15 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Google used to do that. Some of these other companies started doing away with four-year degree minimums to be able to do that because they weren’t finding what they needed. But now they’re finding it in a different way. But I agree with you. Funding that type of stuff makes a whole lot of sense but it’s taking that stigma away to say, you know.
00:27:33 – Kyle Grob
It’s okay to be a plumber. It’s okay to be a carpenter. It’s okay to, you know wash cars. Because I have a friend of mine who started washing cars then he managed a car wash. Now he owns six of them.
00:27:46 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah again, it’s a bit of drive.
00:27:50 – Kyle Grob
Yeah, but he had the drive and he knew that he had to start somewhere. And I think a lot of people are scared of starting at the bottom of something. And but, it’s one of those that like they’re all these crafts all these trades are very inviting they want people. They’re begging for people to come work.
00:28:06 – Rico Figliolini
You know what? You don’t you don’t need to drive as much. You need to be able to, I think take pride in what you do. You don’t need to go into something and say, well, I want to start my own business because some people don’t want to. They want to do a nine-to-five. That’s fine. They can make lots of money doing nine-to-five.
00:28:22 – Kyle Grob
They can make good money doing nine-to-five, yeah.
00:28:25 – Rico Figliolini
Check out the company. Alright, so we’ve sort of come to the end of our interview. Is there anything I’ve left out that we haven’t talked about that do you think you should mention?
00:28:37 – Kyle Grob
No, I said I can go on for days about the labor and trade schools and stuff like that. But no, I said this. It’s kind of a little bit of my story and kind of where we’ve come from, where we’re heading and what I’m passionate about individually and what I want to do for the community.
00:28:52 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. So if you all want to find out about the company, check out the website. I’ll have the, actually, what is the website?
00:28:58 – Kyle Grob
It’s kgm-tech.com.
00:29:01 – Rico Figliolini
I’ll have the link in the show notes as well. If you have any questions for Kyle, just email him off the website. Or leave your comments in the, you know, depending if you’re watching this on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, or if you’re watching this on audio podcast, just send the comments to me and I’ll forward it to Kyle. So, but thank you everyone. Thank you to our sponsors as well, to Vox Pop Uli and to EV Remodeling Inc. Appreciate you all being with us. Share this UrbanEbb podcast with your friends. And if you look, if you know anyone that’s looking to get into the technical field, Kyle could be a good mentor probably. I would think. Thank you Kyle.
00:29:41 – Kyle Grob
Yeah. Thank you sir.
00:29:41 – Rico Figliolini
I appreciate it. Thank you guys
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