The Manufacturing Executive

Hosted by Joe Sullivan

Business MarketingInterviews guests

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Episodes

333

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

On The Manufacturing Executive podcast, we’ll explore the strategies and experiences that are driving midsized manufacturers forward. You’ll hear conversations with passionate manufacturing leaders who have compelling stories to share about their successes and struggles. You’ll also hear interviews with B2B Sales and Marketing experts about what’s working on the business development front and how to make these ideas actionable. Episodes will feature topics related to industrial marketing and lead generation, manufacturing sales strategy, technology, and industrial sector innovation.

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60 recent

October 27, 2026Episode 33337 min

Why and How Manufacturers Should Choose an Outside Board Director w/ Tate Pursell

Former manufacturing CEO and private equity operating partner Tate Pursell will tell you that you don’t add an outside director because a textbook says you should. The trigger is usually an inflection point: a succession, rapid growth, an acquisition, a decision that needs experience from outside the room. In this episode, we’ll unpack what an outside director brings to a family-owned or PE-backed manufacturer, and how to choose one. You’ll hear why the search starts with a three-to-five-year strategy, not a name you already know, what a PE board needs that a family board doesn’t, and the mistakes owners make with their first outside director.

October 20, 2026Episode 33226 min

Operator to Architect: The Six Stages of Growing a Manufacturing Business w/ Paul Van Metre

ProShop ERP co-founder Paul Van Metre will tell you that very few manufacturers bring the precision they put into their parts to the rest of their business. In his new book, Precision Manufacturing, Precision Business, he lays out six stages an owner moves through, from doing the work as Operator to setting long-term strategy as Architect. We’ll walk through each stage and what the owner gives up along the way. You’ll hear why mastering the craft isn’t the same as running the business, how to fix causes instead of symptoms, and why every stage asks you to look at how you show up with people.

October 13, 2026Episode 31140 min

Let the Experts Be the Experts: Leading Without Every Answer w/ Amy Mercante

PPG's General Manager of Specialty Products, Amy Mercante, will tell you that leadership is not about proving you know more than the people who work for you. A research chemist turned business leader, she's often been the most senior person in the room without being the most knowledgeable. In this episode, we'll unpack what it looks like when a leader lets the experts be the experts. You'll hear what it means to flip the leadership pyramid, why she expects her team to bring a recommendation and not just research, and how to decide without waiting for every fact.

October 6, 2026Episode 33024 min

Why Manufacturing Marketing Is Different and The Event to Support Your Team w/ Wendy Covey

Manufacturing marketers are often isolated in their roles, working inside sales-driven organizations and sorting through marketing advice that wasn't written for them. That's why Gorilla 76 and TREW Marketing host the Industrial Marketing Summit, an annual in-person event in Austin, Texas, just for B2B marketers in the industrial sector. In this episode, originally recorded for TREW's Content Marketing Engineered podcast, TREW CEO Wendy Covey and I preview the fourth annual summit, February 23–25, 2027. You'll hear why the program goes past the basics into the nuances of reaching technical buyers, how 2027 pairs foundational work like messaging and product launches with AI search and AI for marketing teams, and why two agencies that sometimes compete decided to build it together. We'll also cover the three hands-on workshops, the new Industrial Marketing Awards, and what manufacturing leaders can do to give their marketers the education and peer network they need to stay ahead. Early bird pricing runs through October 16.

September 29, 2026Episode 32942 min

Always Be Exiting: How Manufacturers Build Value Years Before a Sale w/ Eric Wiklendt

When a private equity firm buys a manufacturing business, closing the deal isn't completion. It's commencement, the start of five to seven years of work to make the company worth more than it was. Eric Wiklendt, Managing Director at Speyside Equity, has done that work from both sides, first as a plant manager and CEO inside manufacturers, now as the buyer. In this episode, he lays out the two-phase system Speyside runs on every company it owns: Fix the margins first, then Build the top line. He walks through what a buyer is really evaluating when they ask whether a business is scalable, why a company where every decision runs through the owner is hard to sell, how customer concentration gets priced, and the difference between creating value on paper and getting cash into your bank account. You'll also hear why Speyside starts planning an exit a full two years before it goes to market, his test for a sellable business, whether it's the kind of company Warren Buffett would want to buy from you, and why owners who may never sell should still operate by his rule: always be exiting. __ All expressions of opinion provided in this podcast are subject to change without notice and are not intended to be a forecast of future events or results. There is no assurance that the trends highlighted in this podcast will occur in the future or that the projections, if any, will be met.

September 22, 2026Episode 32833 min

Growing Women Leaders in Manufacturing w/ Allison Grealis

Manufacturing has spent years asking how to get more women into the industry. Allison Roberts Grealis, founder and president of the Women in Manufacturing Association, says the harder question is what happens after they get there. In this episode, she'll talk about why retention is where companies lose the people they worked hardest to hire, what it actually takes to grow someone into a leadership role, and why the women coming up need to see someone like themselves already in the room. We also get into how the leadership job in manufacturing has changed, and why stepping away from the daily grind has become part of doing it well.

September 15, 2026Episode 32740 min

The Next Chapter of SEO: How Manufacturers Get Recommended by AI w/ Grace Wright

There's a new acronym for it every week: AEO, GEO, LLMO, AI SEO. Grace Wright, VP of Innovation at Gorilla 76, will tell you that regardless of what you call it, the job is the same. Your buyers are searching for what you sell, and ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are answering with three or four company names. Yours is either on that list or it isn't. In this episode, we trace how 20 years of search engine optimization got us here. Then we get into what actually decides which manufacturers get recommended: whether AI can read your website, whether your content answers the question a buyer actually asked, and whether anyone outside your company vouches for you. You'll hear why the old tricks stopped working, what Grace found auditing manufacturer websites all summer and how to check your own visibility before this episode is over.

September 8, 2026Episode 32639 min

Why Your Toughest Parts Still Use 50-Year-Old Materials w/ Fazal Mahmood

Co-founder and CEO of Phaseshift Technologies, Fazal Mahmood, will tell you that much of modern industry still runs on metal alloys introduced half a century ago. Better ones are possible. Proving one works is harder and far more expensive than inventing it, and that's where most new materials die. In this episode, we explore why that's finally changing. You'll hear where additive manufacturing landed after the hype burned off, how technologies like nuclear fusion and hotter-running aircraft engines have outrun the materials they were built from and why a supply shock in tungsten pushed some of the most change-resistant industries in the world to start looking for alternatives. We'll also get into what a small-to-midsize manufacturer should actually do with any of this.

September 1, 2026Episode 32534 min

How Safety Drives Your Bottom Line and Why It Starts With You w/ Brian Fielkow

Ask everyone in your company one question: who's responsible for safety? About half will say the safety manager, and Brian Fielkow, consultant and author of Making Safety Happen, will tell you that half has it wrong. In this episode, we'll unpack why safety is a bottom-line business decision that starts with the leader, and why a safety failure really costs about five times what your insurance loss runs show. You'll hear how to harness the frontline leaders you already have, how to market safety to your own people, and a smarter way to respond when something goes wrong.

August 25, 2026Episode 32428 min

It's Not a Workforce Issue, It's a Workflow Issue w/ Alex Torrey

The headlines say American manufacturing has a workforce crisis. Alex Torrey, co-founder and CEO of AIC, America's Innovation Corporation, will tell you the real constraint is workflow. He sees component shops running at 20 to 50 percent utilization when world class is north of 90, held back by decision-making infrastructure built for a world that doesn't exist anymore. In this episode, we'll explore physical AI, the shift from software that moves data to software that moves matter, and the small, founder-led manufacturers whose components make it possible. You'll hear why Alex calls those shops national treasures, why he thinks the goal is outmaneuvering dependence on China rather than outproducing it and what owner-operators nearing a transition should know about the third option most of them have never been offered.