So with the big picture, why did you build a company that owns the whole arc, the whole value stream? And what does that make possible that you couldn't do otherwise?

It's a very good question, Ed.

And I've asked myself that many times.

I think a lot of it happened out of maybe necessity or luck.

When I bought the business in 2016 and we were 10 years ago, May 6th actually was our 10 year anniversary.

We had a very small machine shop and by small, I mean a 20 year old CNC.

So the projects we were doing, we were trying to do our own manufacturing and we were fairly successful at it, but our projects were small and then they grew.

What does bad scoping actually cost you? What are some war stories from those experiences?

How did you start building your kind of sales and marketing team? What type of profiles are you looking for? Where are you in that overall initiative? We're always looking to grow

internally.

the skillset of an applications engineer that can walk into a plant and see multiple opportunities and see the opportunities that the customer is not looking for.

That's the skillset we're looking for.

We're not selling a widget or a gadget or an ink pen, right? We're selling a solution that might take six months, nine months, a year to figure out what that proper solution is for your business to be able to provide a proper ROI.

so that the project makes sense.

So that's the skill set we're looking for.

Our