Shop Floor Talent; They Are Humans Too, Mike White

Steve Doyle (: 00:01

Welcome back to Blue Collar BS, Brad. How you doing, my friend?

Brad Herda (: 00:04

I am wonderful Mr. Stephen Doyle and I like the new haircut.

Steve Doyle (: 00:09

No thanks you you noticed I got smoked by the lawnmower just a little off the sides. Just keep the top.

Brad Herda (: 00:14

Just a little. Just wait and just try and grow out that man bun thing, aren't you? That would be a wooden line you'll move.

Steve Doyle (: 00:18

Die.

God, how many times do we have to say we don't take tips from trash bags?

Brad Herda (: 00:26

Wow.

Steve Doyle (: 00:31

You know, I mean, it's the inspiration. It just looks like, you know, dudes with man buns just look like they got the inspiration right off the hefty bag, right out of the trash can. That's all I can say.

Brad Herda (: 00:33

All right.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 00:43

I could have done a man bun like a month ago. I could have.

Steve Doyle (: 00:52

That's awesome. So Brad, since we have our guests in here, who do we have on the show today?

Brad Herda (: 00:58

Today is going to be a blast. We have the the human HR master. So we have Mr. Michael White. Currently, he is the founder of Secchi, which is a really interesting name for an HR software solution company in the manufacturing world. He worked with a former colleague of mine at Master Lock as they were moving facilities here out of Oak Creek, Wisconsin. He's been part of

Farm life we've had a track record a caterpillar together back in the day He is an HR guy operations guy, but not an HR HR person person Either he's a human person not a rules a rules person and that's why I'm so excited to have him here today and look by his enthusiasm and excitement I talked him into cracking open a beer for this recording just so he

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 01:40

That's right.

Steve Doyle (: 01:55

Yeah!

Brad Herda (: 01:57

mood as we record here on this Friday afternoon. Michael, thank you for being here today.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 02:00

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks guys. This is cool. I can tell it's cool because of Steve's haircut. That's how I know. Well, I roll up. I actually before you got on Steve, I rolled up. I go, this is like my official outfit. I read somewhere that blue blue insights trust. And then I show up and Brad's got his beer drinking scuba diving golfing.

Brad Herda (: 02:05

I can tell by the enthusiasm.

Steve Doyle (: 02:07

You

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 02:30

t -shirt on and I'm like, I'm overdressed this Friday afternoon. And he's like, you should have a beer. And I was like, yeah, but I'm in HR. And he's like, come on, man. It's like, all right, I'll do it.

Steve Doyle (: 02:41

Just have a beer. It's all right. It's all good.

Brad Herda (: 02:42

Yeah, it's okay.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 02:43

I'm used to a factory where like you walk in you're like shoot I left beer in my trunk what if they searched my car today so it I got that in 20 years of that yeah you get

Brad Herda (: 02:59

And what's your boss gonna do? What's your boss gonna do? Nothing, because you're the boss.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 03:03

Yeah, yeah, I'll tell my wife that.

Brad Herda (: 03:05

We can't go for fish fry at a beer at work.

Steve Doyle (: 03:05

Yeah.

Right?

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 03:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. My boss doesn't care. My boss put the beer in the fridge, so we.

Steve Doyle (: 03:12

Right? I need to write myself up.

Steve Doyle (: 03:21

That's awesome. So Mike, tell us, how did you get started?

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 03:26

how did I get started with the software? I, how I got, how I originally, I'm gonna go all the way back. We talked about, I ran my first, I started my first business at, maybe I was 14 or 15 years old, three years ago. if you guys noticed, I don't, you can put the filter on your camera. So I'm not quite as wrinkly on this, stream. The.

Steve Doyle (: 03:34

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 03:44

three years ago.

Steve Doyle (: 03:55

Well, wait up, up, up. Hold up. I forgot my question. I always forget this. I did. I did. But since we're talking about wrinkles and stuff, Mike, which generation do you fit in with?

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 03:56

I started a... Yeah. You asked me how I started. Where did I start?

Brad Herda (: 04:01

Yes, you did.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 04:09

I'm that one generation, the lost in betweeners. So I'm not Gen X, I'm not officially a millennial. There's like four or five years, depending on who you talk to, the 80 to 84 range. So I'm 82. So it's funny, my brother is three years younger. He got all the trophies and we cleaned out my parents' house. They downsized recently.

Steve Doyle (: 04:26

Mike White, Secchi.io (04:38.762)

I found a medal that said first place farm league for baseball. I was like, farm leagues where your dad pitches to you. Did they really give out first place when we're like, we were six or seven? And yes, they did. And now everybody gets a trophy. gets a, so I'm right.

Steve Doyle (: 04:56

Right.

Brad Herda (: 04:56

Part of that you started that trend those Millennials you guys started that trend you're in that you're a trend your trend setter my

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 05:00

Yes, we started it.

Steve Doyle (: 05:04

Yeah.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 05:04

I, we started it.

Brad Herda (: 05:07

There's no in between. Just pick your... Yes, you are born a millennial, but you behave in the Gen X behaviors.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 05:15

I have Gen X, I'm a linear with Gen X tendencies. yeah, right. We will complain about young people that's, know, feeling our feelings really don't matter that much.

Brad Herda (: 05:19

Yeah, I would agree with that based on what we've been able to get together with.

Brad Herda (: 05:28

Steve is a Gen Xer who behaves as

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 05:33

no!

Steve Doyle (: 05:33

No.

What? There's no way. Anyways.

Brad Herda (: 05:39

So, anyhow, back to your origin story.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 05:41

Yeah. So, origin story, my dad's in farming. I detassled and worked for the local wrestling coach who put together a crew. I think it was my freshman year in high school, partnered with my dad's like, get a couple of your buddies and clean up some fields, which means go do some field work. I'll pay you by the acre. So I went from like $4 .25 an hour. At that time, they might've bumped it up.

to being paid by the acre and I might as well been a millionaire because I got a paycheck for like $400 and that was my first taste of entrepreneurship and I ended up building that business with a friend, Adam, who tragically passed away in a car wreck and then my brother took over where Adam left off and so we ended up having, my brother and I, we

Steve Doyle (: 06:15

I'm

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 06:37

We bought church, an old church van with kids. Then we ran out of room. Then we rented a bus. I had to get a bus driver and CDL. So we had like 90 people working for us and I was 18 years old and

Brad Herda (: 06:51

We're already in DR problems at 18. Perfect.

Steve Doyle (: 06:51

Wow.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 06:54

Yes. So here's my first taste HR and why I didn't go into it. was looking at, I was graduating college and I said, I'm going to go into business or I'm going to go be a teacher. So I got my undergrad in teaching and it hit me one day that my paycheck, I would rather, based off my looks, I need to have a higher income to increase my looks. And so I went to the corporate route.

And I went to look for MBA programs and I found the HR program at the University of Illinois. I figured out at some point, the thing I loved about the entrepreneur thing is we had people the same, like we were competing with migrants for acreage. So these are people that do it for a living. They come up every summer for a few weeks.

Steve Doyle (: 07:45

Hehe.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 07:52

I'm taking high school kids. And the thing I realized was if I, I was beating them on acreage, I was taking their acres because you get assigned to give a signed contract for acres. But if you have a field and they're like, Hey, if you go over this place, you get more acres. All right. Well, I, my claim to fame was I started doing onboarding.

Checklists I started doing I got time my best friend. He had stopped I bought ten stopwatches So every crew had a stopwatch so I'm doing tack times, which I didn't know I didn't know what this was Yeah, you're a nutty 18 year old that's yelling at people and like completely inappropriate In a cornfield and you know, it's all teenagers with hormones and you're just trying to stay out of trouble

Brad Herda (: 08:25

You were just fucking crazy, that's all it was.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 08:42

Dads are, I'd have dad, like parents yell at me. There'd be 90 people working for us from like age, from like seventh graders up to 25 year olds. There was a 60 year old bus driver. So we ended up making so much money that I was like, I feel wrong making this much money. And I started an incentive system. the first year my brother and I,

we gave out the biggest checks that we could like basically think about if you got a profit, you cut it in half. And we are looking at it, I don't wanna say the number, because just in case one of those guys sees me, I don't wanna.

Brad Herda (: 09:23

hahaha

Steve Doyle (: 09:23

Yep. Yep, that's all right. Yep.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 09:26

still friends with them. My high school group techs would get me arrested. the, the, the, the, took 50 % of the profits and just bonused out everybody. And so I'm doing comp, I'm doing industrial engineering. And the claim to fame was I got rid of water breaks. And you go, that OSHA, probably some AI OSHA thing that they're coming up with just heard that. And what are you? What are you?

Steve Doyle (: 09:32

Yeah

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 09:55

was is I was watching and you guys do some factories, right? You go into a factory and you watch somebody sit there and you're like, what are they doing? Then you know, you come back, they haven't really moved. Then they reset the machine. And you're like, what are we paying that guy for? And

Brad Herda (: 10:11

To listen, feel, understand, make scrap.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 10:15

Right, to make scrap. So I, not, not, you're right, they're, they're magician, they're artists. So I, I, I figured out that I, one of the kids' dads worked at the Bell helmet factory and he got a bunch of reject, hydropax. They weren't called hydropax, but, so rather than have them watching them walk to the cooler, walk back.

Brad Herda (: 10:18

to not make scrap. We just take a break to make scrap.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 10:42

talked to every guy's talk, we had like 30 % girls and the boys. So it was like, you know, they're just trying to, they're just causing trouble. So I'm like, we're gonna get hydropax. So I had the cooler, they could fill their hydropax with a cooler beginning of the day. But essentially, they don't need to go do that 30, you know, that's five minutes around 10 minutes around that we're saving. So we were just cranking out contracts, I had to fire my dad.

my dad's company was paying me but Monsanto was next door and they paid way more than his company. said, you got to match us or I'm fine. I'm not going to do the acres. we in Gremlin. Right.

Brad Herda (: 11:23

customer concentration you gotta find the right things. You gotta fire your bottom 10 % half the time.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 11:29

There you go. And the thing that I walked away from it all with like just a great business experience, I was going to be a teacher, made a lot of money, especially relative. then so fast forward, I get in the corporate world. I'm not, I'm not HR, HR. don't, I, I don't know how payroll works. My wife called the, the, the healthcare hotline once and they said, you need to talk to your HR person. And she's like, that's my husband and he doesn't know what's going on.

payroll, you could put me in front of a payroll conference and I will be an entry level payroll employee. So I learned it all enough to do my job, really the HR business partnership. And I think there's a group of us in HR that are there. There's a group for compliance and employee relations. There's a group for talent.

recruitment type things. There's a group for L &D and then you have the business partner that is going to look at your business and go, wait a second, this is super inefficient and you're pissing off all your employees. What if we did this? And those types of things. And there's so much, I mean, you guys know this, there's so much opportunity in the people space. What

What is not realized by the CFOs of this world is that 70 % of your cost is labor. And most of the time, there, and that's a stat off Google. So I don't know if it's real or not. But if you want to pull the lever on labor right now, really the only thing you can do as a CFO is you do a layoff. That's the easy button, right?

Whereas my expertise in training with the awesome people that I've worked with.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 13:22

was a constant continuous improvement, apply engineering structures. do process mapping, know, five S -ing, lean concepts into the people space. And when you do that, that's a huge chunk of your business. Most of the businesses that we work with, your materials are your number one cost because you're making metal or you're melting or you're building, assembling, you're fabbing.

And so that's the number one cause. So there's a lot of focus there, but shortly after that's people and being able to invest in the right spots. So not given, you know, stupid benefits or, or paying too much for something. And then also, understanding like walking people through the change of pay, you know,

I could talk you through the change of benefits. What I can't do is open that book and tell you what HSA plan you should choose. Although, yeah, so that's my origin. So all that, sorry, that's my background. Where this came up, where the software came up is 15, actually a little bit under 20 years of experience in operations, banging my head against the wall, going, I can't train you guys any other.

Steve Doyle (: 14:23

Mm

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 14:43

you a million ways on how to document stuff and have any engaged workforce. And at some point it clicked for me that engagement, we need to hold, you hear this, we need to hold people accountable. We need to have engagement. I put these up here.

Brad Herda (: 14:59

Engagement, engagement or morale? Which one is it?

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 15:02

yeah, yeah, morale to throw that out there. So all those things are things that we focus on and you want high level of that. But what is the tool to get there? What tool gets you there? And we use things like surveys by the time you survey and I do too. These are good. These are good data points. They shouldn't go away. But the reality is you're in reactive mode. Once you do the survey, it's over the next week like that. The feelings have changed in a week. So

Steve Doyle (: 15:29

Mm

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 15:31

By the time you analyze it, by the time you come up with action plans, you're four to six months down the road. It's a good looking back. Yeah, I, we're great.

Brad Herda (: 15:37

If you're lucky, it's four to six months.

I had two clients They did employee surveys it took them a year and half to do something with it I'm like they weren't my clients when they did those surveys, but when I came in I said you have like Yeah, we did this. I'm like how long ago. Did you do it about a year and a half ago? What are you doing with it? Let's do something with it and let's confirm and let's validate that what was there is still there if it's better or worse and

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 15:49

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 16:10

In most cases it was worse because they did nothing with it. So there was no trouble.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 16:12

Well, well, think about it this way too. well, I want to go, yeah. So the engagement is, really, really reactive looking past, looking back. And so what, what I realized down the path as I got frustrated is there's the art of leadership, which is how you interact, how you communicate the soft skills of leadership. That is super important, but that art.

is very complex and nuanced. Every business, even departments in the same building have different cultures. So that's so nuanced, but the process is a freaking same everywhere. Every single place you've ever been, I call it the three, it's four steps, but I call it three strikes and you're out. First warning, second warning, final warning, termination, verbal, written, suspension, termination, some variation of those words everywhere. But you go, well,

Brad Herda (: 16:53

Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 17:06

Yeah. Yep.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 17:11

How do you guys do it? we do it in Word, a Word document. Here's the process map. You gotta get the Word document from here. You gotta copy and paste it into this. You gotta then get HR approval, but you gotta have a meeting with your manager before you do that. After you get the manager on board, well, the manager likes this guy, so I gotta work with that. I gotta convince him this guy's not good. Then I gotta meet with HR. Now I gotta start from scratch from it. This is like the bane of my existence. I didn't like watching.

Steve Doyle (: 17:18

Yep.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 17:39

deep passers walk 15 feet to a water jug. So you can imagine how much I don't like all those extra meetings. And you're pulling guys off the floor, which is like, you know, to pull up, to pull 10 people. And Brad knows his pain. It's like at, the big companies, when you pull them, when you try to have a meeting with 10, yeah. So that's how it started. I built a, it started out with me actually, the

Steve Doyle (: 17:45

yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 17:58

it's terrible.

Brad Herda (: 17:59

Yeah.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 18:07

the ops team saying HR doesn't let us fire people. And I go, I don't, I don't, it's not that I don't let you, it's that you are, you can't do your job.

Brad Herda (: 18:14

You didn't all the things necessary in order to be able to mitigate the risk associated with that when you're in large organizations and even small organizations that risk is even great that might even be greater in a smaller organization because the that business owner may not have the resources or the understanding that His general counsel that put together his buy -sell agreement isn't the same guy that's gonna keep his ass from going broke

through a lawsuit of employment law.

Steve Doyle (: 18:46

Mm -hmm.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 18:47

One, retaliation doesn't have a limit. like you retaliate, which the smaller companies, you guys work with smaller companies, especially like second, third generation person that's willing to risk it all, or the first generation guy that it's his shop, I know my shop, you aren't gonna do this. Those missteps in employment law are super expensive. And...

Steve Doyle (: 18:51

Nope.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 19:16

which is where I pride myself on. I'm a fake lawyer. Caveat, that's a joke. Don't sue me for that. The reason HR exists is because you don't want to deal with lawyers all the time. We're the practical step before you get to lawyers. My thing is, as I got to get to know employment laws, it's not that hard.

Steve Doyle (: 19:28

Yeah

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 19:45

to conceptually understand. I tap when it gets too risky though. I won't pass the risk off to the lawyer.

Brad Herda (: 19:53

Right. So as you've implemented your Secchi software across multiple organizations and different things, how, with those supervisors of various different generations, right, you see the boomer that's leading, and the millennial and the Gen X, and you might even have some organizations where you've got some Gen Z kids that are out there now leading some crews. What's the adaptation or feel from that technology across those generations to come in and say,

I can use this tool to enhance my job and my own performance.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 20:28

Yeah, I should have gone to that original story when they said, Mike, you don't let me fire anybody. What I realized is I took it, luckily enough for me is I had a lot of ops folks that made me go to the dimming stuff and training and all that. And it's not.

Steve Doyle (: 20:46

Hehehehehe

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 20:48

So of course I blame the supervisors, right? And they've got three fingers pointing back at So I realized the process was too hard. And so where our differentiation is, I'm building this from a frontline leader perspective. most companies have an HRIS or they got an Excel spreadsheet they're managing or Word document. And I was like, what if I just build it to make it so stupid easy? That's what I've been saying lately.

Steve Doyle (: 20:50

Yep.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 21:15

It's like, it's so stupid. you can't, it's very, very hard to mess up. shouldn't say it's impossible, but it's very hard. It gets you to the same spot that, you know, considers that employment mitigation that considers the, the productivity and recognition. I, I'm going to make it so easy. The interface is there for, for you as a, as a leader. So my, got a guy in Kansas city.

beta customer, you know, I'm kind of nervous and I'm like, how's it going? He looked at me and he's like, Mike, I am horrible at computers, but this is easy enough. I can do it. And the simplicity message is what, what goes into hourly performance management? Like what are the factors that go into hourly performance management?

And it's not goal setting. I, Brad, did you ever experience this? Because I experienced this where I was like, we were doing performance reviews for hourly guys. And I'm like, tell me about your goals. What do you think? And they're like,

Brad Herda (: 22:18

My goal is to make sure I have all my fingers every day when I leave the building so I can go

Steve Doyle (: 22:21

Right. And nobody steals my tools out of my toolbox that's in the other room.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 22:25

Right. Right. Or they or shoot oil in it like nobody that so going from a blue like let's bring this to blue collar. I'm from my town's not blue collar anymore but my hometown when I was growing up.

Like my friends are union members. My rich buddy, his dad was a plumber. So that's like, then I moved to Georgia and found out like what really rich was.

I grew up in a small town and so it's a blue collar mentality. And when I got in the factory, that's one of the things that I think helped me out is that these are my people, these are my friends. I know where folks are coming from. I know what's going on in households generally. And I get the problem of being a blue collar worker is you got to work next to bad people. And so how do I get rid of those bad ones? And then also I never appreciated enough. So go back to me talking to that

guy on the fork like hey let me talk to you about your goals and they're like get the fly a kite is what they would say really nicely and they actually said that to me yeah and the HR guy so I like get take it and I'm like yeah I'm not gonna be a baby about it and go

Brad Herda (: 23:34

Or, would say, because this is an explicit show, go fuck yourself.

Steve Doyle (: 23:39

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 23:39

Thanks.

Steve Doyle (: 23:41

Yep, I'm sure they did.

Brad Herda (: 23:46

Cuz cuz what are you gonna do about it?

Steve Doyle (: 23:48

Right.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 23:51

get him in trouble with HR. I was like, I understand. I get what he's saying. He's saying, dude, I'm trying to get my job done. Like I can't, I can't do this. So why are you doing goals for, I had 1800 people in my big facility. Why would we sit there and do goals for every, doesn't even make sense. We're all utility players on the lines. Every one of the places you go, they're utility players. So how are we going to keep the right numbers? Like those numbers aren't right because of this. So

what we can measure and what should be measured on the front line is these four things. What do you recognize for? What are you getting coached on? What's your attendance? And what corrective action have you received? So right there, when you ask about adoption of generations, you think they can understand whether you're right out of school or you're 70, probably like 75 years old? It's a forever thing.

Brad Herda (: 24:49

That's pretty popular, Keep it very simple and very recognizable. I've demoed the tool. I've seen it. Mike's been very kind to show me what's behind the curtain, so to speak. And it is really slick. So any listeners out there in that manufacturing world that, what would you say, Mike? Anybody over 40 employees, 50 employees at this point? Small end.

Steve Doyle (: 24:52

Keep it simple.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 25:14

Yeah, I have some smaller, the small end is good for if you don't want to pay for a big HRIS system, like we can be an alternative. So at my smaller customers, they use it for like a totally expanded version of what I intended it to. They're documenting communication meetings, safety huddles. So they're using it more than I ever expected, but where it really starts to hit home is when you can't remember.

Brad, you actually asked this question, which is good, is like, on a scale of one to 10, 10 being you know exactly who shows up every day, who's producing the most, who's not pulling their weight. If you know everybody every day and know what to expect, that's a 10. Or a zero being, I don't know, I am not involved with what's going on on the floor.

between an eight and below, we're gonna help you make a bigger impact on workforce. And we're gonna make sure those viruses, and you all know those viruses, you gotta make sure you don't get sick. And I got a bunch of analogies just popped in my head because I don't need to bring up those. This will come back to haunt me when we go to sell and like tenure.

Steve Doyle (: 26:24

Mm

Steve Doyle (: 26:29

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 26:30

I you that's not a political show, so don't go down that path.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 26:39

So you wanna get the virus person that's trying to bring down the whole team, you wanna get them out, that's one thing. But really the moneymaker of our product is those middle people that show up every day that you wish you gave them more attention and you wish you could like.

like you wish you could just say thank you and make it mean something but they're not going above and beyond they're just like steady eddies those are the backbone of our all of our manufacturing facilities if you want to really make a difference and engage that middle group and do a good job at it that that's how we move the needle

Brad Herda (: 27:15

Well, and the beauty is that middle group, you don't know who's hanging out there. That could be the A player that could be the person that wants to move over into a different area and has just sat back and listened and did nothing. that, that middle section is where I have seen back at Bucyrus and different places. That middle section is where the spectacular people have come from because those that were on the A player side of it.

They are really doing the thing, but they were only in it for themselves typically versus looking at it from a holistic point of view. And, and too often that middle player group gets missed. And now that you have an opportunity to measure, monitor, record, recognize, understand that attendance and do all those things, you now have some data to make some decisions on promotion, coordination, opportunity versus well,

Steve Doyle (: 27:44

Mm

Brad Herda (: 28:12

Joey always gets the opportunity and Johnny always gets screwed because he never gets the chance. So Johnny's an idiot because Joey's always got to do the work. Well, you never gave him a chance to go do the job.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 28:25

Yeah. A little secret in college, you have any college listeners or kids that are in college, I tell this to everybody. It's my trick to group projects is the first, and this is going to make sense in a second, The first thing when you're in a group project is you take control. So everybody complains this is a stupid project. Why are we doing this? It's five minutes of that every time.

Steve Doyle (: 28:47

Mm

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 28:51

So I figured out this strategy because I not an A player at school. I've never been a bragger about my grades. Yeah, I'm smart on where my return on investment is. A B plus, I can get a B. Yeah, I didn't even read a book until I got to college. yeah, I get it. You're 100 % right,

Brad Herda (: 28:59

Let's just be honest, you're lazy.

Steve Doyle (: 29:05

Right.

Brad Herda (: 29:06

He's put water packs on people so we don't to get our homes out.

Steve Doyle (: 29:09

He's efficient! He's efficient! With purpose!

Steve Doyle (: 29:18

the

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 29:20

The part, yeah, I'm out here selling this because I'm super tired. The part that really makes a difference is that, I take over the group and I say, all right, I'm going to take this. I love being in front of people. Most people don't. I'll be the speaker guys. know, does anybody want to be the speaker? No. I immediately signed myself to the group, to the thing I'm good at. Now, the thing that I, I'm not good at is writing that essay, but

Steve Doyle (: 29:26

You

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 29:49

funny enough is that essay's the meat of it. So now let's think about how our players work on a production floor. You got the innovator, the guy that just sits there and like is like, hey, what about this idea? What about this idea? What about that? But more often than not, and I like to use that school example, my brother's a dentist, he excels at school.

Steve Doyle (: 30:03

Mm

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 30:13

I, the joke is I was the prodigal son, I moved to Georgia, he helps my family. Every time I come home, they have a big party. And my one semester of straight A's I put on the fridge and he's like, I've never gotten, I've never got less than an A in my life. So like, and he's never had his name on the fridge. But the point being of that story is, if you're going to hire somebody to do homework, you would hire my brother all day long, but I'm the face of it.

Steve Doyle (: 30:20

Yeah.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 30:41

So I played my part and that happens a lot in factories is the guys with the loudest voice that don't get intimidated speaking up. You're missing out on those middle people that honestly, they probably make you more money.

Brad Herda (: 30:53

Well and recognizing the person that made essay the recognizing your brother to go do the thing You know not that you would take credit for your brother's work or anything like that Mike at all But inside of a factory environment when it's you know We're out looking for ourselves that you you now have you've developed a process and system for them to For the organization to able to recognize that person that is doing all that extra work doing all those things Instead of the loudest voice always being recognized

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 31:21

Yeah. So have you guys ever done this, ever had this happen where, Steve, I don't know, maybe back in your dating days or your wife says, haven't been on a date in a while. And you go, yes, we have. Is this sound familiar?

Steve Doyle (: 31:33

Long time ago.

Steve Doyle (: 31:41

yeah, yeah, let's go down this route. Let's do this. Let's do this. Yeah, let's do it.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 31:44

Okay. Okay, let's do it. I'm going to do some marriage counseling for you. So then, and then in my head, it was like last week we went on a date and then she's like, that was four months ago. Does that? Yeah. Be about right. So if, if I asked you guys, you go walk into a factory and you said to some, you say you as supervisor, are you good at recognition? Do you know what their answer is?

Steve Doyle (: 31:57

Yep. Be about right.

Brad Herda (: 32:11

Yes, absolutely. We are absolutely fantastic at it.

Steve Doyle (: 32:12

Yes. Yeah. Fuck yeah.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 32:15

Yeah, yeah, every single employment survey bar none, zero surveys, probably thousands of different hundreds of thousands of different data points. I have not met one where recognition is not in the top three. So, but if I asked every supervisor, I'm awesome at it. And so, and similar to like, I'm like, I haven't I thought it was last week when on a date in the last four months ago.

Steve Doyle (: 32:37

Mm

Brad Herda (: 32:43

Costco hot dog doesn't count.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 32:45

Yeah, yeah, come on. We had all our kids there. We just spent $500. It's basically like a date and a hotel with our family at Costco. yeah, that's a good example. The same thing with recognition is like you say thank you to somebody, which we all think we're pretty good at, including me.

Steve Doyle (: 32:52

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 32:56

Right. All in one. Yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 33:04

you

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 33:13

And even as I say this, I'm like, I need to thank some of the employees that are working for me. so we all think we do it, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to go, I know the exact date I did this. I have in our tool, we prompt supervisors. like at a minimum every 30 days, we're going to give you a percentage of how much you've connected with people so that you're at least recognizing or coaching. you're, you're, you're intentionally connecting with them. And it's not this big, huge, I know.

Somebody will go, well, this is just one more thing on the supervisors. No, I'm taking away hours of admin work and I can do talk to text. Thanks, and Brad for taking me to dinner on that day to Costco. Boom.

Steve Doyle (: 34:02

You know, now if Costco was selling beer, we'd, you know, I don't think any guy would bitch anymore about going to Costco.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 34:06

Yeah.

I, my father -in -law got me Pappy Van Winkle from Costco. was two bottles he got. Yes, he walked in and it was there. yeah, so it was my Christmas present, Brad. That's what he got me for Christmas. Yeah, so that is the thought process is.

Steve Doyle (: 34:15

yeah!

Nice.

That's amazing. Yeah, Merry Christmas for sure.

Brad Herda (: 34:23

Merry Christmas

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 34:36

Let's have the data to have this conversation. Let's not make a huge barrier. Let's shrink the barrier so your supervisors can document the process you already have and exist so you don't have to start from scratch. So, yeah.

Brad Herda (: 34:49

Awesome. So somebody wants to take this thing for a demo, wants to take Secchi for a demo. How do they find you? Where do they get you? How do they connect with you? What's the process?

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 34:59

Yeah, so if you're like, this mic guy sounds all right, but I'm not sure, go to LinkedIn and follow us, S -E -C -C -H -I. Just look up Secchi on LinkedIn. That's like our, that way we're not gonna push it on you or whatever. That's fine. You'll watch a few videos of me. And then, and my co -founders, and then.

Go to Secchi .io if you want to book a demo, you're like, hey, I want to get more productivity on my people, but I also want to make my supervisors happy. I think a big underestimated area in this whole engagement conversation is the frontline leader. What's it like to be a frontline leader? And what if I could give them the tool to do their job better, that employee relationship tool. And so either one of those are great. You can email me at mwide at secchi .io.

Steve Doyle (: 35:38

Right.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 35:52

or call Brad and ask Brad what he thinks.

Brad Herda (: 35:57

I will say that this tool, and you're very humble in underselling it, this tool has the opportunity to change organizational culture from the top all the way down because you can set the expectation of your supervisors, which then can get through. And all that lip service bullshit stuff that we keep hearing from business owners about, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, and then it just falls flat. This has the opportunity to connect all those dots between all the things.

Steve Doyle (: 36:20

Yep.

Brad Herda (: 36:27

It's an API tool to stick into your culture and engagement part of your business. I'm super stoked for what you're doing with them. I'm grateful that we had the chance to meet and learn more about the product. It's always in the back of my head when I start talking and looking at folks, because it is a underserved market. That frontline supervisor is just beat to shit every day.

Steve Doyle (: 36:48

Mm

Day in, day out.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 36:52

If you're super why that's a good that's our new tagline if your supervisors beat to shit every day like we're here to help and I think I There's not a factory in this country that you're not like I want to be a frontline leader You know, like I it's the hardest job and if we can make it just a little bit

Steve Doyle (: 37:11

Mm -hmm. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 37:14

Exactly.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 37:16

I told a little story. told a boss of mine, I wanted to get into operations and he's like, I'm getting a review. He's an HR guy, by the way, who had come out of operations and he just yelled at me. What the F is wrong with you? You have the cake job. And so for ops people, I recognize I don't have the pressure that you guys do, but I'm there with you.

Steve Doyle (: 37:27

Yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 37:40

Mm

Brad Herda (: 37:42

Awesome. Mike, thank you very much. Enjoy your Lining Kugel summer shanty as you continue the rest of your day. We appreciate you being on the show and sharing all those things. guess, so we'll see how Kerry edits this thing out, et cetera, but we need to go back into the origin of the name because who the fuck knows what a seckey is at the end of the day?

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 38:04

Mmm.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 38:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the origin of the name. So I'm talking to Steve because Brad's heard this. So I'm like, naming the company and what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And I got like a million. I'm like, I've jotted these down for, this has been a dream of mine for 20 years. Like I have a booklet of things I wrote down in 2010, 2011, 2016. I just had like ideas and I just journaled.

Steve Doyle (: 38:13

Yeah.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 38:36

And I called it employee trail. like employee trail, cause we follow the employee. Well, if you, if you type that into Google, there's a book, you know, a billion, there's a Google of employee and trail. There's trails, employees. And I'm like, that doesn't make any, I'll never show up. So I, I heard my buddy was bragging about how clear his Lake was who happens to be an investor by the way. And I go,

That's kind of weird. How do you measure the clarity of a lake? And a Secchi disk, Angelo Secchi, Father Angelo Secchi, was looking at the water one day and said, I want to measure the clarity of this thing. So he figured out if you lower a disk on a wire, on a rope, I now have, I now, when I can't see it anymore, I pinch the rope. Now I have a measure of turbidity.

Steve Doyle (: 39:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 39:20

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yep.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 39:28

of how clear the water is. So now I can compare a body of water up in Wausau, I don't know what's next to Waukesha. Name a lake for me.

Brad Herda (: 39:42

A lake? Well, you could go to Muskegon, you could go to Michigan.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 39:46

Let's be off. Tish again. So I could go to Michigan and say, the water's clear in Tish again today. Well, if I go down to the Gulf and say the water's clear, I can see 150 feet down. So I experienced like what's clear and I experienced this in factories is like, I have a great workforce. I have a great workforce. have a great, I'm like, you can't all have great workforces, but we have no meds for that.

Steve Doyle (: 39:52

Mm

Steve Doyle (: 40:07

But can they?

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 40:12

We use the measurement of how I feel as the plant manager, of course it's going to be great. So applying that concept, this obscure measurement of measuring the clarity of water, we measure the clarity of the workforce. So I'm able right now, I met with one of our customer CEOs, it's a foundry in Indiana, and we met with the CEOs up in Manitowoc and...

Steve Doyle (: 40:14

Right.

Steve Doyle (: 40:26

Hmm.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 40:38

I said, hey, when are you going down there next? And he said, two weeks. And I go, hey, this guy's been recognized more than anybody. Let's say his name's Steve. can't remember his name. Steve. And then I click on him, and I can see all the things he's been recognized for, one of which, you know, there's a happy birthday, there's good jobs. There's just some nice things. But one was like, it means a lot to me that you didn't take break when we had this emergency and you got the line back on so that we didn't miss a beat in production, like something along those lines.

So now that CEO goes down to that facility, he knows that individual. He can tell that individual how much he appreciates. He appreciates them. So that clarity, bringing it back to the Secchi disk, that's the clarity that we bring for a leadership team or for a manager to what's going on in the plant floor. Who's really doing the work instead of who's allowed us, who's really doing the work. And your supervisors will be recognizing those folks.

Steve Doyle (: 41:21

Mm -hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 41:36

Yep. That's awesome.

Brad Herda (: 41:37

I knew nothing about this sucky distilling until I asked him I said where'd you come up with this funky name? And he gave me the gave me the story and I'm like, that makes that makes sense. That is very symbolic and symbiotic between those two things. So

Steve Doyle (: 41:46

That's cool.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 41:53

We tried to make the ass look a little water and it's kind of like if it's round, it's a disc, but yeah, whatever. Yeah. Thanks guys.

Steve Doyle (: 41:58

Yeah.

That's cool. Yeah, that's really cool.

Brad Herda (: 42:01

awesome. Well Mike, thank you so much for being here today sharing the story, sharing some things along and again enjoy the rest of that line of cootles. Yeah, no problem. We're here to help.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 42:11

Yep. Thanks for the peer pressure.

Mike White, Secchi.io (: 42:17

Cheers.