William Hilbert works in project management and corporate sales at PHB. He represents the third generation of his family in the die casting and toolmaking business. PHB has operated as a manufacturing company since the early 1900s.

Nate Wheeler is the host of the popular Manufacturing Insiders podcast. He also owns weCreate, a nationally recognized marketing agency that helps manufacturers grow, save money, and become more efficient.

In this episode of Manufacturing Insiders, William Hilbert addresses one of manufacturing’s most pressing challenges: attracting skilled workers during a massive generational shift. Baby boomers are retiring, while younger workers often lack an understanding of manufacturing career opportunities. William discusses workforce development strategies and approaches to talent competition.

William also addresses economic challenges facing manufacturing regions. He shares practical advice on customer diversification and digital marketing for manufacturers. His perspective on family business dynamics and leadership succession offers valuable insights for other family-owned manufacturers.

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Nate (00:01.339) Bill, thanks for joining me. The Manufacturing Insiders podcast is just getting off the ground here. I think it’s awesome that I got you on as one of the first here. The Hilbert name is synonymous with manufacturing in URI. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that, just kind of how it came to be. You’re working at PHP, your dad, Red Dog Industries, and a lot of family connections there.

Nate (00:28.187) Your grandpa, I mean, we’re talking about a hundred years ago, when he kind of got involved in manufacturing in the area.

William Hilbert (00:35.238)  Yeah, Nate, first of all, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. And the company has been around since the early 1900s as a manufacturing entity. My grandfather first started his apprenticeships and toolmaking in the late 40s, probably, and worked his way through his apprenticeships.

He was a toolmaker for 25 or 30 years before he even got into more of an executive ownership role and started Red Dog Industries after working, I believe, it was Right Precision, which was a long time ago. But I believe Right Precision and Red Dog were the same building, the same location.

He created Red Dog, which is a sister company of PHB. They’re our tool and die shop. They manufacture mostly all of our die cast dies, and they also do injection molds for a handful of other companies. But my dad and uncles were all in the business. My dad and uncle still are. As you mentioned, my dad is still running Red Dog over on East 33rd, and John has been at PHB for almost 17 or 18 years.

PHB was incorporated as PHB in 1984 by my grandfather and two of his business partners, and then, probably four or five years ago, those other business partners were bought out, and it officially became a sole Hilbert-owned company.

Nate (02:30.043)  Gotcha. So tell me a little bit about your grandfather. I guess it must be pretty interesting being the third generation in the business. I believe there are four generations in the business now in some capacity, right?

William Hilbert (02:45.478)  Yeah, I have, so essentially it all started with my grandfather, and then my dad and his brothers were at Red Dog. My uncle Joe was at Red Dog for 25 years before he decided to pursue other things. And John came out to PHB when my grandfather was stepping away a little bit more, you know, kind of entering a semi-retirement phase.

And then my dad has been running Red Dog Industries his entire career, which is about 40 years, I think. But my grandfather is he, he was, he grew up in that time where, you know, he started as, you know, riding his bike around delivering, delivering papers.

He’s had so many different jobs, grew up on kind of the eastern side of Erie, kind of down by where I call it the stadium, which is the football stadium at 26th and what would that be? State. And was always a very motivated individual. He always had to keep himself busy.

William Hilbert (04:27.014)  It’s getting more difficult to find not necessarily the talent, but the interest in that type of work and that type of trade in 2024 compared to the past several decades. But he was always a guide, and he certainly taught me a lot. I know he taught my dad and my uncles a lot. He was all about hard work. He was all about an honest day’s work and providing for his family.

He always had this mindset of “okay, I’ve gotten this far, so what’s the next step? What else is left? What can I do?” Throughout his career, he started at the very bottom from sweeping floors. That’s a very big lesson that was taught not only to my grandfather, but to his kids. My grandfather and my dad taught me that you have to start from the very bottom.

You need to start there to gain the best understanding of the business that you’re in or the trade that you’re in. Everybody started sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms. My grandfather was able to reach that executive position, ownership level, CEO, and president position based on a lot of years of hard work and grinding, and just a lot of hours.

He spent countless hours at the shop. He would go to work when it was dark and come home when it was dark. He was a big family guy with four kids. Obviously, very family oriented as we are all. He was certainly a mentor of mine, along with my dad, and worked with John over the past almost 14 years. You learn something new every day.

Nate (06:18.331) That’s a really interesting dynamic too. I grew up in a family business and working with dad, there are challenges that come with that, working with family. How do you feel about that? What’s been your experience, and how did you work with your dad as well over at Red Dog?

William Hilbert (06:39.91) My interaction with Red Dog was minimal. In the beginning, I’ll call it, you know, in the summers of high school and things like that, I was caddying at the Cockle Club or I was, you know, at Red Dog cleaning the bathrooms. We used to have a company called Anson Manufacturing that was off of Eighth Street. Worked there for a couple of summers, cleaning bathrooms, doing small odds and ends jobs.

William Hilbert (07:09.474) It was as monotonous as it gets sorting O-rings. I had the opportunity to work with some of the guys, learning bridge ports and basic machining and polishing and the EDM process, which stands for electrical discharge machining. It was really interesting because you essentially start with a block of steel and you’ve been out here enough probably and seen our tools that, it’s pretty fascinating how the whole process comes together from start to finish, from design to a finished product.

But as far as getting a little off topic there, the interaction with my dad was minimal. The earliest days that I had a Red Dog was when my mom would take me over there after school, drop me off. I’d have to go get my haircut with my dad. And that was my first introduction to Red Dog.

It was always cool when you were there, because he’d take you around and look at all the big machines. And I have a lot of respect for my dad and my grandfather and my uncles and all the time and energy that they’ve put in working together. I’ll always remember my dad and my uncle who were at Red Dog for a long time together. I think they said in their entire careers to date before they went out, before my uncle went out to PHB, they got in one argument.

So I think that shows a lot about our family. We work well together. We don’t try to step on each other’s toes or anything.

William Hilbert (09:04.134) I was always working with someone else. I know that my dad and John, when I came out to PHB in 2011, wanted to remain in the background. They didn’t want to interject themselves into my education and my training because obviously there are completely competent individuals working for both companies that were able to teach and train me and help me through the many years of being at PHB and you’re always learning. My initial aspirations when I entered college was I wanted to be an airline pilot.

So I started a flight technology program at Kent State. That was a lot of fun. I got to about the middle way through sophomore year and I don’t know what really happened, but you have to have a passion for aviation. I still do some hobby flying when I find the time, but it’s not necessarily something that you have to do or you feel obligated to do.

It was something that I wanted to do. So I changed my major and started in business and went through obviously the motions of college and graduate school at Gannon.

William Hilbert (10:30.086) And the rest is history as they say, because 2011 and here we are today in 2024 and it feels like it’s been about an hour and a half. Time just flies by and once you start a family, get married, all that time just continues to fly by and it’s been a great adventure. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made was choosing to redirect my path to the company business. And it’s an exciting industry, die casting, machining, molding. There’s never a dull day.

Nate (11:11.323) Yeah. And you guys make some awesome things. I want to talk a little bit more about that, but I want to get back to your phraseology there. You said going through the motions of education, which I think is really accurate in a lot of ways with a lot of manufacturing jobs.

I think in a lot of cases, you want to become a lawyer, you want to become a doctor, education is kind of pivotal in it. But with manufacturing, there’s a lot of on the job training. There’s a lot of ways that you can progress in your field and in your career track just by getting that hands -on experience. And that’s really the most important part of it.

William Hilbert (11:51.174) It is absolutely. The biggest advice that I would give, it doesn’t matter what you really do. My motivation, and I told my Uncle John this when I started, you put me in the dirtiest pit you can find, whether that’s a bathroom stall or whether that’s sweeping floors or doing whatever, I’m gonna learn from the very beginning and work my way through. And I’ve worked in every corner of this company.

Including Red Dog, spending some summers over there doing odds and ends jobs as any kind of summer intern would do. But I started sweeping the floors back in 2011, working with our maintenance team. I worked in our water treatment department, which is a very important part of the company. Research and development.

Quality, our process control department. Some of these, Nate, you might understand because of your understanding of our business and working with us and some of the terminology that I use. Working with our setup, setting up our machines, process control is tasked with maintaining the machine production, essentially. Engineering.

In the tool room, breaking down dies, putting them back together, understanding the issues, the engineering and design, that’s essentially step one to designing a new die cast tool, working over at our machining division. So a lot of different areas. And I’ve been with the company since January of 2011. And I still haven’t hit all the places that you can go working now in project management and corporate sales, having been doing that for about four and a half, five years since 2018.

So it is so important to, and I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase before, I’m by no means an expert, but I know a lot about every department and certainly enough to be pretty dangerous. So it’s been a great experience.

Nate (14:25.883) Yep. Enough to be dangerous. So it sounds kind of to me like, you know, your aspirations may have more of a, you know, global role in the company. Is that kind of what you’re looking at?

William Hilbert (14:41.55) Yeah, absolutely. And I think, just like my grandfather did, his mindset and the mindset that he instilled in his kids and my dad instilled in me is you need to start from the bottom, work your way up, take your licks, put in your time, which he did, and which my dad and my uncles have done to reach the level of leadership and executive levels that they’re at. That is absolutely my aspirations one day because as you said, I’m a third generation, we are a third generation manufacturing company and hopefully we can continue that pretty important legacy.

We’re a bigger company, we employ a lot of people. Some of our products, as you mentioned, are pretty well known, sold all over the world. As we all know, the curse of the third generation is never a topic that I like to hear because I’m like, well, hopefully that doesn’t hold true to this third generation, certainly not.

Nate (15:59.707) Yeah, I think as long as you’re reinforcing that, put in the work and take your licks, that kind of a philosophy, because I think really the problem is entitlement. If you’re born into it, you feel like you’re entitled to a position, you can just step right into it. And if you didn’t learn all of the areas of the business, you didn’t spend time in the sales, the engineering, maintenance, you don’t get it. You don’t know what that works like.

William Hilbert (16:24.678) Exactly. One of the things I’ve seen people do, I know people that are in a similar situation that have family businesses and things like that. And they step into more of an executive management role right out of college, they get their degree or they want to continue their education, get a master’s degree or what have you and step into that management role. And that’s fine, some companies don’t necessarily have as many moving parts as we do.

But one of the things that was so important to me personally, starting at the shop was gaining the respect of the employees that hopefully someday will work for you and you can count on them to put in 110% knowing that here’s a guy that didn’t just step into vice president of whatever, he took the time to learn every aspect of the business and that was what was most important to me. I knew I wanted to learn maybe not everything, but a good amount about everything before I would ever consider myself worthy of an executive-level role in the company. And as I said, I’m still learning.

I’m still going through different education training roles right now, project management, engineering, corporate sales, all very important aspects of the job.

Nate (18:05.403) Yeah. No, I think that’s going to be so valuable when you’re running the company, essentially understanding those roles. My business, that’s tough too. I mean, I have developers, they do coding. I don’t know how to do coding, but I know when something’s wrong, I know enough to know that it’s just not going quite right and we need to figure this out. But yeah, one of the things I’ve always respected about you is your leadership demeanor. I think you have a really good, I don’t know what the word is, aura about you.

Nate (18:35.195) You command respect, but you’re also humble. And I think you also are very quick to admit when you don’t know something. And I think those are very important leadership characteristics.

William Hilbert (18:45.766) I appreciate that. That’s definitely as a family, you know, I like to consider, you know, the Hildred family pretty humble. We like to maintain a low profile. And…

It’s always how we’ve been, you know, it’s, you know, we don’t need all the, the lights in the, in the, in the big, big, you know, showy stuff. It’s just, we want to, you know, come to work, do the best job we can, you know, provide as best we can for our employees. And we think we do a pretty good job at that.

Nate (19:24.123) Yeah, I think most would agree with you. What’s your take on our region as king of the economic drivers behind it? I feel pretty strongly about manufacturing. I feel pretty strongly that that’s the core of our region. And the more we try to get away from it, the more we suffer.

And there are people who argue for tourism and for a lot of different kinds of entertainment-centric ways of building our economy, moving new companies here. What do you think is the solution to our obvious economic problem?

William Hilbert (20:03.558) That’s an excellent question Nate. In our business, I’ve been noticing a generational shift. And I’ve said this to a lot of people, we have a lot of retirements that have been ongoing and upcoming. The mid 50s and the mid 60s, everyone’s working a little bit longer now. And we’re starting to see that mass exodus of everyone coming of age and they have put in their time and they want to retire, go enjoy life, which we certainly appreciate and respect and they certainly deserve 100% of it.

The younger generation, I think technology, I think the lack of understanding of what a job is, specifically trades, electricians, plumbers, tool and die makers. We push as a company within the manufacturing realm, we push those types of things so hard. I feel like life after high school is becoming a little different for the younger generations. I think maybe some people aren’t really as motivated to go to college.

We push the mentality of you do not have to go to college, get a degree, graduate, and work for the next 25 to 30 years paying off what you went to school for. I want the younger generation to learn that trades are an invaluable thing, an invaluable profession that can earn you a more than sustainable living wage. You can avoid a lot of debt in the form of student loans, things like that.

I think just globally, the world I feel personally, Nate, I think the world is just in a rough spot at the moment. COVID, in my opinion, it seems like COVID was 15 years ago. It’s like what happened. All of a sudden it was here and all of a sudden it was gone in a heartbeat. It was crazy. And when you sit back and think about it, it wasn’t that long ago, right about this time, everything was closed. Couldn’t go anywhere. And people had to learn and adapt and evolve, remote work.

William Hilbert (23:03.078) That has been crazy. I think it’s not a bad thing, but some people I think have lost the motivation to go to work. I think even from a business or a company standpoint, people said, well, maybe I don’t have to pay rent on this building anymore because technically these people could probably do their jobs from home. I’m not scared for the future.

I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. You could say that about just about anything, but our region has been so manufacturing driven. And over the past 15, 20 years, the level of manufacturing has declined. You can see that just by driving around.

For us as a company, we promote specifically the tool and die, the manufacturing trade so heavily. We have started, we’re hiring as many as we can, skilled and non-skilled labor. Again, when the government was handing out checks, it killed a lot of the motivation. People could figure out, well, I could probably just sit at home and wait for that check to come in the mail, or I’m gonna use this government program or something to my advantage until it runs out or exhausts itself.

I think, and I sense that the economy is going to get a little bit worse before it gets better from a manufacturing standpoint. But I truly feel like there’s going to be something in hopefully the not too distant future that brings it back a little bit mainly in our area. And it’s still relatively strong. You have a ton of manufacturing companies and these don’t have to be these grandiose big manufacturing companies. You have everything from a machine shop that’s in a thousand square foot building to a place like PHB that’s 500,000 square feet.

William Hilbert (25:24.806) So I think if I hopefully didn’t ramble on too long about your question, I think it’s gonna get worse before it gets better in a nutshell, essentially. But I think the future is bright. It certainly is for die casting. My grandfather used to tell me and my dad and my uncle used to tell me that people said, die casting is a dying industry. It’s not going to be around. And that was 30 years ago. And we’re here and we are extremely healthy, busier than ever. So I think it’s going to remain strong, if not get stronger as time goes on.

Nate (26:11.643) Yeah. And I mean, we see the die cast parts you guys make. You’re going in washing machines, heavy duty engines.

William Hilbert (26:19.654) Yep, we make, I mean, our market segments are not broad, but automotive, very ingrained in the automotive industry. Home appliance, the KitchenAid stand mixer that everybody has on their countertop, whether hopefully they use it, or if it’s purely decorative, that’s okay too. Military electronics.

William Hilbert (26:50.022) I mean, those are our top three commercial laundry. As you mentioned, we make a component for the top load washer for Whirlpool Corporation. I think it’s top load. I don’t think it’s front load, but I could be wrong. But yeah, it’s nice to not have to set our efforts around one or two main customers. We have a very healthy book of business across all different types of market segments and we provide parts all over the world to people.

Nate (27:06.843) I think you’re right.

Nate (27:36.251) And I think that’s a really important concept for a lot of manufacturers. I know a lot of them are aware of this on a surface level. We need to diversify. We need to make sure that when one segment of the economy is up and the other one’s down, we have something in focus. Just kind of a hedge. So you guys have been fortunate to have that. Do you have any advice for maybe a smaller manufacturer? You guys are what, around 500 employees?

William Hilbert (28:02.63) Yeah, a little less than that probably is from a corporate level between both divisions.

Nate (28:07.195) So somebody that’s got 100 employees, they’re scarily a little bit too focused in the aerospace sector. What would be your recommendation for them for how they might broaden?

William Hilbert (28:24.966) I mean a lot of companies have one or two big customers that carry 60% of their yearly revenue, which is okay, but that’s a lot of…

Nate (28:41.915) Eggs in one basket.

William Hilbert (28:43.174) It’s a lot of eggs in one basket. I mean, diversity is something that, specifically over the past many years, we as a company have wanted to diversify, not mitigate the risk, but diversify. We’ve taken on a couple of new customers that have really helped spread that diversity out, which is great. COVID was a big deal for us when something like that, as we all well know, killed countless businesses and it doesn’t have to just be manufacturing.

Luckily, we were deemed an essential business. So we were fortunate enough to not have to close our doors for a period of time, but we still took hits in demand and things like that as expected. A lot of the orders dropped off or pushed out and we were able to obviously weather that storm as many did and some didn’t which is unfortunate. But I think for whether it’s a small machine shop or a prototype company, even someone like Red Dog, and they have less than 50 employees.

I think PHB obviously is their biggest customer, but they have a company like Rubbermaid. I mean, they’ve had Rubbermaid for 35 years as a customer and a slew of other customers, but from those smaller shops, you never know what’s out there until something just comes knocking on your door. I mean, it’s crazy what you don’t know what you don’t know. And from a sales perspective, we obviously rely heavily, which is why we’re so ingrained with you and the WeCreate team in our website.

I would say to kind of segue off of that, I think a healthy website is very important because I’m sure you can attest to this, Nate, that we rely on pretty much all of our RFQs through Google searches and online searches, and RFQs that come through the website.

William Hilbert (31:04.71) The day of the salesman, I will say, doesn’t really apply to us anymore. We don’t have guys walking around knocking on doors saying, hey, can I come talk to you? Let me tell you what we can do for you, things like that. We get countless inquiries through our website. So one piece of advice is I would say, if you haven’t looked at your website, if you don’t have a website, or if it could use a little sprucing up, I think that would be important, and all of the SEO work that we’ve done to develop the keywords and all of that terminology that I don’t understand as good as you guys, that has turned us around. That’s how we got one of our newest commercial laundry customers, through our website.

Nate (32:00.283) That’s awesome. Yeah. And I preach it all the time. I think it’s received a lot better coming from you because obviously it’s my business, but I didn’t want to spend too much time on the topic. But I think it is important just for other manufacturers that are looking to diversify, looking for new customers. The outside sales is tough. I mean, I think manufacturers are over-solicited these days.

You guys get calls for literally everything. People want donations, people want to sell you all kinds of services, and you’re just programmed to shut them down. You don’t want to hear from these people all the time. You got work to do. So kind of setting yourself up so that when people are looking for what you offer, you’re there, I think, is really where you need to be.

William Hilbert (32:46.47) Right. One of the biggest things for us right now is, and it’s a good thing, is a lot of the reshoring. We receive a lot of quotation requests for products that need to be made in the USA or be American-made. And a lot of the bigger companies that are involved with that are reshoring and having to move things away from that offshore low price type of offering, and obviously, that can’t be sustained here. But it’s definitely a good thing. I think that’s too kind of a return to the economic question. I think the reshoring efforts and the efforts from government officials and corporations as a whole are to bring those products back to America and bring them back to the American worker.

William Hilbert (34:02.79) And it’s going to hurt financially, but I can’t remember what the acronym is, but American-made or buy American. It’s something that obviously the government has been working on. And we get a lot of people say, hey, this has to be a domestically sourced product. What can you do for us? And we go from there.

Nate (34:30.299) Yeah. And I think that would be a huge benefit. It is such a complex issue because you have kind of the tariff and the reshoring side of things. And you also have what’s really been the big challenge in the past three to five years. And that is finding the employees to actually do the work.

You guys are pushing that. I see a lot of manufacturers pushing it. The NTMA is pushing it. The MBA is pushing it. These ideas, let’s get in front of the kids at school. Let’s try to get them interested in manufacturing. And I feel like those things are making some incremental progress, but I don’t feel like we’ve actually hit the solution yet. It’s a branding problem.

And so how do we rebrand manufacturing to make it more appealing? And I think another issue too is that the COVID period gave people a really remote philosophy on life. We hear a lot of people talking about the nomadic lifestyle and, hey, I want to be able to work from a boat and things like that. Obviously, if you’re working in a manufacturing facility, you’re not working from a boat, but it can afford you those opportunities later in life and give you a lot more financial stability. What is the branding solution? How do we get this message to make manufacturing look appealing to help kids understand what their long-term goals in life are and align those with what their current choices are in their profession?

William Hilbert (36:02.31) That is probably the hardest question, I think, to answer. We go around to all the high schools, every single high school in our region. We go around, we go to career fairs, job fairs. We go to manufacturing day. We’re pretty ingrained with the Manufacturing and Business Association in town.

I don’t even know how to put it into words because it’s so difficult to try to communicate, hey, manufacturing or a trade, here are the advantages. Let’s set up a whiteboard like the one right behind me, pros and cons of do you want to go to college or do you not want to go to college? What are the benefits of going to college? What are the benefits of not going to college?

I think it was out in Iroquois maybe or Harbor Creek a year or two ago. A couple kids were just graduating. You have to ask the question, who wants to go to college and who doesn’t want to go to college? As we all know, continuing your education is great. I mean, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it is only getting more expensive. And those who don’t have scholarships or things like that have to take out the loans and bear the burden of the pretty much full cost, depending upon where you go. Like I said earlier, it takes years to pay all that off. From a rebranding standpoint, it’s tough to try to communicate that and try to explain it correctly.

Like I said, what we do is we go around all the schools, we try to get in front of as many kids as we can and say, hey, this is a well-paying job that you can provide for your family. You’re not gonna be in debt. To your point, Nate, it’s definitely not where it needs to be. I think the manufacturing community as a whole has a lot of work to do, but it’s finding that right note, finding that right chord, essentially, to get the idea through to the younger generation.

William Hilbert (38:48.774) This is, I mean, you can’t sit at home and try to make money on social media or you can try to do this, that or the other. Go be a YouTuber, a TikTok person or whatever, but I don’t know what’s gonna put three meals on your table every day. And it’s not easy work. Manufacturing, anything, any labor intensive job is not easy. Do I think that from a wage perspective, I mean, I think it’s extremely fair. But there’s so many certain trades that obviously carry different wage structures and things like that.

For PHB, we offer a very competitive starting wage, non skilled labor wage. I mean, you get into the skilled laborers, the tool makers, the things like that. Obviously those will carry different perks, but also comes with additional responsibility and training and additional from a monetary perspective, investment. The investment in the employee is very important. You send them to an apprenticeship program, you send them to training classes, all of that would not be considered an out of pocket expense to the employee. So one of the things is we invest and reinvest in our employees and we’re always encouraging the community to not look down on manufacturing.

William Hilbert (40:29.926) And I really think that the college idea, that idea of college has diluted a little bit. I mean, I think we’re pretty much the same age and we can probably remember 15, 20 years ago, college was like, that’s where you’re going. I mean, it’s just, you’re going to college, okay, get your degree. Now it’s not that it’s not important, but like I said, I think it’s diluted a little bit in the fact that people are realizing, man, I can make a good amount of money and not need a college degree.

Nate (41:13.531) No, you’re fine. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense.

And I do agree with you that the concept of college has changed and certainly a bachelor’s degree today is equal to a high school diploma 20 years ago. I mean, it’s just not going to get you that far. I think there’s also this underlying philosophy with a lot of the younger generation that are moving into the workforce and even a lot of adults that I see that are working jobs. There’s this get rich quick mentality. There’s currency trading and Bitcoin and everything. Everybody thinks that they can get somewhere really fast.

And some people get lucky and then those ones are the ones that get posted on social media and everyone’s trying to emulate that. But I think that there’s something to be said for work as not a way to get rich, but as a lifestyle, work as something that provides somebody with fulfillment. For me, I love making things and I love doing manual labor. I mean, I chop wood for fun. I burn it too, but I love chopping wood. It’s just something about it just makes me feel manly and I just like doing it.

But I think there’s a lot of this younger generation that feels like work is something you should be trying to get out of and try to find a shortcut to the money. And I almost feel like that’s the fundamental problem.

William Hilbert (42:47.238) I think the work ethic has nosedived, in my opinion, with the younger generations. Like you said, they want to do less for more. And I think they don’t want to put in the hours, they don’t want to put in the work. It’s unfortunate to see.

But I think a lot of it, like I got my work ethic from my grandfather, from my uncles, from my dad. They got up in the morning, went to work all day, five days a week, sometimes six, seven if needed. And they came home and were providing for their family. That’s just what they did. And that’s all I really ever knew.

That’s what I was taught that you’re supposed to do. I mean, whether you’re the breadwinner, whether it’s mom or whether it’s dad, it doesn’t matter. The work ethic that I learned and that I saw is really what gives me the motivation to want to come to work every day and to enjoy what I do. Like to your point, the manual labor, getting out there on the shop floor and setting up die cast machines, getting dirty, learning, I learned how to weld and things.

I mean, it was a blast. I mean, it’s valuable knowledge. I mean, it was really fun. A lot of people don’t think getting dirty all day in a big hot manufacturing plant is fun. Definitely was fun for me.

And I think work ethic and motivation are really important. And it’s certainly something that I want to teach my kids. I’d rather not see them on their phones, obviously they’re too young to have phones, but I want to teach them that an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, I think, is very important. That’s what we promote here. You give me an honest day’s work and you’re going to get an honest day’s pay. That’s always what I’ve been taught.

William Hilbert (45:11.942) And that’s to this day, I come to work and I say, I’m gonna try to do my absolute best today and my absolute best tomorrow.

Nate (45:19.547) Yeah. And that’s something that you’ve been fortunate to have a family that instilled those traits in you. I have as well. But I think that’s where we’ve lost a lot with the younger generation, especially, as there has been some breakdown of family units, breakdown of just the value that people put on the family unit as the nucleus of these morals.

So I think what we’re gonna have to figure out is how do you instill these values in someone that hasn’t had that background, that hasn’t had that training, and how do you have them value work and the fulfillment that you get from doing your best in things? That’s a big challenge.

William Hilbert (46:08.582) I think so. I think you’re exactly right. Because again, to your point, it’s not something that the younger generation are going to be taught. We were taught our entire lives, both you and I, that going to work is important. Having a strong work ethic is important.

And I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to teach that to a younger generation who wasn’t fortunate enough to maybe have a family dynamic that allowed that to be absorbed into them. And that’s a pretty good point. And I think it centers around a lot about what we’re talking about. It’s work ethic and how we can get to your point of rebranding and making manufacturing fun.

William Hilbert (47:06.118) Exciting and getting people in the door and hiring the young folks because right now we’re an extremely green company. We have obviously a lot of knowledge still out there, but it’s tough. When you have a 30 or 40 year guy that has worked his days and he wants to retire and you have to replace him and train up another individual. So like I said earlier, we’re in that generational shift where we have to teach these guys that there are no free rides.

This isn’t a cakewalk. This is hard work. And it’s something that I think we need to really communicate. And I just don’t know how you teach work ethic. I really don’t.

Nate (47:54.843) It’s a tough thing. I mean, I’m fortunate to have some great employees myself, but they do have different mindsets and they’re motivated by things that a lot of times I can’t really put my finger on. I do the shotgun approach and try to hit it from every possible angle and hopefully I touch on something that works. But it is tough.

Nate (48:21.307) And I think you’ve got an awesome family. I mean, you have three kids now, right? Two sons, daughter.

William Hilbert (48:25.478) Yep, three kids. Beau is six. Brady’s gonna be four and then Claire just turned five months.

Nate (48:32.923) Yeah. And I mean, I think it’s incumbent on guys like us. I mean, that’s doing our part in a way. That’s the most we can do for our country and for society is have good kids and raise good kids. I think a lot of parents, I think a lot of middle-class upper middle-class, I’ve run into this a lot.

Everyone’s thinking about, well, I just, I’m not making enough money. I want to have more flexibility to travel. I want, it’s like that stuff is only gonna get you so far. You can only travel so much, you can only have so much fun, and you’re never gonna have enough money. I mean, that’s just the bottom line. I think you need to bite the bullet and have some kids. I think that’s the bottom line.

William Hilbert (49:17.926) I think so. I have several friends who are still living the bachelor lifestyle and they all have full-time jobs, they’re busy, whether or not that’s a choice or whether they just haven’t found Mrs. Right yet, I don’t know. I was always, again, it just goes back to how I was brought up and what I saw as a kid. My grandmother, my grandfather, my entire family have all had fairly big families, at least two, three kids. We’re very family oriented.

I met my wife, Helena, not long after I started working here in 2012, late 2011, I think it was. Got married in 2017 and Claire was born in December of last year and she was the cherry on top of the cake and we’re a very happy family of five and it’s the best thing. Having kids and watching them grow and trying to instill the same qualities in them that you were taught and got as a kid from your parents I think is really important.

It’s funny. Even though I know people that travel every weekend and go to this, that or the other thing. I’m like, I couldn’t imagine doing all that. I just couldn’t. I mean, even if I didn’t have kids. But yeah, you can never, you’re exactly right. You can never have enough money. I mean, it’s just, that’s life. You gotta appreciate what you have and just love every single day.

Kiss your kids as soon as you get home, as soon as they wake up, as soon as they go to bed. Even though I’m a lot grayer now, it’s still the best thing. As they say, family is always number one, in my opinion. Obviously, that will never change. And then work and any corresponding or auxiliary activities fall to the wayside when it comes to family, because that’s so important.

And you think about it, I think about it all the time, how short life really is in the grand scheme of things. Before you know it, you’re essentially the ghost of your children’s future. I mean, you’re just simply a memory. And what you can make with the time that you have is so important.

Nate (52:08.475) I agree. Yeah, that’s great advice. What are you reading right now? Are you a reader?

William Hilbert (52:17.126) I’m kind of, I have to be in the right mindset. I read, I do some audio book reading, like listening, I guess. I read some business books. I’m reading an accounting book right now that is just teaching you simple business accounting and things like that. Understanding the lingo, understanding how business accounting works. Obviously every industry and the aspects like that are a little bit different. And as someone who is aspiring to lead and run a company someday, it’s important to know that and it’s just one of those steps in my personal journey of wanting to not have to know everything but know just a little bit about everything in order to be dangerous.

To be honest, I mean, we’re so busy. I wish I could read more but I feel like I wake up, go to work, come home, kids time. By the time they go to bed, it’s about 8:30 and I’m exhausted and I can probably read maybe one or two pages and then I’ll fall asleep. So I wish I could read more. I just love the thought of reading. I really do. I mean, it’s just sitting down with a good book.

I’ve read a couple of John Grisham books and things like that, but I like to read biographies and true story type things. I’m not really a big fiction person or fantasy book reader if you will. So essentially, in a nutshell, I would like to read, I just don’t have time.

Nate (54:19.259) I understand. Yeah. I mean, I used to have time, I read a book or a chapter, a couple of pages at least while I was eating my breakfast. But now it’s like, I wake up, Libby’s up right after I get up. And it’s like, I got to feed her breakfast and all that. But I started reading Rockefeller’s letters to his son. So he wrote, and I can’t remember what the number is, like 30 letters or something like that to his son throughout the course of his career from when he was really young until he was integrated into the business.

But I just kind of thought of you with that, because obviously your sons and actually getting them involved in the business down the road. But he has some really, I mean, he seems like a great dad. I know they’ve probably taken a lot of criticism over the years, but he always had really good advice. Whenever someone was in a tough spot, he had some great things to say to him. But that might be something you might pick up and take a look at.

William Hilbert (55:14.694) Yeah, send me, that would be great if you could send me the link to it or something. I’d like to look into that. I really would.

Nate (55:23.515) Yeah, I’ve enjoyed it. I think you would too. Well, Bill, I really appreciate your time today. I think you’ve got a lot of great insights. I think you’re going to make a great leader of the company there. And the fact that you’re learning constantly, learning all the pieces of the puzzle so that when you’re in the leadership position, you know how to manage those departments and come up with the right answer. I think that’s incredibly important.

William Hilbert (55:46.246) I appreciate it. This is my first one of these, so it’s been fun. Hopefully, I didn’t ramble on too much. I was able to get my points across without too much elongation of words and sentences. I’m super passionate about our business, about our industry, about our generation and the future generations.

Nate (55:53.819) No, you did great.

William Hilbert (56:16.39) I could talk all day about it. I mean, it’s something that I do think is gonna get better, I hope sooner than later. And I just, I don’t not like technology, but I wish it would slow down a little bit, maybe just to kind of give the younger generation a chance to catch up and really understand what manufacturing, the trades, I think I was thinking about this the other day that I wish I could go back to like ninth grade or eighth grade or something like that and just relive a couple of days with no phones, no iPads.

Give the younger generation a chance to catch up and really understand what manufacturing, the trades, I think I was thinking about this the other day that I wish I could go back to like ninth grade or eighth grade or something like that and just relive a couple of days with no phones, no iPads. I mean, yeah, computers for school and things like that, but that’s it. And some video games when you get home.

William Hilbert (57:08.006) It was, they always say, 30 years ago, it was a simpler time. And I truly believe that. And I think it’s pretty visible now, but I don’t want to continue to ramble. I really appreciate you having me on and wanting to chat with me a little bit about my story and the manufacturing industry. Happy to continue the conversation if you want or be a support capacity as you kind of get going on your new little webcast thing.

Nate (57:45.499) Yeah. I’m excited about it. I think I’m a solution oriented person and a lot of the topics we’ve talked about today, I’ve heard talked about for quite a few years and I think there is a solution and I think there is something to be done about it. I have my own ideas and what I really want to get is just a perspective of leaders in the manufacturing space and what they think the solutions are.

I actually have one more question that just popped into my head. What do you think 100 manufacturing leaders in our region could do to change the perception of manufacturing to our youth beyond what they’re currently doing? Do you feel like they’re working together enough? Do you feel like there’s more collaboration that could happen with local manufacturers specifically?

William Hilbert (59:06.086) I think there could be certainly. It’s those companies that are motivated enough to do it, that have the time to do it, that have the availability from an education standpoint to do it. Is it from a tool shop to a die caster to machine house, almost like a round table, where the manufacturing association has these types of events and things like that. But I think getting the message out there sooner is important.

Don’t necessarily wait until April of the year before the graduating class is either going to go to college or not, start that, plant that seed as soon as you can. I am by no means a handyman, but if it’s something as simple as changing out a light bulb or fixing up a squeaky door or unclogging a drain, I say, hey, Beau or hey, Brady, come over and help me do this. It comes down to parents, us as parents, as people teaching our kids not just how do I turn on my iPad or hey, can you turn the TV on for me and switch to this station.

It’s planting that seed as early as possible, getting the kids to work with their hands. Sports are great. All of that is fantastic. Getting them back outside is so important to me. I love my family and we love going for hikes and just being outside and playing basketball in the driveway and doing all that.

I hate being inside. It just drives me insane. And I think instead of maybe from an offering in the education system, it doesn’t have to be language arts, social studies, science, math. Let’s get back to the technical aspect, let’s bring back shop class and things like that. I think it would be so great and beneficial in order to promote creativity.

William Hilbert (01:01:34.982) Kids don’t even know what they’re interested in until they’re exposed to something. I mean, they have to be exposed to it in order to know that they’re interested in it. Would I want to be a welder for my entire life? Probably not. Do I think it’s an excellent trade that pays very well? Absolutely. And am I very happy that I was exposed to it and was motivated and interested enough to learn more about it?

I mean, I’m by no means certified, but it was fun. I mean, I love to do it. I think it’s a blast. And like I said, getting the exposure out there as early as possible, I think is super important.

Nate (01:02:34.043) Yep. Yeah, you’re right. And the message needs to be reinforced over and over. When you were talking about reinforcing those messages to your kids, I thought about the way that kids want to be a firefighter, they want to be a police officer. And my little girl likes Paw Patrol. And so she’s watching Paw Patrol and she’s like, I want to be a firefighter. Where’d she get that? She got that from watching her little hero dog friend fight fires.

William Hilbert (01:03:00.454) Yep.

Nate (01:03:01.979) There’s nothing like that for manufacturing, is there? There’s nothing that promotes a message of this is a guy, look at this Bob the welder, man. This guy makes cool stuff every day. How cool is that?

William Hilbert (01:03:05.094) Nothing.

William Hilbert (01:03:09.666) Yeah, exactly. My son, Beau, is fascinated with Lightning McQueen. Just fascinated, loves everything, cars, Hot Wheels, he kind of has a bit of an engineering mind, I think. He loves to, he has those wooden trains that you put together, you make a big train track. He’ll fill my entire living room with train tracks and I get kind of flabbergasted because I’m like, holy cow, you just assembled this entire thing that is an actual track. And it’s pretty amazing.

So whether maybe he’s interested in cars, maybe he’ll be a mechanic someday or maybe he’ll be a train conductor or a train engineer. My son, Brady loves animals, everything animals. So I’m like, well, you have to keep that interest. You can’t let them lose sight of something that they’re really interested in when young. Because, okay, you’re going to be playing with this light up sword one day and then the next day you’re playing with this and that and the other thing.

Seeing what they’re really truly interested in. My son Brady, as I mentioned, is a big animal lover. Maybe he’s going to be a veterinarian. Maybe he’s going to work at the zoo. Maybe he’s going to be a marine biologist. I don’t know, but I don’t want to, I mean, personally, I want to keep that interest in as many ridiculous numbers of cars as my son has. I deal with it because he has hundreds, but you gotta keep that spark lit and don’t let that pilot light blow out.

William Hilbert (01:05:07.302) I mean, you got to keep it going and obviously we’re not going to teach our five, four and three year olds anything about manufacturing, but getting the message out there early on is really important.

Nate (01:05:16.571) Yep. Yeah, I agree. And so I think what we decided is we need to somehow glamorize it. We need to beautify it, have some shows produced about it. I was also thinking, you know how like the firemen have like this calendar, the firemen calendar, the cops do it too, so they take like the most aesthetically pleasing firefighters and put them in there. I was thinking, you’d be a great candidate. I mean, I think that you would fit into that calendar well. Yeah, October. Okay, we got it.

William Hilbert (01:05:38.918) Yeah.

William Hilbert (01:05:53.862) I’ll be in October, it’s my birthday month. We’ll get a couple of electricians, a couple of welders, a couple of plumbers.

Nate (01:06:02.811) Yep. Well, I guess that’s what we’ll have to shoot for. I’ll have my graphic design team get to work on that. We just need a shirtless shot from you.

William Hilbert (01:06:13.254) Send you a couple poses. I’ll send you a couple poses. I’ll have my buddy Pete take a couple of snaps.

Nate (01:06:21.563) Pete Gourney.

William Hilbert (01:06:22.598) Yeah.

Nate (01:06:24.251) I love Pete, he’s a cool guy.

William Hilbert (01:06:26.278) Yeah, we have a good team. I mean, great team out here at the shop. It’s really great. And I can’t say enough about WeCreate and your team and how appreciative we’ve been over the years that we’ve been able to do business with you. And as I said, our website is our salesman. We are, we’re busy, which is great. We’re a little more selective in the quotations that we choose to pursue. But every day we’re getting inquiries, which is great. Whether it’s junk or whether it’s something, they’re still coming through, which is great.

Nate (01:07:05.147) Yep, that’s awesome. It wasn’t always that way for you guys.

William Hilbert (01:07:08.806) No, it wasn’t. And I think going back to the folks that might have a little bit of money to spend on their website, the smaller companies, the ones that are looking to diversify a little bit, it truly has made all the difference in the world. The return on our investment and continued partnership with you and the WeCreate team is invaluable.

Nate (01:07:36.123) Yeah. Good. Well, I’m glad to hear it. That’s why I enjoy doing what I’m doing. I love the manufacturing space and I love when I can help a company achieve their goals and become more successful and really just create a little bit more stability. That’s the main issue that I hear with manufacturers being too dependent on one or two customers. The economy changes, their business goes down. When you’re constantly getting new opportunities, you get the ability to be a little bit selective and to diversify. Cool, Bill. Well, hey, thanks a lot for joining today. I enjoyed talking with you. Hopefully we can talk some more in the future. Maybe you and I can go grab a beer or something.

William Hilbert (01:08:21.446) That sounds good. Yeah, I’d appreciate it, Nate. And let me know what you need. If we can continue to drive the message, I’m all for it. And I know everybody here at our shop would echo what I’m saying.

Nate (01:08:35.995) Yep. Absolutely. Cool.

William Hilbert (01:08:39.078) Good, buddy. Thanks, man. Good to see you. We’ll talk to you soon. All right, see you, Nate.