S1E07 Thermal management & leadership | Chris Bridgewater

Hear tips on leadership, management, and motivation from Chris Bridgewater, CEO of Delta Development Team, as well as insights from his journey as a carpenter in the Army through his non-traditional education path that led to the formation of his company. 

Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com 

About Being An Engineer

The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Transcript

Aaron Moncur: 0:13

Welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Chris Bridgewater, who's CEO at Delta development team where they innovate and manufacture ruggedized thermal systems specializing in military applications. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Bridgewater: 0:33

Hi, thanks for having me.

Aaron Moncur: 0:34

You bet. You bet. Super excited to talk with you and, and hear all about your background. And hopefully you can share some wisdom and insight with us. Yeah, I hope I can. So one of the the phrases in that introduction ruggedized thermal systems is really interesting to me. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? What is a ruggedized? thermal system?

Chris Bridgewater: 0:59

Yeah, so basically, the US military can be one of the the end users hasn't been the harshest time when you're quitting, right, they use your equipment, they're gonna push it to the brain, and everything has to be really top notch. And that's why there's, there's a reason that there's milspec, right, and it's usually higher than most other industrial standards that you'll find. And so, you know, we make these thermal management systems for medical applications and non medical applications. And, and they have to withstand some of the harshest conditions on Earth and they have to have a wide spectrum of operation, you know, we have to operate that to be able to the same piece of equipment SP able to be stored at negative 60 Fahrenheit and, and be stored at 160 Fahrenheit and has to operate between negative 25 Fahrenheit and up to 125 Fahrenheit out in the sun, you know, in the middle of a blizzard, whatever conditions you might come across. And you can't have like a you can't have like a winter package or summer package that that piece of credit just to build a roll out and go from the blizzard in Afghanistan to the scorching heat and Iraq, all in one unit.

Aaron Moncur: 2:16

And can you give us an example? Like a specific example? What is the thermal management system? What's an application for which that would be used?

Chris Bridgewater: 2:25

Yes, so we will talk about thermal management, we're kind of talking about like in the higher level of, you know, thermodynamics, because we started out in, in refrigeration, and then we're, we got asked to do a few other things that, then we're not refrigeration, we're not refrigeration systems. And so they're, you know, basically warming systems, heating systems, things like that. It's always had to call it thermal management, that's, that's what we're doing, we're just managing the thermal load of whatever the customer asked us to do, you know, they may have something that needs to be warmer, and never, that device that we make is never going to cooled anything down. We may make a device that's only going to cool things down and never make it warmer, we make a device that does both. So we it was kind of a compromise, thermal management was was our way of compromising of having a short and sweet catch catchphrase for our company that was easy to understand.

Aaron Moncur: 3:24

And would this be used for, for example, like transporting, you know, blood or organs? Or is it primarily for transporting or storing biological tissue or other things as well?

Chris Bridgewater: 3:40

Yeah, I mean, we've sort of got a few different products we're working on. And when you reference the transplant of blood, that's, that's the flagship product, as we call it, we we started a company I gathered a team of three other individuals and we started a company for the to make a a new blood cooler filtration system. And then on top of that, we have some other contracts, we have a contract with the army, unconscious brain core, everything from environmental control units to very large shipping containers that are refrigerated ship containers with just more isolation, more efficiency, things like that. So yeah, it's a wide spectrum of weather, whatever you might need thermally manage whether it's people or medical products, or food, or I mean, there's electronics aircraft, there's all kinds of things that we're being asked to look at and asked to, to do in the DoD space.

Aaron Moncur: 4:40

Okay, I'm gonna rewind just a little bit. Going back towards the beginning of your career, if I'm not mistaken, you started out in construction and carpentry and then you moved into the army in kind of that that same role. How did you make that change? transitioned into the army, how did you decide that I want to take these skills that I have and enroll them into an army based role?

Chris Bridgewater: 5:10

Yeah, so I guess I just saw I was doing construction since I was like 12 years old. And working since I was 12. So and then just growing up, the military was always sort of, in the, in the background, how a lot of family members, it served, a lot of a lot of friends that joined that they're older than me, you know, working on church every 12 months, I was probably a nice guy there. So most people are, you know, 18 are in their 20s, or whatever that hang out with, and they join. And I joined in 2003. So, you know, it's kind of in the, in the midst of the surge, and, you know, big effort in Iraq, and all that stuff, and everything else was going on. So, for me, it's just, it was, there's a lot of other stuff going on, too. In my life that made the army a really, kind of the best choice for me, there's times were Tanger, harder back then than air out for sure. And so So, you know, doing, you know, the reason I could get a janitorial job, most Muslim job you can get, like construction, or labor or things like that, and I was just sweeping floors and, and bending, bending, picking up nails and things like that. And so when I joined the army, they had, they had a job for a carpenter and I sort of got this romantic vision in my mind, I wanted to be building a shelter for some for in some third world country to to help better people's lives, you know, ever there and, and that's, that's why I joined and I did eventually get to get to do that. But then got my 13 years of being in the Army, and to do just a lot of great stuff. And I because of my enlisted guy. And so I was came in as a carpenter mentoring specialist, but then I got crushing to be an electrician, equipment operator, a plumber, all kinds of stuff got a lot of a lot of different experience, doing a lot of different things all over the world. So just got a lot of really great experience. And I was in a lot of unique situations, my career of a carpenter was not typical for most engineers that you would you would talk to coming out of the out of the conventional army. So So I had a lot of experience, which led into knowing the need of blood cooling, and blood warming and medical staff. So I was basically I was involved in a lot of you know, how to do a lot of medical practice stuff. And on a very, very limited level, you know, very first responder kind of stuff, giving giving an IV or something like that. So not, not very major stuff. But I still learned about those things. And so just as an engineer learning about H back, I learned about H back when I was in, and so only about refrigeration cycles and all that stuff, there are dynamics, and then boiling that into, you know, combine that with the needs that I learned about through my experiences. And then there's a whole nother set of story, and then I ended up here.

Aaron Moncur: 8:30

Okay, so are you saying that your technical? Or would it be fair to say that your technical background largely came from your experience serving in the military?

Chris Bridgewater: 8:42

Right, so yeah, my technical experience of wearing them now, I'd say I've learned more about engineering. In the last five years that I've been out, then, we're talking about, like traditional engineering, unlike what you would learn in a university setting or, you know, to become someone that calls themselves a mechanical engineer, or something like that. I learned more about that kind of engineering in the last five years than I did when I was in, I'd say that, you know, we could just classify everything I did in the army, as you know, as construction engineering. So I learned about learn about, you know, head pressure and, and, you know, electrical load analytical theory and things like that, but wasn't really like, I wasn't really equipped with the knowledge needed to actually like, sit down and invent my own refrigeration system. I could go repair them and braise on them and calculate motorcycles, and micro ferrets and requirements and all that stuff. But, you know, it's not everything you need, by far to do this. And I'd say that more of what I learned was been more valuable and more alcohol in the last five years of this company, and everything I've done is as the leadership, the experiences that I learned in the military and the just that conduct To the end user and the you know, giving myself it's given me a strong sense of purpose and direction of where I'm going and a strong enough. That's what's been strong enough to kind of lead this whole company forward with a set of goals that hey, I'm I know exactly why we're doing this. I've been there, I know how it's gonna be used. And I know that people are going to use this. So it's kind of defined my path going forward. So I would say that, that yeah, the technical stuff gave me a good base foundation to learn about engineering stuff. But what's been more useful more outdoors is the leadership and the use case scenarios.

Aaron Moncur: 10:44

There's, there's a lot there that I want to kind of unpack and talk about, I hate that word on pack, I can't believe I just used it. But maybe let's start with, you mentioned. So much of your technical background, especially your more current technical background comes from, I guess you could call it on the field training or experience. And when I graduated college, I did a mechanical engineering degree, I graduated college, there was very little that I had learned in school, that I could take and directly apply and be immediately useful to my first employer. And most of the value that I ended up being able to provide to my employer was what I learned, you know, on the job, now you work with several degreed engineers, do you have any, any feelings or experience about how useful is what you learn in school versus what you really just pick up in a professional working environment?

Chris Bridgewater: 11:55

Yeah, so let me let me start by saying to that question that whatever I say next, I want to say that, you know, there's, there's, it is important to have formal degrees in place. And getting a mechanical engineering degree or getting an engineering degree is highly valuable. Now, to just put on my CEO hat and talk about there's, there's a lot in that question, right. And then there's what I've done interviews of, you know, I put out a job call and I get, you know, I get 100 applications, for one position. And it's pretty, it's pretty easy to weed through them really quick, because you asked, you know, basic questions about programming, or elliptical theory, or, you know, thermodynamics or something like that, and you get these answers. And it's like, even me as a non degreed engineer, I realize this, that this person isn't really aware of what they're talking about. And they, they don't really know the true world applications of how to apply these concepts that they they've learned about, and they've talked about the last four years. And that's really disheartening about the not necessarily on the individual, because, you know, these individuals could be a 4.0 GPA, student honors and involved in all kinds of stuff. But, you know, they can't sit down and crank out a basic solid model for me, and onshape or SolidWorks, or something like that. They can't do a basic load calculation, Excel spreadsheet, they can't do basic C programming or something like that. And that's, that's really no fault of the individual that's really on. I think that's a statement about the degree plans and what what those look like in this day and age. I hope that answer your question.

Aaron Moncur: 13:45

Yeah, no, I agree. 100% with everything you just said, what, what advice would you give to students right now that might be listening to this podcast, who want to maximize the chances of finding a great job out of college,

Chris Bridgewater: 14:01

I would say, you know, if you if you want to be in engineering, and you want to design stuff, and you want to, you want to build stuff, I mean, at the end of the day, if you're if you're going for a Nike or E or something like that, your your dream is probably to be designing something, and probably be designing something that's going to be life changing to some group of individuals. And I would say to get into that field as quickly as possible, at a minimum as a volunteer, go be involved in that community. You know, you know, look, look for companies that are willing to let you shadow their engineers or, you know, and be willing to do crowd work. As far as grunt work, and in general is a lot different, you know, there's, I've got, I've got spreadsheets of data that come out we get, you know, one of our datasets will get basically equal a 15 Excel workbooks with with you know, each one has 300,000 lines of data on it, that goes out, I don't know how many how many columns it goes out. But, you know, those are all data points that are taking every second over the next 25 days, or 25 days, and I need to, I need to, I need to take all those things and make a graph and you make one graph out of all that stuff for my customers see, and, and that's the kind of grunt work that you know, you could be doing as either unpaid or paid intern, you know, I'm even willing, at some of my paid internships, I, I lit, I'll have another intern who makes half of what my engineers may do the same work of engineers doing. And just to kind of give them the experience, and let them see what they need to be doing sequel or how to do those things, I fully expect it to be wrong, and that's okay, that's fine. That's why I'm having the other engineer do it, too, that's I'm having to degreed engineer do it too. But you know, just just look for those opportunities, getting that didn't call that community. Anything you can do investing yourself investing your time, when I get out of the army, I went right into getting a degree in mechanical engineering, and I, I nearly invested in computers, and that could an a computer that could run SolidWorks and, and got this all work student license. I still taking like basic, general education courses, but I knew that's what I what I needed to do to accomplish things I want to do. And so I got right into it. And so I, I bought the books that I studied, like I was going to, like I was going to take the PE exams and FE exams and things like that, just to really bring out my knowledge. So when I did get those engineering courses that by the way, I ended up dropping out of all that because the company was taken off, when I did get those courses, you know, a little bit easier to handle that stuff. And then when we started using it in the real world, and my because I have a I have a My chief engineers a PE, and he's been he graduated from U of A's and Becky might around 1989 or something like that. So he's been doing this for a very long time. But I needed to be able to speak with him on his level. And, and I just went out and, and just just kept my nose in the books, like every every book, I could find on stock morning terminology. And if there, because I started out when I got, you know, I got me as an employee at another company, working with engineers, I was just the other technician, right. So I was just putting things together for him. And I would just I would hear them talk about stuff and I'd write that stuff down, I'd go research it later, find out what they're talking about. And then just ask them questions. And just just, you know, work for free basically, today, grunt work, I would say that, as the owner of the company, and a leader engineers, those are the kinds of things that that I look for, not to the degree that I do. Because of your work to the degree that I do, then then you should run your own business. But you know, you I want to see some flavor of what I'm doing some some major effort. You know, if you come in here, and you, you know, you act like you, you know everything and you've got your degree and you want to put that on the wall and you want a whole bunch of money per hour, you kind of prove to me that, you know, you're going to make the company that amount and more. Because every single person in the company, including myself has to generate more revenue for the company than what we cost.

Aaron Moncur: 18:40

I think that's a great point. Yeah, as, as a fellow business owner, I see the same thing. It's so easy and have no fault of their own. Because employees, they see a different side of the coin than we do, right. But you everyone on the team needs to be able to generate more revenue than it costs to employ them. I think that's a great point for any young engineers, engineering students to keep in mind is that you need to be able to provide enough value that you're going to generate more revenue for your company than it costs to employ you. And another thing I feel like this is changing, but it's kind of still the mentality where if you want to become an engineer, there's this set path, right? You go to university, you take your classes, you get a good enough GPA, and then you go out into into the workforce. And I love what you did. You jumped into university. You did it for several years, but you didn't just rely on the college to dictate your path. You kind of took destiny in your own hands you figured out I need to understand this to excel at my ultimate goal. So I went out and figured out who I need to talk to and who I needed to work with to gain that experience. And then You know, whatever it was two, three years into it, your company started taking off. So instead of saying, well, I need to finish my degree because you know, that's the path, you said, No, the path is to achieve my goals, one of which is this company. And that's where it's taking me right now. So I'm going to, you know, put school on side and just focus on, on on the goal, which is the company. So I love that the the piece of paper to me is less and less relevant. You know, the further we get into the future here, and I think that mindset and mentality is changing.

Chris Bridgewater: 20:34

Yeah, and I say one of the things is real quickly on that is, I suggest people that want to be engineers, especially in the Mackey's is to go take courses at the technical colleges that are around them. And in welding and a track, there's a lot of, you know, construction trades that these these colleges offer. And I recommend they go take at least one class, you know, it's it's, what, like 150 bucks, 200 bucks, something like that, you go there, and you may fail the class. And that's totally fine. But that's going to teach you just how hard it is to assemble something or put something together that you're trying to design helps you understand the plight of that technician that you're you're designing stuff to be assembled by. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 21:16

I love telling young engineers who are hungry, for experience to go Go to Goodwill and find some products and buy them for like $2 each, then go tear him apart, see what they look inside? How are they designed? How are they built? How are they assembled? I mean, there's so much knowledge in a$2 You know, 10 year old trash product that is it will just available for anyone who wants to acquire it?

Chris Bridgewater: 21:46

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.

Aaron Moncur: 21:50

Let's say Jumping kind of back into the military service for just a second, it looked like one of the roles that you held was as a liaison between military personnel and civilian resources. Can you talk just a little bit? How was being that bridge, so to speak, what were the different communication styles required for the two different groups of people or was it all just, you know, pretty smooth?

Chris Bridgewater: 22:18

No, it wasn't smooth at all, especially with a couple of the really large companies that are out there that have major contracts with the DOD, that are three letter acronyms. Those guys were the some of the worst people that I've ever met. We literally had soldiers getting electrocuted, and you know, because of their really bad work, and because they just refuse to follow the directions. And they just thought, Oh, this is just some, you know, army base in the middle of nowhere, doesn't need to be up to code. But there's no short cutting electrical code, right, it's got no grounding, grounding, and there's no way around that. So working working with those guys, you know, yeah, have a have a different set of terminology, working with those civilian contractors, and inspecting their work and signing off on it, and then ultimately getting them paid. And then resolving issues to you know, that that were out there on the on the battlefield, I was part of the team to go around and inspect a bunch of different work sites that were were being done and just found a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse. Coming from you know, American contractors, American contracting companies, and people on the ground that just didn't care. I will say, the floor, the major contract company, there, there were stellar there, they came in, and they just fixed so many things for free, like the, you know, they went outside of their, their contract agreements, to make sure that we had everything we need. We as in soldiers that were there. So I give, give major props to them, they taught me a lot of great stuff, those guys there, I still talk to a lot of them in front of them for the last, you know, 11 years now. So that they were they were great. And part of so part of that experience is what drove me to make this company is that and that's it's kind of in our in our mission statement in our employee handbooks and our culture culture handbook is that you know, we, my gosh, there are a lot of there's in my industry, so that was construction, and now we're in the, you know, thermal management. And there are a lot of other companies in this industry, and they suck and they make all kinds of false claims and false promises. And, and, you know, mind him a bit, those products may work great, and it's the only sector but they make these claims in the DoD side of things. And I can tell you that it just doesn't work. Right. And, and it's a hindrance To the warfighters. And so our focus is that we are we're transparent with our end users we are we are, we support them 100%. We, we do not compromise quality. If it's if it's a hard challenge, we don't go with an easy solution, we we figure out a way to make that solution work, we figure out that challenging and make it work. And it's it. Maybe you can, you can kind of hear me getting passionate about it, and I do it I do, you know, I run this way around this way so that we can be, we can be better, right? It's easy to be better than than what's currently out there. And it's all those lessons I learned with those contractors overseas. It's part of what motivates me to to have my own company and be a contractor specifically to the DoD because I want to provide that better service to the guys that that I was, right.

Aaron Moncur: 25:57

Yeah. Well, let's, let's talk about your company a little bit. How How did Delta development team get started?

Chris Bridgewater: 26:07

So basically, what happened was, we I, I left the army and my last assignment, like, I'd say, like, five or six months came or exactly, I'd say about a little bit longer that my last deployment, I was, I was taken over to this Lieutenant that is there. And he said, and I told him, I was thinking about moving to Tucson and pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering. Because I wanted to focus on on like, renewable energy stuff. And you have a he had a good had a good program for that. And the metallic replacing said, Oh, I grew up in Tucson, I went to university, Arizona, and I got my degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Arizona, I used to work for this company, they're in Tucson, I think they could use them, I like USA, okay, great. So he got me in contact with, with that company. And then and then the guy that was his boss, hired me. And so there were three employees at that company. And we were there. And as I was working, and of course, my, my major is that I've been kind of an entrepreneur from, from, from the get go from a little kid, I was always looking for a better way to make things better. And of course, I wanted to do stuff with the DVD sales industry that I knew, and I was passionate about getting back and helping those guys. And I saw this, I kept seeing this, this call for this, this blood cooler. And I, you know, I knew that the ones that, you know, I knew that basically ones that we had or just unusable. And so, you know, I said, I tried to convince this company I was working for, to, to do this. And we tried some experiments, and it didn't really work out. And I said, you know, I, I think I want to, you know, try this on my own. And so, so I said, Alright, they they basically, like two weeks notice. And then a few days later, the other two engineers that were there, and they said, hey, you know, sure we're gonna do this, we want to go with you. And I said, All right, well, let's all be partners. And I knew a fourth guy that was actually here in Tucson that was a retired Special Forces medic from the US Army. And so we, you know, got in contact with him. I said, Hey, I'm doing this think probably use your help. From the medical settings, because he's, you know, he had 25 years of experience doing, you know, tactical medical operations. And he's like, that. Sounds great. Let's do it. And so we, the four of us, formed the company. The other veteran and myself, we have majority ownerships or service disabled veteran owned small business. So when we started the company, we got a we got a subcontract. To do a large, we had no money, I wanted to do the blood cooler, but we had no money for it. And so we got a subcontract to do the tricon, which is a food food refrigeration system. And we made that more efficient. And then through that, we just got more contracts and more contracts. And, and I'd say that first year, kind of talking about how that so we've been around for two years. And we actually be two years and in August, so yeah, so I found it. I found it in August of 2018. And that first year, as soon as we had money coming in, I was on planes. And I was all over the place. I did I think I think in 2019 I did about 180,000 miles and air $200,000 in the air or something like that. Just going to every single event maybe with every contract now sir, I could meet with anybody that I thought was gonna help get us some money. I, I was knocking on the door and I was talking to them and I was showing them what we're doing and Just to, to all those efforts and the efforts of my my teammates here, my co owners, we've, you know, they, they too, they, they are knocking on doors too. And they were talking everybody they knew and getting everybody we could could involved in it and users and customers and all kinds of stuff. And from there, we've just grown like, like, I'm hardly a time for business development anymore. It's not a great position to be in. But we're so busy with the contract that we have, and just more contracts are coming off of those things without really a lot of effort. That the, I guess you could say the, the fruits of our labor him, you know, are, are upon us, and we're reaping a harvest or whatever metaphor you want to use. But we put a lot of effort in that first year, just a lot of, you know, 100 hour work weeks, and all that just keep the things to get the word out about this new company.

Aaron Moncur: 31:00

Well, well, where's problems? To have a guess? Right? Too much work? Yeah, yeah. Something I found interesting about your, your title or your role. This is on LinkedIn, it didn't just say CEO, can't find the sentence I wrote down now that but it was something about you know, Leadership and Motivation and equipping people.

Chris Bridgewater: 31:27

So So I, so I have, I have one main responsibility in this company that branches out into into two different so on that one coin that had this, and it's one coin, it's got two sides to it, just the same coin that's got two sides. And one side is leadership and one side of management. And on the leadership side, I provide purpose, direction and motivation. Right. And on the management side, I train organized and equip. Okay. So on the management side, I make sure everybody's properly trained, properly organized, and know what they're doing, and they have the right equipment to do it. And I asked it, I keep it very plain and very simple. As I asked those three things. In my team meetings, we're doing a project and comedian, you know, I may sit there the whole time, and not not really saying anything. But those are the three things I'm going to ask, I'm going to make sure that you're you know what you're doing, do I need to get you the right training to do this, do we need to bring in somebody to train you how to do this, and it's not the fault of that person, like I am more than happy to spend the money on any amount of training that we need to have. So that to my team are experts in it, and make sure they all understand the roles and responsibilities and what they're doing in this particular project, we had the right equipment to do it, if we need a new tool for the new software, if we need, what I don't care what it is, we need to get it so that we can do this, right, I don't want to want to hamstring something together. On the leadership side, you know, providing purpose, direction and motivation. It's just those three things you can't I mean, you can whatever definition you want it all boiled down, same thing, make sure that everybody understands what they're doing, the direction we're going in, and that they're motivated to do this, and they want to be here and that they have to have real emotional buying into what we're doing and why we're doing it.

Aaron Moncur: 33:08

Do you find that you can actually motivate a person to do something? Or does that person already have to have their own motivation?

Chris Bridgewater: 33:16

So everybody has their own motivation? And, you know, if you, you know, you absolutely mood the question, the answer is that, yes, you can motivate somebody to do what they need to do, right, their tasks. Now, how that motivation happens, that's, that's where the purpose comes in, right? You gotta identify their purpose for doing this. Right. So So you may have, you may have a, you may have an employee, and this is speaking on leadership side of things right. Now, as far as finding yourself motivation, that's a whole nother conversation, but as a leader, right, and there's a difference between a manager and a leader, I want to make that very clear, there's, there's a big difference in management and leadership. And if you're a leader, and you need to be adaptable to every single person that you're leading, right, and you got to find their purpose, and then you take that purpose, you identify that purpose, you hold on to that purpose. And that's what helps you generate the finding the motivation for that individual to show to work every day, it may be that that person is only there's only motivation for being there is to put food on the table. And that's totally fine. Right? And you want to make sure that that that that purpose is met, you want to make sure that that you are providing as a leader you your purpose is to make sure that their purchases are met, okay? If it's four different experiences, you know, I got employees or what what training experience over a higher pay, I got some that want a higher pay over or better benefits or something like that, or they want to, they want to work on a particular project. You know, they want to work on particular piece of technology or develop a piece of technology for engineering purposes. So you got to identify all the things and then and then run with

Aaron Moncur: 34:56

it. This reminds me of something Synnex book Start With Why, you know, it's what is the why behind your what you're doing? I think it's synonymous with purpose. How, how have you been able to identify different people's purposes? Like how do you know what someone's purpose is,

Chris Bridgewater: 35:15

I have very in depth counseling with all my employees, from the, from the interview to the, to the first day that they're here, I mean, the first day that someone searched search working with us, you know, I may spend five hours in the room with them and just just getting to know them, you know, on a, up until up until this Coronavirus thing, every week, I made it a point to take at least one employees to lunch and I would cycle that out and you know, pay for the lunch, you know, I don't my own pocket and just make it a hour and a half, two hour lunch and just talk to them. Whatever they want to talk about, I'll just just kind of get to know them and just let them talk and, and just hear what they had to say. And then I just, you know, keep keep all that in my mind. And you know, we've all got our own own challenges, we've all got our own paradigms that we're dealing with, and I try to track all that the best I can and respect all that and kind of revolve the, the, the counseling, the food, the formal counselors, I do, you know, they they identified the career path for for that individual within this company. Because when I say, everybody, I've hired everybody that works here that I envision, they're going to work here for at least 10 years, like, like, nobody's leaving, right. And, and because we're building a team, we're building a family here, and everybody's gonna be very intimate with each other. And so I got to know those things until he had his career progression laid out based on all those all those lunches, all those side conversations, all those, you know, whatever. I try to cater all that stuff as much as I can. I mean, there's, there's, there's comes a point where like, you can't go too in depth, and something's gotta gotta let go. But to the best of my abilities to the best of my time available, I try to do the best I can. And that counts for a lot, test for a lot really with the employees.

Aaron Moncur: 37:19

That's fantastic. That's huge. We're getting towards the end of our time here. So maybe just one or two more questions. Are there any best practices that you and your team have developed with respect to engineering and product development that you can share with us? Like, what? What are the checklists that you go through? What are the the approaches that you take to product development that have proven to be useful?

Chris Bridgewater: 37:48

So you want to do sync meetings as much as possible? Not as well, not as much as possible, but you want to have you had a brainstorming session, you want to foster this brainstorming sessions, you want to read that equipment, while the whiteboards write some sounds? Sounds like a simple answer. But really, white boards are huge. And for great, on the spot brainstorming, I think there's, I think we have, you know, four whiteboards for every employee that's here. So you want to have that, and then you want to get you want to bring the engineers and you're gonna bring them you're gonna bring the engineers to product development, the sales staff, like you want to bring all them in, in the very beginning, you're gonna have a really good set of standards for a process for product development. You know, there's the, we use the the mission model canvas, which is the same as the, you know, the business model canvas, but it's different for DOD stuff. So the mission model canvas, right, like, what are we trying to accomplish here, and then every person has to input their their two cents on how well they how how much success, they think that that program is going to have before even like, investing in basic designs or SolidWorks drawings or something like that. Just Just a lot of collaboration, a lot of open discussion. And then to that end with with the open session, like, just being very frank with each other and, and working with individuals here, you know, personalities, right, getting down to the personalities. So that's the answer your question.

Aaron Moncur: 39:23

Yeah, I hear a lot of different ways of saying communication, probably more than that. But definitely hitting hard on communication, which is something I've found to be the case as well. We have, we have a virtual team. We're all kind of in the same geographical space, but most of we work from home. We have an office also. But a lot of times it's just more convenient and honestly effective to work from home. So that's what we do. And to keep everyone communicating. We'll have a daily huddle. You know, everyone jumps on a Hangouts call. We do that every day. And then we also have what we call Launch Pad which is Monday every week we spend a little bit more time and everyone talks about what are we doing this week? What are the goals this way. And it gives everyone a really good sense for what's going on company wide. And then it gives, you know, the the project manager, engineering manager chance to make sure that he knows, each team member is really clear on what they're supposed to be doing. So great. 100% communication is so critical. It just Yeah, it was to facilitate that.

Chris Bridgewater: 40:27

Yeah, we have a company wide one on Wednesday, all hands me on Wednesdays, every every, every Wednesday at the same time. And then throughout the week, Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have product specific project product and project specific meetings where I sit on every single one of those. And they may not, you know, obviously not the whole companies, and they're not every engineers in those meetings, but you know, at least have one person tracking that has been CEO, it can be the CEO can be whatever, but have one person tracking, you know, every single project that's going on and understanding the complex scheduling conflicts between between all those things and the challenges going on. So yeah, definitely seek beams and keep them quick. Keep them short. Get in there, get your information out, period, what the problems are in and get out of there.

Aaron Moncur: 41:10

Yes. Can't stand verbose. People just can't stand it. Tell me what you need, then leave. That's it? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Engineer chat. Well, last question, lighten it up a little bit. What's the best compliment you've ever received?

Chris Bridgewater: 41:26

The best compliment I've ever received, there's one that sticks out my mind I got pants been like, like a year or so ago. And I had just started doing this I, I invested in some nice suits. And so this company wore, you know, had had a military haircut and get my face shaved and all that stuff. And I was wearing the suits. And, you know, the military is a lot about, you know, we call it dress, right dress and very formal and like, you know, your gig lines and shoes shine and my shoelaces go right over the left and a lot of different intricacies like that. And I sort of adapted that into the civilian attire, and I wore my tie and all that stuff. And I was going to a lot of events here in Tucson, if I wasn't flying, I was I was here in Tucson at some events, some small business event. And there's a there's a guy here that he runs the rental local chapter, the Arizona tech Council. And he, you know, we run into all these events are kept running into him and kept running into him. I'd say like the 1314 time that that random assume event. And he said he came to me, and you know, because when you're a small business, and you're like, Oh, I just started last month, people are like, okay, you know, talk to me in two years and see if you're still around, right? And, and it's like, well, now I need you to talk to me now somewhere around in two years. But anyways, like 1314 times this guy saw me that for like four months. And he comes up and says, you know, I know you're serious about this. And so the event was a small business event. So everybody was there to pitch their idea to the US government, right? And so he says, You know, I know you're serious. Can you show up every time dressed professionally, and you act professionally and you look at all these other people around here and you know that they're just not serious about it. And and for some reason, that sort of like even though I get strange looks about always being formal, and always have the tie on always, always been being there all these events until like, I could tell you what was going to happen every second of the event over and over. You know, it sort of felt like validation, like, like it was it was noticed it was appreciated by someone who's who's who's a very much a superior in this industry in the tech industry. It's been around for a long time, and he was appreciative of the professionalism. And he's to always show that professional I've seen him in a tuxedo at an event before so you know, it was it was I'm sure I've received a much in I've got other ones about a full bird Colonel that stopped his car when I was in Afghanistan, he got out and he asked me, you know, he called me by my callsign asked me if that's who I was. And I got up my approval ragged and he's like, like, just keep doing what you're doing. My guys appreciate it. And that was, that was cool, you know? And like, Could I was fine. All right. I can stand by myself, like fixing things, doing different things for contractors and stuff. And this guy just over Colonel like, knew somehow knew who I was. I was sitting on a bench outside on the flightline waiting on a helicopter to go to another outpost. And this guy just over Colonel just

Aaron Moncur: 44:26

told me so. That was a major year. That's incredible.

Chris Bridgewater: 44:30

Yeah, it was really cool. It was really cool. So I know, I don't want to I know we got some I know we're like down in the second chair. I wonder if I can make some recommendations for some books here. Please. Absolutely. So. So there's there's four books here that have really made a difference in the last two years about business and growth and all that stuff. And I'm just gonna rattle them off real quickly. And hopefully people can Google them and find them. So the first one is Think and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. You can get the revised 21st century one it was written a long time ago is really great book. Next one is traction, traction get a grip on your business. That's by Gino Wicklund. And then grow by Jim Single, single, and then the E Myth, an E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Those Those four books, I've read and reread numerous times, I've implemented a lot of things from from those books. And they've, they've really helped the company continue to grow. And it helped us build a really great platform for for continued growth and success. So I would be remiss if I did not do a shout out to those four bucks.

Aaron Moncur: 45:52

That's great. It sounds like we have very similar libraries based on those four book recommendations,

Chris Bridgewater: 45:59

Probably to probably do.

Aaron Moncur: 46:01

Well, Chris, thank you so much for spending some time with me and sharing your your wisdom and your insights, I really appreciate it super impressed with what you've done in a really short amount of time with with Delta. If people want to get a hold of you, you know, for business or otherwise, what's the best way that they can get a hold of you

Chris Bridgewater: 46:23

Just go to our website and fill out the contact form. And then myself and a couple other people in the company and we'll get the emails or phone numbers are on there to leave a leave a voicemail and, and we'll call you back, you know, that? Just the overwhelming number of spam emails and phone calls I get. I can't answer every single one that comes through. But yeah, you know, serious inquiries and things like that. I've definitely or people are looking for advice on stuff engineers looking for advice, young engineers, young entrepreneurs, whatever. And I say young entrepreneurs only for two years. But you know, if it's, we've, we've got a very healthy company here. We've got about a 12 month runway. So we're doing pretty good. I'm happy to I'm happy to pro bono, you know, talk to people if those if I didn't get a lot of free advice, a lot of good free advice. You know, no free advice is good. If I didn't get that advice, I wouldn't be where I am today. So I'm happy to pay it forward. And do what I can.

Aaron Moncur: 47:24

And the website address is

Chris Bridgewater: 47:27

should be delta Dev team.com

Aaron Moncur: 47:30

Delta Dev team.com. Great.

Chris Bridgewater: 47:33

Yeah. Delta team. Yeah, that's the Dev team.com get you right there.

Aaron Moncur: 47:40

Confirmed. All right. All right, Chris. Well, again, thank you so much. We really appreciate you having spending some time with us and anything else that that you want to say before we end

Chris Bridgewater: 47:53

I just really appreciate you having me really, really flattering. And, and we do it do it again next year.

Aaron Moncur: 48:01

Sounds good. Yeah, we'll make a recurring appointment for this. Alright, see you later. I'm Aaron Moncure, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at test fixture design.com Thanks for listening