S1E13 A Holistic View on Product Development | Devon Campbell

Devon Campbell is the founder and Managing Director of Prodct LLC.  Prodct is a Boston-based, boutique advisory firm focused on helping emerging entrepreneurs and early-stage biotech, medical device, diagnostic, and therapeutic companies create and execute expedited product development, manufacturing, quality, regulatory, and commercialization strategies. 
 
Before Prodct, Devon led product development and engineering at several successful medical device and diagnostic companies over the last 21+ years including Quanterix ($74M IPO in 2017), Novartis Companion Diagnostics (acquired Genoptix for $740M in 2011 + Vivacta for $90M in 2012), and Ventana Medical Systems ($3.4B acquisition by Roche in 2008). 

Devon serves as an advisor or board member for several start-ups and organizations, most recently including MasksOn.org, a non-profit designing and donating high-quality PPE to healthcare professionals working selflessly to care for COVID-19 patients. He can also be found at his personal website https://www.devonccampbell.com or Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/devonccampbell/ .  

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 Devin Campbell, who has worked in many different engineering roles from design engineer to engineering manager to senior director, and is currently running his own consultancy called products. That's PR o d, c t that I pronounce it correctly. Okay, perfect. So, welcome to the podcast. Devin, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Yeah, I'm happy to be here and excited to talk with you. First question, why No, you in product? There's no, this must be a you have a thing, right? That's how they teach grammar. They're

Devon Campbell: 0:54

not you have a thing? You know that there's really no clever answer to the question. I really focus my advisory practice on helping people think through all the infrastructure that you need to be able to do product development really well. And it's all about product development. So I know I needed that name somewhere in the title, when I was trying to figure out what to call this thing is this adventure that I've been on for the last two years. And I'm a big kayaker, mountain biker, I kept looking for analogies with respect to those different sports and, and, and things that you would use and equipment that you would use it has like an engineering tone to it helps kind of steer you in the right direction or you know, things like rudders or, or, or aspects of a kayak. And all of it just kind of felt forced to me. And ultimately, it came down to, you know, as simple as better. And what do I really focus on? It's product development. So simplified the name product, but just product itself seemed too basic. So I just I dropped the U out of it as PR o DCT. In product Dev is the website. So it kind of works and speaks really clearly to what it is that we do.

Aaron Moncur: 2:17

And it's memorable. I mean, I'm not going to forget product with no you, that's for sure.

Devon Campbell: 2:22

I've tried to think of clever ways to say, well, you know, we take you out of the park development process, but that's, you know, that's not right. And you need to be part of it. That's the whole that's the whole point. So I haven't tried to do anything with it.

Aaron Moncur: 2:37

Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So speaking of product dot Dev, the website is very minimal. Yeah, what's, what's the strategy behind that.

Devon Campbell: 2:47

So pretty much all of our work has been through word of mouth. And through either the C suite network that I am involved within, or advisory, other advisory groups that I'm supporting, or the venture capitalists that support a lot of the emerging entrepreneurs, that I try to focus, my business on supporting. And all of that work has been sufficient to keep us more than flush with opportunities to help really cool emerging entrepreneurs, and in the technology development space, so we haven't really needed to do much. I knew I needed to have some kind of landing page, do event do offer podcasts like this, or others, the global medical device, podcast or med tech, true quality stories, and others where people hear me, and they hear us talking about product, and I needed to have some landing sites. So I just put something really simple there. Whether it grows into more someday, that may, but for right now, I've kept it pretty, pretty minimalist. By the time you've reached that website, you already have a pretty good include in your head that there might be something that my firm can do to help you and reach out to support and it goes from there.

Aaron Moncur: 4:19

Got it. That makes sense. So it's almost like you're you're not hurting for work. Certainly you're you're almost kind of tempering it with the the minimalist aspect there. Yeah,

Devon Campbell: 4:28

I mean, it would help obviously, to help other people kind of understand what we do as a company. But generally, isn't it's all word of mouth. I already have those referrals in place. And we get very limited work although we have had some kind of cold calling reaching out for support, and we're happy to deploy some resources to help talk with those people. But for the most part, we haven't really needed to advance the website that much. And of course they say all of With a huge caveat that, you know, what would it hurt for me to go ahead and have us updated? Additionally, more, you know, it could just drive additional business. We may do that in the in the near future, but right. Right now, for the last two years, we haven't really needed to do that.

Aaron Moncur: 5:17

Well, simple is great, too. I mean, simple is less to deal with less to break less to fix, right?

Devon Campbell: 5:23

That's, I mean, that that keep it simple philosophy permeates through everything that we do as engineers, so kind

Aaron Moncur: 5:29

of speaks to your brand even like that. Okay. You also have the Devin Campbell comm website where it goes into a little bit more information about you yourself. One thing I read there that was really interesting is I guess you're into photography, to some extent, is that accurate? Yeah.

Devon Campbell: 5:48

Um, I think I kind of introduced myself a little bit on that. Devin see Campbell comm website. You Yeah, I mean, I, I like to take a lot of pictures, I have an eye toward I am a mechanical design engineer, by training and by practice. So a lot of my photography is of gears, and there's a lot of symmetry involved, there's a lot of roundness and parallel lines, it just kind of speaks to me as an engineer, and I find a lot of beauty in in design, and in the simplicity of design, so I like to take pictures of that when I'm out and about and it's all just random stuff. I don't purposely go out looking for things I'll just, I'll be riding the subway. I'll see. I'll see something that speaks to me and I'll take a picture of it. Try to line it up as best I can. I do very minimal post processing. But I do have an affinity toward black and white.

Aaron Moncur: 6:54

Do you prefer to use your phone for the most part or do you have some heavier gear that you take around with you on it?

Devon Campbell: 7:00

I have heavier gear but I don't typically take it around with me since it's always when the moment strikes and I see something like oh wow, that's really that's that's cool. How like there's a tractor out in the field behind my house. And I found it kind of in the woods and you know, I just have my phone on me it's not like I'm walking around with my big DSLR so the Canon for the most part just stays on the shelf and I am doing a lot with my with my phone. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 7:28

the best cameras the one you have at the moment right? I started a photography company many years ago with a friend of mine and we actually ran it for four or five years and so I I am also a lover of photography sounds like you're in into the canon gear what what Canon camera do you have? Oh, I

Devon Campbell: 7:47

have I have an old I was probably 10 years old. It's a was it EOS Rebel or something like that?

Aaron Moncur: 7:57

Oh yeah, that's a great one.

Devon Campbell: 8:01

I have a minimal set of lenses that I swap that I would swap in and out but like I said it's it's spending more time gathering dust than it does I mean the cameras in our phones are just I purposely why my phone only for the camera capabilities to be quite honest

Aaron Moncur: 8:22

so I'll and what phone are you using using iPhones

Devon Campbell: 8:25

for long for quite a while but like when the seven first came out I got the big giant seven even though I hated carrying around this brick this HDTV against the side of my head I get a better camera and

Aaron Moncur: 8:42

in the software that they have to create the bouquet the blurred background it's it's gorgeous they really have done a great job

Devon Campbell: 8:49

yeah, it does a nice job. Oh, I

Aaron Moncur: 8:51

had something I was gonna say what was it? Oh, it was the rebel I just had to mention this that's where I started as well with a rebel and again just like yours it's it's over 10 years old at this point but with you know we're recording this during the whole quarantine period and so kids are home and my wife and I we took out the old rebel I don't think anyone has used it for probably, I don't know six or eight years and it's working like a champ the kids are are taking pictures and learning Photoshop and I mean I was really impressed with how it still works flawlessly.

Devon Campbell: 9:27

I like how much control you can get using you know a camera that's meant to be a camera not just a phone. Do you

Aaron Moncur: 9:34

think that part of photography that appeals to engineers is the technical aspect No, there's there's dialing in the lighting and there's the aperture and the ISO and the frame rate and all that stuff. I would did the technical aspect appeal to you or was it really just the artistic side?

Devon Campbell: 9:52

Honestly, it was the artistic side. When I went to school, I got my bachelor's and master's both major Chemical Engineering. But I also took enough courses within the creative writing program to have a minor in creative writing. So there's always been this, this air of creativity balanced with the the strict technical nature of what we do professionally. And I think the two can blend really well. But in photography, I like to use the creativity as a way to showcase the technical, I'm not geeking out over the technical of the photography gear itself, I get more excited by taking a good look at the the gear or the valve or whatever it is that I'm finding out in nature, or out in just in the environment.

Aaron Moncur: 10:47

That's great. That's great. I know, we're on a podcast about engineering. So thanks for humoring me and no problem or fee for a little while. Alright, so let's dive into the engineering. You started out working at? What was it? Ventana? That was one of the first Okay, and and pretty quickly kind of climbed the ladder? And within I think it was about 10 years had gone from a design engineer to a director level? Is that accurate?

Devon Campbell: 11:15

Yeah. I would, I would layer in the additional perspective that I went out of my way to find engineering roles while in college. And throughout my bachelor's and my master's, I was working in engineering disciplines. Of course, I wasn't working as it as an actual engineer at that point. But I was fortunate enough, for example, during my undergraduate, to work at the suit observatory Mirror Lab, at the University of Arizona, where the world's largest telescope mirrors were cast and polished. And it's a great kind of engineering Wonderland. And I was fortunate enough to have a boss there who took an interest in kind of molding me as an engineer. It was okay, well, what are you taking this semester, and I'm taking, maybe thermodynamics and computational fluid, you know, dynamics, something like that. And so, okay, great. Well, he took me to projects to work on that or in that space. So now I'm, maybe I'm taking an optics class, and he gave me some work, there's a lot of optics there, it gave me some worked in the optic space, helping design in parameters and things like that. And using the tools back then it was earlier, probably, that I was using. But it really kind of gave me an opportunity to get a feel for what it was like and to work with professional engineers. So that by the time I finished my bachelor's and master's and started working at fintona, I'd already had, let's see, five, six years of kind of experience in that space. So it kind of gave me a big leg up on jumping into the this work environment and being able to make an immediate impact. And kind of understanding how you design things. And where I worked at the Mirror Lab, I not only designed it, but then I had to go down into the machine shop and learn how to machine it myself and how to program the CNCS and how to run them. And whether I'm running a bridge, a bridge port, or you know, a manual bill or lathe, it gave me that unique opportunity to kind of learn how to best design something for manufacturability because I had to go and manufacture it. So I learned, you know what stupid things not to do. And I think that allowed me it was one of the factors that allowed me to perform so well and gain additional responsibility at such a nonlinear pace once I started working.

Aaron Moncur: 14:01

Okay, so what I'm hearing is one of if not the biggest factor in allowing you to advance so rapidly was the fact that you already had some of this previous experience working part time when you were a student at a few different places. And also, you had experience working in a machine shop, maybe not like as a you know, full time machinist apprentice or anything like that. But you you understood manufacturing to the point where you could you could design something with designed for manufacturing in mind. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. And and was climbing the ladder to kind of that managerial or director level role. Was that always kind of part of the goal or did that just happen organically? Totally

Devon Campbell: 14:50

not part of the goal. So I think, let me answer that question, but I'll dive into the second aspect I think that allowed me to perform well and ultimately realize all the successes I've been fortunate enough to have. I was never satisfied as a design engineer, just sit in my office and design something up in CAD, do some modeling, do some, as a true engineer should think through the aspects of the design. In a vacuum, I always wanted to understand who all of my downstream customers were. And when I say customers, I don't mean ultimately the person who is using or the person who's buying the product. But I mean, everyone from the quality engineers have to review the documentation that I generate, and approve it. The manufacturing engineers who have to help create the manufacturing lines to where the manufacturing work instructions to help build whatever it was that I came up with, you have a lot of responsibility as a design engineer, very high upstream, to make sure that what you're designing and developing meets the needs of a lot of different key stakeholders. And I like understanding that holistic picture. So I would do things when I was working at Ventana like, you know, asked to go out onto the manufacturing line. And I don't want to stand over the people building stuff with my arms crossed and just watching and shaking, you know, nodding my head every wants to say, Oh, I like what they're doing. No, I wanted to get trained the way they got trained. I wanted to go through the same programs, I want to sit on the manufacturing line for a few weeks, and learn what it's like to be in that space. I did the same thing to understand what are the ramifications and and what do the field service engineers have to deal with. So I asked because we were fortunately everything was in house where I was we didn't outsource really anything. So I had the opportunity to say alright, I want to go shadow a field service engineer for two weeks. And so they sent me it actually turns out to be the East Coast they sent me out to and I stayed with a very senior engineer to understand what their life was like out here. And what kind of decisions do I make in a way upstream in the in the development space, to allow them you make their lives of a nightmare, or make it really easy for them, and took those learnings take that brought it back taught my team what I what I learned out in the field, so that we can all do a better job to meet everyone's needs, not just the end user. And I think that holistic approach allowed me to live in other people's shoes, understand what it takes to walk not just a mile, but several miles in those shoes, and then be able to come back and design a better shoe to allow them to do that job better. So that coupled with you know, having a little bit of a of a head start on understanding what the environment would be like, before I started there, I think those two things coupled really allowed me to progress quickly. Now, I love being an engineer. And you didn't you ask someone to answer that question. Now you asked about my ability to whether it was organic, or it was it was part of the plan. I love being a mechanical engineer, and my intent had been the entire time. You know, I really like doing what I do. I like understanding the holistic picture, I like coming up with things in my in my head. I like designing them, I like doing the engineering analysis to make sure that what I'm designing is elegant, and clean and simple, but straightforward, easy to use, and not too much material, but just enough material. I love thinking through all of that piece of it. And really, my sense of self identity was of that of a design engineer. And it just so happened that because I had done so much work to understand the holistic picture that the team, the management team that I worked with, and I had some amazing mentors and and, and advisors and bosses in that space. Saw that I could do more and actually approached me at one point said, Hey, Devin, we're gonna pull you up out of engineering. And we want to put you in these other roles where you'll be in charge of engineering, but you'll also have a lot of other responsibilities that aren't just pure engineering. And I when your company asked you to do something you said, I've always had philosophy like okay, yeah, well, I'll do it because they've asked me to, but I didn't like it. You know, I came home and I was like, I really don't like the way this is going. This is gonna lead me more as a manager or than mine being a manager of engineers but to be Director of Product Development and be in charge of all of it. Development and all aspects of a design through development and commercialization and service and support and everything else. I was not excited about that. But they had, they had faith, and they kind of taught me to have some confidence in their ability to see what I could do, and put me in that environment and gave me the right support that I need. And I ended up finding as much as I've kind of fought it tooth and nail, I ended up finding out that I was really good at it. And I think a big piece of that had been because I'm an engineer, and I look at the way that we're trained to look at really big problems and break them down, and to analyze things and to move forward. And that meticulous and kind of thoughtful way allowed me to take that style of thinking I'd apply it to broader product development themes. And I ended up actually really liking that side of the that side of the space. And I've kind of been on that that more senior leadership side of the spectrum, kind of ever since.

Aaron Moncur: 21:11

Okay, here's an another question for you. And this is not, this is not within the context of Devin capital, this is a more general context here, it seems to me like oftentimes, there is an incentive, whether it's prestige, or financial incentives for an engineer to move up into some sort of managerial or director role. And you know, that that's great. I have a little bit of a problem with it, when someone who's really good at engineering, and maybe isn't going to be great at managing people gets plucked from the engineering pool and placed into an managerial role, simply because that individual is very good at engineering. And the assumption becomes, well, if he's that good of an engineer, he's gonna be he's gonna make a great engineering manager. What what do you think about that? Is that a legitimate assumption? Or not?

Devon Campbell: 22:16

I would say absolutely not. You, I have had the pleasure of working with some amazing engineers, just brilliant engineers, and they're great at doing what they're doing. But they are, you have to have the intellectual side, but you also have to have the emotional intelligence side. And to be a really strong manager. Or at least, maybe manager might be maybe a different aspect. But if you're talking like director, Senior Director, or VP level, you have to have a very strong appreciation for the human side of engineering. And we don't always necessarily have that. One thing that I've done with companies that I've run the development for, when we have when I've had engineers that are just brilliant engineers, and they want to do more, and they think a lot of great engineer put me into management is that often kind of coached them toward a fellowship type role. And in two different cases, I had to kind of go and create that side to help people understand there is a role that a very senior level engineer can play, that is still a leadership role, but it's not a managerial role, but it is a leader of other engineers. And to try to create, like an engineering fellow and senior fellow type type roles within an organization, so that people have the opportunity to see these. It's not that there's a ceiling that you're brought up, but up against, and you can't go anywhere unless you go into the management managerial side. It's not the case. I think even really outstanding engineers, that don't have great people skills, could still grow and evolve and have more responsibility and add amazing value to organizations, as leaders of other engineers to kind of help mold younger engineers that come in help teach them the way that we do design and development, whatever the company is, help them appreciate the value of your experience, wait, you know, sharing it with them? That's a really valuable asset and you don't have to be a manager or a director to do all that. So yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 24:42

that's a really interesting approach. So it's almost like a quasi manager. We can't really use that word really to describe it, but and this gets into a little bit of your your coaching or consultancy aspect with product. How How does a company go about about implementing that sort of role, given that they're parb, probably already have an engineering manager, but they have this really seasoned really talented engineer that they want to step into that quasi leadership role. How do you implement that? That engineer leader role.

Devon Campbell: 25:22

So I mean, the way that I've done it is to develop two different tracks so that everyone can see a forward looking trajectory that they might be able to follow. And your, your glide path might be on the managerial side, or your glide path might be that you're interested more in staying purely technical, and you, you don't want to be involved in the in the managerial side of things with performance reviews, and all the other stuff that comes along with that. Or maybe it might be that you think you want that. But your organization says, You know what, you're probably going to add more value for us on the technical track. But to create two of those and show on those different evolution charts, to say, alright, well, you can start as an engineer, but eventually, at some point, you can branch and you can start to go this manager way, or you can start to go this technical leadership way. And I would demonstrate that the salary ranges are the same, depending on both both tracks that you're taking. Is it because that's important to make sure that because a lot of people think, well, I can only get more money if I become a manager or a director. And I say, No, that's not not the case and the situations that I've put in place, so you can be an engineering fellow, and you can get paid the same as, you know, a senior director, if you're a senior fellow, my expectations and the company's expectations of you are different, but there's still very high level expectations. No one is much more on the strategic side, how do we take the company and the product in one direction? What kind of team do we need, but the other one is really, that mentor and that role model and that coach for the team, and you need those people, and you have to pay them appropriately. At least that's been, that's been my experience. But by sending two tracks in place, it really is liberating it frees you up as an engineer to see, alright, well, I don't have this single path that I have to follow, which is all just, you know, engineer, Senior Engineer, manager, senior manager, director, Senior Director, VP, it doesn't have to be that track.

Aaron Moncur: 27:36

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. I agree 100%, that there shouldn't be this like monetary or just prestige based benefit to going into a manager, you should be able to, to receive the same, you know, recognition as being a really good engineer, that, that the prestige shouldn't be associated with leadership necessarily, it should be associated with being really good at what you do. Now, of course, there are limits to that a really, really good janitor is never going to make as much money as a really, really good engineer. But yeah, you know what I'm saying? So let's, let's get into product a little bit more. We talked about your, your coaching, and let's say that I have, I don't know, a startup company, do you work with mostly startups or do work with more established companies as well.

Devon Campbell: 28:32

So we focus our attention primarily on emerging entrepreneurs and earlier stage companies. You know, you might have an a round closed, or a B, or maybe even be working on a C. But for the most part, we don't target companies that are, you know, huge multinational companies, because they've already got tons of engineers and tons of development work that's happening. We have supported larger companies, especially when they're looking for kind of external perspectives on things. But our targets, our target audience, really is is that more of emerging entrepreneurs in earlier stage companies, because we'd really like to get in, right at the very beginning, and help this first time CTO and first time CEO or, you know, it could be two folks that just finished their PhD and they decided to start a company with some technology that that she developed and they're in, they're moving forward with something. But they've really never developed a product that's gonna go out into the marketplace and need to be successful. So we'd like to help those very early stage companies and there's a lot of enthusiasm and excitement in that space. So it's just a place that we enjoy working with.

Aaron Moncur: 30:04

Yeah. Okay, so focusing on young startups, stage companies, let's say I'm one of those. So I've got this new product, it's going to change the world, we just need to get it developed and onto market, I come to use a Devin, we're, you know, we've got a pretty good team got 10 or 20 people here. I'm a first time CTO CEO, what happens next.

Devon Campbell: 30:27

So the first thing that we'll have to do when we come in is to understand what your long term goal is, with whatever it is, you're developing. One thing, I think it's probably important for listeners to understand my entire career. Other than some small optics work that I did, while in school, my entire career has been in medical diagnostic devices and therapeutics. So everything that I've done has been FDA, kind of under FDA jurisdiction, in some cases, but it's not, it's still a life science tool. It's doing r&d work. So it's a very specific skill set and niche market that we try to go after in support. But that specific market has a lot of expectations of you downstream. So if you think you're going to be bringing this new diagnostic device or this new therapeutic, or an implantable or something to market someday, you're going to have to deal with regulators. So I like to understand what is it you're trying to do with your product? What markets do you want to sell it into? Who are the people that you're trying to help with it? Once we understand that, that aspect of the product, I like to focus because we're highly technical, we focus very deeply on the science behind what they're doing, which is fun in the biotech space. So to understand how that works, and then try to marry that science and that deep technical understanding of what they're doing with product requirements. And I like to think through first, what are your user requirements? What are your user needs, it's good business practice to do it anyway. But in the medical device industry, whether you're ISO 13, you're developing something under an ISO 1345, implant quality system. Or if you expect to get FDA approval someday on something, you know, there's certain things that you have to have in place. So we'll start to interrogate the work that had been done to date to understand where is there some gaps. And there's been times where I'll start working with a company, and we'll start diving into it and realize, you know, there aren't, you know, there's no documented Product Requirements anywhere, there's no user needs, and then product requirements, you know, that are evolving from those user needs, and then evolves, ultimately, they would evolve into product specifications, software specifications, everything else that we need to do. So will kind of look backwards and say, Well, what should we have done? To get to, you know, to get to where we are right now? And what kind of gap analysis do we need to put in place and get mitigations put in place to bring us up to speed with where we should be knowing what our long term goal is? And if you're thinking in two or three years from now, I think I want to sell this device in the US. In Mexico, and in Europe, okay, well, fine. Those are three different regulatory agencies, those three different expectations, their safety certification you have to do. So we'll start kind of teasing in what are those things that we need to do now, so that by the time you're done with product development, you've done some verification and validation, you've got a good product, you're not starting over from scratch and saying, Okay, let's go get FDA approval, when in reality should have been doing things in a certain way and documenting certain things from the very beginning, right, the backfill, and it's, it can be done, and a lot of companies do it. It's just really expensive to hire consults should come in and help you recreate design history file, at the end, rather than have having built it in little pieces. And in an inexpensive way from the very beginning. Because you had someone help teach you about the importance of doing it. Yeah, you know, and that's step by step way.

Aaron Moncur: 34:39

So not necessarily specific to the medical device industry, but product development engineering in general. What are some of the, the big obstacles that you've seen in these smaller startup companies and what what strategies have you shared with them? Or what strategies might someone who's not even working with you but maybe just listen to this podcast considered to overcome those those obstacles?

Devon Campbell: 35:04

Well, I think one piece of we touched on it before is to keep a really open mind think holistically about what it is that you do as an engineer, but also if you're if you're an early stage company, and maybe you're the engineer are one of the early leaders for the organization, to think holistically through all aspects, the entire lifecycle of your product, who's going to be touching it? Who needs to review it? Who needs to approve it? How does it get manufactured? All of that allows you, if you think strategically for the long term play, it allows you to do that near term steps in a very careful and thoughtful way. And I think that we as engineers are trained to do that well, and it doesn't matter whether it's the product development for medical devices, or, you know, if you were developing mice, or, or lamps or doorknobs or anything or, you know, auto body components. Knowing that holistic taking that holistic view really allows you to meet the needs of your state of your downstream stakeholders. And, and if you're building up a company, it allows you to build value in the company by demonstrating the people, whether they're VCs or potential partners, that you have an appreciation for that whole the whole environment in which your your product is ultimately going to go into

Aaron Moncur: 36:40

that's, that's solid advice, I'm going to give you 1000 points for that answer. Yeah. What, what are some of the biggest challenges that you personally have at work?

Devon Campbell: 36:52

At work now or at work? In my past,

Aaron Moncur: 36:56

take your pick.

Devon Campbell: 37:00

You know, that's an interesting dynamic, when I made this shift from working 20, some years in product development, working for one company at a time, you know, working on one product at a time using one technology at a time to try to make this pivot into this role, where you're doing advisory work for lots of companies kind of at the same time. And it's really not that much different than working on several projects internal to a company at one time. I mean, you just have to still kind of manage all of that. But it took me a little bit of time to do the mental gymnastics to kind of get my brain wrapped around. Shifting gears and going from one technology and one company that I'm working with in the morning to in the afternoon, working with another I've, I've learned I've come to learn that I find it invigorating, and I really enjoy it. But that has been kind of not even really a challenge just been more kind of an interesting observation and making this pivot. And it gives you not just different technology at different companies to work within, but you're working with different people as well. And I have found, I do everything I can with our organization with product to avoid using the word consultants, we we don't position ourselves as consultants, we position ourselves really as advisors as coaches and mentors. And one line that I like to use a lot of people pretty frequently is, like, you know, if you've been working for a while, you likely will have worked with some consultants at some point. And there are a lot of really great consultants that are out there. But there are also consultants that just kind of come in and take a look at your design, take a look at what you're working on. And just rip it to shreds and then kind of said then all this is crap. And just I think you should do this instead and then disappear without really any responsibility. You know, they got they got paid, they they came gave you their opinion and they're gone. And I've tried to position and build up my company, to focus more on working collaboratively with our clients and not and trying to avoid that. That bad taste that you get in your mouth when you end up working with a consultant that when you're at the end, you're like, that wasn't really helpful. I just feel bad about myself now. We're really there to be kind of encouraging and supportive is not to mean that we're not going to suggest maybe different ways to do things. and more efficient, efficient ways. I mean, you're using an organization or an advisory firm like, like product, to be able to take advantage of our 20 Some years of experience and success, bringing, bringing products to market and building companies that, you know, go public and get purchased for, you know, huge sums of money. You're paying for that. So you want that feedback. But I found that sometimes there's people that just aren't necessarily interested, they want you to really just kind of validate the idea they already have. And so generally, that's been a big challenge for us in this in this new kind of advisory role is to make sure that we're working with resources and with teams that want to learn and want to grow and are open minded to new ideas. I don't care if you don't necessarily do what it is that we think you should do. But you should at least listen. And a lot of times, I've found that, you know, one of our challenges is that, sometimes people, they're really just looking for an external validation of what they already have in mind. And they just keep looking until they find someone that will give them that external validation. And, you know, that's not really what I'm interested in doing. I'm here to help build you as an organization and build you as an engineer and as a leader. And not just to be kind of a paid Yes, man. And so that's been kind of an interesting challenge as well, that I've learned. You see that also, obviously, and, and one company type environments, but I think you see it a bit more, as I've made this pivot into into the advisory side of things. Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 41:43

All right. Thank you for sharing that. Two more questions. One of them is not even a real question. So really, one more question here. Have you developed any habits over the years that have made you more productive as an engineer, as a leader could be a nighttime routine, or a checklist when you do a certain type of work? Anything like that, that you can share? So

Devon Campbell: 42:11

I think, yeah, I think two ideas. One, there's all sorts of tests, you can take, like Myers Briggs tests and things like that, that companies might make you do. And there's all sorts of books you can buy and test you can take on your own. And a lot of it seems kind of silly. But I do think that there's some value in understanding how you think and how your brain works. I know personally, that I best absorb. And I could do my most creative thinking, when I am drawing it out, right. I'm an engineer, so I have to have to draw up sketches on napkins or on any random paper that I have, I like to use envelopes. Because it's just you get them so many of them in the mail, to sketch up ideas. As we're having a conversation, I can throw it away later. I don't need it. I'm not doing it for retention purposes, to keep the piece of paper. But if I don't sketch it out, if I don't draw a workflow diagram, or sketch up some pictures and applies to anything, it applies to thinking through human resource aspects of what you're doing thinking through organizational design, thinking through I'm what this many mechanical engineers, this many electrical engineers, or if you're thinking through a design itself to say, Okay, well, how would I, you know, what are different ways for me to make this to deliver the functionality that's been asked of me as a design engineer, I find that sketching those out and drawing pictures allows me to think much more clearly and much more precisely, and stay focused on that topic. And then I can throw it away. And I can remember it, I retain it. But if I don't sketch it out, or if I don't doodle or draw those pieces, it's much harder for me to retain that information. If you ask me about it a week or two later. If I didn't do that, at that activity, it's a little bit harder for me to reengage the neurons and get them firing in in the right way to bring me back to that topic. So I think understanding kind of how your brain works and knowing like in my case, I'm a very visual thinker. And so I can visualize things three dimensionally, which makes it good for mechanical engineering purposes. But for everything else that I do. I'll give you a really good point. I'm looking at it right now in my office. I cover my walls with dry erase boards. And I do that not because I like to take a lot of notes and leave charts up there for myself to be able to follow and check things off. I do it because as I'm talking me drawing the picture thinking through even just basic mind maps to say okay, well this is this is the client This is Is aspects of their of their downstream aspirations. And so what might be involved in helping them get there, me drawing the picture really allows me to think very clearly about it and look for those very subtle idiosyncrasies that might connect to disparate parts of the system diagram. So that's,

Aaron Moncur: 45:24

I think that's a huge point, one

Devon Campbell: 45:25

trick that I've learned. But I want to make sure that it's a, it's clear that that doesn't work for everyone. Right, the importance is me eventually learning that I was a visual thinker, and and then taking full advantage of that. That's my trick. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 45:44

yeah, absolutely. Learning how you think I think is such a critical skill, and really kind of hard actually, to figure that out. For myself, I've learned that the ideas that I come up with, when I'm in a quiet room, by myself are generally better than the ideas I come up with when I'm in a group setting for whatever reason. That's something I've learned about myself. So I agree 100%, it's so important to learn how you think and how your mind works,

Devon Campbell: 46:15

I can give you another example of that. One of my children the youngest, they do their best thinking when they're writing. So if you put paper and pencil in front of them, they can just, they can just Hall and just start generating page after page after page of written information. And for them, it's that same act of putting the pencil to the paper and writing sentences and just writing out kind of a narrative that allows them to really retain and get deep into the thought. Whereas if you had the same conversation with them, their retention isn't quite there. So for them, they're you know, they learn and they process by writing, I learned and process by drawing sounds like you do your best thinking and your best processing, when you're quiet and some solitude and some empty space to be able to fill with your own things, your own thoughts. I think that's a it's a really important skill that a lot of engineers would benefit from better understanding. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 47:17

I had a roommate in college who would always turn music on when he was going to sleep. And it drove me crazy, because I just it the music would not allow me to go to sleep I need. I crave quiet, which is kind of the opposite of what you get when you have three small children. But that's a story for another time. Yeah, Devin, how can people get ahold of

Devon Campbell: 47:38

you? Well, the easiest way to get ahold of me is through email. And that's DCC. At product dot Dev, PR o DCT, dot Dev, you can also go to product dot product optout, the website and there's a Contact Me page there, maybe someday there might be more, but for right now, there's just a contact. And you can also go to my my personal kind of online presence, which is Devin C campbell.com. And that goes into a lot more depth about me, not necessarily product, but me and the many different projects that I'm involved with right now. And kind of give you a little bit of a of a character of who I am and what I focus on, which is what we've tried to build into how we designed and developed product as a as an advisory firm.

Aaron Moncur: 48:28

Terrific, terrific. Thank you for creating that advisory for my I said consultancy, and my apologies, advisory firm mentors and coaches. Thanks. Yeah. All right. Well, Devin, I really appreciate you spending some time and just running us through your background and your history showing sharing some insight and wisdom with us. So thank you so much.

Devon Campbell: 48:48

I'm happy to have been able to have this opportunity.

Aaron Moncur: 48:55

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