Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S6E1 Tony Simas | Affecting Change, SaaS, & Communicating in Different Cultures
In this episode, Tony Simas shares his journey from STEM to business leadership, the challenges he faced in implementing change and reducing data entry by 70%, and his insights on navigating different cultures as a consultant. He discusses strategies for transitioning to a SaaS model, integrating AI and IoT in manufacturing, and provides advice for younger engineers and leaders.
Main Topics:
- Tony's path from chemistry to business leadership
- Overcoming resistance to change and understanding employee motivations
- Transitioning to a SaaS model and key considerations
- Leveraging AI and IoT to increase operational efficiencies in manufacturing
- Navigating cultural differences in global business environments
- Advice for younger engineers and leaders in STEM
About the guest: Tony Simas is an accomplished business leader with over 20 years of experience driving transformational growth across industries like manufacturing, life sciences, automotive, and technology. With a proven ability to harness technology and strategic marketing for sustainable business development, Tony has revitalized underperforming markets, introduced innovative solutions, and cultivated thriving teams globally. From spearheading a 10% growth turnaround for a $100M+ business unit to integrating cutting-edge SaaS and AI solutions, he exemplifies the fusion of technical expertise and leadership finesse.
Tony’s global perspective, shaped by living and working across five countries, and his passion for bridging people and technology, make him a sought-after speaker and consultant. As the Managing Partner of Client Growth Partners, Tony continues to empower organizations to achieve remarkable success through actionable strategies and innovative transformations.
Links:
Tony Simas LinkedIn
Client Growth Partners - Website
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
Hi everyone. We've set up this being an engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository, if you will. We hope it'll be a tool where engineers can learn about and connect with other companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. So make some connections and enjoy the show. You. Music,
Aaron Moncur:hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Our guest today is Tony Simas, an accomplished business leader with over 20 years of experience driving transformational growth across industries like manufacturing, life sciences, automotive and technology, with a proven ability to harness technology and strategic marketing for sustainable business development, Tony has revitalized underperforming markets, introduced innovative solutions and cultivated thriving teams globally from spearheading growth turnarounds for $100 million business units to integrating cutting edge SaaS and AI solutions, he exemplifies the fusion of technical expertise and leadership finesse. Tony, welcome to the show.
Tony Simas:Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me. So how
Aaron Moncur:did you first get into STEM What was your journey like? Well,
Tony Simas:it started in high school. I had a AP chemistry class, and the grading was all on a on a curve, so I had more labs than I had quizzes, and we could turn the lab as many times as we wanted to, until we did it right. And I said, Wow, this is fantastic. It continued into college to be similar to that. My first general chemistry class was so difficult, 38% was an A. So I was like, wow, I don't have to learn everything, and I can get an A. But what really, what really drove it was I wanted to be a lawyer when I started in college, and I looked at all of the different degrees that I could get, and I found that a STEM degree was actually the most flexible degree, because if I was a communications major and or political science major and became an attorney, or didn't, decided not to become an attorney, rather, then I would, I would have limited options, probably become a teacher, or try to wedge my way in somewhere else. But with a STEM degree, the companies are willing to hire you to be a salesperson. You can, you can go into a lab, which you can't do if you have a Literature degree or something for that fact. Or you can work your way into business, which is, which is what I ended up doing fascinating.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so you get this degree in STEM, and then eventually you make your way from from chemistry to business leadership. What, what was the draw into that intersection of technology and strategy?
Tony Simas:Yeah, I, I always wanted to be in business. I wasn't a big lab person. It was very, very difficult job for me to do being in the lab. So I was always looking out creatively for commercial aspects of the chemistry and how customers were using it, and how we could bring customers together and to leverage our products better. So basically, I did the lab job. I did applications marketing job, and then everybody said, Tony, you really got to do some sort of business, and selling is a good way to step into it. So I got a sales job, spelling, especially chemicals, to food and beverage manufacturing and doing operational efficiencies as well operations consulting within those manufacturing facilities.
Aaron Moncur:And I guess you learned that you like that. Yeah, it really pulled together.
Tony Simas:You know, we talked about the technologies that were involved, but I started selling IoT product in 2005 to these CPG manufacturers. And it was actually with a a landline, you know, telephone modem was in it, and then it pulled all the data and made a chart. And, you know, we looked into, I had car Blanche, in a sense, to sell it with my chemicals or with equipment. And, you know, the thing that excited me most about it was having my my customers integrated into their daily lives and their routines, so that my customers would go to a new manufacturing plant and demand it, rather than just having nice to have a PowerPoint slide with a high chart on it that you kind of look at and go, okay, yeah, all right, we used chemicals and water and energy and time, as you got
Aaron Moncur:into selling initially, what were some things that surprised you about selling that you hadn't been on your radar? Wow,
Tony Simas:so many, so many different things. You know, I think the first, the first thing when you start selling, you think like, oh, wow, I've got this really cool product that I'm very passionate about. Out, and you get out there and you try to get everybody to start using it. And I think that's like, the biggest aha is your excitement about a product doesn't necessarily translate over to the person who you're smiling at.
Aaron Moncur:And what did you do to overcome that? I think
Tony Simas:there are a few things. Three things. One is I got mentors, I asked as many questions as I could, and watched how other people were, were doing things, and I was quiet, but then asked questions, and then I tried my best to embrace sales frameworks. There's all types, counselor, salesperson, the Sadler method, uh, just, just a number of books on sales, right? How to do it. You really got to find the sales method that resonates best with you and and I, frankly, to this day, even though I've been through so many sales trainings and had sales managers and, you know, guided sales teams. I have a sales coach who helps me on a weekly basis, so that I can help you know, bring my customers along on a journey. When they tell me they have a need, bring them to the to the solution.
Aaron Moncur:We're going to go to a specific experience that you had in your career where you were able to reduce data entry by 70% which, on his face, maybe not the sexiest thing in the world, but when you think about it, reducing any process, the effort required for any process, by 70% that's huge. That's a huge accomplishment. Apparently, you faced some resistance in doing so, which is interesting, because as a business leader, if anyone I was working with could reduce an effort by 70% I would be very excited about this. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about the resistance that you faced and how that changed your approach to implementing change.
Tony Simas:Yes, and I think you actually nailed in on it. You said, as a business leader, if people could reduce their energy by 70% I would love that Right, right? As the person that you're asking to change, they won't love that the same way. And yeah, my first job out of college was watching paint dry and then taking notes on it. And at the end of the day, we'd go and type the notes into the computer, do the data entry. And so I said, you know, hey, there's handheld devices. We can just write directly into it, then plug it the computer, do a little editing and be done. We can go get a coffee. We can read a trade magazine. We can do anything. And the ironic thing there that thing that was difficult for people to, like, kind of understand, especially in this this world of, like, thinking about somebody doing data entry and paint dry, the whole world kind of thinks that the, you know, quintessential job people aren't going to have fun doing, wouldn't want to do. But there are actually people that love that, and if you ask them to stop doing it, they're going to get they're going to get nervous and concerned, and they're they're not going to do it. So you're asking them, even though you're you're thinking you're giving them 70% of their time back. That's, you know, something they love to do. It's like, you know, like, say you love playing golf. And I said to you, hey, it takes you nine hours, 10 hours to play golf. I can reduce that to two. Would you like that?
Aaron Moncur:That's a really interesting insight. So a, it was something that that at least some of these people genuinely enjoyed doing. But B, I think that was a really important point you made, that maybe some of them saw it as a threat, right? If you're taking 70% of my job away, what does that mean? Am I going to get laid off and one person is going to take over? What previously took three people? And am I that one person, or am I the other two that get laid off?
Tony Simas:Right? You spin out in a lot of ways on that one. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:So how did that change your approach to implementing change?
Tony Simas:Well, through, through my career, it's made me focus on, what are people's superpowers, what do they love to do? And what is the on the on the customer side, what do customers love to do? So both internally and externally, and once you understand that, then you on, you try to understand how change you want to implement will impact it. So one of my next jobs, or after that, was, uh, Hey Tony, come out and look at this. We've got this SAS product, and it's got IoT components to it services around it. It's really cool. It's forward looking. It'll help our customers figure out how to how to eliminate waste in their manufacturing plant, and it'll save them time, energy and money. And nobody's buying it. And. Nobody wants to sell it. And so to turn that around, I leveraged that early experience to go to the customer and figure out what what is their driver? Because wouldn't their driver be to save money? Well, yeah, but if it's not coming right away, they don't want to wait two years for it. So we actually figured out something that we could tell them immediately from the software that made an immediate impact on something that they cared about and that drove them to buy it. And then from the people perspective, from the sales people's perspective, you know, they their passion was going in to to their customers and finding operational efficiencies and savings. And so if you tell them, we're going to take that away, and we're going to tell you what the savings is that's going to make them uncomfortable. She's taking away. So their job they like. So we change the narrative around it to say, you know, instead of, instead of telling you what's wrong, we're going to tell you, Hey, I think this is wrong. Can you go look at XYZ and verify that it's wrong? And then the person was able to go through the motions of actually doing what they love, but they didn't have to go but they had an almost guaranteed outcome of something was incorrect, whereas when they went through those motions before they could watch something, it could work perfectly. And so you kind of get, you get your time savings there, but you get it in a way that is not as much as if they just implemented whatever you told them to do, but also mitigated a lot of risks of you being wrong and really engaged the team. Nice,
Aaron Moncur:nice. So you're a consultant. Tell us a little bit about what a day in the life looks like. I'm sure it's super different, right? No, one day is the same. In fact, you're just telling me before we started recording about an urgent request that is coming up right away. I'm sure you're getting things like this thrown at you all the time. But what? What is it like being a consultant and working with so many different companies? It's
Tony Simas:great. It's a lot of fun. It's just you get to take a third party, non objective view of what folks are doing, and then help them figure out a way to change and and improve what that issue or challenge they're having is a lot of a lot of it sales too, because I've got to talk to as many people as I can and uncover what their challenges are. And like we mentioned before that, that in sales and transformation, just because you see something happening that doesn't seem efficient to you doesn't mean that somebody's internalized that. So part of being a consultant is helping show people what the financial or personal impact is of a problem, and then building out a solution to get there. And so that's the that's like the second part of my day, and then then the third part of the day is once they've seen the solution, they ask us to change it a little bit, and then we try to figure out a way to do it that works with the client, and then we execute, and we actually help go through the process.
Aaron Moncur:What do you think is one of the hardest parts about being a consultant? The
Tony Simas:hardest part about being a consultant, I think it's the uncertainty of the next project, when it's going to come, and making sure that you've balanced out time in the project so you haven't taken on too many projects, and so you can manage that balance of discovery, work with clients and actually doing projects. And that's the most difficult thing that getting that balance right, and your team, that
Aaron Moncur:sounds a lot like our business, finding that the balance of not too much work, not too little work, that Goldilocks zone right in between having the right team members. Speaking of our work, I've got a selfish question I want to ask you here. You've been involved in some digital transformation involving SaaS and AI, and we have a product right now that we're selling. It's a motion control product that is developed for non programmers. So if you don't know how to program but you need to create automated motion, this is the product for you. It's super, super easy, drag and drop, visual interface, no code solution, and we are not doing a SAS model right now. We're just selling the software as part of the hardware. And I thought this might be an interesting case study to go over and I can get some free coaching from you, and the listeners can get some interesting information and a peek into behind the scenes, how, how something like this would be handled. Because I'm sure there are plenty of engineers out there who have their own ideas, their own products, and they're thinking about these questions as well. So frankly, we don't really. Know how to do SAS, so we're just bundling the software along with the hardware, but eventually we'd like to get to a SaaS based model. What are some of the obstacles that you expect, not just pipeline, but any organization who is moving towards SaaS in the future are going to encounter, and what can we do now to prepare for that?
Tony Simas:Well, the I think the key is, is adoption, and making sure that the customer is adopting and integrating their product into their their daily routine, as something that they're using. Because if it's just something you buy and then use it, you know, once or twice a year, once a month, to program a machine, then that doesn't lend itself to the to the SaaS model, hmm, it's got to be a regular thing. And the there's a lot of precedent now to to turn everything into SAS, right, like the car card manufacturers turning the seat warmer into a SAS model. So, you know, pay as you go, so you have a little bit of that. But the, I think that it's that adoption, using it every day, balancing out the there's, there's multiple pricing models, and I can send you a document on SAS pricing models too, but that's another thing to another way to look at it is like, if, if, how would I charge charge for this service? Am I and is the customer getting value over and over again? I would say that there's also a consideration of, Am I regularly improving this product so that the customer is getting new and new features? And I, I see that as a as a blessing and a curse, like, if you can regularly put out new features and the customers are excited about them, then they'll kind of happily continue to pay. But you could also overdo it, and I'm thinking about like a web a webinar video conferencing software, where they they just changed and moved where the buttons were and how the system operated all the time. And, you know, it got embarrassing one time. They changed it on the phone, and they had a pop up of of you, a video of you, pop up. And I saw that pop up one time, and I was like, I was sitting outside on my porch on this conference call, 300 people, and I saw not on my desk, and I saw the pop up, and I said, Oh my gosh, I'm on the call, because it popped up and it showed me my face. So I immediately slammed the button, and then, boom, I'm sitting there, you know, unshaven on the call in front of 300 people, because I had actually said, Yeah, you know. So this, you got to be careful with these changes, you know, if you've got a video conferencing software, don't change the button, move it. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:yeah. Like, so. So that's a really interesting point that you bring up. It seems like there is this trend towards moving everything to SAS. What? What other considerations are there when deciding, is it a good idea to move to SAS, or should I just, you know, sell this is the price. You buy the software and you you own it for whatever forever or for certain number of years or something. What other considerations might you contemplate? Yeah,
Tony Simas:I would look at your ultimate goal, right? What do you what is your five year plan, 10 year plan with this software, and then walk your way back from from there you mentioned like, oh, it's something that that would have to, you know, be renewed every five years. That's actually a SAS model, just with a crazy pricing model. But you could also build it out and say, like, it's, it's just not going to be supported after three years, right? And that could be your way to get there. So it really is more of a focus on on what is your growth strategy? What is your growth goal? What is your growth strategy, and what do you need to do in order to get there? And I think that's going to guide you more so than trying to boil the ocean. Figure out all of the issues. Start from the end. Make a hypothesis. I want to sell a million dollars this software in five years, and then work your way back and say what has to be true in order for that to happen. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:great. Very smart. All right, I'm going to take a short break here and share with everyone that the being an engineer podcast is brought to you by pipeline design and engineering, where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. You can learn more at Team pipeline.us The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools education. And community for engineers, Learn more at the wave dot engineer, and we're speaking with Tony Simas today. So Tony, you've been involved helping companies with creating market entry strategies. First of all, what is market entry? And then what are some of the critical factors that companies should be considering before expanding into new markets. Well,
Tony Simas:I think that previous question was a great segue into it, right? Basically, when you think about market entry strategy, you're thinking about, how do I achieve a goal? And your your software is a great example of that, it's market entry. Is thinking about where you want to go and how you can get there. A lot of people, you can do this one of two ways. One, you start with a product, like, you already have a product, so you want to do a market entry study for that product. Or you could say, I can make software. What product should I enter the market with, and what would be the most attractive product to develop? Most people start with a product. So when you start with a product, you do similar to what I explained to you before, is you set a long term goal. Some people call it a strategy, but at the end of the day, it's your goal is, like, financially, where do you want to be in a certain number of years? Also, I love to have goals that are focused on people within your company, your customer, or sustainability. ESG, we talked earlier about transformation and transforming people in software and leveraging business process transformation. I actually wrote a white paper about how to go from an idea to delivering the value functionally within adopting a new technology or making a change in your company. So the market entry framework is very similar to that. You set your goals and then you put together a number of metrics. So I just list them out for you. There's you do a market analysis, a value proposition, product positioning, define where the product's position is, the market related to your customers, and that the customer segment you want to go after you build out a go to market strategy. That's your overall approach. The key tactics for launching your your product or service, what you're going to do, when and how, and then the sales enablement, right? Making sure your sales team is on board. They have the tools, training necessary, building out a marketing campaign. This is when you call that branding agency and say, Hey, can you make this thing look really great and appealing to these folks? Can you, can you put this online on the on a website, and get it SEO, the description of it, SEO optimized, so it shows up on Google. And then Customer Success and Support, figuring out how you're going to ensure that your customers are having a positive experience. Then again, this is kind of at the beginning end. At the end your metrics and performance tracking. So there's two metrics that I like the best one is KPIs. You know, what is the volume, what is the margin, what is the total, total price, that total value of what you're selling? Those are lagging indicators of success. Leading indicators of success are more like OKRs, objectives and key results. I'm going to attend 10 trade shows, and I'm going to accomplish this at those trade shows,
Aaron Moncur:switching gears again a little bit back into a manufacturing environment. So you've been involved helping companies integrate IoT and AI into manufacturing environments. What are some ways that you have seen AI and IoT increase operational efficiencies in manufacturing and like, what are some kind of tactical nuggets that you can share with engineers who are listening to this, especially the manufacturing engineers, the process engineers.
Tony Simas:Well, there's some, there's some really cool things you can do with AI now, where you can track what you're doing, in in the in the manufacturing plant, either through actual data or qualitatively, just entering in your insights. I've seen some really cool software that will as a quality person, you can be walking through and describing what you're seeing, and then it'll change it into quantified, quantified data. I think the other, the other piece with you know, IoT, you've got a sensor where you're tracking something that's happening, and you have to AI isn't going to. It is going to have trouble having context around what that device is doing. So you're going to have to build an ecosystem around articulating parameters or trying to help it understand everything that's occurring. I think my my, my insight here, and the thing that I found most challenging is that it's not a it's not an easy button, and it's not a miracle. It's not a miracle. You're not gonna it's not a silver bullet. If you put a device in a plant, start tracking it, you hook it up to AI, it's not going to start telling you that you have a preventative maintenance opportunity or something isn't occurring properly. You've got to feed it a ton of context. A lot of manufacturing is very messy. They haven't, you know, you could use AI maybe to clean up the tags in your manufacturing plant. I don't think this is something that's typically done, but, you know, if you look across multiple manufacturing plants, you're the same one, a temperature sensor might be labeled te 15, and then a different temperature sensor, whether it's the same equipment or not, could be labeled C 15 or C 20, like a totally different naming nomenclature, and you don't know what it is, so you've just got messy data. And I think the insight here is, how can you leverage AI to clean your data, and then how can you level set expectations that you need to collect data and see what's actually going to break before AI can start learning about it. You know, if you have an aircraft engine and it's about to fail, there's probably multitude of ways that an engine would fail, and AI is just going to guess that
Aaron Moncur:first step is cleaning up your data. Yes,
Tony Simas:clean it, track it, feed it. So you've lived
Aaron Moncur:in a variety of different places globally, and have had experiences with a lot of different cultures. I'm curious, have there been any stories or experiences that you can share where you experienced something that was very culture specific and it affected the way that you worked with that organization? Oh, okay,
Tony Simas:yes, you know, I I've lived in I lived in Japan for a couple of years when I was growing up. And I've been in in a lot of countries all over the world. I lived in 11 different places from places, but I think my biggest culture shock is moving from New York to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and there the way that people are very direct in New York and then passive in Minneapolis. So I really needed to learn how to how to be quiet, listen and figure out how to ask questions better to get to an outcome that I was looking for, where in New York, I would just go to leadership and say, x, y, z is wrong. In certain cultures, you just can't, you just can't say that. You can't do it. I was surprised. Yeah, so Minnesota, I think the learning too, is whenever I go into a new culture, I really try to read about the business practices. You can get little books. When we moved to Japan, my dad had little little books where you could read up on it. Now there's also on YouTube. There's a really cool guy that's English, but he lives in Germany, and he says, you know, in, you know, in Germany, we say this, yeah, this way, and that, that's super insightful. And although it's, it's humorous, it's, you know, it's important to know, if you ask it, if you ask some people, how are you doing it? In America, that's like saying hello. But in other places, you say, how are you doing? That's a That's a deep question they want to share. So you got to be ready for that.
Aaron Moncur:I never know how to answer that question. How are you doing? Do you really want to know how I'm doing? Or are we just saying, I'm fine? How about you? I'm fine. Okay, it kind of bugs me, actually, you know, like it seems, let's either ask it and really give deep and meaningful answers, or just do away with it at all. But it's like, it's part of the culture, right? How you doing good? How you doing good? Okay, now we can actually have a conversation about whatever we're trying to talk about anyway. Pet peeve of mine,
Tony Simas:I think, I think you should, I think you should just jump in and go for it. Building rapport is so important. And if somebody asks you, just honestly tell them, like, yeah, you know, you can leave out the stuff that's very super personal, but, you know, tell them and and ask them and that that builds trust and it helps people open up, especially if you're going to have a business conversation. If. People feel like you know, know them and are and appreciate what they're going through, they'll share much more.
Aaron Moncur:I think a lot of that comes down to like situational awareness and just being aware of the context in different situations. When you moved from New York to Minneapolis, were you intrinsically just aware very quickly that the culture was different there and you had to take different approaches, or at some point, did someone pull you aside and was like, hey, hey, Tony. You know, you're kind of abrupt and direct. You need to tone it down. Things are different here. I'm just curious.
Tony Simas:Oh, yeah, totally was pulled over to the side. I didn't, I didn't think to read a booklet about going to Minneapolis, yeah,
Aaron Moncur:right. It seems like the same place, right? I mean, we're both in the US, yeah,
Tony Simas:it sent me back. It sent me back at least a year because, you know, folks were uncomfortable talking to me because I would tell it straight, and it might not be right, or it would be right, but it didn't matter, because you're just abrasive, right? Nobody likes somebody who's abrasive in general.
Aaron Moncur:That is fascinating. I mean, set you back a year we talk. Sometimes we have this volunteer program, CAD club. And one of the things that we tell these young students, middle school and high school age students that come into our office and learn to use CAD among other things. The first class we go over soft skills and how you know you might have the best technical skills in the world, but if your soft skills aren't good, if you don't know how to read a room, if you don't know how to communicate with people, there's only so far you can go, whereas if your technical skills are pretty good, you know, good enough, but you have really good people skills. There's almost no limit to how far you can go. And that that right, there is such a a tangible example of of what we talk about, just knowing how to talk to people. Absolutely, I'm going to use that in CAD club, if you don't mind. I'm going to take that example and share it with them as a real world example. I won't use your name,
Tony Simas:that's okay. I mean it really the great thing that came out of it is a huge different level of emotional intelligence and empathy. Empathy really comes from that. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:all right, one more question, and we'll wrap things up here. What advice would you give to younger engineers, leaders, folks in STEM who are in you know, who are going down that path of engineering, r, d, stem technology, those areas,
Tony Simas:oh, be open, emotionally intelligent like you mentioned. Learn how how to communicate and get a mentor and a supporter at your company and and just ask as many questions as possible. People love to ask questions. Ask them for advice. They'd love to give advice. And you'll learn. You'll learn so much that way.
Aaron Moncur:Terrific, Terrific. Tony. Thank you so much for being on the show today, I sure appreciate it.
Tony Simas:Thank you for having me.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit the wave. Dot, engineer, thank you for listening. You.
