Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S7E18 Aaron Moncur | Building Pipeline, the Being An Engineer Podcast, and Engineering Communities
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In this special role-reversal episode of the Being An Engineer podcast, longtime host Aaron Moncur steps into the guest seat while previous guest Mike Romance takes over as interviewer.
Aaron shares the story behind his journey from a laid-back childhood growing up in Hawaii to becoming the founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering in Phoenix, Arizona. After being laid off during the 2009 recession, Aaron faced a moment of uncertainty that ultimately pushed him to start his own engineering business—learning sales, marketing, and leadership along the way. What began as a one-person consulting effort grew into a thriving engineering services company focused on automation, custom machines, fixtures, and product development.
During the conversation, Aaron reflects on the early challenges of entrepreneurship—cold-calling for his first customers, figuring out how to quote complex engineering projects, and learning to build a team and culture from the ground up. He also shares one of his favorite Pipeline stories: rallying his team to design and deliver two complex automated test systems in just ten weeks—an effort that required nights, weekends, and a fully committed team.
The discussion also explores Aaron’s broader mission: accelerating the speed of engineering by sharing knowledge across the industry. That vision led to the creation of the Being An Engineer podcast, the online engineering community The Wave, the PDX – Product Development Expo, and Pipeline’s CAD Club for middle and high school students. Together, these initiatives aim to highlight the often-unsung role engineers play in shaping the modern world.
Along the way, Aaron and Mike dive into topics like engineering education versus real-world learning, the challenges of running an engineering services business, the importance of culture and leadership, and why engineers deserve more recognition for the impact they have on society.
If you’ve ever wondered how Being An Engineer started—or what drives the person behind the microphone—this episode offers a candid look at the story, philosophy, and vision behind the show.
LINKS:
Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pipelinedesign/ & https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeromance/
Guest website
Aaron Moncur, host
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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 like cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us at www.teampipeline.us
Watch the show on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@TeamPipelineus
I had been doing a little bit of freelance work for the couple of months after I got laid off, but summer of 2009 I decided, formally, all right, I'm going to start my own engineering business, and it was just me and and I did everything, right? So no longer was I cog in the machine, but I was the machine. Hello and welcome to the being an engineer Podcast. Today is a special day that I have been looking forward to for a while. We are flipping the script, and I've got Mike romance here with me, who was a guest on our show about a month ago. We had a wonderful conversation, and he asked if he could interview me next on the podcast. So here we are, roughly a month later, and I'm mostly excited, a little nervous because I have no idea what he's going to ask me, but as he reminded me before we hit record, I have full editing control, so I think we'll be okay, but I'm mostly just really excited to let Mike do the work and sit back and just talk about myself for 45 minutes to an Hour. What could go wrong with that?
Mike Romance:That's a, yeah, that's, that's awesome. Thanks for the introduction again. But question for you is, how many of these have you done?
Aaron Moncur:Oh, boy, we're, I don't think we're quite at 350 we're probably 340 some, somewhere around
Mike Romance:there over how many years
Aaron Moncur:over it we started in. Think it was March of 2020, so we are about six years, six full years in at this point,
Mike Romance:and no one ever bothered to ask if they could interview you.
Aaron Moncur:I think someone did early on, but it was, it was really early, maybe episode like five or eight or something, so it's been a long time since that's happened. Well, I feel
Mike Romance:really grateful and fortuitous that I'm here being able to do this for you. It was super fun last time. So let's get started. So why don't we start with maybe give, like, a brief intro, kind of introduction to who Aaron is, and then we'll go into some other stuff and learn more about you as well.
Aaron Moncur:Great. There's a lot I could say, but you know what? In my heart, I'm just a kid from Hawaii who loves to surf, and that's who I am. I'm an island boy at heart. I love just kind of being laid back and not getting too caught up in in life, which isn't to say that I don't at times, but I'm just an island boy. I like to say that I'm I'm chocolate on the inside, even though I'm clearly very, very pale white on the outside. Growing up, I was the only white kid, and all my friends were Japanese or Hawaiian or Filipino or whatever, and so, yeah, I'm chocolate on the inside I I still think of Hawaii as my home, but these days, I run a company called pipeline design and engineering where we build automated equipment and fixtures. And do we do some product development, product design work as well, bunch of other stuff, but that's a quick intro to who I am.
Mike Romance:Will you say Hawaii one more time? For those of us who are not chocolate, Hawaii, Hawaii, you say it very well. I can tell you're authentic. That's really cool. Did you get into engineering or kind of, I mean, I have a question about your history and background, but like, growing up in Hawaii, were you exposed to industry a whole lot? I mean, how did you I guess we'll get into that later, but it seems kind of cool that you came from the islands, and here you are in Arizona, right? And Arizona running this firm of talent and solutions for people. So pretty cool. So I don't want to jump ahead of myself. We'll, we'll start with the questions, and then we'll come back to a little bit more of that. All right. So yeah, thanks for the introduction. As you did this to me last time, I'm going to give you some rapid fire questions. So like you preface, please. No, don't give it too much thought. Don't spend too much time just rapid fire questions. You ready? Okay, ready? All right, so I'm gonna throw this one back at you. But what breakthrough do you think has had the biggest impact on modern life, engineering or other, for that matter,
Aaron Moncur:engineering or other. Let's see. You know, the one that comes to me is running water, just the fact that we have, like, modern plumbing, indoor plumbing, like, how how much, how many health benefits has that led to, and just cleanliness and getting rid of disease and things like that. I think that's a pretty huge one,
Mike Romance:fair enough. Now, when I watch how they did irrigation in Egypt and all that stuff, and how they. Manage to farm and cultivate, yeah, let alone keep yourself clean. So Right. All right, all right, that's a good one. At this point in your life, would you want your kids to take over your business?
Aaron Moncur:I'm gonna not think about it too much and say, Yes, I think that would be really cool to have a family business that I hand down to my kids at the same time. I certainly don't want them to feel like that's what they should or have to do in any way, shape or form. They should do what feels good for them. But if that were to work out, that would be really cool.
Mike Romance:That's good. Yeah, I grew up in a family business, so I guess it's, I'm used to thinking about, Oh, it's, you know, your parents company. And naturally, are you going to, you know, slot into that. So I guess I shouldn't assume so anymore. Everyone needs to go chase their own dreams, right?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I wouldn't assume so either. And if it worked out, I think that would be really cool and meaningful, but at the same time it it would have to be merit based. Right? I would not give my kids anything. They would have to earn it.
Mike Romance:Remind me ages and sex of the kids.
Aaron Moncur:We've got three kids. We've got an 18 year old, a 15 year old, both boys, and then an 11 year old girl.
Mike Romance:Oh, cool. I thought it was two. So thanks for reminding me on that. So the next one, which is somewhat relevant, would you rather be at home with the family or at work with the team?
Aaron Moncur:Dang, these are hard questions. Mike, man, I'm gonna have to answer both. I know that's cheating, but the way I do it right now, the way I do it right now is I work about two days a week from home, typically Tuesday and Thursday, and then Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm here in the office, and I honestly love both. I love being in a quiet room by myself. That's when I get my best work done. But I also love being here with the team at Pipeline, like the people here, just, they're so lovely to work with, and I would miss them a lot if I, if I didn't spend time
Mike Romance:here, it's the right answer. I mean, you know, I mean family, of course, right? Well, not like I'm, I'm one to judge right or wrong, but I think it's being as similar shoes as you. I think there's, you know, you're raising your family at work as well. There, I shouldn't say You alone are raising you're raising each other, right? But we talked about that last time with just leadership in general. I think what sets good leaders are part of the people who kind of have aspirations, set goals, but also kind of bring in the right people and good people to kind of make it different from everywhere else. So, yep, it's a nice job there. All right, so stepping back into kind of like full history, so I know you're from Hawaii, again, I'm trying to pronounce that correctly. Which island, where did you go to? School, trade College, whatnot, you know, formal education. How did you get into what you're doing here in pipeline?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, so, I was born and raised in Oahu, on the east side of Oahu, a town called Kaneohe, and grew up my whole life there. You know, my childhood was outdoors, running around in the parks and the jungles and the beaches of the island. Yeah, it was. It was a magical upbringing. I wouldn't change trade it for anything. I was not really exposed to engineering at all growing up, I didn't really know what an engineer was, but senior year in high school, we were sitting around the dinner table as a family. My dad says, So what are you going to do in college? You know, next year you're going off to college, presumably. And what are your thoughts? What are your what's your plan there? And I had no plan. Mike, none whatsoever. The only plan I had was, what time to wake up that Saturday to get to the beach and go surfing like that was so you my life.
Mike Romance:You were your full, full Island. Boy at that time, like, not thinking, yeah, too much, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Like, I was hanging out with my friends and going surfing, and that was about it. I had a girlfriend at the time that she was a part of that as well, but that was about it. I was not thinking much at all towards the future. So he asked me that, and I said, I don't know. I haven't I haven't really thought about it. I don't know what I want to do. I didn't even have ideas, really. And my dad knows me pretty well. And he suggested, well, how about you consider engineering? I think that you'd be good at that. And I said, Okay, that sounds good. And honestly, that's about all the thought I gave to it. I didn't even again like going into college. It's so embarrassing saying this now because it sounds so, so naive, I guess, and childish, but I went into engineering not really knowing what it was. Is other than the fact that my dad thought it was a good fit for me and it had something to do with building things and manufacturing, that was about all I knew.
Mike Romance:What was what was his trade? Or, I mean, obviously he, he, because I there's some synergies, you know, parallels to my life. But like, was he into cars? Was he building stuff, woodworking, something that kind of resonated with tangible you know, how did engineering become his first thing? Was it just a good career? Or was he aspiring to do that at one point in his life?
Aaron Moncur:At one point in his life? Yeah, so he was an economist his whole life. He worked at the University of Hawaii as economics professor and but he, before he decided on that career, he considered engineering as well. It was either engineering or economics, and he decided to go into economics. And then he always enjoyed building things. I used the past tense, but he's still with us. Truthfully, he enjoyed and enjoys building things. And so I remember when I was probably, I don't know, 10 or 12, my brother and I, we, we wanted to have, I think we're getting new beds. And instead of just going and buying a bed, my dad found these plans, not online, because there was no online back there. But somewhere I found these plans for this really cool like double decker bed, where the top was the bed and there was a ladder going up to it, so you climb up there, and then on the bottom there was a desk that was, like directly underneath the bed. So you climb down the ladder, and you've got a desk there where you can work. And I remember going to city mill in Kaneohe, that was our Ace Hardware or Home Depot. With that there wasn't a Home Depot or Ace Hardware back then, at least not where I was. So city mill was the place we went to buy lumber and wood and things. And so we went there and bought all this wood and came back and, you know, got out the saw and the screwdrivers and the drill and and started building these beds. And we built two, one for my brother and one for me. And so there were things like that, projects throughout growing up, where he just build something. And I thought that was cool,
Mike Romance:yeah, yeah, and yeah. That's, that's really cool. Great memories. It's, you know, like I said, my dad was here this weekend, so kind of bringing me back. It's been a long time, yeah, in the in my 40s. And, you know, you think about growing up, and some of that stuff reminds you of how you got to where you are. All right, so you, so you went to college at University of Pacific, is that correct?
Aaron Moncur:No, I went to college at BYU in Utah, Brigham, young university. So that was there from, let's see, I graduated in 2004 at BYU, and then I and then I came down to Arizona, and I did a master's degree at Arizona State ASU in bioengineering.
Mike Romance:Okay, so that's how you kind of got introduced to, well, I don't want to answer the questions for you. But like so, so you, you go to be, you know, Brigham Young, and then you go into Arizona, then you go to Arizona for bioengineering. And then did you get into a corporation? How did you find out about manufacturing automation? Right? Because you get taught mechatronics and mechanical and fluids and all this stuff throughout your education. But then you've, you kind of slotted and found this niche in what I think is kind of cutting edge right robotics and manufacturing in my area, at least. I think that's such fantastic so how did you kind of navigate into that world?
Aaron Moncur:It was a bit of a journey when I when I started school at BYU, I was actually enrolled in the manufacturing engineering college. And then they ended up eliminating that that degree from their program, and the default alternative was mechanical engineering. And so I switched over to mechanical and graduated with that degree. And then I went to ASU and did bioengineering a friend of mine at BYU planned on going into medical devices, and that was the first that I'd really heard anything about medical devices. And I thought, oh, that sounds really neat. The body is interesting. I think I'd enjoy that. So I did that degree and graduated, and then started working for a local company here in Phoenix, doing medical device design, and I did that for about three, three and a half years. I really liked it, especially in the beginning I was doing all the things I loved doing. I was doing CAD design I got to work on there was, you know, a manual mill and lathe that I got to do a little bit of prototyping with there was a 3d printing department at the engineering company where I worked, and so we did lots of 3d printing, and, you know, building prototypes and testing them. And it was just, you know, it was, it was a blast. It was everything I hoped engineering would be. I got to do. I. And and then the recession hit, right? 2008 2009 and things kind of slowed down at this company. And the fun work, the prototyping, the CAD design, the testing, the all that stuff that kind of there wasn't a lot to do. There was, there was paperwork for whatever reason, that's what we that was the work we had to do was, you know, filling out engineering change orders and updating design history files and things like that. And that wasn't fun for me. Now, looking back, for sure, there was a lot of immaturity, because I kind of checked out. I was like, I don't like doing this. This is not fun. And so I remember walking around with with earbuds in my ears, kind of isolating myself from the rest of the company, because I was just not very engaged. I did the minimum. I put my 40 hours in, and then I was out of there. I remember, I remember my my boss at that time gave me an assignment to learn about. Oh, it was something manufacturing related. I can't even remember exactly what, but he gave me a book and said, I want you to read this book and learn about this. And I said, Okay, you know, that's fine. And, and I kind of honed and hawed about it, and said, I mean, are you going to give me time at work to read this, or, like, do you want me to read this on my own? He's like, Well, I kind of expect that you'll, you'll read it on your own, you know, during your own time. And I was like, you know, I put up a little bit of a stink about that. And again, immaturity, for sure. And he recognized that I just, I wasn't really engaged, and the company didn't have a ton of work anyway, so it got to the point where they needed to let a few people go. And I was a pretty obvious choice. So I got I got canned there, and I remember going home and telling my wife at the time, who was pregnant, and we just bought our first house, that I had just lost our only source of income, leaning up against the side of our bedroom door, talking to her about this, and just feeling like trash, right? Like I just lost her only source of income. And I don't know, I don't know what's
Mike Romance:just out of school.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, married kids. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So it was, it was super stressful. And I remember feeling physically ill for several days after that, and I thought, you know, I don't, I don't really like engineering anymore. I think I want to do something completely different. So at the time, I had started a photography company with a buddy of mine on the side right. It was our side hustle, and we've been doing it for a few years, making a little bit of money having fun. And I had also started a little web design company on the side, another side hustle. And so I had a little bit of income coming in from from those two things, right? Maybe a couple $1,000 a month, not enough to live on, but it was something. And I thought, you know, maybe I'll just keep doing these things. And then I was, I started exploring commercial real estate. I thought, oh, that seems interesting. Maybe I could do that. And my father in law pulls me aside during this time, right? And I'm sure he's thinking, Hey, I've got a daughter and a grandson now invested in this guy. And so he pulls me aside and says, So what's the plan here? Right? What are what are you going to do to he didn't phrase it like this, but I think what he was saying is, how are you going to take care of my daughter? And grandchild? And he suggested that perhaps I should reconsider engineering. And maybe it wasn't engineering that I didn't like anymore, it was just the way in which I had been doing engineering. And I thought that's really smart, you know, that that could be so maybe there's a different way I can do engineering. So I decided to hang my shingle, and that is when I started pipeline. So this was summer of 2009 I had been doing a little bit of freelance work for the couple of months after I got laid off, but summer of 2009 I decided formally, all right, I'm going to start my own engineering business, and it was just me and and I did everything right. So no longer was I cog in the machine, but I was the machine, as much of a machine as a one person operation can be. But I did the marketing, I did the website design. I did product photography of things that I had designed. I started learning how to do photorealistic rendering to create some nice, compelling marketing images. Obviously, I did all the design work and the engineering work. I did accounting. You know, it was like everything I was in charge of business. Learn how to be right, yes. Began learning how to, definitely, I'm still learning how to run a business. I started that journey, yeah, I hope not, yeah. So that that's how it got started. And it really, it really was kind of revolutionary for me. I mean, it changed everything I went from you. Know, putting in 40 hours a week, and then I am out, I'm not going to put any more time into my job. And then, when it was me, I was in charge of everything, and I had started pipeline. I was putting in 6070, hour weeks pretty regularly in the beginning. And I loved it. I was
Mike Romance:just saying, no great sweat, you know, probably love it to work harder and longer, and passion was still there. Yep. I mean, not everyone can do that, but that's, that's, you know, I've done the paperwork, I've done all that, so I recognize there's, there's, there's work everywhere, but that, it just the excitement comes back, right? When you have your own it does thing. And I'm sure the photography all came into play. And, you know, the web design, it's fantastic.
Aaron Moncur:All these things that I hadn't, you know, really considered, there was no plan, really, for them. They all sort of tied together to help me create the beginning of pipeline.
Mike Romance:Well, let's see I want, I had, I started to go into some different things. But I'm actually curious to know kind of the next couple years of pipeline. You know, I mean, you sound like hard questions, but you're one stop shop, right? Your couple years into a a don't call it a real job, but a formal job, and now you're on your own, and you need to sell your services and ideas to people. So tell me a little bit about tell the audience, a little bit about the next couple years, and trying to sell services and solutions, and just curious how that works, right?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah. So like you said, I was three and a half years in to my full time professional engineering career, so it wasn't like I had all the answers. I was I met a gentleman around this time named Warren Starnes, and he's, he's since passed on, but he was a really smart marketing or business guy, and I was talking to him about my business, and he said, You know what? You just got to fake it till you make it. And I was like, Oh, that's a clever saying, fake it till you make it. And he's like, I'm serious. Half the stuff I do, I don't know what I'm doing. And he was much, much older than me at this point, right? And so I kind of adopted that a little bit. I don't know how to do this, but I do have enough confidence that I can figure it out. And I also I knew some people in the industry, and so when I got stuck, I had people to reach out to, but I didn't really know. You know, I knew the basics of design and mechanical design and engineering and all that stuff. But there was, there was a lot I didn't know. So I proceeded to sprint forward with with a confidence that I probably had no place exhibiting. Yeah, and I, I got a few jobs pretty quickly. In fact, this guy, Warren was, was one of the people that I did some work for, and I spent some time cold calling. I had never cold called before. This is something that I've learned I'm actually pretty good at and and I took for granted in the early days, but but now I recognize as a skill set that I have that not everyone does, is I'm good at just figuring out how to make something happen, even though I've never done it before. So I'd never started a business before, but I just figured it out step by step. And I'd never done any sales or marketing before, but I thought, I thought like an engineer, right? Like, what are the steps that need to happen for me to get work? Well, I need to find leads, and then I need to convert them into customers, and then I need to do the engineering work, and then I need to send invoices. And so I said, Well, how do I find leads? Why I need to find, like, a list, somehow, of people that that need work? So I I just started searching online for databases and lists and like, like CES, all the exhibitors are listed. So I go to the CES website and just find companies that I thought were relevant to the work that I was doing, and then I just cold call them or cold email them, and I got some jobs that way. In fact, I got a bunch of jobs that way, not just the CES site. There were some others that I found as well. But, you know, online directories that were relevant companies, and I got a bunch of work, and just, you know, started, in fact, I remember spending about two weeks doing cold calling and cold emails, and that was kind of it. I somehow lucked into enough work that I didn't really have to look for work for a long time. After that, you get
Mike Romance:a couple of key contacts, key accounts, exactly repeat business. I think, I think you're, you know, a lot of people can do, you know, one of the things that I think makes one of the best types of engineers is being resourceful. And it sounds like you were just that, right? You had a problem. Stewart. Statement, you had the skills, the know how to do, to learn everything you need to do. You know, whether it be learn on the job or not, but you kind of put yourself out there and figured it out. And I think that resonates with you know, I'm sure half the audience here, because they could do a lot. You don't always need to be the subject matter expert. You know how to find the information, get the information, but it sounds like you capitalized it, especially after that recession, which I remember quite well, and things started to feel like they were going back to normal. And next, you know, you have stable accounts right, at least for a while. So, yeah, yeah, when did you start adding team members? I mean, that's kind of natural next step, I guess, right,
Aaron Moncur:it was a few years I remember that first year or two, going out to lunch with a friend of mine, and he said, Why haven't you hired anyone? Don't you want to have a team? Don't you want to have employees? And I said, No way, man, I'm not interested at all. Yes, exactly. Like, I don't want to be liable for anyone else. Like, I'm very happy doing this on my own, and that's what I'm going to keep doing. But things got busier, you know, I guess, luckily, they didn't get slower, and eventually I needed help. I couldn't do it all by myself, so I started hiring contractors again. I just went online and found directories of contract engineers or freelance designers. I don't remember what before Upwork.
Mike Romance:I don't even know it was a Craigslist for Upwork.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, Craigslist is one that I used, yes, yeah, but there were a few, and I found some people. Most of them were remote there. There's a guy in Chicago that I used for years. He was great. This guy, Jay, and then there was this guy, Michael, that I found, I can't remember, he may have been in Chicago also, and he ended up eventually becoming a full time employee. But anyway, I I found a bunch of people locally or otherwise that could do contract work and just use Dropbox to share files, and I had a couple of extra Solid Works licenses that I would give access to these different contractors if they didn't have their own. And after a while, I had 234, contractors that I'd use on a fairly regular basis. And then it was 2011 or maybe 12, when I hired my first full time engineer. And I remember there was this project that I was working on, and it had just been sitting on my desk. Literally, there was an unbuilt prototype sitting on my desk in in pieces that I just, I hadn't, I couldn't find the time to put together, and had been weeks that it was just sitting there. And I thought, all right, I need some of this just full time dedicated to pipeline. And so I found Brandon, Brandon Graham. Shout out to Brandon Graham, if you're still listening to this, I know he was for a long time. So if you're out there, Brandon, this one's for you. And he generously decided to join my, my band of one that became a band of two at that point, and we worked. He was local to me, here in Arizona, but we worked remotely. We didn't have an office. I worked out of my home, and he worked out of his home. And that's, that's where the the team started, I guess. And then pretty soon after that, there was Michael, we hired and then there was John, and there was Michael, and there was Rhett. A few of those are still with us to this day, but that's where it started.
Mike Romance:Yeah, looks good. I'm glad you're doing your shout outs. Anyone else along the way, because we're going to jump into some more specific
Aaron Moncur:topics, I guess. Well, for sure, Nikki, I'll give a shout out to Nikki. Any of you who've worked with us hear from Nikki, because she does 1000 things behind the scenes, and she's the one who sends invoices, and she does payroll, and she's basically our IT department. She does so many things out there. And I used to say half jokingly, that if she ever left the company, I just shut it all down, because I couldn't do it without her. So shout out to Nikki. My my sister in law
Mike Romance:actually, nice. That's fantastic. Awesome. All right, so let's what inspired you to start the podcast and then do the trade shows. I mean, you know, you start this business. I could ask you about growing the business up until today. I could ask you all day, and kind of, we can go down tangent. But I had some other questions. I mean, really like, the reason I'm here, we're here is you have this podcast for those that you don't know. Also, you kind of set up that trade show for last year that, I think it was your first one, or maybe your second one. But what you're branching out from just services, which we'll get back to in a moment. But what, what you're growing, you're growing what you offer from just this pipeline services company. So you know, how'd that happen?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I think that engineers are the unsung heroes of our world. I mean, you look around at all the things that are out there that make our modern day society what it is you. Yeah, and nearly all of them involved an engineer in some critical, fundamental way, right? Whether it's our phone, our car, electricity, this, all of this stuff, right? Everything, yeah, everything out there. And I thought to myself, I'm also impatient. This is something my my mom told me all the time growing up, You're too impatient. You need to learn to be patient. Well, I think my impatience has actually been a benefit in many ways. I always want to do things faster, and I thought to myself, if, if we could accelerate the speed of engineering, but just a few percent. What would that mean to the human race, the world, right? Yeah. Like, how greatly would that impact all of our lives? Even a few percent? I think the answer is significantly. And so when I went to school, you know, I went through the same engineering program that everyone goes through, and it was fine, but I realized that I really didn't learn, or I didn't use a lot of what I learned in school on the job. And there were just, you know, maybe 10% of what I learned in school is what I actually use on the job. And I thought
Mike Romance:there's so much, I thought, because I went through the manufacturing engineering program that got shut down, and then went into mechanical as well. And I just, I recognize, actually mine was in reverse. I started mechanical then finished in the manufacturing program. But the manufacturing program was so much more hands on and actual real world, yeah, mechanical stuff, which is fundamentals, which is totally needed, right? But keep going. I don't stop you, but if that, yeah, most of the time, the computers do everything for you. Engineering becomes more project management or risk assessment.
Aaron Moncur:I haven't used calculus once outside of college, never. So I thought there's so much information out there, and how often are we all reinventing the wheel? Because we just don't have access to that tribal knowledge that stored it, you know, behind the walls of some company. And I thought I would really love to to take all this information, create a repository of practical, useful engineering information, and just put it out there so anyone who wants to use it can whether they're a degreed engineer or someone tinkering in their garage. And so I started without any kind of holistic plan. I started adding these new brands or channels to our company, and it started with the podcast. So this was beginning of covid, and I was part of a business coaching group, and our our team coach posed the question to us. He said, What if covid decimates your business and you have to close your doors? What will you do next? And I thought that's a really interesting question to think about. Hopefully it doesn't happen, but academically, it tickled my brain. And so I thought, yeah, I'm going to think about this. What would I do? And I thought I kind of, I don't mind a little public speaking. I kind of like writing. I think I'm a very capable communicator. Maybe I'll write a book. Maybe I'll be an author that could be fun. And I thought that's pretty far away from what I'm doing right now. What else could I do? And then I had this idea of a podcast. Podcasts were just kind of on the rise at that time in popularity. There were popular, but not as popular as they are now. And I thought I could start a podcast that could be fun. I could be the host of a podcast about engineering. And then I quickly realized, well, I don't have to wait until pipeline shuts down to do that. I can just do it. So I did. I never started a podcast before. I didn't know anything about it, but our band of merry men and women came together and figured out the basics and and we launched the podcast in Yeah, March of 2020, so we're on season seven now, and a few years later, I had this idea for I call them Design Accelerators, and they were kind of like Lego sets for CAD design, where you have These pre built, kind of partial CAD designs. CAD assemblies, kind of like grab CAD, but actually useful, like you could use them to actually manufacture parts. They weren't designed by a student, and that grew into what is now the wave, our online community for engineers, the wave dot engineer, you can go there, and they're a bunch of these Design Accelerators, as I call them, that you can download mostly for free. So the wave came to be, and then, most recently, PDX, the product development Expo that you mentioned. And last year, technically was our second year, but the first year was kind of a pilot, and it was very different format. So last year was kind of our. Flagship year, our first real year, and that was another one. Just like starting a business, I had no idea how to put together a trade show, and we actually just finished what I think is really cool little documentary about how we put PDX together. It was a neat story, and that'll be going live in the next month or so. So keep an eye on my LinkedIn channel, YouTube. You'll see it. You'll see it out there. But Nikki, who I mentioned our we call her our integrator, because she integrates all the things behind the scenes, internal pipeline work. That's right, internal integrator at the integrator shop, yeah. I told her about this, and she's like, You're nuts. Like, we can't do this. We don't know how to put on a major industry trade show. We should not do this. This is a bad idea. Aaron, these were the things that she was telling me. I was like, yeah, yeah. But I think we can do it. Let's let's just try. And so she went out and cleverly started talking to some event planners who presumably knew what they were talking about, right? And these event planners told her, No, you're This is insane. You're being set up for failure. Because I'd asked Nikki to help with a lot of the legwork figuring some things out. And these event planners were just like, No, that your boss is setting you up for failure. This is terrible idea. You're not going to be successful. Who are you kidding? And this really spooked Nikki, so she came back to me. She's like, Hey, I know I expressed some concerns about it, but, but really, we should not do this.
Mike Romance:People are telling me that's a dumb idea. Exactly. Yeah, right, right, right. Have to listen to them. Why am I listening to you?
Aaron Moncur:So I said, yeah, yeah, I concerns noted, and hey, I'll help. It's not like you're gonna have to do everything. And we'll just, let's, let's do the best we can, and we'll see how it turns out. So thankfully, she agreed to help, and she was just instrumental in the whole thing. And we ended up bringing to some other team members on later, but she was really it was the Nikki and Aaron show back in the beginning of 2025 as we began planning PDX. And it all worked out. 10 months later, we had the event. It was at a convention center here in Phoenix, and we had hundreds of people show up. And it was just stellar. It was freaking awesome. I loved it. I was so pleased with with how it turned out. We had lots of positive feedback, and we are in the middle of planning pdx 2026, right now, so I'm looking forward to that one even more. But so those are how I started building some additional channels and brands here at pipeline. So now pipeline engineering services is still our core business, automation, custom fixtures, product design, that's the core business but, but tangential to that, we've got the wave dot engineer, our online community for engineers. We've got, obviously, there's a
Mike Romance:podcast I haven't checked out yet, so that'll be next on the list.
Aaron Moncur:It's cool. I think it's pretty cool. I'm, yeah, I'm pleased with how that is going as well. And then we've got the PDX flagship in person event. We also have PDX webinars that we do kind of every other month. Our ethos for PDX is, teach, don't pitch. So all of the exhibitors that come to exhibit, unlike a typical trade show where, you know, they're just handing out brochures or flyers. They're actually teaching something practical and relevant to engineers. And so in our PDX webinars, it's the same format. We invite vendors to present and we just ask them to, Hey, make sure you're available sales pitch. Yeah, you're actually providing some practical, meaningful education. I think we've done maybe eight of those. It's kind of every other month ish that we're doing that we're also leading local hardware meetups here in Phoenix. And then we have CAD Club, which is a volunteer program that we started three or four years ago. And once a week on Wednesdays, we open our doors here at pipeline. And middle school and high school students come to our office and we teach them how to use CAD and we teach them some engineering principles and some life skills. Every week we have what we call the CAD club tenant, and these are things like early is on time, or be honest, or the difference between good and great is attention to detail. Persistence beats brilliance, you know, just life principles that hopefully set these kids up for for success and and I've received you. We've been going for three or four years now, so a few of these students have graduated high school and are now in college. And I've received a few emails from these kids. It's so fulfilling to get these and they'll say, Hey, I'm in my second year at college now, and just wanted you to know that the CAD Club was like the catalyst that really got me interested, and, you know, played a pivotal. Role in my life, deciding to go into engineering. So anyway,
Mike Romance:it's pretty cool to hear him. One more thing that documentation is okay. Early in your career, don't shy away from documentation.
Aaron Moncur:No, just kidding, garage engineering and true, engineering is documentation.
Mike Romance:You know, I'm just sitting here and I'm like, Man, this guy internet in our our time knowing each other hasn't been that long, most of it through you know a client, you know customer, you know that type of thing. But I, yeah, I'm sitting here listening to your story, and you know you spent a couple years in industry, in corporate, and it didn't satisfy your need to do something else, to do something more challenging. Maybe you know something of your own. So you build this, something of your own. You start cold calling, building up this client base, you know, a lot of ways, just kind of scrappy right, trying to go after it. And instead of just right word growing that as big as you can, you're pivoting right into everything you've mentioned has been helping people and giving back. And I just, you know, to me, I just think that's the world of that. I think engineers, you know, like, I got two kids, we talked about them all the time, but they, you know, their aspirations. You know, it's athletes and this and that. And actually, one of my sons really is like, Daddy, you're an engineer, and he's really proud of me being in really proud of me being an engineer, but, like, I don't get enough credit. We don't get enough pay. It's hard to do our jobs, you know, I don't want to go dwell on that, because I think in some ways, we really like what we do, but it's not as glamorous as a lot of other, you know, things you can do. And I think you're giving back, you're, you know, raising awareness. You're trying to make it glamorous, right from your element. And I just think that's fantastic.
Aaron Moncur:Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, I don't even know. Engineers are not, not the sexiest profession, right? They can be.
Mike Romance:It depends how geeked out you want to. I mean, come on, we do some cool stuff, right? We're now, we're showing, showing exactly, that's my point. Like, how do you how do you make it sexier, I guess. But, yeah,
Aaron Moncur:well, I have thoughts on that actually. Well, my latest interest is documentary filmmaking, and I've been getting into it in a big way. And I'm very excited about telling engineering stories in in more of a like, cinematic style, okay, not just a simple cell phone video, but but with dramatic lighting and and high production value. So that's, that's my next foray. So yeah, take this and do it
Mike Romance:because you already have a platform for it. It's probably right down the alley. But when I was young, you know, kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I remember applying to college and not really knowing, like, you get some descriptions of what each of the roles are, but you really don't know. And then you get into your first couple years in, you know, out of college, into your first job, and like, you had no idea what to expect out of that role, like that one you had, right? I always thought, and this is back in the DVD days that it'd be a great business. And again, it revolved around, I guess, business and money. But it wasn't about the money. It was like, can you show like, you know, years one through three of every profession? And, I mean, it's now, you can do all, say anything, but can you show the in the life of, you know, a new grad and allow people, and that would be, I mean, you're not going to monetize that at all. You just make it available. You just make it available on YouTube or something like that. But here's what a quality engineer. I'm just using engineering, but you can imagine an accountant, you could do this industry, and you could have them fall around it and take the the second guessing away, and also show kind of what real life is. I mean, there's some element of your peeling the covers off and exposing, maybe what isn't so glamorous, but that's, that's work. That's, that's a job, but, yeah, go for it. Man show what a design engineer does. It's not all just CAD and doing, you know, cool designs. A lot of times it is documenting or maybe getting shot down because you're presenting to a team and you miss something, right? There's a real world to that. So anyways, that'll be fun to watch. Watch you go after that. You're not gonna have enough time. Yeah, pipeline, after all these extracurriculars.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I know the hours are filling up for sure, but ultimately, I don't know that I'll get there. But my dream, my vision for doing this, is to do like a reality TV series about what it's actually like doing engineering projects. I've watched, it's been a while, but there were, there used to be this show. I don't remember what it was called. It was these, these guys who design very high end aquariums. I think they were in Vegas or something. Yeah, cool, cool design projects, right? They're always different. They're custom, they're big. There's, there's controls,
Mike Romance:controls, right? Teaching engineering, because I got a buddy who built one in his garage, and he's an engineer. I forget which industry, aerospace, but, yeah, he's got full, you know, inputs, outputs, timers, you know, level, level sensors, filters. I mean, it's like process engineering, but you're building a phished. Yeah, come on. Totally. That's pretty awesome,
Aaron Moncur:and it was fascinating.
Mike Romance:Brewing beer was my introduction to some chemistry and purification and process out of it. So, yeah, I think that's fantastic. You know, thinking outside the box, right? Yeah. Well, I've already deviated from half of my agenda here, so I think in the interest in somewhat keeping this light, let me see. So Aaron, what is the best memory you have of your business of pipeline?
Aaron Moncur:I don't know if this was the best memory, but it was certainly a good one. We had an opportunity several years ago to do a pretty big project, but I knew that we did not have enough hours in the week to complete it on the timeline that our customers said they needed it. It was a ground up development project of two different automated test machines, not simple test machines, lots of automation motors, vision systems, pneumatics, full controls. So these were like legitimate automated machines, and they needed both in 10 weeks. And for anyone who's familiar with automation, that's insane.
Mike Romance:Parts just in general, right?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah, right. 10 weeks is there's no way, not even for one project. And I knew that the only way we had any chance of getting this done was if the team was willing to put in extra time. You know, it was going to be nights, it was going to be weekends. And so I posed it to the team, and I think this is very illustrative and representative of the culture in general that we have here, which is probably the thing I'm most proud about at pipeline, that the culture that we have. And I said, All right, team, here's the opportunity. If we do this, it's going to require nights, weekends, extra work. We don't have to do this. We can say no, and I'm not going to compel anyone to do anything. We have some some governing principles at Pipeline. One of them is we. We manage by invitation, not compulsion. And I got to demonstrate that principle with this opportunity. I said, What do you guys think? This is what it's going to require. If you're willing to sign up for this, we'll do it. If you're not, we'll say no. And we were a little slow at the time, so we kind of needed the work, sure, but this was, like, almost too much work, right?
Mike Romance:And risky and and
Aaron Moncur:risky, yeah, right. I mean, and without drop, dropping a beat or skip without skipping a beat, the whole team was like, we're in, yeah, let's, let's do this. And we, we finished it in. Like, it may have been 11 weeks, but it was darn close to 10 weeks, which is just a miracle. And throughout that entire period, not once did, like any of quote, unquote management have to step in and be like, You guys aren't working hard enough. You said that you're going to be here and you're going home at five, and we need you here. None of that. Not a single occurrence.
Mike Romance:You mean, you mean everyone just did what they needed to do. Everyone just self motivated. So exactly the way to do it, too.
Aaron Moncur:You know, everyone just showed up and like they had enrolled themselves. You know, I wasn't telling them, this is what you have to do. They decided that I invited them to do this, and they said yes. And so they had enrolled themselves, and everyone managed themselves. And it was a really cool experience as a team.
Mike Romance:That's probably the only way you succeeded was, yeah, let the team buy in. Let them want to do it. You know, yep, you know, kind of all hands. You know, when you do the baseball and everyone get in the middle and say, Let's do this. So did you guys celebrate when you were done? Did you reward yourselves for together, for such a, you know, positive I would assume, you know, successful experience delivering this.
Aaron Moncur:I can't remember if we did any kind of formal celebration, but, but I did promise the team, you guys are all contributing more than what is expected of you, right? Like, 40 hours, that's what I expect, and everyone's going to put in more than that. So I said, whatever profit we get at the end, I'm going to distribute a portion of that to the team and and I did. And, you know, I think everyone appreciated that. That's cool.
Mike Romance:Yeah, naturally coming to an end. What is the hardest part about running your engineering services company, like, what do you want customers? I guess people to know about the hardest part about doing what you do, because I'll tell you, I didn't really know you think you could just go order. And I don't want to say, push around vendors. You definitely don't think that. But you know, you go into business with somebody, and you're under the gun as the customer, and you have to deliver, and you kind of assume, hey, they're just going to build a frozen it's going to work, but there's work, but there's there's just so much to executing, delivering. But what's the hardest part about running a services company?
Aaron Moncur:Specifically, I think for our business, there are two things. One is just finding the customers. We were very lucky for a long time. And I think Lucky is the right word. We also worked very hard, so there was that aspect, but we had a couple very large customers for the first 10 years of our business, and we really didn't have to do any formal sales or marketing. The work was just there, and we grew organically around these couple of large customers, and then they went away for various reasons, and we found ourselves in it was funny. It kind of felt like we were a startup at that point, because we realized we really don't have, like, a great way of finding new customers. We never had do it. So we never built any processes or tools around that. And so for the past probably five or six years, we've been hard at work building tools and processes for sales, for marketing, and I think we've done a fantastic job of that. And I think we're probably ahead of the curve at this point versus other similar engineering services companies. We have a pretty good sales and marketing engine at this point, but it's still hard. It's a grind going out there and finding new customers. So that's one thing. The other thing that none of us like is quoting Yeah, and quoting is hard. I mean, you and I have talked about this, like, you get it. Most of our customers kind of get it. But what's so frustrating about quoting is we're quoting, you know, big systems, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, and it takes time to put these quotes together. It's not like we spend an hour with a customer and we're like, Okay, I understand what it is. Here's your quote, Mr. Customer, right now that I wish it takes, you know, 10s of hours to put these to really do a good job and put a thorough quote together. And often, we're not perfect at this, but we're getting better at it, we'll ask in the beginning of that process, what like effectively, we're asking, what's your budget, sure, but maybe not in those exact terms, what's the commercial value to you, Mr. Mrs. Customer, of having this solution, and if we can get that information from them early on, I get it right. A lot of customers, they hear that, and they're like, Well, if I tell you that, then you're just going to quote that amount regardless of what it costs you. I get it. But genuinely, that's not why we're asking. We're asking because if you as the customer come back and say, Well, we have$30,000 to spend on this or this solution is commercially worth about 30 grand a year to us. If we know it's going to cost 200 grand or hundreds of 1000s of dollars to build this machine, then we can very quickly say, thank you so much for sharing that I don't think this is the right fit for us, and we save everyone a lot of time. But so often that's just not the case, and as much as we fight against it and try to make it happen that way, oftentimes it doesn't. And so we put in all this time quoting things, and we give them the quote. They're like, Oh no, that's way too much. Sorry, no. And we're like, Ah, well, we asked you this early on, and you said, Well, I'm not sure what the budget is, but, but now we give you a quote, and you know that this has apparently exceeded your budget. So why couldn't you have given me some kind of range in the beginning, and we'd know, you know, much, much sooner, and save everyone a bunch of time? So that's, that's pretty frustrating. I think we're getting better at it, at having those conversations early on, and convincing people we're not just asking so that we can maximize our quote. We're trying to save you and us time. That's that's why we're asking. I'd say those are the two most challenging things, finding new customers and then just the quoting process.
Mike Romance:Yeah, I feel you on that one. It's painful on my side too, right? You're not giving away, sure. Yeah, the sauce you have your good, great, best type of situations, and there's so many levers to pull to. So how do you even, you know, say, you know cost or quality, or you know reputation, of the components you use, you know, the UI, all that stuff. So, like, it's really hard. I think there is quite a negotiation that you know, and you. Partnership that goes into that. And then, you know, most customers are going to have to get multiple bids, and how do you keep those equal on the same playing field? So I think it goes back to relationship and trust. And, you know, you protect each other, right? Both sides need to protect themselves, but I think you can also protect each other, and I think that's where requirements come into place. Yeah, yeah. I can keep going. Couple other questions. Is there, you know, maybe you answered it actually in that last conversation. But what is like one thing or maybe two that you wish customers would know kind of about your side of the business that maybe they don't, and that's kind of related. But is there anything
Aaron Moncur:else specific? Yeah, for sure that that quoting part.
Mike Romance:Yeah, I think that's probably true. What else
Aaron Moncur:to say about that? Yeah, that's probably the big one right there.
Mike Romance:Yeah, I would say that makes a lot of sense, knowing your requirements, right? Kind of having them, yeah, some stuff down to tell you if there's specific component vendors you'd like to use, right? I'm thinking answering all those unknown questions probably helps a lot, huh?
Aaron Moncur:Here's a more concrete way for me to communicate that, quoting piece for the customer side, knowing specifically, not just your technical requirements, but understanding how you'll decide whether it's worth doing a project, and sharing that information with us. That's super helpful.
Mike Romance:Yeah, it's kind of reverse engineering. Kind of what we use to come up with our budget sometimes too. So I will have to see. And again, it goes back to, you know, whether it be NDA or not, you know, fairness and bits. But I think the more you can, you know, kind of unlock those hidden assumptions or factors with all parties, but to allow the vendor. I've been in too many situations where, you know, the vendor gets screwed because, you know, you lock them into, you know, some design that's going to cost more development, and it's not clear. So you want to both on both sides. So do you like small do you guys, like, prefer smaller projects or larger projects, and then similarly, like, repeat designs, or do you like, totally bespoke, like kind of new things.
Aaron Moncur:That's a tricky one. Well, first answer is, good projects for us are generally in the hundreds of 1000s of dollars. That's a good sized project for us. And then the second question, the bespoke, totally custom, brand new invention projects are super fun. From an engineering standpoint, we love, love doing those projects. From a commercial standpoint, it's a terrible business model because it's really hard to make money on that first machine, but if the customer orders a second machine, we tend to do fairly well on on those, okay,
Mike Romance:what industry is your favorite to work with? Or the easiest for say,
Aaron Moncur:we like medical Yeah. I mean, it's a regulated industry, so that they have a lot of of needs that align well with automation and custom manufacturing equipment, fixtures, things like that. So there's a good natural fit there. And then medical devices tend to do fairly well financially, so they all usually have the capital money to pay for these things as well.
Mike Romance:All right. Last question, where do we get the swag? Man, where do we get the swag? The pipeline swag, dude.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so yeah, there actually is some swag on our website. We just had someone purchase a being an engineer t shirt just a couple of days ago. But there, there's being an engineered T shirts and stickers on our website. You just go to the the shop area and there's a bunch of swag there. Got any kids stuff on there for my little ones? I think there's some child size t shirts anyway.
Mike Romance:Yeah, right. We'll have to go grab some. Thank you, Aaron, this was fun. I hope it
Aaron Moncur:was fun for you. Thank you. I really appreciate you asking and being interested in doing this. Mike, those it was a lot of fun. Thanks a lot.
Mike Romance:Yeah, anytime, anytime. Any last words for the audience here we go.
Aaron Moncur:I don't think so. Just thank you everyone. I mean, it's been a long journey here. We're season seven, and you all are still with me. So thank you all, you dear listeners out there for the support.
Mike Romance:All right, man, have a good one.
Aaron Moncur:Thank you, Mike. 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 and 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.
