Episode Details

Connect with Allison DeFord:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisondeford/

Email: allison@feltmarketing.com

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Allison DeFord. Allison is the founder and trailblazer at felt marketing for manufacturers, and also an expert on the manufacturing MA Masters platform and the overly caffeinated host of the Manufacturing Masters podcast.

She lives to rid the manufacturing world of the web. We syndrome and guide manufacturers to being seen, heard, and felt by their ideal customers. Allison, welcome to the show.

Allison DeFord is Excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Lisa Ryan: Share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing with manufacturers.

Allison DeFord, it's mostly the fact that they are makers, and that's always fascinated me. They make something from nothing. And for me, it's the people, the stories. Many companies we work with, granddad or grandma, bootstrapped had two nickels rubbed together, but they solved a problem.

They created something that didn't exist to solve a problem. And I think the coolest thing about manufacturing is making something from nothing again. And I love its technology side and its evolution over the years. It used to be considered blue-collar, grungy, dark, whatever. It's the complete opposite today. And I just find that very exciting, watching the transformation, and yeah, I live to help people communicate better, and that's the reason that we are called Felt. The most beloved and successful manufacturers are not just seen and heard.

But they're felt and connected to the heart of their customers, and that's not an easy task. And we're good at helping them do that, especially small to mid-size manufacturers. That's just my absolute favorite to work with.

Lisa Ryan: Yeah. Awesome. And it reminds me of when I was in the welding industry, and it was literally at that time it was everything your mother ever warned you about the same thing, dark, dirty, dangerous.

You'd walk in; everything was gross. Now I walk into these plants, and they're bright, shiny, and automated, and as you said, the technology is just amazing, and you start bringing in robots. It's also a recruiting tool because a candidate is walking in. They're like, that's the coolest thing ever. I want to work on that.

Allison DeFord And good point, too, because there's all that talk of the robots taking our jobs. No. They're there to take over the repetitive stuff so that you can elevate the talented people that work with you.

Yeah. Yeah. And when I've had people on the line on the show talking about automation, a good place to start I've found they have found is, what is the task your employees hate doing the most?

And automate that because, again, you're showing them that you're listening to them and you're giving them other things to do that is a better use of their talent than whatever that manual labor task that a robot could do easier and cheaper and not call in sick. .if you could be marketing for any industry, why did you, why else did you choose manufacturing?

Lisa Ryan: Why do you specialize in that?

Allison DeFord We looked at this model years ago with our own business. We're the test dummy; I don't serve you something I haven't tried myself. And we figured out that distributors, for example, are looking to the manufacturer. For the marketing literature and the support and training, the dealers are looking to the manufacturer, and we thought, why wou