Episode Details

Connect with Todd Carroll:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-carroll-65b11914/

Website: https://www.bbman.com/

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm here today with Todd Carroll. Todd is the Vice President of sales at B&B Manufacturing, serving the United States and Canada. B&B is a manufacturer of timing pulleys, synchronous belts, and power transmission products. Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd Carroll: Good morning, Lisa. Thanks for having me.

Lisa Ryan: Absolutely! Todd, please share a bit about your background and what led you to manufacturing and with B&B.

Todd Carroll: Great. I've was born and raised around this industry. I grew up in Indiana and went to Purdue University. When I graduated, my dad had an independent distributorship here in Indianapolis. I was able to get familiar with the different manufacturers that he represented. As I graduated from Purdue, I got into manufacturing with one of his tier-one manufacturers. My journey started there down in Dallas, Texas, Arlington, Texas.

It then took me to Portland, Oregon, and then Minnesota - all with that one manufacturer. I like to see how things are made from the raw form into finished form and where it goes in the marketplace. Manufacturing is unique from a pair of power transmission standpoints because there's not anything you didn't get up this morning that manufacturing and our products didn't have some role in making, whether it's making toothpaste or coffee or whatever.

I've also spent a little time on the distribution side with some different distributors, national distributors in the United States. But I've always found my way back to manufacturing. It's my comfort zone and my happy place. I like to connect people with products, solve problems, and come up with solutions for manufacturers for the customer.

Lisa Ryan: One of the things that we talked about in our initial conversation is that we want to change the conversation to bring more people into manufacturing and in today's competitive workplace where everybody's fighting for the same people. You must create the type of culture that people want to work for, and there are just so many things that you were doing there at B&B to make that happen.

Was this something that was kind of always part of your DNA, as far as building those relationships, or was there something with B&B that you just decided to start changing things and connecting with employees? What are some of the things you're doing and some of the thoughts behind it?

Todd Carroll: If you talk to anybody who knows me, they will tell you that I'm in sales and I like to talk a lot, so I connect pretty well with people. At B&B, one of the nice things is that we've got a privately owned company. Bob Hamilton is our owner and CEO. I've known him for probably about 20 years. So when we talked about my coming on board to set up the sales and marketing aspects of B&B, I started to get to know Bob well as the leadership team that he's put into place. I began to understand what kind of culture he was creating there.

In today's workplace, you're fighting for talent, and it's hard to find it. How do you keep it? How do you bring it in the door? One of the things that we do is a standard benefits package. You've got your 401 k's contributions, but we also have profit sharing. If we hit a specific goal for the company, then the company kicks in a bit more percentage for its overall profit sharing side. We've also got a gym onsite, and Bob pays the employees to work out. If you have a certain group within the organization - let's say that because we're a manufacturer, we've got primaries out in the shop. We've got secondaries. We've got shipping, receiving, packing, etc. If your team does all the workouts during th