Episode Details

Connect with Andrew:

Email: crowe@the-mfg.com

Website: the-mfg.com

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

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Andrew Crowe. Andrew is the leader of the new American manufacturing Renaissance and host of tv's project MFG. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Crowe: Thank you so much for having me.

Lisa Ryan: Share with us about your background and what led to your passion for changing the face of manufacturing.

Andrew Crowe: I would love to. My name is Andrew Crowe. I grew up in inner-city St Louis. The area I grew up in was violent, and there weren't a lot of opportunities. In the school district or the radius of where I was, I didn't have a lot of options or platforms to see what I was good at outside of sports and entertainment.

Seeing many people around me with jobs that weren't paying enough to survive on it led me into crime - to do something to lift my family out of poverty. Unfortunately, the only examples I had around me were people doing badly and illegal things. Before I was 18, I was a two-time felon and a teenage father. I didn't have a lot of focus, and I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I didn't have much opportunity to express what I could be.

Fast forward to jobs not working out because of felonies and getting into more trouble. I finally had enough. I put the word out that I was looking for a job and a young lady introduced me to a place where she was working. It was a manufacturing plant, and I walked in and took a machinist test and failed horribly. I had never seen micrometers or calibers or anything like that. But on the back side, there was a math test with fractions and decimals, which is what we measured. I did well on that side, so I got hired to run the saw on the third shift, cut material, and drop it off at the CNC machines and the manual machines. I took this job in that factory, and my mind exploded with all the opportunities for the first time. I felt like I was the guy that got left in the museum or the kid in the candy shop.

I walked into this new world and had never considered how things were made. I didn't know anything about manufacturing. It lit a fire under me that I had never felt before. I wasn't passionate about the other things I had done in life. I didn't know what that felt like to have a passion. So I stayed in that environment as long as I could. I would work my eight hours, clock out, and then I would stay for four hours and watch the machines. Finally, I would stand and take notes.

I bought a lot of coffee and donuts, and I tried to find some teachers and mentors that would teach me more about this field. At the same time, this thing kept me from the streets and making bad decisions because all I could think about was how important my job was. We were making things that went into the fighter jets, the tanks, the cars, and stuff like that, then that moves America and protects America. I didn't feel like a felon, and I didn't feel like a teenage father. I felt like I was an American, and I felt like the things I was doing contributed to America. I was important here, so I would come to work early and stay late. I would study and at the same time.

I understood that the culture wasn't conducive to people who look like me, and frankly, not people who look like you. So, as I fell in love with this industry, I realized that this place isn't a great place for people of color and women. Because women raised me, and I am a person of color, I felt there were some things we could do to change that.

I watched how manufacturing could uplift my life and brought me from feeling like I didn't have a place in America and wasn't important. I wanted to ensure that people who came from coul