[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Fernway Insights, where prominent leaders and influencers shaping the industrial and industrial tech sector discuss topics that are critical for executives, boards and investors. Fernway Insights is brought to you by Fernway Group, a firm focused on working with industrial companies to make them unrivaled. Segment of one leaders to learn more about Fernway Group, please visit our
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[00:00:38] Speaker B: Hi, this is Lidhi Arora, vice president at Fernway Group. Welcome to another episode of Fernway Insights as we continue with our theme of value creation and transformation in industrial sector. Our guest today is Miss Megan Jude, chairman of the board at Ideal Industries. Megan is a speaker, author and family business and corporate governance advocate. She has a deep understanding of what helps family businesses thrive and survive and makes it her mission to share this know how with the family business community.
The enthusiastic champion for family businesses draws on her experience as a fourth generation leader and chairman of the board at Idean Industries 105 year old family business in its fifth generation of ownership.
Megan has vast experience speaking and moderating events and as a panelist, podcaster and keynote speaker.
The published author sits on the editorial board and as a contributor to NACD private company directorship, contributes and sits on the editorial board for Family Business magazine and writes for private director and family business magazine and other publications. Her consultant work focuses on family and corporate governance. Megan served as the director of the Family Business center at St. Joseph University and founded the Lodi's Forum, a peer group for female board chairs, vice chairs and lead directors. It is no surprise that Megan Today is a highly sought after public speaker, published author, and transformational leader. With that, Megan, welcome to our podcast. Very excited to have you here and look forward to the conversation.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor and pleasure to speak with you today.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Perfect. So Meghan, let's start by talking about ideal industries. It is no news that it is one of the most successful family owned business. Tell us a bit about the company and what it does.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: So Ideal Industries was founded by my great grandfather Jay Walter Becker in 1916, and he started with one product which is a commutator stone, which still is used today. Although it's not our most well selling product anymore, it's something that is still very useful in the marketplace. So the company's evolved, obviously, over 105 years, and we're now focused in a manufacturing company focused in the infrastructure, lighting and electrical spaces. And we're really most well known for ideal industries or in the electrical space for serving electricians.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: You and your family, like you said, you are 105 years old company. The company must have seen multiple economic crisis. Right. How was Covid-19 any different, if at all? For ideal Industries, Covid was challenging.
[00:03:49] Speaker C: We have operations globally, so we have operations in China, the UK, Canada, multiple sites in the US and New Zealand, all of which, as you recall in the news, were highly affected by Covid-19.
So when it first came out, obviously China was hit hardest earliest, but then you just kind of saw the wave go through all the various countries. And the UK, obviously, has really struggled with containing the virus and getting people back to work full time. So I would say that being an essential business in the manufacturing space, we really struggled with ensuring that our employees were safe and that they could come to work. And our philosophy is a family business, which is not unique in the family business space, is to really try to put employees first. And so although we didn't lay anybody off due to Covid, we really did struggle with the fact that we had all the cost and reduced sales, certainly in 2020. So it's been.
I would say it was a challenge. And also, I think in most economic events, it was fairly protracted. And also there was this element of the unknown. When you look back at 2008, you saw what happened, you knew why, and you knew that the economy was going to recover. And certainly in 2020, we thought it, or I certainly thought it was going to be over in three months. And here we are two years later. So there was this element of unknown and not knowing how far you have to cut back, how you need to pivot. And now, of course, we're seeing, with the global shutdown in 2020, we're running into very significant supply chain issues, not unlike everybody else, obviously, it's an issue for all. And so it's been quite interesting. One of the advantages that we have is that really in the eighties, when there was this big trend to offshore a lot of our manufacturing, a lot of manufacturing in the US, and we lost subsequently a lot of that talent and expertise in the United States. What was lucky for us is that we had always had a philosophy of manufacturing products near our customers. And so although we do have operations in China, it's to serve our customers in China, and same with operations around the globe. So although we have had supply chain issues like everybody, it hasn't been as catastrophic as many. So like all businesses in Covid, we had some winners and losers, but given that we had a, you know, we had this philosophy of not laying off our employees due to Covid, we really were able to pivot quite quickly. Or very early in this year when things kind of the lights turned on everywhere and we started serving, we had such demands in the marketplace, we were able to deliver effectively, at least with our talent side.
It's hard to manufacture stuff if you don't have the materials. But it was an interesting journey, certainly, and certainly very different than previous economic challenges we've seen.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Got it. And Megan, some of these challenges that you mentioned were a common theme across a lot of industrial companies. We've heard these before, for example, like you said, like, keeping employees safe for the essential businesses, the supply chain disruption.
And at the same time, you've also been vocal about, like, how typically family businesses or private companies do tend to overperform, outperform public, public companies. Right. Did you see any of those, like, you know, advantages play out during the COVID times as well, especially when dealing with the same type of challenges?
[00:07:56] Speaker C: I'd say that certainly from what I've seen and heard, family businesses, because they were able to wait out 2020 with their staff, you know, their employees intact and their, their businesses intact, they were able to really pivot quite quickly in 2021. And so you could see them having that advantage. They didn't lay off 50% of their employees to keep the bottom line whole, and so they were able to pivot and ramp up quite quickly. I also know a lot of family businesses did a lot of acquisitions in 2020 and 2021. It's an advantage if most family businesses don't carry significant debt. And so it means that you can be opportunistic. And you see that certainly one of our biggest growth periods has been when everyone else kind of closes up shop and battens down the hatches.
We get to be opportunistic on some of these businesses that come available. And certainly that was the case in 2008. We made quite a few acquisitions right around that period.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Megan, if you think about challenges, I mean, even before COVID right, the industry, the electrical industry has been seeing many disruptions. Right. If you talk about IoT robotics in energy storage and so on and so forth, right, energy efficiency. So how did that, like, play out or, like, how did that challenge the electrical industry and also, like, play out again for ideal industries in the context of being a family owned business?
[00:09:36] Speaker C: I do worry sometimes that family businesses in general are going to have a difficult challenge with meeting the new technologies that are up and we're seeing more currently.
I also think that a lot of family businesses have been slow to even adapt to kind of the digital trends that started 1520 years ago.
And some of them are being left behind or being competed out by people who either have more technical expertise or just willing to invest more to keep pace with the changing times. But one of the things that I find so fascinating, and I've run into a lot of family businesses that make these products that no one ever touches or thinks about but are absolutely reliant on every day. So one of our biggest selling products, for example, is the wire nut, which everyone has in their homes. It's connecting wires behind every switch or light fixture in your house. There's probably thousands in your home on an average home, and yet nobody thinks about it, nobody talks about it. It's just, it helps you get about your day, but you don't think about it. And I've met a lot of family businesses who make the thing that goes in the thing. So one company I ran into makes soundproofing to go inside car doors.
No one's thinking about who's manufacturing that, but those are real niches for family businesses. They get to evolve into split places where it's specialized and it's not going to make. It's not what is making the product sell. They're not focused on. They're working on, you know, b, two b environments and customers, and someone else can worry about the digital and technology and IoT and everything else. So I know that's a huge, I mean, family businesses, you know, spawn everything. But I think it's kind of interesting that a lot of family businesses have found these niches that no one would even think to. To disrupt or get involved with, because it's not, you know, it's not where the massive dollars are. It's great livings for people and creating real jobs for employees, but it's.
I don't know, I think it's kind of fascinating to see some of those trends.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Right. And so what's next? Right. Like, so, like you said, some of the family businesses have been slow to adopt to these technology disruptions, but how can they catch up? Like, these disruptions could become opportunities very well. Right.
[00:12:22] Speaker C: Believe me, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. And one of the, it depends on if you're a b, two b or b, two c business, right. If you're a b, two b. It's really all about what family businesses are great at. It's, you know, relationships, quality customer service. I mean, you can build such a tight relationship that would be really hard for the company to separate if you're a b, two c business. I think, obviously, digital is really where it needs to go. And certainly in our electrical business, although we sell to distributors and big box stores, our end users are electricians. So we have to kind of try to create that pull in demand with those end users. So in terms of what's next or how do they catch up, I think it really depends on the kind of business that they're in and where their customers are. But I think that every business probably needs to be aware that an Amazon or Amazon like, is going to see an opportunity in your space and try to take it. And, you know, you can see that a lot in just some businesses that you would think would never have been disrupted, like the grocery store.
It's kind of surprising that somebody, you know, a local grocery store which has the customers can provide, you know, has perishable products and, you know, has the footprint has been disrupted into being, you know, by Amazon and other vendors who are trying to get closer to the customer with convenience, not kind of at your doorstep. Rather than having the bricks and mortar, we are going to see some businesses get disrupted. And certainly when you look at hotel chains, which have been, a lot of the hotel chains that started were family businesses that have started with one hotel or motel, and it's expanded across the globe, but you're seeing a quite significant disruption with them with a different offering like Airbnb or Vrbo, which is really putting an impingement on some of their growth opportunities and creating challenges. So I think in the end, it's really about what are the core issues that your customers are dealing with and really trying to understand that, to know whether or not you have the best offering that you can deliver and that you are thinking creatively about how to solve some of those challenges and issues.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Got it. Got it. Very interesting, Megan. Megan, I would like to switch topics now and talk about your journey so far. You've had an amazing journey. Right. Like talk us through your path to chairman or chairman of the board at Ideal Industries.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: So growing up in a family business of a manufacturing company in the midwest that had only ever had male leaders and male family members working in the company, I grew up never really considering ideal as an option or serious option. It's just one of those things that, you know, I didn't have anybody coming before me that really saw this as an opportunity. And in fact, as a child, I remember my brother and I were sitting on the rug at my grandparents house for Sunday dinner. We were playing before dinnertime. And my dad and grandfather, my grandfather, who had been CEO and chairman, and my father, who had been CEO and chairman were sitting there looking adoringly at my brother, who's five playing trucks, saying he's the next one, he's going to be it at seven. I thought to myself, yeah, he's going to be it, of course it's going to be him. And so I never really considered myself kind of a successor, certainly at a young age. So growing up, I went to school and graduated from college with really no idea what I was going to do. But luckily it was at a time when in just a very high growth period in our economy, and I was able to get a consulting job at one of the big five firms and I ended up, I loved that job. It was fantastic. So did you know early career, did project management, was a business analyst and worked on very large it installations on the project management and organizational change side, which was fun.
I loved it. It was running around every day trying to get people on board. I loved that job. But during that tenure, I met my husband, we got married. And it was at that point that I realized there were no women in this consulting firm between the ages of 30 and 45. Like they had all disappeared. At the time that I joined, it was 50% women, 50% men. And then there's this was massive attrition of women during. And I kind of understood it because if you did want to have a family, you would never knew where you were going to get posted from week to week. Some people were on a plane every week, some people would have get the same, you know, have the same client for three years like you just never knew. And of course the hours were really not very conducive to actually ever seeing children awake. So I decided to stay home for when I had my son. I was going to take a year off. I really wanted to be with the baby and was very excited about it. And I think I was holding a three week, my three week old at the time and he, my dad called me up and said, why don't you come work on this transition? We don't know how we're going to transition from the third generation to the fourth.
We know it's going to be very different than the transitions that had happened before because we didn't have family members working in the company at the time. And I decided that I wanted, I figured, why not? I had a three week old, there's nothing else to do.
Not knowing that at six months it's going to get a lot more challenging. But of course, and I'm first time mom and very naive. And so I started working for ideal and really focused on the governance side. So it's really trying to change the engagement that the fourth generation had and really trying to create an opportunity for the fifth generation to focus on the company in a different way and be introduced to it and build relationships with one another. This one of the concerns that I had, if the family wanted to remain family owned, we were missing an opportunity with the business or with the fact that the parents, we didn't have anybody's parents coming home and talking to them about the company. I grew up with ideal as a sibling that I needed to compete with for time and attention. Like, I was always, you know, it was always kind of a adjusting match, but we were not going to have that for the fifth generation because we just didn't, we don't have those people who are there day to day. And so really started working on an education and development program for the fifth generation and trying to, I mean, these kids were all even, you know, five years old at the time, but making sure that they. Every interaction that they had with ideal or the family was, you know, exciting and positive and compelling. So I did that for about 14 years. And during that time, I was named to the board of directors at Ideal. I started chairing the nominating governance committee.
And then what happened was our outside CEO at the time really kind of identified me. He was kind of my sponsor. And I find a lot of women who have had success over during their career, certainly at this time have had sponsors in a way that we wouldn't have been successful otherwise. And so this outside CEO kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, I think you'd make a great chairman. I was like, really? Okay. I don't know. Sure. And so I worked with him for about eight years side by side, really learning the business. I had a great background, having just kind of grown up in it, but really learning the business, getting to know the teams, meeting, going through all the facilities, really building that kind of muscle around corporate governance. And then in 2018, was named vice chairman, and then 2020 was named chairman. Yes, that's right. 2020. Yeah.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Well, it's a very inspiring story for a lot of women leaders, Megan. And Megan, you talked about that how when you joined the company, you focused on governance, and you focused a lot on shaping the fifth generation of leaders. Right. Tell us about some of the initiatives you launched to do that, to increase the family engagement and to also shape the next generation.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: I think what happened family business is that they like to do everything the way that it was done before. So they want to do a transition the way the previous transition did. They want to have family leaders the same way that they did in the past. And really coming in and assessing the situation, I realized that what had worked in the past, although it had been very effective, was not something that was going to be work for that fourth generation. It's nothing. This is the generation that you go from siblings to cousins and second cousins. And people grew up very different lives. They had very different associations with ideal, their parents had different associations with ideal, and some were very enthusiastic and supportive, and some maybe not so and so all of that. When you look at family business, often people talk about legacies being this great thing, but a lot of times, a lot of prejudices or dislikes that somebody has, they pass those down to their children as well.
So I felt like we needed to really start from scratch and look carefully at our governance and make sure that we were producing. We had a governance model that was inclusive and that we really were trying to create opportunities for people to get engaged kind of wherever they could. So one of the things that's different in the third generation, there was enough wealth that people had a lot more free time than what existed in the fourth generation. Certainly at that period, people were working, they had jobs. We did a lot of stuff on the evenings and weekends to really support those people who were working full time but still wanted to be engaged. And we also implemented a task force process so that although many family businesses address all of their governance matters in their family council, we felt that it was too difficult for some people to commit full time to the family. Not full time, but, you know, commit formally to the family council, but still wanted to be included in their decision making process, policy development, or whatever else. So we came up with this model of a task force process so that people could come in for us, you know, for six weeks or three weeks or four phone calls, you'll get fully apprised, share their viewpoints, and then kind of go back to their daily lives. So that was a way in which we were able to incorporate all of the voices in the family, or anybody who felt passionate about a topic, either for or against. It's good you want to know all those things and really end up delivering on a, you know, delivering a policy or program that was more inclusive and reflected more of the family's perspective. For the fifth generation, we really felt that when we had a fifth generation that were growing across, you know, growing up across three or four time zones in the US, luckily, we're still in the US and not all international, like some family businesses. But I felt that we really wanted to ensure that every time the parents got together for a family meeting that the kids had alternative programming. We would fly them all in. The company paid, so if you had a family council meeting, you would bring in the kids as well. And so it became this very useful opportunity for them to.
They just, it was like this quarterly pattern of, of course, you give up whatever you have scheduled that weekend and come to a family meeting. And for them, the family meetings were babysitters or bouncy houses or I adventure training. So leadership skills and team building. And what's been so nice is that we have a population of kids who, although they're second cousins or second cousins once removed and in kind of any other non business owning family, they wouldn't even ever have probably met. They are on FaceTime every day or whatever new technology they're using, but they are, they're still, you know, even all through the pandemic, when we couldn't get anybody together, they were on the phone every day talking, or it's not the phone, but whatever the phone thing is.
And they are very close, which was, I'm so proud of, because not everybody gets an opportunity to grow up like that with their, you know, second cousins. And so we get a chance of getting everybody together every year, a couple of times, obviously, for our ideal meetings, but then we actually have the fifth generation run family camp for us. So they have to plan a weekend. We get about 2025 people to come up to. We have a cabin in northern Wisconsin that we all share. The kids plan the weekend, including baking logos, t shirts, trophies, medals, ribbons, you know, the whole deal. And then they run a lot of activities over the weekend, so, you know, canoe races or scavenger hunts and things like that. And they have to work hard to collaborate and, you know, put together an agenda that's going to work for the weekend, and they have to work together to execute, and they also have to corral 25 people who'd rather, you know, sit on the docker, do something else. So it's been. I think it's been a great opportunity for them. I think they learn a lot about how do you, how do you work together? They feel so important when they get on conference calls, when the, when the parents are getting on calls talking about different matters. It's been a great opportunity for them to show some leadership and for them to learn how hard it is to do group decision making.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Wow, sounds like a lot of fun and exciting extended family interactions. So, megan we've talked about governance and engagement in family businesses. Right now, I would like to talk about a couple of other things that we've noticed at firmware for family businesses. And one of the things is the fact that sometimes family businesses struggle with getting access to the right talent and capabilities.
And the electrical industry, like a lot of other industrial segments, has its own talent gap challenges, too. Right. Tell us, how have you managed to bridge the talent gap at ideal?
[00:28:17] Speaker C: You know, it is a challenge, I think, that we've had. I mean, we have geographic challenges where many of our manufacturing facilities are outside of, like, a metropolitan area, and it's just kind of happened by chance. But it does make it more difficult to get executives to want to relocate their families or move. And so we have, we actually have a, even up to ten years ago, we had a remote executive team, mostly because it doesn't matter where you live, because you're always at some other facility doing something. So that, I think was a competitive advantage that we're not requiring people to relocate. And now, you know, certainly during the pandemic, a lot of our executives have actually, you know, relocated to places even outside of Illinois because we've got so good at remote working. So, and then when you look at the challenges in just the manufacturing space, it's difficult. You know, this is an expertise that has exited the country, essentially. You know, when everybody started offshoring, and we just lost that, that pipeline of talent. So we have had, you know, we really work hard to make sure that our compensation and benefits are very helpful. We expect that if somebody retires with us after working a career, that they can retire with a pension in a 401K, which will give them almost exams exact same salary as, you know, of the last year that they worked at the company.
And so we're really trying to create a benefits package, a culture, and a, you know, career opportunities that I deal that allow people to really spend their life working with us. But there is another talent gap that we are worried about, and we actually have deployed resources for. And that's really a talent gap in our and a skill gap actually in our end user market, which is electricians for the ideal electric business. We have actually started a annual electricians competition, which gets aired every year. This year it's on Fox Sports. And I think it just came out over the weekend when we usually get 40, 50, 60,000 electricians trying to compete to come to this weekend, where we pit them against each other to try to see who's the best electrician in the US.
And it's been a great project. It gets, you know, attracts people to the industry or the trades in a way that maybe they wouldn't have. We do spend a lot of time working with guidance counselors and, you know, community colleges to try to let them know that there are alternative paths for lot of the students who maybe not everybody should probably be sent off to college. If you can find a meaningful career and you love working with your hands, you should, you know, be in the trades. Those are, you know, great jobs. And we've actually changed our foundation at ideal to focus solely on workforce development in the trades. And we're trying to attract more women and minorities into the trades, because that's something that, I mean, those are great jobs for anybody. And certainly a lot of those jobs require brains, not brawn. And so there's a lot of opportunity for people to find great careers there. And then lastly, we've been working with actually the Fernway Group and a couple of people from McKinsey on trying to build a Trades council and a foundation to tackle this broader issue of attracting, attracting people to get into the trades. The reason this is such a big issue is that we have, the average age of almost every trades person or trade in the country is 55. So that means that we have ten more years of this talent and expertise staying and helping our apprentices and early tradespeople, early career tradespeople. But we're going to be losing a lot of talent very soon, and it's really should be considered a national crisis. If you think inflation is bad today, think about what it's going to take when you actually cannot get any trades person to come to your house unless you're paying the top premium dollar, because they just have so much work they can say no to. So it is a concern. I actually was talking with somebody who's a home builder on a very large scale and thousands of homes a year. And he said when he first started, he's entering retirement age now, but he said when he first started, he could build a house in three months. And he said, now it takes nine. And when you look at, you think about, okay, one house, no big deal, but you extend that across the millions of homes that are being built. You see that we are actually already seeing an impingement on our economic growth in these homes being built. And so I think this problem is going to get bigger and bigger. And so we're really working on many different fronts to try to make the trades look exciting through ideal nationals, which is the competition we do to try to track more people with the Ideal foundation and to create more awareness now, with this trades council and foundation we're working on as well. So there's a lot of work to do in this space, but it's a massive issue. And one of the things that we really want to do is make sure that we're working together with all of the other organizations and businesses who are trying to tackle this issue, because the problem is so big. There's no need for any kind of competition. We just should all be working together.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Some really good initiatives there, but also some concerning stuff.
[00:34:23] Speaker C: Like you said, we should all be very concerned.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Right? Right. And you mentioned culture, Megan. So that's where I want to go next, is the fact that sometimes family owned businesses, they take a lot of pride in their culture, but it's always not easy to sustain that culture over generations. Right. With ideal now being in its fifth generation of leaders, how have you been able to do that at your company?
[00:34:58] Speaker C: Well, I mean, I agree it's difficult. And also worrying, especially as a family business grows to having outside executives and you have less family presence there. There's a worry about the culture and cultural impact to that. But I would say that our founder, my great grandfather, Jay Walter Becker, had values, and he actually was not a egotistical man and would never have called something ideal, except that, or his company ideal, except that he thought that ideal really represented his philosophy and culture he wanted to create. So he thought that if you had ideal relationships with your employees, customers, vendors and community, that everybody would prosper. And that was really his goal. Not for him to prosper on the backs of others or on the back of the community, but really that everybody is lifted up together. And I spent some time, certainly when I started getting more involved with the company, and then I became vice chairman and then chairman, I spent some time really thinking a lot about culture. And I realized that under our current leadership, that J. Walter Becker's values are lived every day. And I firmly believe that if he came back today and looked at this business, he wouldn't recognize the products, the buildings, the people. But if he spent time talking to them, he would say, he would realize this was his company, because those values, I mean, talk about a meaningful legacy, those values are still living today. However, there's always more work to do. And we recognize as the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging conversation has really bubbled up in our country. We want to be better. We also believe that we have some opportunities in the ESG space as well. So one of the things that we've been doing is really trying to put together programs to at least understand where we are at a baseline level and to then also assign executive sponsors to these programs, but then also have reporting structure to the board. And so we've even changed our compensation committee on the board to really look at compensation talent and culture as well, because compensation is like, very small piece of what you're trying to achieve when you run a business. And so really trying to expand that charter to tackle all of these major topics, I think really helps then drive the importance through the rest of the organization.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: Great. So, Megan, we are almost towards the end. In closing, I would like to talk about some of your writing and some of your writing and your work as an author. You've been a long time contributor, and you also sit on the editorial boards of family Business magazine and NACV private company directorships. Tell us about your most enjoyable work so far there.
[00:38:15] Speaker C: So usually when I find myself writing, it's usually because I woke up in the middle of the night all, like, feeling passionate about something.
And, in fact, a lot of the work that I've been doing recently is really around corporate governance. But I also find that writing really helps me understand. It helps me understand myself, and it also helps me organize my thoughts in a way that's, that's compelling. And so I have actually written a lot about corporate governance because it helps, you know, helps me learn about my job. But I've also really identified that there are challenges with being a woman in leadership in the boardroom. And so I didn't ever, I've never thought of myself as a female team member. I've just thought of myself as a team member. And I really real, I really started, you know, had some kind of gender awareness when I became chairman because I was the only woman in the room and also one of the youngest people in the room. In fact, it was during that time that I started realizing that I didn't know any other female chairman. And so one of the things we haven't talked about yet is I actually started a peer group for female chairs, vice chairs, and lead directors to try to support them, create a peer environment, but then also try to create a, some awareness of how to be great at the chairman or in that board leadership role. We've really learned a lot in that, and that's where I've been spending most of my time writing. But for me, I think family business, as well as supporting women in leadership roles in the boardroom, is something that I'm really passionate about. Certainly family business is a noble cause, and I think having women in leadership roles in the boardroom, it can be very transformational, not only for the work of the board, but also it's one of those very meaningful things that you can do to really change the face of your organization.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Fascinating and all really inspiring stuff. Megan, thank you. Megan, it was a pleasure having you here today.
[00:40:26] Speaker C: Really.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Thank you for making time for our podcast.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: Thank you so much. That was wonderful to speak to you, and I really appreciate the opportunity.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Fernway Insights. Please visit fernway.com for more podcasts, publications and events on developments shaping the industrial and industrial tech sector.
