Merging Legacies: A Unique Approach to Growth and LeadershipMerging Legacies: A Unique Approach to Growth and Leadership

Merging Legacies: A Unique Approach to Growth and Leadership Transcript:

Announcer: You’re listening to The Kula Ring, a podcast made for manufacturing marketers. Here are Carman Pirie and Jeff White. 

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how are you doing, sir?

Carman Pirie: I’m excited for today’s conversation, sir. 

Jeff White: Yeah, me too. I think it should be interesting. 

Carman Pirie: I think there’s like a lot of components of today’s conversation that I think kind of, different listeners will be able to hook onto. They’ve either experienced similar things or maybe planning similar initiatives. So I think a lot to learn from today’s show. 

Jeff White: Yeah, for sure. And that was very just hiding the burying the lead a little bit there. 

Carman Pirie: I try. We try to build to some sort of pinnacle of suspense here. 

Jeff White: During the show, for sure. So joining us today is Amy Rogers. Amy is the marketing director at KMM Group. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Amy. 

Amy Rodgers: Hi, thank you for having me. 

Jeff White: Great to have you on the show. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, Amy it’s awesome to have you on the show and let’s kick things off with learning more about you and tell us a bit about you and how you ended up at KMM. 

Amy Rodgers: Yeah, so I’ve been in marketing for around 25 years and I’ve had, I’ve been lucky to have a pretty renaissance career, in a lot of different industries in a lot of different ways. So I’ve, Been in large corporations. I’ve been in small businesses. I’ve been on the corporate side, the agency side, B2C and B2B and met John Chagda, who’s the CEO of KMM Group and started working for him. And yeah he really liked my ideas and the way that I wanted to build his brand and the corporate brand and the merging of three different companies. And yeah, it just took off from there. 

Carman Pirie: And for the benefit of our listeners, who is the KMM group? What do y’all do?

Amy Rodgers: So just to introduce the KMM group evolution it was, it really started out with three distinct companies that were started by. the leadership’s fathers. So KV Inc. was started by President Eric Wilhelm’s father in the 70s, as an ultra-precision machining shop, making components for many different industries, including aerospace and high tech, The other two companies were M& S and Arliss Grinding, started by CEO John Shagda’s father in the late 50s. And then John joined him and started a second company called Marin Medical that specialized in medtech grinding which is a more, much more precise type of grinding for things like guide wires and catheters and needles, things like that. Around 2019, having known each other for many years, running in the same kind of circles and the same industries, they decided instead of going to private equity to continue to grow their businesses that they would merge these complementary businesses under one roof called KMM group. So that happened in January 2020. And so it transformed three distinct brands into a cohesive and much more competitive.

Carman Pirie: This is a fascinating challenge on so many levels. Of the, it just occurs to me that, two CEOs, they’re both still in the business. They are second-generation CEOs at that. I appreciate that they know one another and clearly got along before all of this happened. Cause if not, it wouldn’t have ever come to pass, so often in those types of situations. There’s a clear purchaser and a clear person being purchased. And, it’s obvious who gets to call the tune there a little bit when we think about things like a brand evolution as part of a merger and, um, capabilities, personalities, et cetera, that get put in the window versus not But this is a really unique one in that I don’t know, Jeff, have we ever had anybody on the show that has guess marshalled, that guided the M and A communications, marketing sales of a merger acquisition that was a true partnership like this versus something that’s, more of a cold-hearted acquisition. Can we say, I think this is a unique one? 

Jeff White: I think it’s unique. I think the closest thing would probably be the marketers we’ve had on the show from ProMach group, where they were bringing other companies into the fold. But it was very much a sum of all parts is far greater. Then the one trying to maintain some of the original life of the original brand. 

Carman Pirie: Fair, they’re a kinder acquirer, but they are acquiring. So yeah, this is really unique, Amy. What did you think about this brand? The merger of these companies through the lens of the brand, how did you, how do you think about evolving and nurturing those brands or have you consolidated into one? Have you kept them operating separately? How is that transition? 

Amy Rodgers: So when we started thinking about the merging of the three brands, it was really, it was a wild concept because I started with five websites. I needed to merge them into one because M& S Centerless had a website, Marin Medical had a website, and KVI had three websites because they were industry-specific, right? And so trying to get, download all of that information and come up with a strong identity for KMM Group while still holding on to what I thought was a unique selling proposition of the heritage of these three companies and the legacies behind them was something that was important to us. And you were talking about, how strange it was with these two men with an equal merge. And what’s great about these two guys is that they are opposites in the most complementary way. John is really the visionary. And Eric is the nuts and bolts. He makes sure that operations are running in this optimal way. And John really does a lot of the help with the branding and the marketing.

So when we’re thinking about merging these identities we had, like I said, we had to make sure that we create this entity that looks like. It’s bigger than it is. At the end of the day, right? Because we have to be in a space that’s competitive with these multi-million dollar entities, and it’s a really competitive space, especially the machining side, and so we started with the website and a capabilities brochure because they were, Eric and John, were talking about their companies in such different ways. One was really about the nuts and bolts and the other was about the why and the how. And so making sure that we started somewhere. So we started with the logo identity evolution, and so we wanted to. Go into it making sure, hey, we want you to remember who these companies were, here’s who they are now.

And so we started with a combined logo that had the legacy logos under it. And any new visitor to the new website, we get a pop-up reassuring them if they were redirected from one of the other websites, you’re in the right place, right? So we had to do that for the first couple of years, honestly, because, not even old visitors to the new website were, Maybe not knowledgeable about what was happening with the company.

So facing these five separate sites with completely different narratives, I had to scale it back into who are we working for? So I started with our target audience and that was the industry. So we worked for, we wanted to look as expansive as possible. And since there were so many different industries that we actually did manufacture components for, that’s where we started.

And we also had a pretty tight timeline with that website. So we wanted something compact, but we wanted to be able to build on it. So, that’s where we started when I needed to get a handle on the technical aspects of manufacturing and the actual disciplines that I was representing. And I think that the best part of the evolution of my entire career is that everywhere I go, I learn all of this minutiae about different industries and that’s kind of my purpose, I really love the continuous learning and I’ve heard said, have the courage to suck at something new. And that’s something I’m willing to do every single day. 

Carman Pirie: You know, I hadn’t heard that before.

Jeff White: I think it’s a really lovely way to put it and incredibly self-aware because not only were you coming into this new as well and having to pick up the pieces, but you’re certainly helping to assemble them. As you’re going, as the bus is going down the road, you’re putting the wheels on, how have you? Especially with things like the website and combining the three entities and even more sites, how have you continued to expand on that? Have you had the time, to invest into growing that out into a broader, bigger platform as time has gone on? 

Amy Rodgers: Yeah, absolutely. We needed to establish a brand identity, right? And so obviously the two sides of the coin are branding and marketing. So brand building is extremely expensive and unless you want to try and just do it organically. And I always say, if you don’t have a lot of money, you have to have a lot of patience. However, as long as you keep firing the same brand identity over and over again. So you have to from the very beginning, say, What are we going to look like? What are we going to sound like? What’s our core message? What’s our unique perspective on the industry? And in such a crowded field, you have to find a way to stand out. And so that’s where we started. We became much more selective of the platforms that we were on. Because we started out, across social media and social media is such a huge animal, right? Because every single platform speaks to a completely different audience and so you have to find where your voice sings the loudest. And so we decided to focus mainly on LinkedIn. It had to maximize our kind of B2B impact rather than spreading our resources really thinly across Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and you know developing targeted content again pushing that brand message that brand voice the colours the feel and slowly You know, pulling back on the legacy logos, the legacy companies, and, increasing our impact across different platforms. So there’s a lot of industry magazines and industry sites that we’re pushing into getting out and getting into the PR realm of things and trying to get speaking opportunities and podcasts for the leadership and all of that kind of stuff, just to make sure that we’re starting to spread our wings as the KMM brand.

Carman Pirie: You mentioned about the, you had these various different brands before you’re bringing them under one. They had very different ways of speaking, and very different tones of voice. I’m assuming that as you consolidated or merged the brands, consolidated would maybe be the right way to put it, I don’t know, but as you merged them together. Did the new voice that you were bringing to market, I’m assuming it was at least different than some of the brands that you were merging. And I’d be curious about the experience with the brand that was, it was most different from, did you have any kind of greater amount of change management, the further that the new brand voice got away from the old?

Amy Rodgers: I think so because I think that, in the beginning, you want to sound, you want to provide enough social proof to show that you’re a bona fide entity, right? And so the voice started out very authoritative of, we know what we’re doing. We make, hard-to-make parts, right? And then over time, over the last year and a half, really, the voices evolved more to something a little more down to earth and something a little friendlier, because I think at this point, the thing that separates us the most from our huge competitors is our personality. And the fact that you can actually speak to us and we can solve your challenges. And so where they have, their biggest advantage is mass, ours is, personalization. 

Carman Pirie: How has the CEO thought leadership that you’ve been building played into that? I’m assuming in some ways what we’re doing is we’re putting the CEO’s personality on this merged entity, but I don’t want to put words into your mouth.

Amy Rodgers: No, we are. And what’s great and what I’ve inherited from this company is a CEO who is an expert in his field, but also an amazing storyteller and a very relatable guy, right? So he has the technical expertise. He grew up with his father’s company. He’s actually worked on the shop floor. He’s, managed the shop floor, now CEO of this Much larger company than his father had But he can tell a story in a way that anybody listening he meets everyone where they are and so I knew immediately That he needed to be I needed to start building his brand and make him Kind of the focus of the KMM brand so that we could have put a face to a corporation and just the fact that, he’s so mechanically inclined. He’s the type of guy who can just sit down to a piano and play something by ear. And being able to meet people where they are. He’s an extremely approachable person. And I bother him incessantly to create vlogs for me. And because I think that even just hearing his voice and seeing his face, that’s really what I wanted to do. And so going into next year, I’m really putting pressure on him and I say it’s pressure. He wants to do it, obviously, with all of his responsibilities it’s going to take, a lot out of him to move into the true thought leadership spectrum of marketing, right?

Because you have to have a thought or perspective that’s unique to this industry, which he does. And then you have to build that into an entire brand, which is not an easy feat because you have to, again, just like we did with the original KMM brand, move into a lot of different venues. You have to be posting on social media constantly. You have to get a lot more speaker engagements. You have to get interview requests, all of that kind of stuff in order to build your brand into I’m a thought leader for the manufacturing community. 

Jeff White: When you came into this and were focused on building the brand, did you know that this was going to be a big part of the strategy that you were undertaking? Did you have a sense? That he was going to be your frontman on this or was that something that you discovered and realized? Hey, I’ve really got something in this personality I need to leverage. 

Amy Rodgers: Yeah, because when I initially, when I was building the KMM brand, it was all about the KMM brand and how can we leverage all of these legacy corporations into building that brand into something.

That really sings and it wasn’t until I was really working a lot with John that I realized especially in working with him on different content pieces that I wanted to put out there that I knew that he had background in so I would interview him on it or even, ask him short interview questions and have him just respond. And even just taking the smallest steps, I started something called the Chagda Sessions on LinkedIn, which are just really short audio clips, just sound bites from John that are the answer to some questions that I’ve asked him. And then, just putting that out there. Every week or every other week and starting to build that because it started with and I’m just going to say this because it started with this incredible story. He told me that I dug out over and over again. And it’s called 100 steps. And he put this story together about. It’s really about having perspective on how far you’ve come, which is, KMM’s entire story, right?

And it’s a story about him, as a child going to the dunes at the Cape with his family. And he’s five years old and they’re headed back to the car at the end of the day. And he starts crying because he’s looking across this expanse of sand and it looks like the desert. And his dad crouches down and says, I know it looks like A really long walk, but can we do it? Can you do a hundred steps with me? And so he hundred steps his way back to the parking lot and then his dad turns him around and says, look how far we’ve come. And that gets me every, and it’s every single story. This guy tells me that it’s just like that. It just really hits at the core of Humanity and thinking about how far one has come and having perspective instead of looking across what’s yet to come, 

Carman Pirie: It’s interesting to consider that. I think a lot of folks, I think there are a lot of CEOs that would be listening to what you just said and they’d be thinking my goodness, I don’t know if I’m that compelling, I don’t know if I, I don’t know if I’m that good of a storyteller. And then. I’ve also heard them say, I don’t know if I’m technically that good. I don’t know if I know enough about the nitty-gritty of what we do. I guess how, and you seem like you have a CEO, that has both in spades, I’d be interested about the balance between those two. Cause I think B2B gets a reputation for having to be, always all about the hard-hitting facts and the feeds and speeds and that’s certainly not your hundred-step conversation.

Amy Rodgers: Exactly. And I, and that’s what is so magical about these two, both of them is that they are, they know every piece of the business and they are so technically inclined and they have this unique perspective on it that is empathetic. It’s humanizing it. It’s not just, A line of cogs trying to turn out something. It’s, that they built this entire culture. And let me just talk about that for a second, because I think that’s an important piece too, is that they both had corporate culture at their own businesses and they were able to merge them into this, these 20 foundations for KMM group that they both believe in sincerely. It’s not just a poster on the wall. It’s something that we talk about every week. We talk about one of them and there’s always some story that comes up to help people relate. And it doesn’t just come from John and Eric. It comes from the entire team when they meet about it, but obviously, I think the best stories come from John, and he was even talking about one of the foundations is to, um, accept change.

And that’s the same anywhere, right? Things never stay the same. But he makes it more relatable and empathetic by saying, he said, I have this story I talked to a friend of mine in my Vistage group who talked about how humans actually react to change and how it actually hits you on a visceral level and you can even go into fight or flight if someone, if you’re being forced to change or asked to change something because your brain doesn’t want to, it gets into the habit of doing something over and over again and it wants to continue that. So you just have to remember that, change is inevitable, and that there’s room for excitement. And, it’s just things like that every single week that really builds on this corporate culture of, we’re not just here to pump out parts or components, we’re here for everyone. And I think that, it’s just, it’s an exciting opportunity for me to be part of, you a field manufacturing that’s really the backbone of America, and every single thing that you pick up has been manufactured somewhere, right? And so it’s exciting to be a part of a homegrown manufacturing operation that’s been around for decades. 

Jeff White: So you’ve got the raw talent. You’ve got the empathy, the storytelling, all of these pieces. What have you had to teach him? 

Amy Rodgers: So I’m his editor. He’ll write out stream-of-consciousness stuff. And like I said, it’s always compelling, but I always, I usually have to shore it up for him. I have a background and degrees in print journalism. And just making sure that, at the beginning of the show, you were talking about burying the lead, making sure that we’re not burying the lead, that we start our stories where they begin and that they’re, the way that you’re telling the reader, your story goes in a cohesive fashion so that it has this impact and ends with something that will stay with them. So I think what I’ve taught him is just how to make his writing more impactful for the reader. And like I said, he’s taught me how to meet people where they are. 

Carman Pirie: There’s an awful lot of, um, CEOs, probably many in smaller companies that would be thinking to themselves, There’s no way I’m writing a thing. I have people to do that. I’m not going to sit down and try to draft that. Is this, Has this been a hard habit to get into or was that something that pre-existed your time with him? 

Amy Rodgers: No, it’s something that he really likes to do, and he likes telling stories. And with Eric, I write a lot of his stuff for him and he’ll tweak it, let’s change this or I want to make sure that we emphasize that. But with John, he’s the one that tweaks it. That gives me the start and will write things out because, like I said, he’s a great storyteller and he likes to tell those stories, 

Jeff White: where my head goes with this is, so you have a great storyteller and you’ve got a plan for how you’re going to roll this out across, a number of different places where you can bring him to life.

What’s the thing that he is That he’s not scared is the wrong word. John, if you listen to this, I don’t want to mean to suggest that you’d be frightened of something. I have no idea, but what’s the thing that he’s most trepidatious about? 

Amy Rodgers: I don’t think, I think I’m not sure it’s a fear so much as a concern. And that is just the time element, the amount of time that it takes to really build a personal brand. Obviously, as CEO of this large company, he has, he’s pulled in a lot of different directions. So being able to focus on something like that, I think it’s going to be difficult, but I believe in him and I know he can do it.

Carman Pirie: Maybe as you undertake this, I’m curious, do you have a, do you have a sense of what success looks like in a year’s time or so, or how, and I’m sure that’s not the end goal, it’ll be longer than the than say the end of 2025, but do you have a sense of what you’d point to say, if we get there, I’ll know we’re in the, heading in the right direction?

Amy Rodgers: Especially with personal branding and thought leadership, it goes through a set of stages that starts out with, the person quoting someone else and, putting their spin on it all the way up to other people quoting them. And so when we start to see something like that, where, his follower his followers are building, his brand is building, and people start to reach out to him and ask him for his opinion on things and start quoting him as an expert in the industry, that’s when we know that we’ve reached the mecca. 

Carman Pirie: I appreciate that as a KPI. That makes total sense to me. I would wonder if there’s any tension between what you just described and say maybe more immediate ROI measures. Do you find that the enterprise is okay with having that level of patience, or has that been something you’ve had to counsel and coach? 

Amy Rodgers: No, they definitely do have that level of patience, which is what I love, because they’re like, they trust the process, which is what a lot of people, that come in thinking that, oh they know exactly what to do what marketing and branding is, and they want to be the next Coca Cola, and they think it happens overnight, and people, you have your boss telling you, I want this to go viral, and not knowing exactly what that means. I don’t work with those people. They do trust the process, and they understand that this is, There is a long road with a lot of twists and turns.

And again, I feel like I’ve been sitting here bragging about John, but I really think he’s an exceptional human being. And even when he talks about, we recently just did this article for the National Tuning Tooling and Machining Association Magazine, and he talks about annual planning and he said that there’s this analogy that he uses a lot with people about how often do you think that the Apollo space mission was on track to land on the moon? And the surprising answer is only about 3 percent of the time. They spent their time course-correcting the entire way to the moon. But they knew what the destination was. So they made it work. 

Jeff White: It’s a great way to a great story to finish it out. Amy, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Really excited about what you have coming. 

Amy Rodgers: Me too. Thank you for having me. 
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