SHORTS 4 | Nathan Morimatsu with H2 Manufacturing Solutions

Welcome to the Loco Shorts Podcast from Loco Think Tank. In this podcast series, Loco Business Developer Rory Shah will help unfold bite-sized business learnings through the crazy experiences the business owners face along their small business journey. Listen in and listen up because these short business stories may just have the secret ingredient to taking your business to its next level of success. Okay, well, we will get started then. So I am here today with Nathan Mori-Mitsu, the Director of Operations, excuse me, at H2 Manufacturing, where they do metal-free printing, different types of manufacturing, continuous improvement, construction automation, grant writing, so much more. So there's a lot of to it to what you do. So I'm excited to share some of your stories specifically with how you've impacted your community and beyond during 2020 in regards to COVID. So Nathan, thank you for being on the Loco Shorts Podcast with me. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So I would love to kind of set the stage for our audience so they know a little bit more about who you are and who H2 is. I think there's a lot of things that I heard kind of even listening between the lines of what you shared with me previously that H2 is so much more than just what you do. There's a big community impact. Yeah, absolutely. So H2 was started a few years ago by our CEO Heidi Haastetter and anybody in manufacturing in Colorado knows her name. She's, as we jokingly say, kind of a big deal. And she started it to help other companies just be better, really. And so that's taken many different forms over the years. We've helped companies optimize their processes. We've helped them make capital purchases to bring in new equipment so that they could be more efficient and run faster, better, and you know, make more products, make not necessarily just more money, but employ more people. And that's really one of the things we go first. We want to see Colorado working. We want to see them working at good jobs, making good wages, making products that people in Colorado and around the world need and want to use. And so that's kind of where we sit with our primary core. And we like to say that we try to make the trials and tribulations of day-to-day operations easier through a combination of technology training and support. And that's the whole purpose of the company. And we've done a lot of things lately that are directly related to the pandemic and how our Colorado going and how to make things better for people in Colorado. And so we're continuing to do that. We're rolling out some new changes soon. And I'm excited to get to tell you about them and tell you about our programs. All right, let's kind of just dive on in. So thinking about this year, for your view within your business, your view within your role within your business, as COVID was striking at whatever month that meant for you, but probably March, how did you all handle that internally? And then how did you shift that to impact others beyond just your organization? Well, when it started rolling out, when we started seeing cases pop up, there was kind of that oh crap moment. And for us, we had one very briefly where we were actually at an event at the State House for Colorado Aerospace State Capital. Displaying one of our partner companies works there. And there was someone who attended the afternoon reception that tested positive. And we got that notification the next day. And it was, and this is, you know, beginning of March, one of the first cases in Colorado. And it's like, oh, are we in trouble? And I was like, oh, no, we didn't go to that reception. We're fine. We're okay for now. But how are we going to change our business? And how are we going to operate under this? And so being an ultra small company and doing a lot of work remotely, anyway, it was very easy for us to just say, all right, everybody stays home. No big deal. We're not going to go out in the world and potentially, in fact, ourselves most of what we can do, we can do remotely, we can, you know, do a Zoom call, we can do a phone call, we can send an email. So that was easy for us. The whole shutdown, the world didn't really affect our day-to-day going to work. We do work with company in our vaticle, Faust and Cool and Machine. And they are an essential business beyond what, you know, the governor has said they're essential as ordered by the Department of Defense and because of the work. Okay. And so occasionally, how do you, or I would need to go down there to take care of things and so it was kind of a weird thing to have a letter from the Department of Defense, like the Secretary of Defense sent this letter out to all the essential companies that we carried in our cart just in case that down to the point where it was, you can't be out at all. We had a letter telling us, oh yes, yes you can. Yeah, that was not a thing I was prepared for in January. I didn't think that was ever going to be a thing that I did. And suddenly I had that in my car and it was an odd place to be. But it's still, again, it didn't affect our day-to-day operations that much. And then a close friend of Heidi's and a friend of mine, former City Council member of Fort Collins, Lisa Papa, was the director of the Crossroads Safehouse in Fort Collins, and Mayor domestic violence shelter there. And Heidi and said, I don't have enough PPE. I don't have any way to keep my staff safe for our, you know, the people we help save. What do I do? I don't know what to do. And Heidi called me and I said, I don't know what to do either, but I'll think on it and I proceeded to stay up all, right? What a task. Thinking about it, did not get to sleep. And then about, I think, four in the morning, I said Heidi a message and said, well, here's the deal. I can 3D print reusable respirators. I'm working on a design right now. And we can give them, you know, an N95 equivalent mask that we can manufacture in my home office if we need to. Wow. And people who know Heidi know that she doesn't do anything small, that doing things small is not in her vocabulary. So by the end of that week, we had ordered 10 3D printers. Well, actually a total of, I think, 13 3D printers. Three of them ended up in my home office, 10 down at our location in Longmont, which was co-located with an electronics company. And we proceeded to help that electronics company stay viable through the shutdowns because they were considered non-essential at the time. Their number one client manufactured parts for RVs. And when the shutdowns happened, recreational vehicles were non-essential equipment. So this little electronics company in Longmont suddenly went non-essential. And so what we did is we took those 10 printers, we went in there, we trained them on how to use them. We started working with another electronics company to help, in Loveland, to help finish the products. And we started manufacturing face respirators. And as part of this, we ended up partnering with the warehouse business accelerator in Loveland as well. We formed a task force in manufacturers and government people from across the state. And we've shipped two date, 1500 respirators all over the state. That's fantastic. And first responders, I sent the entire town of Nutterland, every employee got one. They're sewage treatment people to their police to the town hall employees all have them. We sent close to 100, I think, to hospices in Montrose and nursing homes. We've got them in homeless shelters in nursing homes across the state, domestic violence shelters. And I fear that we're going to have to school that program back up again, what with the rights and needs of this. We may see some more PPE shortages. And if we do, we're ready to go and get that in place. But as part of this, we actually managed to get secure a bunch of funding. And we're able to provide all of these respirators at no cost to the people who needed them. And pay the manufacturers to stay open manufacturing. So these companies, the impact has yet to be seen dollar-wise. But I can say for certain that we've at least, during that time, kept 13, 14 people with full-time employment without having to go on to furloughs or on employment. And that's not a significant. 13 jobs doesn't seem like that much in the grand scheme of things. But when you think about every dollar that somebody gets and puts back into the community, turns into two or three dollars down the road, it's a big deal. And to have those people instead of just collecting on employment, they're earning a wage, paying taxes, and putting back into the system, it's a big... So, yeah, so much more is coming in and out of that. And even beyond the monetary value of people who could be safe on their day-to-day and front errands that they needed to, or serve others that they needed to, all because of this 4 a.m. intuition and product that you created. Yeah, and that simple 3D printed face respirator spawns. A new product, as you call it, with age 2. And we call it our pivot product. So, it's actually pivot assessment training and coaching. This is one we do have acute acronym for. It's the patch program. And managed to attract the attention of Lockheed Martin, who also had developed nine different technologies that are COVID-specific. Everything from a ventilator, which we've kind of, they kind of abandoned. They also created their own 3D printed respirator mask, which I'm not a shame to say is probably better than mine, but I'm not an engineer. I'm just a, I'm a marketing and graphic design guy. That's a pretty good competition then. The, yeah, UV sterilizing and heat sterilizing devices. Lots of things and they created these and said, we're just looking for community and industry partners to manufacture these. We'll give you the license. We'll help you get them to market. If there's certifications that need to be done, we'll help you get that done. And also gave us some grant funding to help it make it happen. And so what we're doing now with the patch program is companies that are finding themselves either potentially non-essential or think that their, you know, their markets might dry up and then shut down. We're, if they reach out to us and we'll go through the process with them and potentially find one of these products or part of one of these products, that they can start making and stay essential, stay open and diversify their product line and, you know, become deeper and grained in the Colorado supply chain as well. Like a big part of this is securing our supply chain. And this goes beyond just COVID. I mean, tariffs have hurt companies all across the state. And so we've got our supply chains. More secure Colorado companies are going to be. Absolutely. I love that thinking that it's, you have it so broad and that the impact can be so wide. It makes me think of, like, the question I want to try to ask is, what would you recommend for these businesses that are maybe a little shocked and overwhelmed with how they had to pivot or will need to pivot in the future? What would you recommend on, like, how did they find something that works for them to say open or be innovative and stay in tune to even what their greater audience and customers need? So if I had to get some just, you know, 30,000 foot advice, my number one thing is we've seen a lot of companies go into panic mode and you just gotta, don't panic. Take a breath. Don't panic. There are resources to help you. We're one of them and we'll work closely with the state if you need to. We've got friends at the World Trade Center Denver with the manufacturing extension partnership. We've got, you know, industry connections all across the state and the country in some places. And what our goal is at the end of the day, we, you know, we want to keep our own lights on. And care on bills, but the main goal of age two is to provide economic impact or color out. And if we can help a company stay open, we're going to do that. And we'll get to it a little bit. I'm sure, but we have another product that will definitely help them stay open. Yeah, well, let's go ahead and talk about that. You're probably talking about your COVID safety system. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. All right, we'll tell us more about that. So we looked at the fact that there's no clear instruction or regulation from the feds or the state or even local counties. It's all just a big, confusing pile of regulations. We don't know what's going on from one place to another. And so we've got, you know, our team working on it figuring out what's, you know, what the regulations are in one county versus the next county and how that relates to everything up the chain all the way to the CEC. And we've developed a program where we'll come in and we'll do a gap assessment on any company. And we also are doing these for schools as well. And we go in and we figure out what are you missing to meet the regulations and the guidelines from your state, local, federal government. And what do you have in place? And how can you get everything in place? And then if we go to one of these companies or schools and they can get everything in place, we'll offer a certification. And, you know, we're the accrediting authority on that right now because nobody in the government is going to offer this at all. The government doesn't want to take on any liability or responsibility. Yeah, put their name behind it. But we're willing to do that. And so we, by offering the certification, it means that a third party has come into your company and or your school or, you know, whatever your business is, we'll be restaurants, anything. We'll come and we'll inspect and make sure that your cleaning supplies are all up to the latest EPA guidelines. We'll make sure that your cleaning schedules are correct. Everybody's trained on how to do things properly. You've got hand sanitizer in all the right places. There's signs everywhere they should be. And that your staff is fully trained up on what to do in the event of a single case or an outbreak. And if you get certified, we'll give you a sticker for your door that will inspire some consumer confidence because people on the street say, hey, this company cares about their employees and their customers. I want to do my business here. And we're not afraid to take that sticker off either if they fail to meet the requirements going forward. Once we issue that certification, we're going to come in every eight weeks and re-inspect just like the health inspector does and say, okay, you're still up to our standards or you're not up to our standards. If you're not up to our standards, we'll revoke the certification. But part of this is also every week. Later today, I'm going to be setting it up, but we send out Friday mornings to all of our safety system customers, the updates from the week before. And some weeks it's pretty pretty minimal. This week is not going to be so minimal. We've got new, not shut down, but higher, safer at home regulations. Right. There's counties that are just right on the brink of shutdown. We've got, I've got to read, read the press release, but it looks like DPS is going back to online learning next week. And so we're going to send out a pretty intense update tomorrow, but it's, we'll do that every week so that they can feel confident knowing that they're getting the latest up information. And if there's an urgent thing that happens, we're going to send it out. Like if there's a shutdown order, I'm going to send that out within probably an hour of the governor ordering it. Wow. So have you had to increase your experience and attitude with like translating government jargon or health information and quickly and clearly communicating that? That seems like a big skill. Yeah, it is. Company wide, none of us were experts on, you know, cleaning supplies in February. Sure. We can tell you now how many seconds you have to leave the bleach spray on the table before you wipe it up so that it actually kills the virus. It, you know, there's certain brands that, you know, say it's anti-bacterial. Well, it might be anti-bacterial, but it's not anti-viral. And so, you know, that list and we'll go through our clients that have done this. We go through their janitorial closets and say, all right, all of these things here. Don't use them anymore. They don't actually, they're not proven to work. Wow. You've got all that effort. And it's a little nerve-racking at times for us with the number of changing regulations, but that's what we've decided. I mean, your average business owner can't keep track of all this stuff. They're trying to run their business. They're trying to, you know, make sure the payroll is there. Make sure that, you know, everybody's scheduled right. They've got products coming in, product going out. They don't have time to keep up all these things. And so that's where we step in and fill that gap for them. And so when you're talking about your clients or these people that you're serving like these business owners, is it literally any business, anyone that comes in contact with anyone else? Anyone that has employees? Yeah, if they want certified, we'll do it. We're actually setting up a program where we'll have lots more details on it soon, but we're setting up a grant program that we're going to fund partially through our own funding. So that companies with fewer than 15 employees can take advantage of this program from a greatly reduced rate. Basically, we'll do a more batch on that. So where it's typically, you know, and actually, I should step back. We're also working with Colorado COVID check. Some people may be familiar with them. They do testing for several school districts. And they recently started rolling it out for private enterprise. And we were your first companies to sign on as a private enterprise with this, along with Thauston Tool and specialty products in Longmont. And we worked with the, with manufacturers at Colorado's MEP to set this up. So we go, I get COVID tested every two weeks. And I got mine on Tuesday. And it's on pleasant for anybody who's gotten a test. They know exactly what I'm talking about. Oh, yeah, starting to roll out this saliva test now, which I'm much more looking forward to spitting in a tube, having them probe my brain with a long point. You can get up there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Or probably you could do that often. It's it's 1,500 bucks to get signed on to this. It's an administrative fee to get them set up. And then it's $20 per test. And that's all they pay. Even if the employees don't have insurance, they only pay $20 per test. If they have insurance, Colorado COVID check builds the insurance for the test. If they don't have insurance, they've got cares funding to cover it. To make sure that we get our testing up because that's the best way to control. Absolutely. And so with the grant program, we're going to set up with a one-to-one match, our initial gap assessment to go in. And we really just cover our costs on these is $1500. And we sent our our auditor and our auditors depending on the size of the facility. And they go through and figure out whatever the facility needs gives them the instructions on how to fix it. That's 1,500 bucks. So what we're doing with this is we're going to cover if people want to sign up through our program and use our grant funding, we're going to cover $1500 so that they can use another $1500 to get signed up with Colorado COVID check so they can do proactive testing. If people wanted to know more about that now or you know being a loop as you all have more information, where would they find that? They can go to and I really hate how long our website is. And I'm sure you can figure out a way to put this on yours as well or somewhere in the podcast. But then go to our website, h2manufacturingsolutions.com slash services. And that has information on our patch program and the COVID safety system. Or they can hit us up on LinkedIn, Facebook, or and if you don't mind sharing it, you can share my email or you can email h2 at h2manufacturingsolutions.com. Awesome. Yeah, that'll be helpful. Nathan, I have a question about your company culture. I think that what you've done and how you've adapted your offerings in a way that you've done the past few months and helped these essentially new marketplaces exist and keep current marketplaces going. I think that to me, that's your personality. It sounds like there's something more in your company. So tell us more about what is your company culture like and how does it support them? Well, the culture is one where we kind of have this philosophy that you take heroic action, whether that's just getting up in the morning to go to work. If that's heroic action for you that day, that's what you do. But we don't accept that there are problems that can't be solved and we're encouraged and we're a very small company. We're we're shockingly at five people right now and we're technically on paid volunteers. So but what we do is encourage everybody in the company to look to the problems that can't be solved and fix it, solve it because there's there's nothing that can't be solved if you don't try to and we don't accept no for an answer. And it's not it's not an aggressive thing. Some people hear me say that and they're like, oh, you guys are really aggressive. No, we just you don't stop trying. You never quit and we're encouraged to do what we need to do every day live so that we can maintain that level of mental ability or mental strength to say I'm not going to quit. Absolutely. So that makes me wonder too. Do you have space and time to recharge or be creative or get out of your brain completely so you can have space for these new ideas? Yeah, absolutely. We, one of the things I really appreciate when Heidi Brownean told me, we work four days a week and yeah, we work four, ten hour days. Sometimes I work four, twelve hour days, but Friday, Saturday, Sunday, unless there's something that's absolutely mission critical for one of our clients, we turn off our phones. We kind of log out and don't do anything for work and that's made a huge difference. I've worked a lot of jobs where I've been doing good work, I've been doing things that I enjoy but I get off at Friday at five and I'm not to a functioning brain place until Saturday at 8 p.m. and then I wake up Sunday morning going on crap, I have to go to work tomorrow. And this way, knowing that for instance, today and we're starting these up again, we do an online happy hour now. It's a COVID thing we started. Awesome. We've invited manufacturers from all across the country to join us for this and we hang out for an hour, have a beer on the internet and talk about our problems, our solutions and then when I hit end meeting on that, my day is done, my week is done and I can go and recover and embrace my other activities that keep me going. Absolutely. What would you recommend for an organization who's trying to adopt a different type of culture that's digital and still fun and compelling for their employees? Well, that's tough. Be forgiving. A lot of companies are at least many that I've interacted with over the last several months, expect the same level of I'm sitting at my desk from nine to five from their employees while they're working at home and it doesn't work that way. You can't expect that from people working in the home office. You can't see it right now because I have my cool zoom background up, but my cat is outside my home office door shoving toys under the door, hoping I'm going to come play with them. The little paw under the door. There comes a point when you're working at home where you just have to get up and pet the cat or you're going to be barking dogs. I once worked a job many years ago back in 2006, so 14 years ago. We were all remote because we worked across the country and the home office was in California. There was very little tolerance for things like barking dogs in the background on conference calls. You've just got to in today's day and age, you have to accept that because let's face it, all of us working from home and being trapped in our homes for so long, if we didn't have our dogs to tell us to get up and do something, we wouldn't. We'd be useless. Yeah, you need that little bit of levity that dog barking in the background or the cat's hot. There's so many people who have their kids at home now that they're doing the home schooling thing with you. You've got to flexible with them and at Faustin, we, I mean, we manufacture things there. We can't do a lot of those jobs remotely. The ones we can out and she works from home. The people who can work from home do, but those that can't, they have to go in and actually physically do things, but they also are dealing with things like having kids that need to be homeschooled. And so we've been working with them to stagger our schedules so that's, you know, their kids are at home with a person that can help them learn and then they come work later in the day or they'll work earlier in the day so that they can split that home learning time. Yeah, that flexibility is key. Yeah, and flexibility, if you're going to be inflexible with your employees during this time, you're not going to build any employee loyalty. The second something better comes along. They're out. They're going to. Yeah, yeah, I hear that. That makes me think about my next question is what we're looking at now and how you've adapted. What is your next milestone? That's a really good question. My next milestone for the company is to help that next company. We we were in Colorado Springs yesterday helping a company with a potential pivot. And next Wednesday, I'm going to be in Denver doing the same thing with another company. I actually think they might make a good pair for a couple of the locking products. And if it works out, that's going to be two companies in two weeks that we will have helped get a new product line started so that they can be more diverse and stay profitable and keep more people employed. And that's that's really how we look at it is every job that we can help save, whether it's through keeping a business open by the safety system or helping them get a new product or in some cases kind of our our old tasks where we help them with some automation so that their employees can be doing less dangerous jobs and things that are more interesting to them personally. Like, you know, we've we've helped companies improve their automation to the point where they are able to take guys who've got mechanical engineering degrees and start mechanical engineering instead of standing their pushing buttons on the machine. And so if we can help people and well, if we can help companies save a job, that's a milestone. If we can help make the jobs that they save more rewarding for their employees, that's that's a milestone. And every one of those we treat as a victory. That is so fantastic. That has to be so rewarding. So do you get cards and thank yous and fun stories back from these clients? Sometimes, yeah. And it it's really fantastic to see things like, you know, Heidi or CEO has won awards and been nominated for awards all over the place. She just was nominated for an award with I think it's metal manufacturing or metal fabrication magazine as an outstanding woman in manufacturing and knowing that she does a lot of what she does because she's got this team behind her and I'm part of it. It's pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. That would bring a lot of pride pride to your day. I imagine. Yeah. And when we started sending out the face respirators, we would get pictures and thank you cards back from the people who got them and that was pretty powerful. Yeah, and that has to be really touching. That's really important too. And I again, I and so in awe of how you've been able to kind of look up from the fear or the moment of fear that people perceived and had the chance to take an opportunity forward and help other businesses. And like you said, the economy, you're helping people keep their jobs, they safe. So I think what you're doing is pretty commendable and very innovative, which is awesome. Thank you. My last question for you is if you have any crazy business stories that have happened this year, that sparked a key learning moment for you. Oh wow. Not necessarily this year. It's been such a weird year. I don't know as I can pick a specific crazy business story. None of us have lived through a pandemic before. And so everybody playing by ear the way we are is remarkable to me. And there's some companies that are out there just doing things. And I look at them and go, how are you still doing what you're doing? And yeah, that they still exist is crazy to me. And the fact that they're still profitable is crazy to me, not because they're doing anything spectacular other than just not quitting. So that's been, that's actually, yeah, that's been the crazy part. People aren't quitting. They're looking for new things. And it would be so easy, I think, to just close up shop, roll over and say I'm done. And the number of people that aren't doing that is, it's amazing. Yeah, that resiliency. Yeah, we've seen it a lot too within our business organization. And it's powerful. And it's also motivating to looking around the people that are next to you and you realize they're still in business or let's link arms and how can we help each other? And that's exactly what you and H2 are doing. So, yeah, the amount of collaboration I've seen between competitors is really cool to share. Usually, that's fantastic. In industries that's cut throat and we've seen companies that literally compete for bids on certain things come together to make other things happen. It's really cool. Yeah, there's something more to gain from that. So it's often here stories and examples that that's happening and it's the bigger picture. Well, Nathan, thank you so much for sharing more about your innovation this year and how you helped so many people and helped the Colorado economy and I'm sure definitely beyond just Colorado with your safety equipment and then the safety audit as well. And it sounds like there's more to come from you and H2 with that. So thank you for being here today. Would you share the best way for people who may be interested in getting in touch with you, how to connect with you? Yeah, so best way is email and probably the best way to get those is you'll put up links with the podcast I'm guessing. Absolutely, yeah. My personal email goes to my phone, which even though I say that I check out the weekends, I'll probably check it over the weekends. A little scroll once in a while. Yeah, you can also reach me by phone and you can go ahead and give my phone number out as well. I'm happy to take calls pretty much anytime if somebody needs something and if it's not me at the company that is the one that's going to help you, I will definitely touch with the right people to make sure that you get what you need and you can, you know, stay safe and stay open. Awesome. So if anyone has any business related questions around COVID or protective gear or audits or how to stay open in regards to all of that, you're a good outlet. Yes, absolutely. Okay. If nothing else, we will always provide more. Okay. That's always needed as well. So we'll miss and thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you being on here. So we'll let you go. All right. Thank you so much, Roy. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the LOCO Experience Podcast. This is Kurt Baer, founder of the LOCO Think Tank and host of the LOCO Experience. And I'm here with Rory Shar, LOCO Business Developer and host of the LOCO Shorts episodes. We hope you heard some new ideas and business perspectives in this episode. Our mission and all that we do, including this podcast, is to share collaborative business ideas and solutions that uplift the business community. Subscribe and follow us where you listen to podcasts to get new episodes as they are released. Curious about LOCO? You can learn more about us at LOCOThinkTank.com, where you'll find more information about our chapters, business resources, and events for business owners and key leaders. If you're looking for perspective, accountability, and encouragement along your business journey, why not apply for a chapter near you today? Why not? Why not? Why not? We'll catch you next time on the in-depth LOCO Experience Podcast with me, Kurt. And with me, Rory, for Bite Size Business Lessons in the LOCO Shorts. Bye!