The AeroGrowth Podcast

Dan and Tony discuss how bad actors can’t be fully removed, so the real challenge is filtering them by designing incentives and rewards that shape group behavior. Tony argues that “souls are bought a piece at a time,” describing how organizations, platforms, and trends often start pure, earn trust, then degrade as copycats and monetization incentives exploit that trust - citing memes, YouTube, and...

Dan and Tony discuss what AS9100 represents across the aerospace supply chain, arguing that OEMs often treat it as a hard gate (“if they’re not AS9100, they can’t work for us”) even though it may be more a stamp of documentation and traceability than proof of a “good shop.” They describe AS9100 as enabling end-to-end traceability - potentially back to raw material sources - driven by crash investi...

Dan and Tony bring Dan’s daughter Kaia into the conversation, and she says she’s feeling much better after knee surgery - walking again, but not exactly sprinting up stairs yet. They riff on baseball cards (Kaia estimates tens of thousands total), Mike Trout’s home run numbers, and jokingly try to compare Trout to manufacturing leaders before Dan volunteers himself as the “fading legend”. The epis...

Dan and Tony discuss switching from ChatGPT to Claude and compare AI tool lock-in to Apple vs. Android, where ecosystem friction prevents change unless the pain outweighs the effort. They explore how AI tools now capture not just what people search, but how people understand the world, rapidly encoding humanity into machine-trained data and increasing dependence on systems run by different entitie...

Dan and Tony discuss the tension between execution and art in writing, image creation, and video, arguing that some people feel threatened by AI because it can mimic artistic output without lived experience or personal expression. Tony describes testing whether AI could replicate his voice by feeding it years of LinkedIn posts, but the results still felt off, reinforcing his belief that a real “pi...

Dan and Tony start by celebrating a real operational win: an internal tool (Orbit Coach) that keeps coaching calls organized as they talk to more people, and they point out the punchline - things got easier only because they invested the work, with AI making that investment dramatically cheaper. They argue AI is the next step after Google: it strips out the 80% of waste in getting information and...

Tony and Dan discuss how effective coaching and leadership validate the quality of outcomes with objective evidence rather than a person’s worth, warning that when someone is asking for validation they may not get maximum benefit. They frame “gut feel” as experience-based pattern recognition and connect behavior shaping to reinforcement learning, noting humans seek different reinforcers than anima...

Dan and Tony unpack why the people with the deepest manufacturing domain knowledge often don’t get heard, especially when small shops support massive customers, creating a power imbalance that makes giving feedback feel risky. They argue this lack of honest, technical back-and-forth - especially through restrictive procurement portals - creates long-term engineering logjams because critical DFM in...

Tony and Dan talk about Dan’s leadership style and how he focuses on what “good” looks like for other people and organizations, tracing it back to being a natural team leader and a “giver” who enjoys making others smile. Dan shares that after a diagnosis three years ago (now clear), he shifted to putting himself first more often, which actually reduced pressure and desperation and made him better...

Dan and Tony ditch the “business-y” persona and spiral into why Tony actually likes trade shows: he shows up as himself, talks to people without forcing ROI, and lets curiosity do the work. Tony shares his favorite “Astronaut on Earth” T-shirt story about helping connect a friend, Joe Ryder - paralyzed from a motorcycle crash - to ReWalk Exoskeleton so he could walk down the aisle. Dan admits he’s...

Tony and Dan break down what small aerospace/machine-shop growth looks like by revenue stage: $0–$2M is a scrappy, overworked sprint where heavy systems are mostly a time-wasting fantasy compared to sales execution and customer service, while $2–$5M is where you awkwardly duct-tape together real systems, hire beyond your inner circle, and learn financing so equipment can expand capability ahead of...

Tony and Dan talk about how aerospace manufacturing isn’t just machining: critical “outside processing” like heat treat, testing, anodizing, plating, and painting often becomes the weakest link, partly due to chemical regulation and mostly due to misaligned incentives. The manufacturer holding the customer PO takes the blame when finishers or material suppliers slip, but those vendors feel little...

Dan, Founder of AeroGrowth, and Tony, the CBO (Chief Burrito Officer) kick off a new podcast meant to be more like a loose, funny morning radio show than a serious industry program, riffing on whatever they’re hearing across aerospace through conversations with hundreds of people. They outline two paths they see in manufacturing: a VC-funded push to centralize into an “American Shenzhen” versus th...