The Manufacturing Automation Podcast

Michael opens on a milestone he didn't expect to feel so strange: he's up to nine people, four of them in the last month, and for the first time his job is almost entirely infrastructure and people management. The individual contributor work is almost gone — except sales calls, which he's starting to find numbingly repetitive and knows need to be handed off. Matt's feeling the same...

Matt comes back from Automate brain dead but buzzing — the LED wall was a hit, the custom trade show software finally worked instead of fighting them, and podcast listeners stopped him in the hallway of the Airbnb. Michael returns from Maui with four new hires in the last month and a company that's somehow handling its busiest month ever with fewer things breaking than usual. Both are starting...

Both hosts open on the same diagnosis: the sine wave problem. Michael keeps bouncing between B2B proposal mode and Shopify e-commerce focus, and whichever one he's in, the other declines. Matt's seeing the same pattern smooth out slightly as style guides and brand kits he built over three months start coming back to him from the team — nearly finished, almost no edits needed. When the tool...

Matt opens with a gut punch: his agency account manager — the person carrying the entire team for two years — is leaving, and the contract runs through November. He's weighing a settlement negotiation, bringing marketing in-house, or both, and Michael doesn't hesitate with his position: for niche B2B manufacturing, agencies that can't tell a vise from a clamp aren't worth the train...

Matt opens the week buried in content review — 18 pages for Vac-Fixture, eight for Develop, two press releases, and a 12-email drip campaign audit, all pushed through in one week to hit the Automate deadline. It's good work, but he's sick of reading about his own company. Michael is dealing with a softer May on e-commerce after a record April and trying to figure out whether it's a con...

Matt opens the week buried in content review — 18 pages for Vac-Fixture, eight for Develop, two press releases, and a 12-email drip campaign audit, all pushed through in one week to hit the Automate deadline. It's good work, but he's sick of reading about his own company. Michael is dealing with a softer May on e-commerce after a record April and trying to figure out whether it's a con...

Both hosts open the week running on fumes but with cautious optimism — Matt's new EA is three weeks in and already taking real weight off his calendar, while Michael is back from his last planned in-person install and feeling the full weight of how much travel has been quietly killing his momentum and marketing output. The shift to Turnkey Direct is officially underway, IntraLoad is fully woun...

Michael opens on the road — again — and makes a decision he's been circling for a while: IntraLoad is done, full-service in-person turnkeys are done, and the business is going all-in on product revenue and remote Turnkey Direct installs. The goal is scalability without him being the critical path. Matt's feeling a different kind of drain — not hours, but context switching. Negotiating cont...

Michael opens with something he hasn't been able to say in a while — things are calming down. Passive revenue is growing, repeat customers are showing up, and he's starting to feel less like the linchpin of every transaction. Matt, meanwhile, is deep in financial planning for a line of credit renewal that has to account for two of the largest projects in Develop's history landing back...

Matt opens the week with a closing runway feeling — Automate is on the horizon and there's a lot to do. He walks through Develop's most ambitious trade show setup yet: a 10x30 booth with a 10x20 LED wall, live HMI demos where attendees can actually run a machine, and a complete website overhaul cutting everything that isn't hyper-focused on automation. The website nearly tripled in tra...

Matt opens with his head already in 2027 — two of the largest projects in Develop's history landed back to back, and now the focus is making sure the sales pipeline is ready to sustain that momentum after the current wave clears. Michael is back from the Toolpath Manufacturing Summit, where he spoke on a panel and came home with renewed clarity on where the business needs to go — and a snowboa...

Michael opens with something he hasn't been able to say in a while — things are calming down. Passive revenue is growing, repeat customers are showing up, and he's starting to feel less like the linchpin of every transaction. Matt, meanwhile, is deep in financial planning for a line of credit renewal that has to account for two of the largest projects in Develop's history landing back...

Matt opens with a rare moment of reflection — his first real day off since his son was born surfaced something he'd been ignoring: he's lost the Sunday thinking time that used to drive his best strategic decisions. Both hosts find themselves in a similar place, mid-evolution on what their roles in their own companies should actually look like going forward. On the marketing side, Michael&#...

Both Matt and Michael open the week running on fumes — but not without wins. Matt's team is locked in on the five-robot Project 29 build with a December deadline, onboards two new engineers in one week, and approves a search for a second electrical engineer as the team eyes doubling headcount. He also finalizes cutting VFS from Develop's website and reflects on a 77% Q1 OKR completion rate...

Matt and Michael open with a rare moment of alignment — both independently arrived at the same conclusion this week: they're doing too much. Matt trimmed his sales pipeline from 95 deals down to 33, cutting loose months-old leads that were draining energy without moving forward. Michael is rethinking his entire business model, pushing toward a larger share of semi-turnkey and product revenue a...

Matt and Michael kick off Q2 planning mode while navigating one of the tightest operational squeezes yet. Matt reflects on running 91% engineering utilization — well above his preferred ceiling — and what that means for team sustainability, onboarding, and hitting deadlines without burning people out. He also shares a quiet but meaningful decision: hiring a cleaning crew that returned a 25% time g...

Matt and Michael dive into a question many automation companies eventually face: are you building a product business or a service business—and what happens if you try to do both? Michael reflects from a corporate retreat on the tension between scaling product-driven revenue and supporting the service-heavy work that often surrounds automation deployments. Meanwhile, Matt shares what growth pressur...

Matt and Michael compare notes on what happens when growth forces you back into the weeds—and AI becomes the ultimate force multiplier. Matt shares how being the sales bottleneck again has sharpened his approach to qualifying projects, turning down work that isn’t the right fit, and focusing engineering energy where it matters most. Meanwhile, Michael dives deep into rebuilding the company’s inter...

Matt and Michael reflect on the operational realities that surface once automation is deployed in the field—especially when crashes happen and customer expectations collide with the limits of a small team. Michael shares lessons from repairing a damaged IntraLoad system in Chicago, and how these moments are forcing him to rethink service models, contract structure, and which customers—and products...

Michael and Matt unpack what it really feels like to operate in the most difficult stage of company growth—the stretch where you’re too big to wing it and too small to specialize. They talk candidly about culture drift, missed deadlines, and the hidden cost of onboarding , especially when half the team is new and tribal knowledge disappears faster than expected. The conversation dives deep into ex...

Matt and Michael compare notes on what happens when your bottleneck stops being production and starts being sales consistency and founder bandwidth . Michael shares how Gimbel Automation’s Shopify revenue is up ~4x in a few months , driven by a major page overhaul and a conversion rate that’s increased ~10x —shifting his attention toward scalable “widget” sales instead of field-heavy turnkey insta...

Matt and Michael recap a packed week of operations pressure, follow-on project momentum, and the unglamorous reality of scaling: quality errors, retraining, and tightening SOPs without bloating the system . Matt shares what he’s learning from a new owner-operator roundtable, plus how follow-on work is stacking up across multiple active builds. On the marketing side, they go deep on SEO strategy th...

In Episode 64 of the Manufacturing Automation Podcast , Michael Gimbel and Matt Moseman dig into what it actually looks like to run and scale an automation business when the hype wears off. This episode covers: Hiring realities and why “working interviews” reveal more than resumes Founder stress, perspective traps, and learning to measure the right metrics Profit-first thinking vs. raw growth in c...

In Episode 63 of the Manufacturing Automation Podcast, Michael Gimbel and Matt Moseman kick off the new year by reflecting on 2025 and setting a more disciplined, profit-driven direction for 2026. They dig into the shift from cash to accrual accounting, applying Profit First principles, and why growth without margin creates unnecessary stress. The conversation also covers product strategy decision...

In Episode 62 of the Manufacturing Automation Podcast, Michael Gimbel and Matt Moseman unpack a high-energy, high-stress week inside two growing automation companies. They cover factory acceptance pressure, hiring engineers and machinists, refining interview processes, and the realities of scaling technical teams without compromising culture. The conversation also dives deep into sales and marketi...