In every industry, there are noticeable gaps that beg for solutions, yet many hesitate to act. Ann Ensenbach defied this trend by founding AAPEX Group, aiming to fill industry gaps and revive the Gold Standard.

AAPEX is more than a manufacturing company; it's a hub of educational empowerment and skill advancement. Through scholarships and training, particularly in engineering and automation, the company molds not just products but people.

This strategy not only cultivates a skilled workforce but also confronts industry-wide challenges like aging demographics and technological integration. AAPEX actively recruits from often overlooked groups like foster care systems and military veterans, breaking barriers to employment and growth.

Ann Ensenbach is crafting a modern manufacturing ecosystem, reinvigorating the industry's values while championing inclusivity and innovation.

Highlights:

• Embrace Change for Innovation: Ann's journey with AAPEX showcases the power of disruptive innovation and high-quality, American-made products, revitalizing the American gold standard in manufacturing.
• Opportunities for All: AAPEX isn't just a company; it's a community advocate. Offering scholarships and training, particularly in engineering, it aims to uplift individuals from all walks of life, especially those transitioning from challenging circumstances.
• The Impact of Leadership: Effective leaders foster positive work environments and opportunities for growth. AAPEX exemplifies leadership that nurtures potential and contributes to setting industry standards.
• Being the Change: Learn how Ann's leadership at AAPEX Group is revolutionizing American manufacturing, focusing on quality, innovation, and inclusivity.
• Breaking Stigmas: Discover how AAPEX Group tackles misconceptions surrounding the manufacturing industry, promoting a cleaner, safer, and more innovative environment.

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Welcome to Blue Collar B's, a podcast that busts the popular myth that we can't find good people, highlighting how the different generations of today, the boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z, are redefining work so that the industrial revolution that started in the US stays in the US.

The Blue Collar B's podcast helps blue collar business owners like you build a business that'll thrive for decades to come by turning that blue collar bullshit into some blue collar business solutions.

In this episode, you're going to learn about being the change, to inflict the change, the definition of the quality of american made and the gold standard, and to look for talent in places that you're afraid to look. And it is never the workforce that is letting the company down.

Our guest today is Anne Essenbach, a millennial who grew up with silent generation values. She is the change for american manufacturing. We hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome back to the show.

Brad Hurter.

How are you doing today, my friend?

I am doing wonderful, Mister Stephen Doyle. It is final four weekend coming up. It is the end. Beginning of April. Weather is changing all the time, so I can't really ask for much more than that.

Right? You get out and doing a little bit of golfing.

That is the plan in the. We had about seven inches of snow and rain over the last week, so it's going to be very wet this weekend. But yes, that is the intent. As you can see by the attire.

By the attire, I can tell we're.

Gearing up for it.

You're definitely gearing up. So, Brad, who do we have on the show today?

So our guest today was introduced to me through a mutual connection of ours. Ann Essenbach, who is from Duluth, Minnesota, originally spent some time in foster care until she was 18. And she's been taking those experiences and lessons moving forward in her career. She has started the Apex group, which is really important to her, to bring back the american gold standard and bringing in veterans and bringing people into the industry so we can bring back that standard of expectation, the pride of doing things. So she has that interest in transition and multiple opportunities. And she's got this great thing going on down in the Carolinas. And I am super stoked to have her here today to talk about the story. Because when her and I talked before she came on the show, I could just envision what she is trying to accomplish.

And there is nothing more awesome than what she's going to accomplish. And I'm so grateful you're willing to spend some time with us today to share your vision and paint that picture for our audience.

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

So, Anne, before we get started, before Brad reminds me that I forgot, which generation do you best fit in with?

Well, I was born in 84.

Okay.

So I believe that's technically millennial.

Yep.

I don't know if I quite relate in that age group. I grew up as a ward of the state of Minnesota and my foster parents were much older. They grew up during the depression. So they had a way different worldview when it came to things. They believed in good quality, they believed in american made and they believed in working really hard. So they instilled those in me. It definitely wasn't easy being a foster kid and dealing with the things that I did. And there were a lot of things that happened that shouldn't have.

But one thing I will accredit to that is my love for manufacturing and producing new products. Disruptive innovation, and really just good old hard believing in the gold standard and believing in good quality products and being able to hopefully at some point eliminate a lot of the outsourcing. Because when you start looking at workforce and you start looking at the opportunities we have, especially for those in transition, whether they're transitioning from the military, from high school into college, college into the workforce, foster kids, transitioning out of the system, really anyone who's transitioning from what I would consider a disadvantaged point into a position where they can grow continual education, we provide scholarships, we provide training opportunities, cross training. We have multiple divisions in the company, primarily all focused around the same industries, comes down to contract manufacturing, research and development, and then of course, a line to distribute those products. And what that does is that allows that interest to grow in not only apex, but in the industries themselves. And for those in transition, there isn't much out there to assist that. So I believe in being the change to inflict the change, you know, being that example and providing those opportunities, opening our doors a little bit to non secure areas for those people to be able to experience what a real life facility operates like and how that world is. There's so much stigma on manufacturing that it's dirty, that, you know, people get hurt or that, you know, there's not really much to go up.

Like this phrase, button monkey comes up a lot. And I really don't appreciate it because there are so many opportunities in manufacturing and as we add more automation and more opportunities for people to grow into engineering positions and even larger, even more corporate positions, they have to have somewhere to start. And that's what I did I started working third shift CNC machining, just filling parts and running machines overnight. My husband passed away in 2015. And after that, that was really when I really started focusing on developing the concept of apex and bringing an opportunity that helps those like myself, not only a former foster kid who worked their way and fought their way, to be able to try and find some way to go to schooling and getting scholarships and working so hard to be able to obtain that, still having to pay so much out in student loans. But in order to make that happen, there just isn't a lot out there to structure that and make that accessible.

Right.

My goal is to make the trades more accessible to those, especially those who may not have those prospects or would not believe that they would have those prospects. We can only help those who want to help themselves. But at the end of the day, by helping those, we're helping ourselves, and we're helping the whole country. Right. And that's what's most important to me.

Right. So can you tell us in our audience a little bit more about the. The story behind Apex and the different branches of that? So you kind of alluded to, you know, kind of spawned out of some family struggles, but can you kind of share with our audience, you know, the. The story behind how you built that?

Yeah, it's actually a pretty dynamic story. When I was a kid, my foster dad called him Grandpa. Worked overnight as maintenance at Fitger's Brewery in Duluth right before it had closed. And I remember going there with him and being able to see all the machines and help him, you know, clean them up and get them ready for operation. And I just was fascinated with it. And then I remember this one time, my grandpa was mowing the lawn, and he was using a craftsman, and one of the blades had gone dull. So my grandpa took me to the hardware store, and we got the blades sharpened, and the guy at the hardware store was talking about, you know, how these products aren't really like they used to be. And my grandpa said, well, we've had this mower for 25 years, and it's things like that, like those really good quality products.

And it just always interested me. And as I've gotten older and I'm getting into different portions of my life, I view things very differently. But as I've grown, I've seen just a decline in american made products, but also in that quality standard that we've relied on so much, especially at that time in my life. And I really want to bring that back. And that's where the passion comes from. And as I've been working with this and I've worked separate projects, manufacturing has grown to the point for us in the contract sense, that we saw a great value in being able to have a research and development division, because a big part of what we bring in is new product development, new technologies. So to be able to have a single place where we can have a great group of people that can continually develop and create, and to have the manufacturing location right there as well, that allows us to produce those prototypes very quickly and be able to launch things to market much quicker than if we had several individual locations across the US. And that's where we're coming in now.

And that's why we're doing a significant expansion, like you said, into the Carolinas, where we're putting our campus in. That allows us to have our divisions in one location, streamline those processes, but also greatly increase the capacity so we can initiate several more jobs for the area, several more opportunities for us to fill projects that may potentially be outsourced or potentially not filled in general, because some of those limitations are still there in the market. And it's just really important to me that we are doing what we can to be the example. And we are very strict on our values as a company as our mission statement. And it really comes down to disruptive innovation and giving back and making sure we're doing what we can to help as many people as possible, but to grow an industry that is unfortunately dying out. It's dying out because of automation and interest. Right? So by taking away the scariness of automation and the scariness of people going, that's going to take my job going, there is an opportunity for you to work with that automation and be able to create yourself into even a higher level of education just from that. So instead of maybe being someone that would fill a machine, you would actually be someone that would be programming one of the machines, just as an example.

So there's just so much that we want to do to increase that interest, be able to bring in the next generation of industry. And that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you guys the most about today, was being able to bring my knowledge and experience to those who are coming next, you know, opening those areas, allowing them to come and get that experience, but also providing that guidance to know where to go and which programs to look at in the area for different schoolings and different opportunities that may be available to them to help them with that expansion on themselves.

Right. So, Anne, to that. To that portion of bringing in that next generation. I sit on a board of directors here for what we call the home Building Trades foundation here locally in the Milwaukee area. And we were at a high school career night event, our president and our vice president, and they just sat at the table. We didn't have any material, didn't have anything. We're not. We don't sell anything because we're a foundation.

We had 49 kids come up to us that had asked for opportunities to make connections. And there's one student who said he wants to be a finnish carpenter. He contacted eight companies, sent emails, walked into doors, did everything, and nobody was willing to talk to them. He took those names of those individuals, made connections to people that we know that are looking for opportunity to hire folks and made those connections happen. And the outpouring of thanks from those individual children, I should say children, young adults, has been amazing. So as you move your. And build your campus in the Carolinas, what is that recruiting process looking like for you across all sectors of the economy, right? From the military standpoint, from the incarcerated, from youth programs, from the foster programs, what's your game plan to bring all that together? I guess. And what are you looking for? For maybe support or opportunity to support that success?

Well, I know this is. It's going to be a long process. The best thing I can ask for is advocacy and support from the area schools and anyone, any educational system around the country that would want their student population being able to experience apex. And everything that we do, we are open to that. Internship programs again, you know, we have community outreach where we can be able to let people know that we are here. And if they do have that interest, we can help let them know the best places to go for that. But also, I do a lot in regards to just speaking with everyone from the homeless shelters up through the VA and those who attend that, up through community programs and board meetings and town hall meetings and really just advocacy and people talking about it and understanding that there is a solution to this and that it isn't a big, scary industry, that no one's looking out for them, because we are. So the only thing we can do is just let people know about it.

Okay.

And knowing that you're an older millennial and do things more like a Gen X from the generational perspective, with the workforce that you're seeing in, what are you seeing today? As far as the interest in the trades with the different generations?

I've noticed a significant growth in the technical software side. I've noticed a lot more interest in that side of things in programming, which is phenomenal. I've seen a significant decline in operators or machinery, and that is the saddest thing for me to see, because having my start in the industry, running at CNC, and being able to get the opportunities that I did through that, I think it's important that we keep those skill sets active and we keep that passion there. And the only way we can do that is provide those opportunities for those who don't normally have them, whether it be donating machines to area schools for their shop classes so they can become familiar or even, like I said, opening our doors and allowing them to come in. And then the more support and the more advocacy we can get to help these guys in the programs that are available to them and continued scholarships, continued growth opportunities, the better. And the only thing I could do is hope that we can be that example and we start seeing it across the industry. And it's not just us who's providing that. And through that, we will see a significant increase in that interest.

But also, take a look. You can't discount anyone. I grew, you know, no one expected anything out of me. And there are. I do have several siblings, and there are certain siblings that are still in the system and have no intention of getting out. And to me, if I can be a part of a small change of that, that's gonna be huge, because there are opportunities for those guys and there are opportunities for. And that's what I love about America. You can be.

You can start anywhere. And, you know, most of the best stories are people who started at the bottom and worked their way up.

That's how the country is built. Right. The country is built on that. Right.

And if we don't perpetuate it, I mean, we're only as good as. That's what's been taught to us. Right. So we need to be great so we can teach the next generation to be great as well, and we just need to keep being great.

What have you seen? Let's talk behaviors for a minute. So with the kind of the focus that you have with kind of like the targeted workforce that you're targeting, what are the behaviors that you're seeing that are most successful with your business and the target audience that you're looking to employ?

You know, I was really, really nervous getting into it. I had a lot of fears of weaker workforce, people who don't really show up. And I haven't noticed that there is such a dedication to these trades. And, you know, we foster such a positive environment, and people want to come to work. And as long as we maintain that, you know, it, it's never the workforce letting us down.

That is so true. That is so true. It is usually leadership or leaders of leaders that that's where it typically starts as we. We lose focus of what is really important and it's. And where the money's really made and it's really made at the ground level.

Exactly.

So when you were growing up, Ian, and getting into the manufacturing, what was your work experience like? Meaning, did you have a mentor that kind of, like, took you under the wing? Did people actually show you the ropes around?

Not for quite some time. You really kind of have to have something about you that gets their attention. You have to be a really strong leader, you know, work harder, better than anyone else, and then eventually you'll get that attention. In a lot of the places that I've worked, and that's what I really struggled with was being a young female and being taken seriously in the industry. And that's actually why I started Apex in opposed to just working with other companies and being a part of that anymore, is because there were so many things that I really didn't see as being beneficial that I knew with my own company I could rectify and at least have one spot where it's good. Right. So it just comes down to eliminating those glass ceilings and not limiting people's opportunities and giving them that opportunity to show that promise. And by doing that proactively.

And that's, I think the big difference between Apex and other locations is we proactively do that. We do the assessments, we look at where those skill sets are now, but the ability for those skill sets to grow, and that allows us to put them in the best location where they can really flourish and grow very quickly. And then, you know, as they've shown that strong performance, being able to scholarship them into continued education so they can get even more knowledge base and experience that either they can keep growing with apex or they can take that to another location and be able to provide that there. And that's even better because then we're getting those standards throughout the industry just by being able to provide those good opportunities to begin with.

Right. So you just mentioned something. Do you provide, like, scholarships for education, for training of employees?

We do, yeah. Specifically for engineering. Those who want to get out of the machining side and really get into either the automation or, like, mechanical or design engineering automation. And then.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's. That's something unique that we have not necessarily heard specifically in the really in the trades, you know, industry, more specifically in the. In the manufacturing side, where, you know, if there's growth like and you want to grow out of and into something completely different, it's actually encouraged and you provide scholarships for that. That's amazing.

In order to see change, you need to be the change that is. I had no opportunities. To me, I remember being in high school and getting in arguments with the governor of Minnesota because he had removed, there was a grant for foster children to go to post education and he removed it my junior year. And I remember I got on the news because I kind of was really upset. And that always stuck with me. You know, I said, where do you go? What do you do if you don't want to be in the system anymore and you don't have anyone who's taught you those skills? I don't know. So I just kind of. I found my way and then I created apex to be able to provide that opportunity, but also provide great products and be able to help the US as a country as well.

I think we're winning on all sides. And in order for that to continue and perpetuate long after we're gone, we need to invest in our workforce, right? And through that, we can do that with education because that only continues to grow. And then they teach others. And then if we are the example and it does start rubbing off, we're going to see a much, much different industry coming into the next generation.

So as you're making your move into the Carolinas out of the Colorado area in multiple locations, how can people get in contact with you to either support that transition or they have family members down the Carolinas that think this could be a great opportunity from that employment side or just be there to navigate and support as you go through all the bureaucracy of what you need to do to accomplish what you're looking for along the way. As this show reaches different people and different networks, how do people find you to be engaged and be involved and provide that advocacy and support for you?

First suggestion would be theapexgroup.com. That's apex with two A's. There are forms on there and contact information on there for them to find. Me, we are on Facebook. We also are on LinkedIn. I do encourage you to check out. My profile on LinkedIn gives you a lot more information on us. Some videos, some articles.

And then after that, just give me a call. We do have a direct line. It's 912-250-6500 and that will go directly to our offices. And they'll connect them right to me.

Okay. Yeah. There's what you're trying to accomplish when, you know, building this community, putting all three campuses together, building with purpose and intent, and bringing back that american pride and all those things that come with that from the manufacturing perspective, is something that I am confident as others listen to this show will, will be able to feel and embrace that. And I know that I, as prior to the show, in my head, there are like three or four more people I need to connect you with as well that might be able to support what you're looking to do along the way also. So I will definitely make those connections for you either via LinkedIn or direct mail.

That's awesome. I really appreciate it. In summation, I really just kind of want to reiterate, you know, the most important thing to me for Apex is to just be that example and to prove the concepts out. And we've proven them in smaller ways. But this campus is, you're going to see a significant prove out of these concepts and how they work and the amount of support that we've already received on it in the smaller areas that we've done it and proven it out is overwhelming. And I just think that what we're doing is extremely positive. It's very, very good for the future, but it's also really good for now. There is a lot of catch up we need to do.

Unfortunately, COVID kind of showed us where some of our limitations were, and that's really when Apex really kind of started coming out and showing, showing those capabilities and that ability to really kind of help assist with, with a lot of those challenges.

That's fantastic. Well, and thank you very much for being on the show today. We definitely appreciate it. And thank you for everything that you do for the country, for the communities that you're currently serving. So thank you very much.

Yes, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

All right. Thank you for listening to Blue Collar B's, brought to you by vision for business solutions and professional business coaching income. If you'd like to learn more on today's topic, just reach out to Steve Doyle or myself, Brad Hurta. Please like share rate and review this show as feedback is the only way we can get better. Let's keep blue collar businesses strong for generations to come.