The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Blasting Innovation: Brandon Acker, President of Titan Abrasive Systems, Talks American Manufacturing and Tech

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Blasting Innovation: Brandon Acker, President of Titan Abrasive Systems, Talks American Manufacturing and Tech Titanabrasive.com About the Guest(s): Brandon Acker is the President of Titan Abrasive Systems, a leading OEM manufacturer that specializes in abrasive air blast equipment commonly referred to as sandblasting equipment. Brandon purchased the company in 2013 from his uncle after five years of learning the intricacies of the business. Since then, he has spearheaded efforts to modernize and upgrade the product line, emphasizing the importance of American manufacturing. Brandon is passionate about utilizing made-in-USA components for all Titan products, ensuring quality while supporting local jobs. Episode Summary: In this exciting episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss engages with Brandon Acker, President and transformative leader of Titan Abrasive Systems. Known for his commitment to American manufacturing, Brandon dives into the company's evolution since he acquired it in 2013. From modernizing processes to utilizing advanced technologies, Brandon's insights offer a rich narrative of innovation and leadership in the abrasive air blasting industry. The conversation delves into the technicalities of sandblasting, highlighting Titan's focus on custom solutions for various industries, including military and aerospace. Brandon underscores the critical shift from sand to other media abrasives in blasting, discussing the benefits of reclaim systems and the safety improvements they offer. The episode also explores the future of manufacturing in the U.S., the potential impact of AI and robotics, and Brandon's unique leadership style that fosters team collaboration and innovation. Key Takeaways: Brandon Acker purchased Titan Abrasive Systems in 2013 and has since modernized the company’s operations, emphasizing the use of 3D modeling and efficient manufacturing technologies. American manufacturing holds immense importance for Brandon due to its quality output and the jobs it creates; Titan also prioritizes sourcing components made in the USA. Titan’s products cater to various industries, including the military and aerospace sectors. The innovation lies in their transition away from traditional sandblasting to more efficient and safer abrasive methods. Reclaim systems are crucial for modern blasting, allowing for the reuse of media and improving both cost-effectiveness and safety. The future of abrasive blasting could see significant advancements in robotics and AI, further automating complex processes and enhancing safety. Notable Quotes: "To me, it’s important just for being an American and keeping manufacturing here in this country, keeping supporting the country, supporting jobs." "If you can dream it, we can make it." "Even as an American manufacturer, covid kind of taught us some things and really helped us flush out any remaining parts that we might have coming that are not made in this country." "Technology, obviously, is a big one. For us in the blasting, a lot of robotics come into play." "Everything kind of looks like sand. Imagine everything’s in that form." Resources: Titan Abrasive Systems Website

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Chris Voss here.

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Crisvoss, one of the TikTok and all those crazy places on the internet. Today, we have another young, accomplished CEO and entrepreneur of his companies and what he does. We're going to get into his journey and how he got into it as well, and maybe give some advice to people who are up and coming, want to be entrepreneurs. Brandon Acker joins us on the show with us today. He purchased Titan Abrasive from his uncle in 2013 after having spent five years learning the ins and outs of the business. Since then, he's been in the process of of the company's complete line of blast room, blast machine products for industrial applications. He's passionate about American manufacturing, the jobs it creates, and quality produced, and the bright future that lies ahead.

Let's keep hoping that keeps saying that way. We like a United States bright future. And he sources made-in-USA components for all of their Titans blast cleaning equipment. Welcome to the show. How are you, Brandon? Excellent, Chris. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming.

We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? We're easy. We're just titanabrasive.com. An abrasive singular. No S on the end. Nice.

So give us a 30,000 overview of what you guys do there. So we are a manufacturer, OEM manufacturer of abrasive air blast equipment, commonly referred to as sandblasting equipment. So we make big blast cabinets that have gloves. You put your hands on the blast parts, big blast rooms. You can drive a a dump truck or a tractor trailer into dust collection systems good stuff and so they like does that blast the paint off of trucks and stuff or is the dust or yeah it's a combination sometimes it's new it's actually new steel a lot of times that's just being prepared to be coated so it's

new fabrication on other manufacturers they blast all their stuff to give it a profile to coat it or it can be you know something old that's rusty that you want to clean that all the rust off and it'll take the metal back to pretty much how it was when it was new or repainting if you're repainting a you know equipment cars you blast the paint off and get it ready for a new new coat now i'm a little overweight and dieting could maybe i use this to shed a few pounds you know what they call that sculpting a little body sculpting a little body sculpting a little sand sand blast those fat rolls off me might be a little painful but it's 2022 damn it why haven't you fixed this it's your fault

brandon so you guys make and this is american made why is american made important to you in your words to me it's important just for being an american and keeping it keeping manufacturing here in this country keeping you know supporting the country, supporting jobs, supporting our own people, making a good quality product. I think that's what we've always been about and were, and I think we've kind of lost our way in the recent past, but hopefully we're coming back. Hopefully we're coming back.

Definitely, you know, I think over COVID, people learned that, you know, issues with supply chains and issues with quality, you know, there's been questionable stuff coming out of China for years. You know, fentanyl being in all sorts of stuff too is a big thing. And so I think a lot of people kind of realized with COVID and supply chain issues that near sourcing, I think is the term they're using now. And so either coming back to the States or manufacturing either in Mexico or Canada, I'm trying to figure out what's, I'm trying to figure out the map. Clearly I went to public school.

Oh, Canada. You know, this has been a big thing, I think, hasn't it? Manufacturing turning to America. It has been. It has been for, I'd say, quite a few years. And I think COVID really brought it to light and really made people aware of it and what can, the problems of not manufacturing in this country and what they can be. I mean, even as an American manufacturer, COVID kind of taught us some things and really helped us flush out any remaining parts that we

might have coming that are not made in this country became pretty obvious when they were all of a sudden two year lead times. Yeah. Yeah. We, we used to review a lot of products before COVID and so people would send us their products and the chip shortage and other shortages of COVID, you know,

I had people I was calling up that I'd been in business with for 10 years. And I'm like, hey, can we get some reviews of whatever this is? And I'm like, Chris, we're dead in the water. We can't make product. We can't ship product. We got nothing. It's on a boat somewhere.

And we can't get the chips for it. I mean, it really just locks some people down, probably puts some people out of business. Yeah, unfortunately, I think it put quite a few people out of business. Yeah. Now, I'm a single guy who hates dusting the house. I know you have these cartridge dust collectors. Can I install one of those in my living room so it doesn't collect dust because I hate

dusting? Yeah, it's pretty big, pretty big to set up in the living room. But hey, as long as you have three-phase electric, we can get one set up. Three-phase electric? Is that what you said? Three-phase? Yeah. Yeah, we can.

I don't know what that is, but I can pretend. So tell us a little bit about your journey through life and how you ended up owning the company. Well, it was my uncle who started the company back in the 50s. And as a kid growing up, I always knew about it, the company back in the 50s. And as a kid growing up, I always knew about it, always liked working there, helping out. Never really thought at the time when I was a kid, never thought I would own it. I just liked working out there, hanging out in the shop. I just thought it was a cool place to go, cool place to hang out.

I wanted to work there when I got older, which I did. And just one thing led to another and I ended up you know taking over and had the opportunity to purchase the company outright and take over in 2013 and change some things up you know being a new generation and had different ideas and now I'm getting a chance to make them happen. So was it scary taking on your first foray into being an entrepreneur? Of course, you're buying an already successful business, and you kind of know the ropes of it. It was. It was scary and probably I had wild ideas of what to do and a gross underestimate of what was going to be involved in that undertaking. What?

Starting a company? No way. There's a... Redesign all the equipment? It's a cake. Yeah. It's not as easy as... It's a large ship and it's not too easy to turn that ship.

That's for sure. No. There's a lot to go into it. But so you buy it the what do was your rest of your family in the business or was it just your the i think it was uncle or something you bought it's my uncle no no just no other members of the family and how did you convince him to sell you the company was he wanting to retire or do you just say i've got some ideas yeah just get just kind of the the going different. And I guess the direction I wanted to take the company in, I guess, was a favorable one.

Required some thought and then came back to me and decided it was a good idea to have me take over and see what I could do with it. So what's the journey been like? You've been overseeing it now for five years, right? Since 13. So we're really 14 kicking it's almost 10 years now i did i flunked pug school again yeah that's why oh it's for five years before uh yes five years i worked before taking over correct i vaguely remember the bio i was reading it's in there the five was in there it's the alzheimer's is kicking in so now you've been doing it for all this time what what are some

of the things that you've helped innovate or some of the processes you've used that helped innovate you know like analyzing stuff trying to figure out how to do the improvements you want i imagine there's probably some monitored modern modernization you probably tried to do over the years. That modernization was probably the biggest thing, the biggest goal I had in that we were fabricating everything in-house and we were doing it for many, many years and kind of old school. And I was just trying to bring us up to speed that we could compete with our our larger competitors and innovating that and bringing it you know my idea was getting everything you know onto a computer getting everything into 3d models being able to spit it out to machines machines we didn't have so that was the start getting getting all of our all of our equipment redesigned is what it

took because all of our stuff was kind of on old drawings and, you know, a lot of lot in people's heads that know, I know how to do it. I know how to make it, but unfortunately no one else does. If it's not on a new drawing. I got hit by a bus last night. Does anybody know how this works?

Yeah, exactly. So luckily I was able to get that info out of people before, before Bob got hit by the bus yes yes before the bus thanks bob we miss you the it's always fucking bob the it's always a guy named bob bob so you you probably do a lot of updating do you guys have lasers yet that's a that's a new thing you have any we have being being a smaller manufacturer, it's virtually impossible to get that kind of equipment because of the cost of it if it's not running constantly. A structural laser, which we need to use for tube, round items,

anything that's not flat, there are a couple million dollars. So it would have been about, I'd say, a $5 million investment in equipment, which when buying a company was more than I was willing to take on at that time i actually started to look in and outsource some of the found a contract manufacturer someone who had those capabilities that already had the lasers investment and just needed our that was the key of our equipment being in in in solid works, being in a 3d modeling program that we could outport it to their machines so that they could cut it out. So it, it kind of brought us, brought us up to speed without, without the investment.

And you guys pretty much can make these custom to how they want them. Yeah. Yep. We can pretty much make, make anything. If you can dream it, we can make it. Maybe that body shaper. I'll get engineering to work on that as soon as we wrap up. What if you just had like a sand blast proof suit on, but it was really tight. And so when the sand would blast off you, it wouldn't break the suit. But it would just kind of help pound those fat cells and kind of, I don't know, explode and dissipate them. That might do that to your heart.

I don't know, one of the two. Maybe this isn't such a good idea. Kind of like the modern version of the belt, that big belt. The belt. I mean, yeah, it's pretty funny. I mean, with leadership, what is it like taking over for another CEO? What is it? Were you prepared for the leadership position when you went into it,

or did you have to kind of trial by fire that? No, I was pretty prepared. I don't know if you're ever fully prepared for what's going to come at you. It's almost like life sits around and goes oh what can he handle oh yeah let's throw this in him yeah let's throw that in them too just just keep him just keep him dodgeballing back and forth yep just just when you think you're ready i got this no problem then bam i remember i remember i used to tell my business partners are growing i'm like i mentioned i guess eventually we're going to get a sexual harassment

complaint thank god we haven't got one so far and the first one we did he came in my office he goes we got our first sexual harassment complaint and I go oh really who is it and he goes Chris and Greg and I go we don't have any Chris females that work here

and it was two guys sexually harassing one another and I was like I did not see that one coming it was not on the card that was not on my card I did not see the the LGBTQ sexual harassment thing I always I always just for some reason assumed it would be a man a woman but what do I know you know know, it's just, it's, it's like a never ending. Hey, have you experienced this yet? Go ahead. Cause we just threw it at you and you're just like, damn it.

Damn it. I wanted to sleep today. What do you find works for you in being a leader and inspiring your staff? Of course, you know, you're trying, you're, you're taking company from, or you were taking a company at the time from, you know from maybe kind of an older world concept, process, and ideology to maybe a new improved culture and a forward-thinking kind of learning organization. Was there any of that you struggled with or went through? Yeah, I mean, I had a different approach probably than what everyone was used to. I was just trying to, my approach was more trying to keep everyone involved, everyone on the same page with what we were doing, what my plans were,

what my goals were, and make sure everyone had some involvement in that and everyone was included to say, hey, this is the path I'd like to take and make sure everyone was on board with that and make sure they knew they had a place and a role in the company's future yeah this is where we're going to go and you know how we need everyone to get there yeah having an organization that makes feel feel like people feel like they are they they've had the buy-in you know they want to do it as opposed to you know the normal gun to your head you know do your job Yes. And that's how we do things around the Chris Voss show, by the way. And it doesn't work well, but boy, people sure get their work done.

But the feds keep calling. I don't know what that's about. Don't hold a gun to people's head, folks. That's a joke. Yeah. Because the amazing stuff you have to make clear on the show. So who are your big customers that you guys usually type serve? Not by name, but like by industry.

I'm thinking of people listening to this on LinkedIn that are in some of these industries hear this. We do a lot with the military. The military is a big one. Aerospace. Aerospace is becoming very big now. Some nuclear stuff. And a lot of other manufacturers. OEM manufacturer equipment.

Mold. Mold guys that do mold guys that do vacuum molding. Yep, they're using it to clean the molds. Oh, for mold molds. I was thinking black mold. Although there is mold remediation that sandblasting can be used for. Yep, you can actually spray baking soda. Oh, really? It will be like a soda blaster so you're

actually spraying soda blasting it's good for used in like fire damage take take smoke and fire damage off deodorizes it also good for you know mold remediation yeah kind of interesting i'm gonna put some if i can if if it will uh there's a soda joke in there somewhere. You said something. It'll blast soda. I'm going to put some Pepsi in it. I don't know. That's a dumb joke. But most of them are on the show. The blast room.

Now I'm just laughing at how stupid that joke is. Blast rooms, blast cabinets, blast machines. There's a lot of blasting going on here. A lot of blasting. Yeah. You guys ever thought about just making hug rooms instead of blast rooms? Yeah, instead of blast. Put them on blasts is how they talk in the troll chat.

It's funny on the blasting thing, too. We used to get a lot of, you know, search engine optimization, people contacting us for equipment, what they type in. And people were typing in blast room. And they kept coming to us. And it was all these marijuana guys, which is, I'm like, why are all these marijuana guys wanting blast rooms? I'm like, what are they blasting in there? And finally one call, I'm like, okay,

what are you guys blasting in there that you need a blast room? They were looking for a room that was like an explosion proof room not a blast room apparently when they do whatever they do to extract whatever they're extracting out of marijuana it they use i think they use alcohol and do it something is volatile so they wanted something to contain that if it exploded so they did not want a sandblasting room but that's kind of funny on that play on that on the blast room what people think a blast room is and yeah i live in nevada and take edibles uh um i i didn't know they were blasting my edibles somehow they're blasting that's what they're getting out like all the cbd whatever they're extracting from

the marijuana put in the edible somehow that that process i believe they've they've changed it now because we don't get much of that anymore explains why my edibles taste like sand it's a little gritty it's a little gritty but you know it gives you that it gives you that that fiber the sand fiber someone looked that up yeah i might want to get you know if it will control explosions i might want to get one for my girlfriend to put her in there when she's in her feels and maybe i can just kind of contain you know are you calm honey i don't think this is going to work for me at all i think there's laws against this really but it made for a good joke media reclaim systems what is a reclaim system a reclaim system is used to that reclaim the media basically the key is that's where it got away from the term sandblasting sandblasting

was an old term because people used it they used to use sand and that's how it started where you know the here in way back early 1900s a guy ben Tillman, is the one who invented sandblasting and saw it happen in the desert by sand hitting an object and eroding it. And finally came up with the invention of sandblasting. But in recent times that we've actually gotten away from actual sand, using sand because of its harmful effects of silica in the dust and getting silicosis. And now there's a whole bunch of different medias that can be used. because of its harmful effects of silica in the dust and getting silicosis. And now there's a whole bunch of different medias that can be used. And the key to that is the reclaimability of it, being able to use those medias again and again,

which is what that reclaim system does. It takes that media that you blast with, you put in the reclaim system, it cleans it, and then puts it back into the blast machine so you can reuse it, which is where you're really going to get, you know, save your money, make your money back on the equipment and all by reusing that media over and over. Yeah, you don't want to get any of that stuff in your lungs. That's for darn sure. No, you certainly do not. That's not fun at all.

So they use something more than sand. That's really interesting to know. Yeah. It's still called sandblasting. Most people still refer to it as sandblasting, yeah, even though very few people actually use sand. Wow. What do they use now?

A lot of our rooms for recycling are using steel grit. Everything kind of looks like sand. Imagine everything's in that form. It all looks like sand, but steel grit is just little. It looks like sand, but they're little pieces of steel. Another one is aluminum oxide. Aluminum oxide is what you find on sandpaper. Oh, yeah. Same thing. All comes in different grits like that just like sandpaper you have

you know 400 grit 80 grit they're going to be more coarse or fine it's crazy man i don't want to get caught one of those rooms without a suit or breather on that's for darn sure no no i could lose some weight you know if you just turn on for a second and then, I don't know, there might be onto something here. This could be a, this could be a new revenue source. Yeah. The fat loss, the fat loss baking room or something.

I don't know. Yeah. Um, what do you see on the future for manufacturing in the U S manufacturing for yourself? Maybe new trends that are coming in technology or even AI? AI. You just need to decide. That's too much.

That's how I am whenever I try and figure out. The show is going to make people's brains bleed. I just didn't know it was going to be mine. That's what we're here for. That's what we're here for. The only downside of the brain bleed thing is we seem to lose,

like someone dies about every couple months or something. But we're like the NFL. We haven't gotten it tied to us yet, so we're just waiting for a class action lawsuit. But no, I mean, like anything on your vision horizon, what you see happening with american manufacturing or what you guys are doing or maybe where you're trying to lead the company to i mean technology technology obviously is a big one for us into blasting a lot of robotics robotics come into play something we're working on automating things making things safer

ai obviously ai is going to play a role in probably everything everyone does soon i just don't think we really have a handle on what it's going to do yet yeah i'm gonna go ask open ai if it can help me lose weight using sandblasting see what it says that should be interesting yes that would be a good one we're gonna sandblast all you humans when we take over yeah give it some ideas yeah so in the green that's where y'all going and so you know you so you run this company good job taking over and leading it successfully anything more we need to know about your company what it does and how you do it our big thing i guess that we are when we're a u.s manufacturer that's our big thing we said you know we're taking great pride in making everything here,

constantly innovating to do the best we can and keep up with technology and always advancing. Got to keep up because if you don't, your competitors will, right? Yes. Yes, they will. Or the AI will. Or the other. Or the AI will, yeah this somebody's got that ai down

it's crazy i can't even keep up like normally i can keep up with everything but ai is just so all over the place i'm just like holding on for dear life and normally i'm not like that with technology but you know it's not focused on one sort of thing there's so many different variations but you look at the movies it can make, the creativity that it does. It's pretty insane. I'll go piss OpenAI off and see if I can... Do we get money from OpenAI? Am I just doing free advertising

at this point? That'd be cool. Any more you want to talk about before we go out? Give us the dot-coms. Dot-coms are titanabrasive.com You can also find our blog titanabrasive.com. You can also find our blog at letsgetblasted.com. I love it.

Let's get blasted. That is awesome sauce. We'll be putting up the feedback from the OpenAI on losing weight with blasting. You'll find that on lets's Get Blasting. I can see you on a TikTok channel on TikTok and just talking about sandblasting. You could probably sell like a million of them shirts on TikTok. It's been wonderful to have you on. Very insightful, Brandon. Thank you for coming on the show.

We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right. Continued success. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com,

Fortuness Chris Foss. Chris Foss won the TikTok and the crazy place on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next

time. And that should have us out. Thanks, Brandon.