Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• How Dusty combined his upbringing around manufacturing and his knowledge of software and coding to help the industry adapt to modern digital times
• How Dusty recognized the manufacturer’s need for digital integration of sales and advertising
• Dusty’s strategy for helping technologically shy manufacturing companies leverage a digital presence
• The importance of metrics and measurable success
• How to help foresee issues, problems, or trends that may not have been considered by companies before
• How Dusty defines personal success and how to seek an enriching life

In this episode…

How do you successfully integrate the tangible industry of manufacturing with the benefits of today’s digital tools and platforms to create a better business?

Raised around the world of manufacturing through his father’s work, Dusty Dean took his own knowledge of software and coding, and saw where it could be applied for manufacturing businesses: digital sales. This gap in the industry led him to create BITCADET, where he’s been able to help fill a void that was leading to wasted time and energy.

On this episode of the Measure Success Podcast, Carl J. Cox speaks with Dusty Dean, Founder of BITCADET, to discuss the importance of helping a client address what they couldn’t see before. Together, they talk about projecting and predicting trends to prepare in an ever-changing industry, Dusty’s definition of success, and the importance of continually exploring an enriching life outside of the workplace.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Dusty Dean on LinkedIn
• BITCADET
• VersaTube
• Seedzi
• Acumen Executive Search
• Suzanne Hanifin on LinkedIn
• Karen Anderson on LinkedIn
• 40 Strategy
• Contact 40 Strategy
• Carl J. Cox on LinkedIn

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is sponsored by 40 Strategy.

40 Strategy provides strategic planning and consulting to help organizations realize and achieve their dreams by creating and measuring KPIs for success.

Unfortunately, most organizations only spend 2% of their time—or about 40 hours per year—on building an effective strategy.

Increasing the success of those 40 hours is what 40 Strategy does because your success is their passion—and that’s why organizations look to them for guidance.

Not only does 40 Strategy help you craft and implement an effective strategy, but they’ll also work to facilitate teams with proven practices and help with your scenario planning.

Harvard research shows that you can triple your success when you use the right Key Performance Indicators. Who doesn’t want that?

If you have questions, you can reach out through their website or email them at catch@40strategy.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Measure Success Podcast where we feature top leaders on how they measure success in their business and life. Now, let’s learn from their experiences.

Carl J. Cox 0:18

Carl J. Cox here, and I am the host of the measure success Podcast, where I talk with top leaders about effective strategies that actually inspire success. This episode is brought to you by 40 Strategy at 40 Strategy. We help organizations create their strategic plans so they can help organize what they’re doing and actually achieve their dreams dusty, basically what we do is we don’t do this in particular strategic plan that’s custom made to them. And we measure the right KPIs for success. Unfortunately, companies and organizations only spend about 2% of their time collectively as an organization on strategy, which is only about 40 hours per year. I don’t know about your destiny. But I think that’s pretty crazy of how little we spent on strategy. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. And and so at 40 strategy, your success is our passion. That’s why organizations call on us to help. Not only do we come up with strategy, but with proven practices that actually help them be more successful. However, research shows when you actually do focus on the right key performance indicators, you can triple your success and who wouldn’t want that? So email us today at catch at 40strategy.com or simply go to our website at 40strategy.com before we talk about our guest dear Dusty Dean, I like to do a little shout out to Acumen one of my favorite organizations I like when we need some recruiting, support and help with organizations and not only here in the Northwest region, but throughout the US as well. Suzanne Hannifin is the founder and Karen Anderson have been wonderful for me of helping out some my clients finding the right talent, they have over a 90% retention rate in a three year period with people that that they really focus on getting the right people for your organization to help make a difference. So thank you to Suzanne and Karen. So with that we’re gonna do our introduction to Dusty here Dusty is the founder and CEO at BITCADET. BITCADET is focused on increasing manufacturing companies sales and value evaluations. By creating innovative digital sales channels. They design and create an executive execute growth program tailored to actually fit your industry and your specific needs. Dusty is also senior board advisor at VersaTube Building Systems, which was the leading manufacturer is leading that factory pre engineered DIY Steel Building kits. And he was also the president there for two years. He’s the founding partner for Seedzi, a startup incubator with a focus on the people side of the equation, which is really neat. He’s also the president for Digirocket Media in Memphis. He was also the president sorry, he also present for digital marketing and I already mentioned that he’s a has a bachelor’s and poly science in English literature at the University of Tennessee and Martin. He also and of course, I knew I was going to mess up this investigation and my one year of German is not going to help me out here Dusty n bestie at t u brunch. wyke brunschwig. From soy. Yep, you got it. You got it. Oh, okay. And has Yeah. I did German language in history. He is a member of a crazy amount of organizations if you actually check Dusty Dean out on LinkedIn, but to the ones who want us to mention is that the Oregon entrepreneurs network and the Portland city club and with that dusty Welcome to the measure success podcast.

Dusty Dean 3:46

Thank you, Carl. Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this since we first talked earlier this year.

Carl J. Cox 3:51

Absolutely. And thank you so much. You told me you get multiple requests for doing podcasts and that you were kind enough to select our Measure Success Podcast I’m really appreciate you taking the time as I know you have a crazy busy schedule. So tell us a little bit more about that cadet, and how does it make a difference out there in the world?

Dusty Dean 4:12

Yeah, yeah. Some quick history about me the kind of lead up to BITCADET I I grew up in a manufacturing family, like a lot of us do or did looking at our community. My dad worked as an electrician for a big manufacturing operation. My brother worked at the local aluminum plant. I didn’t want to do any of that. Obviously, you don’t want to do what everybody else does. You try to go in a different direction. So I I, ever since a young age, I’ve been really interested in building computers and software development just as a hobby. I was one of those weird kids that tore stuff apart and tried to figure out how to put it back together. And then when I learned about software, you can actually program it to do stuff. So I was going to my hobby as a kid that I, I, again, not wanting to do it, my, my, my family, my whole extended family did I wanted to go in a different direction. So I started to study pre law and political science international relations with the attempt to go to law school. But during that time I spent in Germany and meeting some great great people there, I realized that probably best for me to try to figure out how to make a living doing what I enjoy to do as a kid, which was software development, building stuff, creating things that that are complicated, but but but looks so simple on the front end. And that kind of led me down the path of, of working as a contractor, building whatever I could, for ad agencies. Because they at the time, were still very much, let’s say, mid 2000s, they were still very much like digital II, we will do radio spots, we’ll do billboards, digital, we don’t feel comfortable doing so I would come in. And just by luck, some of the first accounts were were manufacturers, and I got to work very closely with some excellent people. And that’s when I realized that most manufacturers in the US have do a phenomenal job of, of investing in innovation on the factory floor. But when you pass that threshold, into the admin side, a lot of the Lean principles and a lot of the investments in whether it be standardization, or however you want to choose your flavor, they just kind of go out the window, it’s quite messy. And that’s where I saw a huge opportunity, I suppose I was I couldn’t believe the just following an order, from cells to engineering back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then finally, it would get approved and then go to production where it would be out the door almost immediately because production had their act together. But the admin didn’t. So so at that time, I thought I need to figure out a way to turn this into a business, not just do you know, contract work. But how do I turn this into a business and my first version of that cadet, I wanted it to be a self serve kind of website, website, platform type builder, something like you might see today with the Squarespace or with a Shopify, even though Shopify didn’t exist. I don’t know if Squarespace existed then either. But I realized that that was it was too, too early to do something like that I really needed to work closely with

Dusty Dean 7:50

the executives in different manufacturing firms to figure out how can we how can we automate this front end sales process like we eliminate the waste between engineering and sales, and allow customers to self serve themselves. So really, we started building because that is a consulting operation, that that did that. Fast forward to today. And we’ve built this little team that I call it like your, like a digital SWAT team, where we have designers, developers and ad strategists, you come into a manufacturing firms operation, with the goal of increasing sales through a digital investment. So increase in leads, or increase in e commerce self either or both. Oftentimes, it’s both because of the transformation journey that we go on. But I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to use technology, it has to demonstrate value. It has significant value to the operations. And we work a lot on performance space, because I do I’m a big believer that technology can actually create cells and is measurable. Hopefully, we can talk about that at some point. But yeah, so really, firms come and work with us today. Because they they want to grow. And they don’t quite know the best way to do that. But they’ve heard and they’ve seen that some firms have had a lot of success online, and they want to figure out how they can they can do that. How can they deliver these superior buying experiences for their customers online?

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