GA 600 | Reflecting on Six Hundred Episodes with Ron Pereira

With all the content that we've created over the years is just trying to deliver that balance of respecting people and continuous improvement. And when you're doing both of those as best you can, even through the hard times, it's going to be really difficult to be stopped. I really believe that with all my heart.

Hi, everyone, my name is Greg Nichol and I'm just one of many of the producers here at Gemba Academy that work hard to create and maintain top quality educational material. With us today is Ron Pereira. We're kind of doing this backwards today, but. So, Ron, where are you calling in from today?

I am calling in from Keller, Texas, and the same chair I sit in when I interview people. But I'm looking through this glass at this other guy named Greg. So.

Okay, real quickly, just to play the normal script here, you got a favorite quote for us?

Oh, boy. I think when I always get the quote question, I, I love going back to the great philosopher.

Yoda. Do or do not, There is no try.

Is my favorite, I think. Yeah, I think it really sums up. Yeah, Continuous improvement. Do or do not. You know, you can, you can try things, you can experiment or you can just sit there, right. And yeah, you're better to do and try and see what happens, see what you learn.

I know everybody knows you, but just for anybody that happens to be tuning in for the first time, can you give a little bit, You've got a big background, but can you give just a quick synopsis?

Yeah, so. Well, I'm currently the. What am I around here? Managing director, I guess they call me, of Gemba Academy. So I'm one of the, one of the founders of the company which we started. And was it March of 2009, something like that? Been a little bit, I guess, but before that I, I sort of always been in the continuous improvement world. I started my, I guess out of college. I started my corporate career with Motorola, which we used to make cell phones. Some of the younger people are probably like, who's Motorola? But back in the day they were, they were huge. And then I, from there I went to Nokia, another cell phone company that really no longer exists. So I just went to where our cell phones died, I guess. I don't know, but, but they were both great companies and I learned a lot. And that's really where I got my continuous improvement start and got all my training. Black belt master, black belt, all kinds of lean training. And so, yeah, I'm very, very thankful for those years. Went to a company here in, in Texas called Flowserve for a few years and had more of a leadership role there and did that for a few years. But I've sort of always been, I always described myself back then as a entrepreneur trapped in corporate America. So I, I was always trying to, I mean I, my poor wife, you know, like I had like gumball machine business at one point I was going to be a gumball machine empire and I still think it's a cool business but, but didn't work. And anyhow so I tried multiple things. But then this, I guess the Skimba Academy thing, when we stumbled upon it, it, it. I'm very thankful for that.

Well, that's a good question. How did you just happen to stumble into that?

Well, I remember working at, in my corporate years. You know, I was training, you know, we just did a traditional training and I remember looking for videos and I don't want to disparage any of our competitors who may have been around back then, but all I could find was sort of like what I describe as voiceover cartoon and I just don't like watching cartoons in some person talking over them no matter how well done they are. So I, I was like, I didn't know I want a person talking to me. And really honestly back then it just didn't exist. And so.

I thought gosh, it's a, that's an opportunity. And I had a, I had a blog back then back in blogging used to be really popular. It's not so popular anymore but, but you know, John Miller, my other business partner and then Kevin Meyer, the three of us or the co founders of the company, we all had blogs. John and Kevin actually had been blogging longer than I had and probably had a bigger following than I did. But, but that's sort of how I got into sort of teaching through maybe an electronic means and then just started experimenting with videos. Even on my blog back then they were just really badly shot and produced sort of like YouTube style videos that I, that I put up. And, and I remember the first one of the first sort of so called viral videos I did was that one piece flow envelope stuffing exercise. You know, it's where you, you stuff 10 envelopes in a, in a sort of a batch production. We, we can link it up, we've done it here on Gamba Academy. But, and then you do, then you do 10 envelopes, one piece flow and one piece flow, right is much faster than the batch. And, and I remember like the comments on that and that post like blew up and people were like accusing me of Playing camera tricks and all kinds of stuff. I'm like, no, there's no tricks. Do it yourself. You know. And then I snow. It really hit me. I was like, boy, there's something to this video. And, and people sort of learning and teaching through that, that, that, that medium. So, so yeah, all those things kind of just stumbled across the idea and I approached John and Kevin. It's like, hey, ever thought about making videos and selling them and as a business? And they were like, yeah, but no idea how to do it. And, and so anyhow, I actually bought a, a course on how to make videos from a guy named Dave Kaminsky. I know you know him, Greg, because we've, we've watched his stuff over the years. He does a great work and he had a web. I think it's still around, actually, I don't. It's called. It used to be Web Video University. And anyhow, he had just started it and it was real raw as well, but, but he, boy, he walked you through how to, how to shoot videos, how to edit them and how to get them up on the Internet and, and so I just followed it step by step and, and we launched Gemba Academy. Kevin built the website because he had really good sort of tech background and, and we launched it in March of 2009 with 12 videos on value stream mapping and True story. The, the backdrop, you know, on the wall was literally a gray bed sheet that I pinned to the wall and I had, I thought I was fancy because I bought one of those softbox, you know, lights and off of, I don't know where I got it and had it rigged up in my, in my little office in my house. And, and yeah, man, that's how we did it. That's how we, we hacked together 12 videos and started a company.

So it worked.

Yeah, it did. It did.

So I'm assuming you don't use a bedroom as your studio anymore.

Yeah, we, we have a beautiful state of the art building here in Keller, Texas that. Well, you built the studio, Greg, so you can talk more about that than I can. But yeah, so we're, we're real blessed and we're all proud of what we've been able to build over the years. And, and yeah, anybody who's ever in Keller, Texas area, look us up and 460 Johnson Road, we'll give you a tour.

So in this, in this time of growing this business, has there been any one part over the past, what has it been 16 years in that crazy.

Yeah.

Has there been anything that really Stands out as maybe the biggest growth or the biggest reason why things have just kind of maybe caught on.

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think that.

I think. Well, I do think that we, you know, timing is really important in the business world and I think we were lucky, maybe even call it that, that we started it when we did because, you know, YouTube and everything was obviously around back then, but it wasn't anything like it is now. And I don't know, was Netflix and those things around back then? I don't remember. Maybe they were just kind of getting going as well. But yeah.

In the mail.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. But so anyhow, it was kind of innovative what we were doing, you know, So. I don't know, man. I feel like that, you know, the stars just really align for us and we just kind of tried to. We've always been focused on. I don't want to sound like a big sales pitch, but for Gamma Academy, how great we are, but. But you know, just really trying to add value, you know, to the world. And, you know, we talk a lot about waste and muda and Lean and trying to remove that. And that's sort of what we've tried to try to do with our. With our training and still do just, you know, don't say it in 20 minutes when you can say it in five. Right. And get the same point across. And so that's sort of what we did in the beginning. And just, you know, back then it was literally me and, and eventually we hired. Who is it? Elaine? Was Elaine the first. Yeah, Elaine Crescione. She's now retired, but Elaine was sort of our first employee and, and known Elaine for years and. And she, she started helping just because I had just so much going on, you know, trying to make videos, take care of customers and all the rest of it and everything in between. And so she came on to. To really help me and. And yeah, it just kind of just took off and. And again, John and John Miller, who's who still. He. He does all of our content now for folks that don't know John, but he's sort of the brains behind Gemma Academy. I mean, I always say John is actually. He's forgotten more about Lean than I'll ever know. He's brilliant when it comes to continuous improvement. And he learned from some of the original Toyota, the architects of the Toyota production system. John speaks Japanese American guy, but he speaks Japanese. He grew up in. In Japan. And so he learned from some of these original sort of sensei if you will. And so real blessed to have John from the very beginning, you know, creating, helping create new content and all that kind of stuff.

So were there any challenges in the early, like, like after you guys got started, the first few years?

I mean, of course there were challenges. I mean, every, every business is. I mean, we, we were blessed, I guess, from. From the beginning, again, having that following of the, the three blogs, that was really, really a big part of our success, I think, because people, a lot of people, and we had big followings back then, the three of us did. I mean, if you stacked us all up, maybe many people probably followed. All three of us only followed Kevin or John or me or something like that. So that was a big thing. So, like, we could announce it on our blog, say, hey, we got this thing called Gemba Academy. And so I feel like that was really instrumental. Whereas a lot of startups start up with nothing, right. They have no visibility, nobody knows who they are. And that wasn't quite our situation. So I feel like we're really fortunate in that, in that sense. And that was probably. I don't know what was the original question, but that was a really important part of our, our success early on, I think.

Yeah, I was just curious if there were any stumbling blocks or anything that.

Yeah, well, you know, I had a day job, man, like I was, and so I was trying to honor that as well and do a good job doing my day job. And so, man, there were many late, late nights where I'd be shooting videos and editing videos and the kids would go to bed, real young kids back then, and so couldn't even do anything when they were away because they're so loud and so just had to really just grind, man. You know, that's what I tell people who are starting up my sons and as, you know, like in a music business. And I'm like, man, you gotta put your head down and get to work and grind. And even if things aren't going the way you want them, just keep going and don't, don't, don't quit. I remember blogging again. I've mentioned it a few times, but I think there was a run where I blogged daily for years and I never missed a day ever, you know, and maybe there's some like, hey, we're going on vacation, so I gotta cue some up and have them release. But I did, you know, and so just having that consistency and we've obviously built our business around that with the content that we create in the podcast. I mean, we haven't. We've never missed a week on the podcast, so. Yeah, that's a big. A big part of anybody's success is just being consistent and showing up, not giving up.

You had mentioned that you guys started off with what, 12 videos?

Value stream mapping.

Value stream mapping, Yep. So, okay, 16 years later.

What. What do you. What are you doing now? What, what, what's your library? Rocking.

Oh, boy. What's our library? I should ask you. You. You know better than I do, so. Yeah. Yeah. We started with 12 online videos, and now we have.

2391. I just looked it up. So. Yeah, over 2300 videos from 12. That's kind of wild. Yeah, it's a big number. 2300 it is. 2391, to be precise. Yeah. So that's. I think it's like, what is it? Something like over 600 hours of video or something like that. Yeah, it's. It's a lot of content.

So blog articles, videos, podcasts, and a lot of this stuff is obviously free.

Yeah.

What's the idea behind that?

Well, I don't know. Maybe we're not smart business people. I don't know.

No, I mean, we've always had sort of this abundance mindset. Like, if you give enough to the world and give enough value to the world, then the world will. Will repay you, you know, and, and so we've always done that, you know, we've always tried to help people and, and, and provide. I begin you could spend.

I don't know how many hours of content we would have on the blog to kind of read through and to learn, and it's all. It's still all out there. So. Yeah, it's just having that abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset. A lot of people have a scarcity mindset. It was like, just got to protect everything and got to keep everything under wraps. And, And I don't know, to me, not how we've. I don't like to live my life like that. And, and we definitely don't run the company like that. We never have.

So I guess the philosophy that Gimba Academy has had over the years is, I've got some videos to show you. I've got some videos to help train you. It is. How can we help you?

Yeah. No. Yeah. What problem are you trying to solve? You know, like, I still, I do some coaching. We've got a whole coaching department now where we're coaching folks through various certification programs and whatnot. And, And I don't do. I used to do A lot of it, but I don't do as much of it anymore. But I still have a handful of candidates that I, that I work with. And that's just today I had a coaching call and I just, I could tell the gentleman was sort of struggling. And I'm like, what problems are you trying to solve? And I just paused and looked at him and he was like, that's a good question. You know, and I could just see him write it down. And. And so, yeah, that, that's a lot of times where you gotta start, you know, because there's some like, he can get overwhelmed, right? Couple thousand videos, you know, that sort of thing. But in the end, it's like Gimbal Academy. It's not about watching all of our videos or anything like that. It's about coming to us with, you know, sort of like curiosity and humility that, hey, I want my business or my life to be better. And I know it can be. And I've heard this lean and Six Sigma and continuous improvement stuff, project management, all these things can help and go hit the search box on our website, you know, something like that. Like type in a question and just see what pops up. And that's probably the best way to, to at least get started. And then you could say, okay, I want to, I want to make go of this. No, we create a formal program and work with us and we'll help you say, hey, here's some things that you should be learning. And, and then at that point you get. Make more of a roadmap. But always begin with that sort of mindset of, I got some problems, I like to solve them, I don't know how. And I promise you, our library, if you can't find the answer in our library, hey man, let us know and we will go get the work making that content. But I'd be shocked if, if someone could stump us.

You said you had were just coaching somebody earlier, so I'm sure you've heard stories upon stories about how people have worked on their business to try to improve different things. Is there any story, any person, any business that has stood out more than others of just.

Really got your heart, just. Just that you see something had really happened.

Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, I don't name names or anything like that, but I remember.

Working with a individual one time, it's been many years ago, and they were always kind of quiet and I won't say like down on the dumps, but yeah, they were just sort of quiet and, and, and my style is never to sort of, like, push anybody or anything like that. But long story short, we worked together for a while and worked through some challenges that they were going through. All work stuff, not nothing personal or anything like that. And. And I remember this person came up to me at the. Towards the end and. And said that, you know, no one has ever listened to me the way that you listen to me. And I'm not saying that to, like, pump me up, but it was. I mean, it. It was really moving. I was. Earlier in my career kind of thing, but it really moved me, like. Like this person, like, I genuinely, like, listened to them and invested in them, and. And they said that I changed a life, you know, because they actually went on to get into the continuous improvement and, you know, kind of launched her career in a different path. And. And so I feel like, as continuous improvement practitioners, we all have this ability, and I would almost say obligation to sort of lead and help people change for the better and change all aspects of their life for the better. And so I've always been real sort of moved by that. That moment when that. When that happened, because it was. It was pretty touching for me. And. And I think it helped help me understand that I was on the right path and I was in the place God wanted me to be. And that's kind of. I never stopped from that point on.

Okay. Something that I'm sure everybody wants to know, and you may have mentioned it before. You teach Lean, you know, Six Sigma. You're kind of an engineering background kind of guy. You've been doing this for quite a while. Do you do this at home, too?

Yeah, to some extent. I would say my wife sounds crazy. I would say she's better at it than I am. She really is. I mean, she's just crazy organized. And last night, it was. True story. I mean, I'm not making this up. She was yelling at the kids and said, put that at point of use. So, like, kids, you know, like, we homeschool some of our younger kids. And so she's got everything set up, and, you know, it's like, you don't need to go walk over there. Just keep it over here by you so you're not getting up and moving around, that sort of thing. So. But, you know, we for sure try to practice these things, but I think, like, more than the. The tools, like, which is. Go see. And my amazing, you know, shadow boards and my toolboxes and all that. I mean, maybe a little bit, but probably more just the way I try to live my life and The. The way that I lead my family is probably influenced by continuous improvement and leadership principles of, you know, sort of just servant leadership and that sort of thing. It's kind of just guides everything that I do, really. More than how I organize my toolbox, you know what I mean?

You had mentioned the video that went viral a long time ago, the one you shot at home for the first time or early. Mm. There was actually another one. I'm not sure I thought it was more popular than the one piece flow, but it's one dishwasher. It's. I'm assuming that's the one that was a true lesson at the house. And you just happened to go, oh, maybe we should capture that.

Yeah, I can't. What. What were we doing in that video now? I can't even remember. It was. It was the dishwasher.

I think they were walking back and forth with a bunch of.

Oh, yeah, so we saw. Yeah. So it was all about kind of like teaching them the. How deadly the waste of transportation and motion is.

And.

Yeah, it's like emptying the dishwasher, you know, and how you organize it and how you lay out your kitchen and. And why you. Why you grabbing one fork and bringing it over there. Grab the whole silverware thing and bring it up, you know, just little things like that. So it was a true story of, like, before we had cameras rolling, kind of showing my kids that, you know, and then thought, well, let's just make a little video of it. So we did. And yeah, it was. I think it's still in our. Or I don't know if it's in the latest version, but in our Kaizen way course. I think we had a video in there, but.

It might be around somewhere.

Yeah. What do you hope the next generation of continuous improvement leaders will take from Gemba Academy?

That's a good question, Greg. What I want them to take from Gemba Academy? Well, as I mentioned. I've mentioned it already. It's. I'm really passionate about. It's not about, you know, the tools per se. If anything, I hope they take that. You know, just the tenants of, like, the Toyota house is perfectly designed. You know, there's two pillars, continuous improvement and respect for people and just remembering what those pillars are. And so if you ever find yourself getting a little bit too obsessed with one pillar and it can happen. You can get all crazy on respect for people, but, you know, your processes are falling apart. You know, that's no good. That's not. That's not even respecting your people. Right. So having that balance maybe is. Is what we've tried to do with. With. With all the content that we've created over the years is just trying to deliver that balance of respecting people and continuous improvement. And when you. When you're doing both of those as best you can, even through the hard times, it's going to be really difficult to be stopped. I really believe that with all my heart.

Two questions left, and I know this one's going to be totally surprising because you've never heard it before. If you could go back a number of years and tell your younger self something, just one thing, and it can't be financial.

Yeah.

What advice would you give yourself?

Be patient. Yeah, Be patient. If any. I mean, I've learned that over the years. I mean.

But it's tricky, you know, like, going back and trying to mess with time. Even when I ask that question, I'm kind of, like, waiting for somebody to say, no, I wouldn't say anything, you know, because things happen for a reason, and you got to learn your way forward, you know, and so it might be. That might be the right answer is, I wouldn't say a dang thing. You know, I would just go and give them a smile and high five and say, let's do this.

So what number is this podcast?

This is 600.

Wow. Yeah.

Yeah.

So what do you hope anybody can walk away from listening to this 600th episode?

Yeah, maybe.

The power of showing up. You know, the power of showing up. I mean, hat tip to you. How many of these episodes have you edited, Greg?

Because it's been.

600 of them. It's been 11 and a half years. You started doing them earlier.

Oh, no, we redid them.

We recently started over. That's why it's only 11 and a half years.

Yeah.

I mean, you've been going for 16. I don't know when you actually started them.

Yeah, that's.

Yeah, I had to go back and look that up, too.

I can remember if you did the very first few ones. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Only of this series.

Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying, though. You've touched all 600. Yeah. So. And not just you, but, like, over the years, you know, all of our IT folks who've gotten everything up. So, yeah, hat tip to everybody at Gemba Academy that's been involved, our marketing team, Natalie, and all the team over there who's getting the word out. So it's definitely been a team effort. It's not just me, that's for sure. In fact, I probably have the easy job just talking to a microphone about Lean.

Maybe some Six Sigma once in.

A while to wrap things up. Do you have any final words of wisdom?

Well, I've heard that before.

Oh, I don't know. You know, maybe.

Be kind. You know, be kind, be kind to yourself, be kind to others. But you know, being kind doesn't mean that you're like a pushover or anything like that. But even when you got to have sort of like hard conversations or you're in difficult situations, you don't need to be a jerk. So don't be a jerk. Be kind. Maybe that's in. Because if everybody did that, the world would be a way better place.

I think I agree. So what's the best way people can get in touch with you?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe go to gembaacademy.com Two A's in the middle, right? Yeah, we'll have it all linked up in the show notes as well.

Sounds great. Thank you, Ron.

All right, thanks, Greg.

Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.