https://www.listennotes.com/e/e2fb0004c6ed4b8fa9a2df0ed8f574d5

Foreign.

Welcome to Executing the Vision podcast. I'm your host, Brad Hunter, president of Emerge Labs. On the podcast, we'll get to know the person behind the vision, their successes, their challenges, and their plans for the future. If you're interested in becoming a guest or know someone who might be a good fit, stick around to the end and we'll discuss how to apply. Now, enjoy the show. All right, everybody, I'm Brad Hunter, your host for Executing the Vision Podcast, and we have another episode today. I'm welcoming Wayne Woodard. It seems to me you have quite an extensive background in that space overall, and want to tell us a little bit about kind of where you started and then how you got to where you are now.

Yeah, happy to do that, Brad. Thanks, first off, for inviting me to be on your show. It's wonderful to have an opportunity to tell our story and tell a little bit about myself and kind of my journey. My career began in the mid-1980s after finishing up in college sports and getting my degree and then moving into a little company called Sun Microsystems, which was a computer electronics company.

And what college sport did you play?

I played football.

Oh, sweet. What position?

Defensive defensive lineman.

That's fun. I did the same. I played outside linebacker at Western Michigan.

There you go. Mid American Conference.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice.

Every. Every year we play the Mid American Conference. Well, when we. If you won the championship in our conference, you want. You got to go out. They came to California to play in the California bowl, and we played those guys. We played Miami of Ohio and.

Yeah, senior year.

So it was really great fun. Something I loved about my. My. My. My growing up and my time in university. So, yeah, so after that, went to work for Sun Microsystems computer company that was kind of taking the world by storm back then with this idea that the network was the computer and that eventually we would all be on this great thing called the Internet and everything would be what we see here today. So it was a great learning experience. I spent 11 years there, traveled the world and saw and was involved in operations my entire time there. Spent a little bit of time, more on the commercial side toward the end of my career, but really enjoyed that opportunity to kind of build my base of operational focus. It was kind of what I loved to do, and I sort of found my little niche there. Then I went to a little startup company, had my first entrepreneurial experience there and the mass storage business and. And did a little bit of work in that space. That was really fun. Then on to a company that was in the semiconductor Equipment industry. So I love building things. Building equipment sounded like a lot of fun. So I went and did that. Put a, put a lot of time and energy into building a company up there, moving the factory and facility to Singapore and working with contract manufacturers in other parts of the world.

And curiosity, you know, because that's a big topic these days, why on earth did all manufacturing go for, for something like that. Right. Something that clearly is going to be the future.

Yeah.

That all of it went overseas. It kind of, at this stage it's a little bit shocking of like, well, wait a minute. Didn't somebody think, think how important this was going to be and realize we should have kept some of it here?

Yeah, well, it's an interesting question. Would take another hour's conversation, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But I will say this at the end of the day, if you recall, in the, the, the early 1990s and in, through the, the, the turn of the century, there was a lot of emphasis on becoming a service oriented economy in the US So everything was about services and offering services and there wasn't interest in building a manufacturing sector as a robust part of our economy. It was believed that we would just be all service focused. And so there wasn't a lot of energy around that. And so thus as the fact that there wasn't a lot of energy around it, there's also the belief that we couldn't afford to do that because it was too expensive to build it here. And as technology was climbing that curve of an advancement, much of what was happening in the wake of that was commoditization of a lot of those things that we all now take for granted. So whether it's the microphone we're sitting here talking to each other over, or a cell phone or a computer, all of that became somewhat commoditized and certainly the components within them. And so price was a big issue. So everything got pushed down in price. You needed to find lower cost labor markets to actually produce these things. There wasn't the level of sophistication and automation that you could bring to final assembly of a lot of this stuff. So it really became a question of what could be outsourced or what could you go to another part of the world and outsource and have somebody else produce for you and provide it as a variable cost to your, to your P and L? Or is there, you know, a way for you to do some of that and then also finish up the product and what they call final assembly and test and, and deliver it? And that was what, what you saw a lot of really happening in, in the early, early 1990s and early 2000s as people were moving stuff over there. And so in my experience, going over there in the, in the late 80s and early 90s and then also again in the 2000s was just sort of watching that evolve over time to become part of the strategy and most of the electronics and technology oriented companies that were utilizing supply chains in different parts of the world.

Okay. And then now we're, we're. Well, I don't know that we're truly seeing much of a full circle, but it seems like there's at least some. I mean, obviously you have a manufacturing here, right?

CHARLES bed, California yeah, yeah, yeah. No, there is a certain manufacturing, manufacturing renaissance that has come back because I think people realized two things that a lot of people were, were talking about but not a lot of people were listening, which was that your intellectual property, the cultural norms in other parts of the world don't treat intellectual property the same as we like to believe that our patents and the approach we have here in the US and so that was one thing that people have really recognized and realized. And despite the fact that they've been talking about it for 30 years, it's a really big deal. And in our industry and the health, healthcare and life sciences side of things, this is a really important point and certainly is right now. It's very, very timely in terms of the bio secure acts that's being considered and contemplated in the, in the US Government at this point in time and a lot of conversation around that. But I think people realized as well, coming out of a pandemic and a kind of sort of a really disjointed change in the way we operate, that a lot of things that some take for granted weren't so, weren't so robust as we thought in the supply chains that people had. And so you'll see and you hear a lot about people talking about, yeah, we need to, we need to onshore, you know, capabilities, we need to find redundancies in our supply chains and we need to do a lot of this. A lot of that takes an enormous amount of work and time. And people are realizing doing that work here in the United States is probably the best thing for all of us as US Citizens or in Europe or in other parts of the world that are securing their supply chains as well. And so I think you're seeing this, this renaissance of, as I say, in the manufacturing sector here in, in the United States. And I think it's great. I think it's wonderful. You know, as I said, we're a contract manufacturing company. We do a lot of that kind of work for people that allows them to continue to utilize a variable cost alternative. Typically when folks went to other parts of the world, they didn't go there by themselves. They went there as a, as a customer of a contract manufacturer who was located in those parts of the world. And so having that ability here back on the, on the west coast of the United States now has been an attractor for us to bring customers in because they see the value in that and they can still maintain that variable cost alternative. We're never going to be as affordable as China or somebody in other parts of the world. But for at least, you know, the time being, we feel like this is a great spot to be in Carlsbad for what we're trying to do.

Yeah. Okay, and so walk me through that part. So you, now you go overseas, you get real familiar with manufacturing over there. Right? And then I see. And then, you know, to what was this shift where you're in this. And then you go over VP of global supply chain. Right. So you're getting very familiar with manufacturing and global supply chains and everything. But then you make this decision that, okay, I need to build a facility here in Carlsbad.

Yeah.

And it looks like that took quite some time. Right. That wasn't just, you know, okay, we're gonna do it and we switch the lights on and here we go tomorrow. It looks like that was a pretty massive decision and a pretty big. Yeah, you know, yeah.

So to kind of bring this to how did I end up in the, in the world of life sciences? So I left the semiconductor equipment industry to work for a company called Affymetrics. And, and that was in the micro ray space and, and had a similar. They had operations in, in Singapore, they had operations in West Sacramento and a couple of other places in the Bay Area and, and work with them for a while. Then eventually, you know, it got myself immersed in a new industry now a third industry that I've been in, in the world of life sciences. And, and really saw that there was a component of maturity relative to their supply chains and the world of, of life sciences that was further behind the same technology curve that I saw with computers and electronics and the semiconductor world. And, and so I felt like, man, this is a great place to continue. I'm a strong believer that history repeats itself and in these technology oriented industries as they repeat themselves, there's opportunity. And so I felt like there was going to be a great opportunity to start a contract manufacturing company in the, in the life sciences space. Now I was at the time, you know, worked for a company that eventually was in next gen sequencing and was sold to Life Technologies and then eventually sold to Thermo Fisher and realized I didn't really think I was going to achieve my goals in a big company. And I needed to sort of jump off the hamster wheel and contemplate what I really was going to do to finish my career and decided that we were going to start this company in 2015. Did the classic journey into the venture capital world. Found the monies, found people that I was familiar with in the network that could help us get this thing off the ground. And in 2016 we incorporated Argonaut Manufacturing Services here in Carlsbad.

And now when this decision's happening. So you've been a VP at several companies and multiple industries industries, I assume, doing pretty well for yourself, but kind of this feeling of like, ah, you know what? I, I'm, I'm just gonna be stuck here unless I make a different move. This is kind of where I'm gonna end up being stuck. And I just not satisfied with that. I want to try to strive for more. Now. Was that you by yourself? Is that, you know, some co workers and some other people, like what did that initial thing look like?

It was me and my wife.

Okay, so that was just you and yourself. Right. It wasn't like trying to gather up a small team, but it was just like, you know, whatever, I'm going for it.

Yeah, I had a, I had a really good, I still have a really good friend who at one point in time him and I talked about this idea and then wrote some things down and thought about it and thought maybe we should maybe do this and wasn't right time for him and we never did anything with it. But then I, I decided that just being in, in a big company was not going to be way I wanted to end my career and so I wanted to go create something special and I wanted to do something different. And I thought, you know, I, this was either either I was going to do this or I was never going to talk about it again. And I really just decided, you know, like, let's go do this. This is, there's a real need. We can fill a void and let's go fill that and, and try to help people along the way. And it's been the best part about being involved in the world of life sciences is that you are helping people at the End of the day, you're helping people. They're hopefully, you know, they take in some of the, the drugs that we have filled. You've seen, you know, we see success stories from some of our, our customers, customers that are just inspiring. We're helping them with diagnostics. We certainly were involved in a lot of activities surrounding Covid and, you know, helping people hopefully make some decisions that were more better informed and in different, different markets like oncology and other spaces that we support customers in. And that's just been really a great way in my mind to spend the, the last few years of my career, which will be, you know, over at some point in time soon. And, you know, when that day comes, I want to. I'll felt like I've really accomplished something I never ever thought I would do. I never started out thinking I was going to be a CEO. That's just kind of the way it.

Went in from when you sat down with your wife and said, you know what? Just think it's time. I gotta, I gotta try this. I gotta do this. How long from when that. Till when there was that breath of like, okay, I think it's actually going to work.

That's a great question, Brad. I mean, probably, probably two years. Two years into it, like after we got the money raised, I was like, okay, we're going to get this going. I don't know if it'll work, but we'll get it going. Two years into it. So in 2018, we kind of had a point where we had had, you know, we'd gotten a bunch of milestones accomplished on getting the infrastructure. We had a blank building, nothing in it, just myself and a director of quality and, and she. And I just sort of started thinking, all right, well here, here we go. And, you know, hiring and setting things up and getting a lot of that stuff, I had spent countless hours and days and nights worried about ahead of that day. I got the keys to the building. But once we were in there, it was go time. But it was from there till 2018 before we really sort of felt like, yeah, people really need us and they want us to be successful and they're here to help and they're here to be good customers and, and help us grow and, and it's. It's been great. It's been great, and it's not every day is great, but, but it's been a very rewarding journey for sure.

And what would you say? Because I know people, you know, different friends and whatever that are in that exact scenario, right. They've done well in life. They've, you know, they've, they're, you know, in the upper echelon of their industry. But yeah, that same thing, you know, I mean, they've got a decent amount of money saved up, but they're kind of in that thing of like. And, and you know, what would you say to them too, as far as, what does it take to make that leap? Like, what did it take just from a mental, you know, emotional thing to, to be willing to commit and you know what? I'm just gonna do it.

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, first off, do it earlier than you thought. You, you know, don't put it off. If that's, if that's really in front of you, don't put that question off any longer, go decide and make that decision. But live with that decision, you know, in, in such a way that you're prepared to do whatever it's going to take to be successful. That was probably the one thing I, I wish I would have done this 10 years earlier, but I wasn't there yet. I wasn't what. I, I just didn't have that opportunity. I guess it didn't work that way. But, but I would all. I would say that seek wisdom, you know, seek wisdom from people who you trust that, that, that know you. That like, do you think I could do this? Do you. You know, from the people who can help you technically, the people who can help you financially. The people who can help you just with coaching, like how to do it, you know, like people who, who help people be successful at this. If you're lucky or blessed enough to know anybody who coaches, executives, buy them a drink or buy them, figure it out, right? Because they know, they, they know who you are and, and just, just do that and go. So when we decided, like look, we're gonna do this, we're gonna make it happen, you know, as blessed. My wife was all in. She was very, very supportive. Still is. And it was, it's. That makes a huge difference too. You always have a fan in your, in your, your court because as a CEO, it doesn't always feel like that at work. So gotta count on those folks as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Need that when, when things are going bad and yeah. That you need to know that she's behind you and supporting you and not questioning you like a lot of other people might be at that time.

Exactly.

Yeah. Okay, so then, so talk to me about exactly what Argonaut does. Who is your customer? What is it exactly you guys are making.

Yeah. So we, we have two business segments of customers that we support. One is in the pharmaceutical services sector. So we support customers by taking a drug substance that a drug substance manufacturer would make. It typically would be for a biotech company, could be for, you know, small, mid size, medium sized or even large pharma company. And we'll take that drug substance and on an outsource, in an outsourced fashion, take that drug substance in, we'll reconstitute it to the proper dilutions that are necessary. Then we're going to fill that material in an aseptic sterile environment. Aseptic sterile environment is our drug product manufacturing process. It's a fully automated system. It does all of that for us. The next time that drug, you know, is taken out of that vial, it's going into a human. So it's got to be done right. It has to absolutely be done right. So that's a big part of our strategy and again our go forward strategy.

So the majority of your customers here in San Diego then, since that's such a big.

All over the country, really all over the world, a lot of customers appreciate the fact we're out here on the West Coast. If you're a biotech out of San Francisco or a biotech out of the San Diego area, you know, these are two hubs out here in the West Coast. Now you have somebody to do the drug product filling for you right here. It's a big, it's a big advantage because if you, it's literally for these biotechs, it's everything they've got. We're doing clinicals. It's the only drug substance they may have to work with and they're going to hand it to you and say here, don't, don't screw it up. You want to be really careful with that. It's really important to them. It's very, very valuable. And so that's one component or part of our business. The other component was where we originally began really because that's my background and experience was on the diagnostic and life sciences side. So we had all this amazing information in the 2010 to like 2015 era that was being generated from next gen sequencing. Still a ton of information and data coming out in next gen sequencing and PCR technologies that have given us this, in this opportunity for folks to go out and really monetize that data. So if you think about it as very simple terms, if, if I had a cell phone but there were none of these apps that we use, it's still just a cell phone, right? Well, if I have all this information from your genome or from people's genomes or millions of people's genomes, it's just information if it's not valuable until someone monetizes it and turns it into something of an application. Well, those applications happen to be in one of the core areas, diagnostic applications. So people can take a known marker in your genome and test you personally against that known marker and figure out whether or not you have a problem or you don't have a problem. I have Covid or I don't have Covid was one way to do it with pcr. You could also do that with oncology or rare inherited diseases and all these other things that would then lead to some form of a therapeutic. And so we've been big advocates and supporters of that market of monetization for them. And so we provide them the formulation, the filling, the kidding, the qc, the regulatory, helping them with the regulatory pathways to getting those launched as products into the market. And that's really been kind of the, that's the other component of our, our business. We also support some of the larger cap companies that are involved in, in everything from spatial biology to, you know, products, materials that they use in their platform. So platform companies we support, we a lot of work in oncology and different spaces like that, but at the end of the day we're trying to help people get information that in, in the form of diagnostic data that helps them make decisions.

And so would it be. So recently I did that Gary Brennan, the, the 10x gene testing thing, something like that.

Yes.

Where you just do a little.

We would support them in making, as an example, like we would make the material and the kit bubby, right?

Yeah, the little kit they ship to you and you do the swab and send it back. Okay.

Goes into a transport media, then it goes back and is tested. And so those are reagents typically. So those reagents that are used and all that's the stuff that we produce and, and package or. And then also lyophilize, which is a big name and kind of a funny name to say, but it really is freeze drying that material such that it actually can be supported in ambient conditions because a lot of times this material needs to be stored at low temperatures. And so that's another thing we do here at Argonaut.

And now. Okay, so the things you've recently mentioned to me seem like things that all have a very explosive future ahead of them. It seems as if you're very well positioned. Is that the way you feel about everything? Because everything you've mentioned is like, oh, wow. Yeah, that's, it's big now and it seems like it's only going to get bigger.

Yeah, we believe so. We think these are great markets to be in and supporting. And it's real early days. It's still real early days in people's focus on diagnostics as an example, kind of where people are going. I mean, pharmaceuticals products are pharmaceutical products. But having that ability to be here in this industry in support of them in a ecosystem and working with partners on those kind of things, it's still early in the development of that as an industry. And I would have said earlier I came from that, the electronics industry. We're in the late mid, mid-1980s. People were just starting to use contract manufacturing as a, as a, as a way of creating a variable cost alternative to building your own factory. So now we have that here where we built the factory for you. We built the quality management system and it's the same thing now happening in life sciences industry. And it's just getting started. And so I think the future is very bright for both of these markets. I think a lot of people are recognizing the importance of, of having that kind of capability and infrastructure here in the United States. I'm, I'm proud to be, you know, an American manufacturer and our old team is very proud of that. You'll find big giant red flag, white and blue flags everywhere. But it's a, it's a, it's great. It's a great. We wanted to build a special place and I think we have built a special place.

Yeah. And would you say from where the industry is now and where you started? Like, did you, was that part of the vision that you did see things going this way, or do you feel like you're sitting there now like, wow? I mean, I thought it was a good idea eight years ago, but man, we really have struck more gold than I realized we might have struck.

I think it's, I think it's been an interesting ride because we've been through a pandemic when everybody in the world was introduced to PCR testing, Right?

Yeah.

So it was like, you know, like I always said this, you know, I've said this to customers before. It's like, you know, my mother had a rare. Rarely did she understand what I was really doing in for a career and like, why, what are you doing in life science? I don't get it out. She was a nurse for 30 years but she didn't really, you know, didn't have any idea what we were doing. And I said, well, we're a contract manufacturer and we make these tests. And she goes, well, do you make these PCR tests? And we're like, yeah, we make these PCR tests. Like, well, those are really good ones. That's the one you have to take. And I'm like, oh, wow, you. Yeah, you kind of figured it out. Right. This is one of these tests that, that are out there in this diagnostic space and it's changing so much. It's so. It's going to be so different into the future in the next five or 10 years. But to say that I would have predicted we'd had that. No. Never expected a pandemic.

Yeah, right.

Never planned on seeing it explode and take off in the way that it did. And then of course, coming off the backside of. That's not been fun for anybody in the economy. It's been both met with a bunch of inflation. And then we had problems in our sector of the world was just. People had a lot of capacity and capability and they were taking it down offline. And. And now we're starting to see another cycle to return. So we're excited about that. It's tough to play the long game, but you just, you have to kind of keep your eyes on the horizon a little bit more than what's right in front of you every day, because it could get. Gets a little scary if you look.

Yeah, yeah. You know, we're, we're kind of big in like the biohacky stuff. And so I feel like all of that, you know, just the, the concept of being more proactive about your health care, you know, so it's doing those, like we've done all the whole. Has done the, those different genetic tests to understand, you know, which, you know, can't process. B vitamins, you shouldn't have this shouldn't, you know, all of those things that a couple years ago such the concept never even dawned on us at all. Right. And then you hear that like, oh, so you can take a test that tells you what your genetics are and helps you understand what vitamins you can absorb, what foods are good for you, what foods are bad for you. It's like, well, yeah, of course we want to do that. Of course. You know, it's so. To me, it very much so seems like that type of thing is the future.

Yeah. That you, you. I think that. And as I've said this before, but like the world of health care and and this world of life sciences becoming more informed, whether it's a pathway to a therapy for something that's really wrong or just something that you need to. You should be aware of. Just like you talked about metabolizing different vitamins and, and things of that sort is so powerful and so important. All that was enabled by getting access to this information. And at, at a level that has become, you know, democratized in terms of, if you think about, like the genome information you need, anybody can get a test, at least in a specific area or for a whole genome sequence, if you wanted that. And in the future, folks, it just is commonplace. It'll be commonplace for them, but today it's still just emerging. And that's why I think it's so exciting is it's just people are all starting to get it.

Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, to me, it's been, it's, it's been great. It definitely just little habits around the house. You know, we had the kids take it and then we understand what things they do. So we just simply buy different stuff at the grocery store.

Right.

You know, I mean, still stuff they enjoy eating. You know, it's just great. You know, such a funny concept of, like, it's so simple to understand each human better and to properly nourish that human.

Yeah.

You know, with a simple little test.

Yeah.

So. And then what do you think about the, you know, the whole battle with the, The Big Pharma and FDA and all these things? You know, I listen to a fair amount of podcasts and things on that front. I mean, is it. It seems like in. From some respects, you know, it's like Big Pharma seems to be really running the whole show and they're able to stomp out some of these smaller, more innovative people if they kind of get to, you know, if it looks like they're going to get in their way too much. I mean, is that something that you actually witness or is that kind of more of a fringe? That's not really what seems to be happening.

Yeah, I don't, I don't have. We don't run into it as a course of business. It's not, it's not really, you know, the big pharma discussions and, and how all that works with the government and the like. We don't run into a lot of that in our business every day.

Yeah.

Support innovators. And that's been a mission of ours from the beginning, is supporting innovators and creators. Now, if you look at these innovators and creators, they're the application development guys, right? They're the guys who have a molecule and there's a few of them together and they're like, hey, these are the customer base that we support largely. I mean, it's a huge chunk of it. And they come to us and they're like, hey, we have a great idea. We think this works. We want to move this into clinical trials and we want to get started with it on the, on the, right away. And we need a drug, drug product manufacturer to produce it for us and for our drug trial, for our clinical trials. These guys are, these guys are pioneers. Every one of, there are thousands of those out there. And you know, when you think about the opportunity that they bring to this market to continue to evolve, no one's going to stop them because they can do that now because they have an ecosystem of suppliers that surround them that allow them to do that. Exactly the same thing, albeit running much slower behind than the pharmaceutical space because it started later, is the same concept of these diagnostic tests. It's all the same thing. You don't have to build everything yourself. You don't have to solve this problem. There are people here to help you in that space. And that's what contract manufacturers do, that's what other service providers do for you. And you have to figure out how to leverage that, that equation as a CEO and as a, as a leader of a company like that. So I see these guys on the big pharma side, you know, they're absolutely looking in on all these, they're checking in on all these technology innovations and, and I think these guys in the biotech space will continue to build their companies. But, you know, there's a very interesting corollary that you can, you can derive for yourself, if you want to, about how this industry kind of works and what, what, what, what, and how did it happen? But if you go back to the computer electronics industry and, and you were to actually, you know, ask me, you know, like, what company's going to be super successful in, in 2024 and will just absolutely have blown you away. That started back in whatever. Let's say they started sometime in the early 2000s. There was this little company very similar to every one of these biotechs and very similar to a lot of technology companies called Nvidia. And maybe you know about Nvidia, almost everybody knows.

Yeah, everybody does now.

But it was basically the same concept. They had this exact same business model where they didn't have a, found they didn't make semiconductor chips themselves. They designed them, they developed them, and then they used a foundry model to produce and create a company that eventually grew so big they needed their own foundry. So they got, they bought one, but. Or they built it. I don't know for sure. But now that they're who they wanted to be, so there is a pathway that says, if I just wanted to be a biotech company and I wanted to start my own, I could become the big boy someday, just like Nvidia did in the, in the electronics industry. But they also could say, you know what? I'll cash out. That's good. My children's children will never worry about money the rest of your life. Their lives. And they're, they're done. And they, they hit it big like that. And that can happen too. So is it, is that a bad thing? I don't know. I don't think it's. I don't think so. I think it's just a choice as an entrepreneur you get to make, but there's a pathway for both.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And now, how are your days spent now? Is your focus, you know, more on the, you know, client side of things? Is your focus more on the manufacturing side of things?

I'm blessed with two great general managers who run the operations for me. So I have a less of a, of a hand in that every day. And I spend most of my time trying to focus on client opportunities and making sure we have the adequate capital and the framework to go build this company to keep it growing at the pace that we want it to.

Yeah, because from that thing, you know, manufacturing. Right. I mean, things are always changing. You're always having to deal with new equipment then, right?

Yep.

Yeah. So that's just a never ending cycle. And even if it's a product you've probably been building for a long time, there's some advancement that makes it faster and cheaper and better. So all of a sudden, you know, you had this super expensive piece of equipment that's outdated and you need to get the newer piece of equipment.

Yeah, technology doesn't stop.

Yeah, yeah. And then how have you found things? So I've read a lot of Elon's stuff and you know, he talks about, you know, that's a big point in his books and things, it talks about that like, you know, the thing nobody ever talks about the hardest thing in the world is manufacturing, like building a prototype. Simple. Yeah, anybody can build a prototype. He's like, but go try to manufacture that at scale. It's the hardest thing there is. To do?

Yeah, I, I, I, I, I like, I have a, I read as much or listen as many, as much as I can to that man. He's brilliant and he's absolutely right. It's one of my favorite lines. The one you just said was one of my favorite lines from him. You know, we can build prototypes, we can do that. But the hardest thing in the world is to manufacture at volume. And it is, it's a challenge. It's not, oh, it's not impossible. It's obviously one of the benefits of being, of doing this in 2024 is that they've got a lot of help now with automation and new technologies and newer technologies coming out all the time. And I think that's been a big benefit. But it is a challenge. It's a, it's, it's a challenge that some of us were born to do and we love and you know, we try to find ways to make it work for everybody. And if, you know, I'm doing, and.

If you were talking to a new potential customer right now, you know, what is it that sets you apart from the competitors? Why should somebody be working with you?

Yeah, we, we try when we talk to and engage customers and we think about like, like how, why, why would you work with Argonaut 1? We're very focused on being innovator and creator, innovators and creators, you know, you know, right hand, the one that they can lean on in the areas of things that they may not be as innovators and creators, they may not have a lot of background or experience in. And that, that's one of the benefits of, of working with us that we try to, to emphasize. Second one is maintaining flexibility and agility. So recognizing that the process of product realization or bringing an idea from a lab or bringing it from the CAD model and bringing it into reality is a journey. And that journey is never a straight road. And so we know that we're experienced that everybody in our senior staff averages about 25 to 28 years of experience. We've seen a lot of things in this world of operations and managing supply chains and the like, and we can help people with that. And that's a big plus as well. And then having the facilities and the capacity and the mindset to be very customer centric with program managers who do a great job and leaders in the organization who are aware of what's going on in all different customers. I mean, we work with over 90 different customers now. So we're working with a lot of different technologies that they can trust, they can trust that their intellectual property is safe here. They can trust that we're never going to be in the business of producing products ourselves. We're a service model, we're a service business. Why would we do that? And I think building that confidence, that experience, the know how and then, and then just making sure that we, that they understand that, you know, we're going to be there for you when you need us at the, at the most desperate of times. And that's the, that that's, that's the trust part of it.

And I assume in that space, especially the space you're talking, you know, the biotech, the innovative space, that, that, that they're very aware of that intellectual property fact these days. Right. That the cost savings overseas that it's probably for most of them isn't even a consideration anymore. Right. They realize that whatever we take over there a thousand percent, they're going to steal it from us. The question is how quickly is it going to be replicated and you know, we're going to compete against ourselves.

Yeah. The intellectual property component of it we take very, very seriously and we bifurcate things so that people's ips, you know, obviously customers never you see any of that. But you know, what we do internally to make sure that there's project management, separation and the different things that we do on that side, all with that in mind and then knowing that, you know, we, we're here in the US we want to, we want to basically support them and protect those assets for them to be a successful in the US Markets but also in Europe and in Asia and other parts of Asia. You know, things aren't as, aren't it is, isn't a blanket statement about Asia, that's for sure. But the intellectual property thing is a big deal and there's a lot to talk about it these days. And you know, from our angle, it's just important for us to make sure that they, they know they're going to be in a safe spot here at R. Great.

Okay. So how could, you know if somebody wants to get in touch with you, wants to learn more, where should we send them?

Yeah, that you can go to ww argonaut m s.com and then there's a contact us section page. You can also send me an email at Wayne Argonaut ms.com and love to, love to support any customers who are looking for support here in this industry. You know, we're a great group of people to work with. We think and we really enjoy it.

Awesome. Well, hey, it has been wonderful talking to you. Been highly informative on my end and a lot of great wisdom and congratulations.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And you know, Brad, if we get a chance to chat again. We're not. Don't sound like we're very far from each other. We're probably running each other at the grocery store. But take care of yourself and thanks very much.

Okay, thanks, Wayne.

Bye now.

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