In this moderated panel hosted by the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, Dan Fogel (Wake Forest University) leads a discussion with Tana Green, founder and CEO of My Work Choice, and Jonathan Such, president of Advanced Superabrasives. The conversation centers on three middle‑market workshop themes presented by the chamber: (1) Workforce – addressing a tight labor market, the shift toward flexible schedules, the emergence of “sideline workers,” and the role of technology in enabling new scheduling models; (2) Enterprise Planning – challenges of implementing new ERP systems, ensuring data quality, and achieving interoperability across functions; (3) Going Global – managing multinational supply chains, navigating trade agreements such as the USMCA, and dealing with immigration and international workforce mobility. The panel also touches on financing strategies, with Green noting extensive self‑funding and Such describing the difficulty of finding knowledgeable growth partners. Both panelists share long‑term visions: My Work Choice aims to reshape contingent labor with greater choice and dignity, while Advanced Superabrasives targets expansion to 60‑100 countries and a 3‑4× revenue increase over the next 15 years. The session concludes with a brief statement from Janet LeBar, President & CEO of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, emphasizing support for middle‑market growth.
Chapters
Good morning. I'm Dan Fogel. I'm with Wake Forest University. I'm a professor in the business school, and I have a consulting company called SB3, which does consulting in strategy and businesses. We're here to talk about the middle market workshops that occurred at the chamber and also talk a little bit about specific sessions during those. There were 3 sessions. The first session was on the workforce, the future of the workforce, the current challenges with the workforce. The second workshop was on enterprise planning, enterprise resource planning. And the third one was going global. Now, these workshops are aimed at middle market companies. So there's some specific challenges that those companies face that maybe very small companies and larger ones do not. To help us go through these workshops and understand a little bit about what was covered, Tana Green's here, and I'm going to ask each of these people to introduce themselves in a minute. Tana Green and then Jonathan Such. So could you introduce yourself, Tana?
Sure. I'm Tana Green and I am the founder and CEO of My Work Choice.
Excellent.
So my name is Jonathan Such. I'm president of Advanced Superabrasives, a manufacturer of grinding wheels.
Excellent. Thank you. So I'd like to start with the workforce, if we could, and talk about that. So what's the main challenge that middle market companies face?
Well, I think we have several factors that we're dealing with now. One is a 3.5% unemployment rate. And then the second thing is the mindset of the worker. And the third thing is what technology is bringing to the workforce. All 3 of those combined have created almost a perfect storm of companies scrambling to try to figure out how to change to meet the needs of what these workers are looking for.
I see. So availability.
Yes.
Entitlement, maybe?
Yes, entitlement.
And a little bit of lack of skills in the technology area.
Yes, absolutely.
So talk a little bit about the mindset. I'm curious.
Well, the mindset now is I want to work when I want to work. And it's the— a lot of it, people go, well, that's the millennials. But it's not just the millennials, it's the baby boomers too, because it's— you're at a point in life where you're like, I want— life happens. And I can't always be committed to 40, 50 hours a week, especially in my world, it's hourly workers, manufacturing and distribution. So in that world, only the people that can commit, which is amazing to me because you go back 100 years and we created this work week. Well, that was when it was only men in the workforce.
Yeah.
Now we're in a situation where people have families, they have— they might be students, they might be retirees. They still want to work and they still have a lot to give. But they can't commit to that full workforce. So when you look at all these gig companies that have come out, the ridesharing companies, the delivery companies, they become the number one place to work. Why is that? The survey shows 74% of people want flexibility and only 42% get it, mainly white-collar workers. So you look at that and you just look at what's happening in the landscape and you go, Well, in order for me to survive in getting workers, I'm going to have to think differently, and I'm going to have to figure a way to offer flexibility. When you look at the workforce now, we're short about 700,000 jobs aren't being filled. You're feeling it.
Oh yeah.
And so you say to yourself, well, there's 1.1 million people that aren't looking that want to work, but they're not looking because they can't commit to that time. So they're called sideline workers. And when you look at the reports over the last 4 months, 205,000 new jobs were created. 74% of those came from sideline workers. What does that tell you? It tells you we've got to change. Technology is allowing us to change that. It's allowing us to push out schedules and let people choose what they want to do. And adopting that in an hourly workforce is really where it's going.
So you see this too in your business?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you see it across the board. Everybody wants to have that flex schedule because they have so many things going on. And it also allows for more education. It also helps us as a business to allow them to take educational classes that maybe aren't available, you know, after hours, what we would call our 9-to-5 work week. So it's very beneficial for us if we can have that flexibility as well.
Yeah. So in your case, in the workshop that you had, you talked a lot about going global. And so you have a middle market company. You would classify your company as that. Tell us a little bit about what your company does and then what the challenges are going global.
So we manufacture grinding wheels for every kind of sector, whether it's aerospace, automotive, medical. And what's different about us is we're in 28 countries around the world. And so we're not just a US-based company. We're global. I mean, we're all over the place and we have supply chains also outside of the US. So we're very affected by what happens in global markets, whether it's Tariffs, free trade agreements, you know, whether there's strikes, whether there's economic downturn in certain parts of the world, that all affects us as a company. So it's exciting, but it's also difficult at the same time.
So do you deal with each country separately, or do you tend to have a global strategy? How do you handle that?
Well, it depends on which part of the world. Some parts of the world you can do it as a package deal, like the EU. But in a lot of cases, when you're dealing with South America or Asia, you have to handle each country individually. Because the cultures are different, what they're looking for is different.
Yeah. So just, I think just last week, right? Or just a couple days ago, we passed the kind of counterpart now to NAFTA, right?
Correct. USMCA is now fully going, and they signed the protocols of amendments yesterday in Mexico City. So that's extremely important for us moving forward.
Why is it important for you?
Canada and Mexico is our two largest partners. partners for the U.S. and for our company as well.
Canada is a big market. So I get that, but what's this do for you?
Well, it actually has more protections. It has things in it that weren't around during NAFTA, especially with digital media and internet, e-commerce, stuff like that. None of that was even around when NAFTA was formed.
Right, right. So it updates it basically.
Absolutely.
Yeah, good. Do you deal with an international workforce?
Not yet, but we will be. With this happening, it's going to create even more jobs. So we're going to have even more of a challenge. Yes.
Right. And so I know the The U.S. has an ongoing conversation, if you will, about immigration. And how does that impact your business?
We do E-Verify on everybody around the country. We're in 8 states now. And we— it's just something we do. So it doesn't affect us in any way that I—
But is there a lower flow of immigrants coming in? Therefore, it's more challenging?
If they can't pass the E-Verify, they wouldn't come into my workforce. So I wouldn't really be able to—
How about in your case? Do you, do you work with immigrants? And also, how do you handle this global workforce? Do you move them around or—
Yeah, so we do. We have some offices overseas where we move people around from the U.S., but the immigration situation for us is very difficult. It's very difficult to bring somebody over from another country unless it's like an EU or something like that. So that has hurt our business a lot, especially in places like Brazil. Where it's very hard to get somebody from Brazil to come to the US for the proper training to go back to Brazil to actually sell our products.
Right, right. Yeah, interesting. You know, the 3rd panel that we dealt with was on enterprise planning. And the idea there being that you have this centralized, if you will, or you have a system by which you put data in and analyze the data, connect people and things of that sort. From my knowledge, the 2 biggest challenges, one is getting people to use it right, put good data in, understand how to use it. The interoperability, in other words, getting everything to work together. Do you have challenges in your company with enterprise?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have a new ERP system and it's very difficult to get people to put the right data in, to know what the right data that we're looking for, because we can't run our reports and focus our company on things if we don't have that right data.
Yeah, how about yourself? Do you have any challenges in this area?
It's always the same. It's getting people to adopt. In every way of life is what you deal with, is getting them to change.
Yeah, so these topics, this going global, the workforce, the enterprise planning, are really, really important to middle market companies. I'm curious, one of the challenges is financing always to go to the next step. Tell me a little bit about that. In terms of your business, how do you finance your business and how do you push it to the next level? Or is that a challenge at all?
Well, after 32 years, I pretty much fund it. So—
So you do a lot of self-funding?
A lot of self-funding, yes.
I see. How about your business?
Well, we used to do self-funding, but we're having explosive growth right now across multiple sectors. So it's difficult. It's challenging sometimes to find the right partners that can do the right things that you're looking for. It's not a easy task to find groups that are educated enough to deal with a company that is global.
I see. Interesting. So fantastic. Yeah, good. So I have one, I have one more question for each of you. So in the— so you're 15 years out now. Okay. What do you see for your business?
Well, I see that we're definitely changing the contingent landscape of contingent workers and that it's bringing more choice and dignity to the worker. And it's bringing results to the client. And we are definitely going to change the way the landscape is. We are pioneers in what we're doing.
Excellent.
So very excited about that.
Excellent.
Yes.
So in our business, we're looking at being in 60 to 100 countries in the next 15 years and to have real presence in countries that we wouldn't even dreamt of today.
Yeah.
And growing in revenue by at least 3 to 4 times what we're having today in 15 years.
I gotta tell you, this is gold for me because I work in a university environment and our responsibility is to produce workers for the future.
Yes.
And I think we got some changes to do in that respect. Well, thank you so much, Tana and Jonathan. I appreciate it.
Hey, I'm Janet LeBar and I'm the president and CEO of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. We are super thrilled to be supporting the growth of our middle market companies because we know that existing job growth comes from that segment of our businesses. We look forward to supporting you in 2020, and let's go forward with a strong partnership.
