Growing a Business by Investing in People with MPC’s David Yeaman

In this Snippets episode, Leon chats with David Yeaman, Founder and President of Molded Precision Components (MPC), about building a manufacturing business rooted in innovation, culture, and community.

David reflects on growing MPC from a three-person startup into a company with more than 100 employees across two facilities, while creating meaningful, high-paying work in Oro-Medonte, a rural community north of Barrie. A major part of that mission has been giving people the opportunity to work closer to home, spend more time with their families, and avoid the long daily commute into Toronto.

The conversation explores talent development, reshoring opportunities, advanced manufacturing, and the company’s rapid pandemic pivot to produce millions of face shields and other medical products. David also shares the leadership philosophy that has shaped MPC’s growth, including the importance of putting people first and building a culture where employees can thrive both professionally and personally.

Listen in for a thoughtful conversation on entrepreneurship, resilience, and creating a business that has a lasting impact on both people and community.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Special thanks to Kingsmere Financial for helping us bring you today's PEO Leadership Innovators Alliance Snippets Podcast. Welcome to our Snippets podcast. I'm Leon Goren, CEO of PEO Leadership and Innovators Alliance, North American, Premier of Peer to Peer Network and Leadership Advisory firm. Today, I'm very excited to welcome David Yeaman, founder and president of Molded Precision Components, MPC based in Oro-Medonte, just north of Bari. David co-founded MPC in 2006 with fellow engineer Thomas Woegerer. They started with three people right before the 2008 recession. doubled headcount through the downturn and today run two plants with over a hundred employees with work spanning automotive, medical greenhouse and consumer applications. You may know MPC as one of Canada's most talked about pandemic pivots, retooling in a matter of days to produce more than 10 million face shields, along with hand sanitizer and patent medical solutions. More recently, David has been championing a medical innovation park in Oro-Medonte. David, thanks for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Leon. All right, taking this off business. And I got to ask you the first thing, Mount Kilimanjaro. We all do these life GPS's with all these members. And in mine, I have this box where it's around the health and I go, be able to climb Mount Kilimanjaro when I'm seven years old. uh I'm not there yet. You're not there yet. But how was it? Most transformative physical and mental challenge of my entire life, literally. And the lessons I learned from that are really how I manage. I use those lessons I learned to manage through today's world. So was literally standing on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro when Trump took office. The entire world was falling apart beneath the clouds and all I could hear was silence and look at the beauty and the horizon of the clouds and the sun rising above and realized all of that is noise. All of it was noise. And it really gave me the perspective that when I came down from there, that I've been able to stay there mentally and not let... everything that's happening in this world that's outside of my control even touch me to be fair. it beyond many other things I learned from it, but truly I have a meditation I do and it's a sound of wind chimes hanging from the sign at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro that when I listen to that meditation, I could literally put myself back there, you know, bring myself back to that perspective. Therefore I don't get stressed out about all this crazy stuff that's going on. Before the joint school, we need to get up there. Well, there was a 71 year old that did summit with us. He got carried down afterwards, but that's not to be ashamed of because many do. So, and I was this close to being one of them. was like, I was barely carried myself back down. So, all right, well, we'll take that another time. We'll just have a conversation on that. Bringing us to back down to business. You've built an incredible business in a rural community. And I just did a whole bunch of reading about you and the business. And I just thought, like, I want to share some ideas with some of the members. And in building it there, anything you can share, like rural talent, we talk about skill talent. How do you find it? Was it a challenge at the beginning? Is it a challenge today? And what's it like to build in a community like that? OK, so first of all, For those who in Toronto that think anything past Highway 7 is like the Great White North, uh it's actually only an hour from Toronto. So let's put that in perspective. That being said, when I started my career, I wanted the lifestyle of living in a rural area, having access to mountain biking, skiing, world-class wilderness in Algonquin Park, yet being within reach of Toronto. Of course, I had a lower cost of living uh to Toronto. So, you know, I meant that as a professional, really there wasn't a lot of professional jobs in the area. So as a professional engineer, for me to find meaningful work, I had to commute to Toronto. So, you know, get the Toronto wage, you get the cost of living in the North. And that was okay at the time, but you know, that was back in 1995, 96, 97. And I did the commute for like five years. And, you know, at that time, Canaan's one land was in a farmer's field. And we all know that that's now called Vaughan. So, has increasingly gotten worse tenfold, and it's not even practical to do that drive. So for me, Oro-Medonte is the township and their motto is work, live, play. And I love it. I really adapted that. mean, why do we have to live somewhere for work instead of like live where you want to be and have work? So it was a passion of mine. I created my own job because it was like, the only way I'm to be able to do this is create my own. And one thing that keeps me going, and I didn't realize this at first, but it came to me over time as we building the business was like, People say, why do you do what you do? We all know as entrepreneurs that it's, you repatch you on the back. must be nice to own your own business. And then I want to punch them in the face, but because they don't understand what you have to do. Right. Absolutely. Where I fell is greener. Yeah. Well, you know, it's one of those things you're like, that's okay. If you want to mortgage your house four times over and, you know, sacrifice your children and everything to build a business and yeah, it must be nice. But it was that being said, uh I did find passion in taking people off the highway, giving them professional high paying like Toronto jobs, big 15 minutes from their house, where they don't have to pay for before and after care for their children, where they can be there for breakfast with their kids and for dinner with their kids, have meaningful work where they're valued as a people first organization and have meaningful professional work that they can find uh satisfying. And, you know, of course, when you start when there's two of us, like, how do you hire people and what's their succession plan when... You're working for two owners, right? So it was tough at the beginning to attract people and have them stay and build a business with you. But now, you know, 80 people, we have over 25 engineers within our organization and we are the employer of choice within like a hundred kilometer radius. So we have no problem attracting talent. Over 50,000 people drive from Simcoe County to Toronto every day. I've often talked about like hiring every billboard sign from, from Barry all the way to Toronto. with an NBC ad saying, hey, why don't you come work here? You would have been there like an hour ago and you could have left on time. And maybe some pictures of you eating with breakfast with your kids and dinner with your kids and driving through the country, seeing the sunrise on your way to work. So I've been very passionate about building them. Every time I take somebody off that highway and they're safe and they get to be home with their family, it's like, that's why I do what I do now. I didn't start that way, but I did it for myself. And I'm like, wow, look what I... What's happening is we're doing this for others, right? And then it became that much more meaningful for me. Yeah. So I know when I read about it, I keep centering on the community, community, community, and what you're doing for the community, which is, it's fantastic. Well, that's our presence in the community is very strong, right? And again, it's just slightly North of Barry. So we have George and college just down the street. So you talk about, do I find my people? So I'm passionate about developing youth as well. have Tabacon Adventures that I am a founder of that I created, which is a Backwoods Camping Organization where I take youth and now leaders out into the wilderness and backwards camping, developing resilient life skills. And in future we'll be connecting leaders with youth as a mentorship type program. So that's my long-term mission, a paddle with purpose is what we say. And that is my goal to be basically in the woods from May till November every year, uh developing use and connecting. high level CEOs and leaders with youth and creating mentorship programs. But so that's where we find our people. So we cultivate them, right? So I work with the college. on the advisory committee. I connect with all the professors. I find out who the rock stars are. We hire them into co-ops and internships and we develop them and we have a high level of youth and young up and coming engineering and professionals that work at our organization. And right now, frankly, we have people flocking to us because we are an employer of choice. You know, we've met the working major. wage requirements. The person sweeping the floor is still making 24, 25 dollars an hour. Right. So and how do you do that? Right. So the most even general labor we're paying over 25 dollars an hour for. So I'm very proud. the industries you're playing in, it's funny. Reshoring. Yeah. Components. I mean, I just listen to Angelo at National Bank speak and you guys are in such a sweet spot right now. about what you're doing, what you're manufacturing, and even how you've expanded the business. It's almost the future in terms of where we're going when you listen to them. You talk about the economics and the geopolitics and the fact that we really need to make more made in Canada. Maybe we don't make finished goods, but we're making all the components here. True. That's where the real money is and the opportunities are. mean, that's really what he focused in on. Yeah. I mean, you have to pick something that, you know, our thing when we look at it is how do we change the game and what we're going to make. And if we can't change the game and find some sort of form of technology or methodology or process innovation or product innovation in order to be able to be different than anyone else, whether it be just extremely high tolerance, tolerances that others can achieve to, you know, what we say, performance critical parts that you can't have a failure of your door lock. You get in an accident, your door lock doesn't work. Like they have to work a hundred percent. You know, that's what we focus on. And if we can't change the game or it's not so critical that, you know, you can just work with mom, pa shops, then, you know, we don't, we don't engage with it unless there's some sort of engineering challenge. So almost everything we have, we solved a major warranty problem, major production quality issues, something people couldn't do that we can do that no one else can do in the world. So it's a, it's a basically an engineering company that applies it to injection molding. Cause that was where I happened to cut my teeth, but that's what makes us different. Right now, where everybody's struggling in the industry, there's literally no new business. All automobile developments basically stopped. Everybody's recoiling back into ice engines and hybrid. And they're not doing a lot of new work. So really where the work is, is transfer work. Unfortunately, from others that are struggling. So sometimes there's other Ontario manufacturers that are not doing so well. So that business has to be moved. But we're bringing in a lot from the States, actually. Contrary to popular belief, the terrorists are causing a lot of issues. But it's also US companies going, let's move our stuff to Canada so we can avoid the terrorists and the stuff coming in from Europe and China. And we're seeing tons of transfer business associated with that as well. So you can grow through acquisition. You can have natural growth through acquisition and or transfer work, which is harder to get because it's very difficult to move work. But when they have to, then we are a world leading expert in doing it with all the technologies and skills that we have within our organization being vertically integrated, we can seamlessly move something and reduce your risk by 90 % compared to our competitor, right? What about the movie? There's stuff on the medical innovation part. You seem to take another swing at something else here. What's that all about? Well, I mean, if I'm honest with you, like that actually, that whole project basically went to zero for the lack because of the lack of government involvement, to be fair. So. A big part of that, I mean, we purchased land, we started development in the background. When people hear something like that and there's land, people have to understand it takes five years before you break ground, right? So it's like, oh, nothing's happening. It's like, well, of course nothing's happening visually, but we all know there's lots happening in the background. there was a lack of federal and provincial engagement with it, even though it was meant to be a collaboration with them. A lot of distraction. The government had pivoted back to buying everything from China and India and Mexico. And because of that, project literally basically ended. So it was a dream of ours to create, you know, basically take what we've done at NBC in terms of vertical integration and collaboration amongst companies to be able to complete globally by being in a very small footprint where everybody is local. And we wanted to take that methodology and build it out at a large scale, specifically geared towards Canada's critical health and safety needs, right? Medical supplies. So if you did what our proposal was, which was first engaged with, in other words, received an MZO to convert the property and then start the process, but if the government procurement system is to buy from outside the country, well then who are we selling to? Because the Canadian population isn't even big enough to support a business. And if you don't even have the Canadian sales, then how are you supposed to continue to grow if the... Canadian government decides, hey, we're going to support foreign multinationals and give them grants to build up capacity. And then you've got these entrepreneurs that are trying to make the difference. like 99 % of the people that stepped up during COVID and started businesses to support COVID went bankrupt and no longer exist today. We still exist because we had a core business behind us. We didn't start just to do that. We used our, what we had in order to support. And then we could, you know, pause automotive and then come back. But There's a lot of really terrible stories about people that stepped up to help that no longer exists because of the Canadian procurement rules, right? And their lack of It'll be interesting to see if that changes now as the Serenian War has actually moved everybody to become protectionists again. Yeah. Well, let's put it There'll be vital interests, right? It's like ibuprofen. I saw that slide on ibuprofen. 90 % is made in China. Yeah. It's not going to be the way in the future in terms of where that stuff's going to have to be manufactured. It's going to probably manufactured domestically. Yeah, well, I'll say one thing to that. If a national world pandemic didn't change the habits of how we operate, then I guarantee you there isn't anything that can be any bigger that's going to change anything. It all comes down to politics and money. I hate to say that. I'm an optimist, but a realist, right? So I did learn that, you know, politicians are not your friends. Politicians are your friend until they don't need you anymore. And I hate to say that, but it's true. So I had to learn a lot. didn't know when I started a business, I had to become a politician. The bottom line is it comes down to money and politics and world pandemics didn't change it. They're back to their old ways and everyone says, okay, this is it. We're to change this forever. It's all going to be domestic supply. Well, it's not. And then they'll tell it, oh, we gave money to 3M, a foreign multinational company, you know, $70 million where any entrepreneurs home and grown got nothing. Right. So it doesn't make any sense. And then even then it's, it's a challenge. Without federal and provincial alignment with entrepreneurs and to be the executors, it's just not going to happen because they're funding foreign multinational companies. How are we supposed to compete against the government who's funding foreign multinational companies? It's like having your competitors, your government, who's giving money and enabling foreign multinationals to do the work. There's no way we can fix it unless there's a political and federal alignment. It's going to be politically motivated. Well, let's hope we listen to our podcast here and sort of go, hey, they read the... David, I'm to push this on because I know the amount of time we have, on a close, know, in closing with our members, three guys have built something from zero, mortgaging your homes. You're probably over 20 million, a hundred people today. What would you give as sort of two or three lessons? Just share some quick thoughts to people listening to you today in terms of where should we spend our time and what should we focus on? Maybe the times are different today than they were when you first started. Okay, so three, you're gonna have to me on track here. I like threes, I always go for threes. But if you give me two, I'll take it. It's funny, of course, I'm just doing this live, but I've learned a lot over time. I can't say that when I started this business and it was Tom and I, we walked through that front door that our passion at that time is the same as what it is today. We learned. I was 33, I was an engineer, I was high level engineering. I'd never run a company, I was never a CEO. Never looked at an income statement or balance sheet before in my life. I was just a hardcore engineer that loved technology. I was hands-on, I came from the farm, I could build anything, make anything, figure anything out. Tom and I were just gonna get our nose to the grindstone and build cool stuff and build a business out of it. And that transferred over time. So we talk about three things now. There was a point in time in my life where I was like, why am I working 16 hours a day to make plastic parts for cars? It wasn't meaningful. I was like, why? Why am I doing this? And there's a transition that happened to me where I did find my why. And my why ah was really about the impact that I can have on people. by doing exactly what we talked about in the beginning, creating meaningful, high paying jobs where people can come in and go home better than they came in. Taking people from just surviving, driving to Toronto and back and forth, four hours a day on the highway, to thriving, being home for their kids and being at the little league game. So my passion was about taking people from just surviving to thriving, because that's what I was doing, just surviving, just doing the drive and paying the bills. And I'm like, there's more to life than work. And how do I give that to others? So for me, I had this little sign and my kids colored it in at the time with like highlighters and pink and yellow and it was stuck on the door to the basement and said, focus on the process. The product will take care of itself. I used to always say that if you focus on the process, right? Go upstream, the product comes out perfect. Anyway, so what I was missing back then was actually, so I switched it and it's not uncommon now, but first it's, so I would say focus on the process, that's number one, but it's actually not, it's focused on the people because the people are what drive the process. And then you're focusing on the process and the product takes care of itself. So it's all about people. It's about building people, creating an environment for people where they can thrive. The right people on the bus, Jim Collins, good to great. Right people on the bus, not only the right people on the bus, but in the right seat, right? Elevating people, you've got to have relentless decision-making in terms of having those right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus and allowing people to grow. and having that engagement. so my focus on people and culture first now uh makes everything else really, that's, know, the producing plastic parts is a means of us using our skills to bring people together to be able to change their lives. And by changing their lives, you change their family's lives and we change our community's lives. So that really became the mission. And my heart goes pitter-patter every single time I hire somebody and say, how was your drive today? And they're like, I don't even what to do with myself. got so much time. got to eat breakfast with my children. Right. And I'm like, that's why I do what I do. Right. So three things, focus on the people, focus on your culture. Cause we got lost in about the technology and the grind and getting parts out the door. And it's not that we had a bad culture at all, but I mean, as you grow beyond five, six people, you know, you, what are you going to do? So there's more to it than just technology and hardcore engineering. So that was one, like your culture is everything and a culture is People and culture are the big two. I don't even think I need a third one from you to be honest. Those are so, they're just so important. And listen, we can go to part two here, cause I didn't get to ask half of my questions here in terms, and I wanted to dig into the engineering part. But just thank you for sharing with us, you your insights and your experience here. If you're interested in any of our live webcasts, the way forward or any other snippets, please take a moment and visit us at peo-leadership.com. We've got a number of webcasts include guests such as Morgan Housel, our famous professor Janice Stein, Greg Wells, and many more on such topics as mental health leadership, the new world, et cetera. And don't forget our many Snippets podcasts, featuring our own great Canadian members sharing their success stories and best practices. Thank you for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you again shortly.