Benjamin Bohn | Bohn Engineering Services

Keegan Dillon – Host (KD): Hi, my name is Keegan and I'm your host of Engineers in Automation. On today's episode, we're going to be talking with Benjamin Bohn. He's the chief engineer and owner of Bohn Engineering Services, we're going to talk a little bit about starting his company kind of from a side gig to a full-time business, while we're also going to talk about his amazing social media presence. And we're also going to talk a little bit about what it's like being a small business owner, looking for new clients. Now, let's go talk automation!

KD: All right, and welcome to episode 17. I'm here with Benjamin Bohn. He's the chief engineer and owner of Bohn Engineering Services. Welcome to today's show.

Benjamin Bohn – Guest (BB): Yeah, thanks.

Benjamin Bohn’s Automation Background

KD: And let's just go ahead like to always jump right into it, can you give us a little bit of background about your engineering in automation background that you have?

BB: Well, so I would say my background, I, my first engineering job was in automation. So I was hired on a friend of mine had a consulting business, mechanical design, absolutely would not touch any kind of controls and whatever. And, and this was back in 2008, and couldn't find a job anywhere else. And it's, you know, found my way in there. And away we go. So that's where it started. I ended up taking quite a detour through pretty much all the different aspects of product development. But I mean, at the end of the day, as a mechanical engineer, the end of the line where everything gets put together, I mean, that's really where the, all this design and all the rest of the work that I've been working on, that's where rubber meets the road.

So, you know, I'm quite fortunate for the career path that I've had. Because otherwise, you know, my, my designs and things that I would come up with, would be pretty mediocre, like most other engineers coming up with things, but because I came from that world, came from the land where, you know, things are actually built and assembled. All that got shoved into the design from the, from the beginning, and it made quite an impact on the things that I was able to put out there.

Why Start A Consulting Company?

KD: Yeah, good. Good. And let me ask Benjamin, what made you want to start your own company?

BB: So I would say, it's kind of in my blood more than anything, I don't, I don't seem to fit in well, with most companies going, going that route. My father is a cabinet maker. And I grew up in that shop, building houses, building cabinets, doing all that kind of stuff. And he owned his business had a few people working for him. Now and then, but mostly it was him and I and we're doing this stuff. And I figured, okay, got my degree, we're gonna go get a job and get in there. And it's like, you know, I like to work, but I just don't fit in this realm. It's not, I'm not built for it.

Because there's so many times where that service aspect that I was taught and brought up and brought into, you can't really put it out there the way that you need to. And so my, you know, I, I always wanted to eventually get into a consulting role or something like that, to be able to have the freedom of motion, but it's been the last 10 years or so it's just like, that's, that's where I need to be because this this is not, this is not where I fit.

Turing A Side Business Into A Full-Time Job

KD: Yeah, interesting. And then I saw it you were it looks like working a little bit too. In the beginning. Was it kind of a side gig to start and then now it's, it's moved more into a full-time thing for you?

BB: Right, right. So I started I officially started the company in 2015. I was oddly enough, I got my papers registering the company in the state of Texas the exact same day I got laid off from Baker Hughes. So that was kind of a fun day. But unfortunately, that downturn that we had in the oil and gas industry was so bad that, I mean, I was I had to go physically from Houston all the way to Iowa to even have a real shot at a job opportunity because it just drained opportunities.

And that's where we wound up. And the last I would say since In November of last year, I was really hitting it pretty hard going part-time on the business and full-time work, and come March, it got to the point where I'm working 60, 70 hours a week. Going “wait a minute,” I've essentially got two paychecks at this point. The job that I want to do is projecting that we’ll be good here for at least quite a while. Okay, we're done. We'll talk to the missus. And we came up with a plan and we cut ties and off we go. We jumped off in the deep end here.

Bohn Engineering Services Business Location

KD: Yeah, well, congratulations, then. Are you still based? It sounds like out of Iowa?

BB: Yep. Yep. We're in Dubuque, Iowa.

KD: Okay, and that's Do you have an office there? Work, you know, work from home type office? Or, you know, what's kind of the plan there?

BB: Well, as of right now, pretty much everything that I've done is all remote, easy to support remotely, things like that, I have put in a couple of proposals that we're looking for. Potential start next year, we'll see how those turn out. If those end up coming true, then we're going to be looking pretty hard for an actual workspace and an office and all that good stuff.

KD: Oh, cool. Congratulations. And I do want to ask a number of employees? It sounds like we talked earlier a little bit. Now you have two.

BB: Officially have two. Yes, myself and my wife. My wife is I it took me about three months to finally convince her that it was not be a bad thing to work with me. And she's finally like, “Okay, well give this a shot.” And, with her, she's got just an amazing ability to plan and, and plan sequence of events and things like that. She has a, I'm not, I'm going to try to tell you what that degree was. It has nothing to do with the engineering or anything like that. So, we don't have any of those fights and arguments. But she's just got this innate ability to plan things out like this, and to very, very deep down into the weeds kind of level.

And I've been pushing for years, it's like you. I need you as my project manager, that's all I need. Well, it took about three months. And I finally got her convinced to, and she's like, I don't know anything about this. But I got her in there, I got her doing it. And she's actually a project manager on this job that we're doing right now. And she's just doing an amazing job just keeping on top of everybody and everything. And, and I'm getting compliments from the field that are talking to her and dealing with her as well. It's like, yep, that's exactly where she needs to be. And what that does, it helps me to focus on the engineering and all the other details that we need to and I mean, we're just making a great team out of this.

Bohn Engineering Services

KD: Oh, that's great to hear. Being able to work with your spouse. You know, a lot of people I'm sure couldn't do that. So if you guys are making it work, that's, that's really special. I did want to ask them, what kind of services do you provide?

BB: So really, any type of engineering services in general, so the way I originally structured the company is to be able to if a company has a need for, you know, has some sort of skill gap or just don't have quite enough people in their projects, they can hire me in to fill those gaps, mechanical engineering background, so and I've got every aspect of product development from crazy concepts all the way through production testing, and you know, everything in between. I've got a lot of experience in the analysis realm, vibration, and FEA, things of that nature.

Also CFD, I've also got I do a lot of a lot, I would say the product development side, there's a lot of experience that I bring to the table that there's been a number of places I've worked at, I've, you know, just the background that I can bring, I've been able to say, “Okay, how about you do something like this?” And everybody's like, “I don't know anything about that.” And it's like, “Well, I do and this is what we did over in such and such industry prior to,” and brought that knowledge in there and brought in different ways to do things. And we ended up every single thing that I've every single product that I've worked on has brought cost reduction, complexity reduction, you know, overall, fewer parks and things like that. So I mean, that's what I'm bringing to the table.

Likes As A Business Owner

KD: Yeah, cool! And let me let me ask then. What are some of your likes being a business owner now that you've been in it 100% for the last seven months?

BB: I would say I got to one, the ability to walk away from that dumpster fire. Because plenty times when you're working on a project like this, this is not working, nobody's listening to you know, you got all those issues. At this point, I can say, “Nope, I can't help you any further, there's nothing else I can do, because it's just not going to work. And it's not good for anybody.” And I just have the ability to say yes or no, and when and how far.

The other thing is the abilities to really the bigger ones for me is the ability to put my name on the side of something. So you know, I grew up, my dad stuck his name on that business and everybody everywhere he went, he had people it's like taking a celebrity into town kind of thing, right? People stopped talking to him, they knew who he was people he, he didn't know they knew. Because the because that name that was out there. And the reason for that is because you stand behind what you're putting out there.

And so I did the exact same thing names right there on the company on the side of the truck and everything else. And I mean, that's, that's what it is. There's no, there's no oh, well, here's some random nope, that's who it is. It's there's an individual that made those decisions that decided this is how we're going to do things this is, this is what we're doing and backing it up. And, you know, if something's not right, we're gonna fix it, or we'll go after, you know, whatever we need to do. Till the clients happy with what we what we're doing out there. We're not done.

Dislikes As A Business Owner

KD: Yeah cool, cool. And let's go with the opposite side. I think I know what you might say. But what are some of your dislikes? You know, being a new business owner.

BB: Just likes I hate trying to figure out how to get new jobs. That's the absolute worst thing that could possibly be.

KD: Finding new clients, right?

BB: I was very fortunate up to this point. What's that?

KD: Finding new clients, right?

BB: Oh, yeah.

KD: Can be difficult.

BB: Oh, yeah. It very much is. I've been very fortunate for the clients that I do have up to this point. Good folks, good folks to work with. We're doing a lot of good, good things over there, helping them do what they're doing on. But yeah, I mean, the trickiest part is I'm an engineer through and through. I've got a project manager. She's good at what she does. But sales and marketing, I have no idea.

Marketing Your Business

KD: Well, that's a great lead, because I think you're actually pretty darn good at sales and marketing. Because I obviously have following you on, on LinkedIn, you and I wanted to talk about this anyway, you post some great funny, like memes and content on there. Where do you come up with all these ideas? Man, that's, that's what I want to know.

BB: Um, I would say, I don't know that I necessarily come up with them. I'm just not holding it back, I guess. Because most, pretty much every single one of those things is there was a real thing I really saw it really was there really had to deal with it. And I'm just sitting there thinking to myself, and one day, I thought, you know what, let's just put this down and see what happens. And that's all it's been is, you know, my thought about some random thing and, and a few of them have gone crazy nuts.

But, you know, at the end of the day, that's really what it is. That's what, that's what anybody hiring me is gonna get is, I'm not gonna be, “Oh, well, I can't say that. I can't talk like this. I can't, whatever.” It's like, No, you're hiring me, you're gonna get every bit of me. And that means I'm gonna call it out and say, you got a mechanical engineer to put lockwashers and everything there is and you really need to question his ability to do what he's doing. Because you do that shouldn't be, right.

KD: Yeah, the fact that you're not going to sugar coat it for any of your clients. I am sure they appreciate it.

BB: Yeah, because they really do because, well, the ones that like to work with me do. Some others, they, you know, people, some people do take offense to it, which okay, whatever. But the nice thing about it, though, is the ability to say it straight to people, you can really tell whether or not you're going to be able to work with them anyway. Because at the end of the day, if something's not working on a project, and I don't care what it is, or how it's structured or who did what. If the team or the client can't listen to somebody, say, “Look this and this person, or you or whatever,” and that turns them off, and you there's no way I can help them because we can't have a conversation about what's the root cause here, and how do we actually deal with that? Right?

KD: Yeah. Yeah, and like I said, that's a lot of times being a consultant, that is one of the benefits that you kind of can open your mouth and be straight up and honest with people. And sometimes people don't like to hear the honesty or the hard truths, right?

BB: Right.

Finding New Clients

KD: Yep. So I did want to ask, you know, you are fairly new, you said clients is somewhat difficult for you sometimes, is there a handful of clients that you're kind of using right now rotating through them? And then kind of what's your next step strategy then to build your client list?

BB: Well, so right now I've got a fairly steady stream from the clients that I do have, we've got this big project that I'm working on right now is going to take us through probably, February, just a lot of things going on there. I've got a couple proposals that I'm working on are helping support that we're looking for January timeframe. If we get approved for those obviously, outside of that I don't really have a whole lot of a strategy at this point of, of how we go after new clients, new work and things like that.

KD: And I mean, another, I've talked to one of my good buddies, does engineering consulting, and his strategy is basically look, I've got six clients, and I just keep them happy, and they keep coming back to him. So, some people have different ideas of you know, building a large client list. So, I'm just keep a small handful and just keep them satisfied. Right. And as long as you're happy, and their happy.

BB: Well you kind of have to do a little bit of both, right? Because I mean, you have to have the work to keep the lights on kind of situation, right? But you also have to, you have to keep going after the other things as well to help build that and spread that word around. I don't know that's kind of what it is. I remember when we moved when I was like four years old, down to Oklahoma from Minnesota, we didn't know anybody here we just up and left. And it was like six months before he had any job. But you know, the type of work and everything that he put out there. He was retired, and they were still calling him, right, he was not out of work a single day. And that's really, the type of thing that I'm trying to do here is to be able to put out the work in such a way that it just keeps doing its doing its thing, and that's fine. Quality work sure speaks for itself. I'll tell you that.

Work-Life Balance As A Business Owner

KD:  Absolutely. And with that work and hard work that you're putting in, again, being a business owner. Now, what's your work life balance look like?

BB: Um, I don't know that. I don't know that I really believe in such a thing, right? There's a, there's cut offs, right? It's you know, you put that phone down and you're not looking at it, and you don't do anything with it. And the clients know that. Once that time comes, you ain't get nothing. I do have one client that we do have arrangement for some emergency support and things like that. And okay, but unless that number comes up with that particular name on there, you're not it and getting it.

Because, you know, part of the part of the benefits of being able to run a company like this is the ability to attend those things with your kids go out go fishing more often go camping more often, whatever. Bring those kids really important is bring those kids into the job to see okay, this is what it really looks like you can you can go and get your job at the restaurant and whatever else and get that experience. Yes, but this right here is a whole different ballgame because you're doing something and you're doing it back in it by your own word. And that's what you could have stand up for. And to me that's really what what's driving all this is to be able to teach my kids to be human beings that I really want to be around, right?

KD: Yep.Yep. And basically, like your father did to you, right? Show you the path. Yeah, show you your hard work and you know, what you can do with, you know, your own hands, right?

BB: That's right. I mean, there's a lot to it. I mean, heck with this project that we're doing right now we've had dozen or more contractors, subcontractors that said one thing couldn't do it fell through all this nonsense, and it's like, what do we got? We got two rght now that I would tell anybody and everybody these guys are who you want. I don't care. What were whatever. Those are the guys because they're like, Yep, we're gonna be there. They're on time. They're showing up early, they're staying late. They're I mean, they're just busting it trying to get this stuff done, and they're standing behind everything they're doing. And it's just such a rare thing. And people have the ability to stand behind what they're doing anymore.

Business Goals

KD: Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Um, and we are coming up here. on your end. Have you set any goals for this year? Did you have any, you know, targets you were trying to meet? How did you deal with that? And if not, are you? Are you thinking about setting some goals for yourself then for 2024?

BB: Um, well, right now my only goal that I've got is to continue to maintain our income so that we don't have to go looking for a cardboard box. At least that's what's the goal that the wife made me commit to, and we cut loose. So far, we're doing pretty good we are we are going to exceed that a little bit. So we'll have a little bit of cushion coming into 2024. At this point in time, we've got, you know, we've got a few prospects that we're looking at. But, you know, that's kind of what this is trying to make a goal on that is it, it always seemed kind of silly to me. But because I can't, I can't make much of a plan not knowing, you know, I can't I have no pull with the clients as to when they're going to do something, and when they're going to call me up.

And usually, when I get called up, they're like, 90%, into the decision-making process. And I'm like, hold on a second, back up about 20 paces. And let's question what we're doing first, and then, and then sometimes I actually kind of lose the job happened to me a couple of times, I kind of lost the job. And then they come back around. I was like, “Okay, so we want you to finish this thing.” After we did all the stuff you already said. Okay. Yeah. Because, you know, just a little bit different path. I mean, it'd be really nice if clients would come talk to us from the get go and get our opinion. I mean, I have no problem having a conversation with anybody.

It's like, okay, here's what I think here's the things that you're going to need to look out for. You might want to look into these things, and vet it out a little more, because you get a lot of a lot of times you get a roomful of people, you end up with kind of a group think and they're like, this is the one and only option for us. It's like, yeah, or you can save like, twice that amount of money by doing it this other way and slightly easier. But nobody was in the room to even offer up a suggestion. Right?

KD: Right. Yeah.

BB: So yeah, we just kind of roll with it.

Connect With Benjamin Bohn

KD: Yup, yup. Well, I'm sure again, your clients appreciate that. Before we wrap up here. Can you let everybody know where they can get ahold of you?



BB: Um, yeah, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn. Anybody wants to connect? Go for it. Click that button and away we go and yeah.

KD: Okay. And then we'll also leave a link to your website too, as well. And a link to your LinkedIn at the bottom in the description. So, if you guys enjoyed today's episode, please give us a like, comment, share, and don't forget to subscribe. And we hope that you join us here next time on Engineers in Automation. Thanks!

BB: Thanks, everybody.