my TRUE POSITION

Doing business with friends can be rewarding — but it can also get complicated fast. In this episode of My TRUE POSITION, Jim Carr shares personal lessons from decades in manufacturing about the risks of mixing friendship with purchase orders, subcontracting, tooling, consulting, and supplier relationships. The hard truth: good people can still be bad business partners. Jim talks about why expectations break down, why it is so hard to hold a friend accountable, and why a simple written agreement before the work begins may be the best way to protect both the business and the friendship. Because when delivery slips, quality fails, communication breaks down, or money gets involved, friendship alone will not save the relationship. Clear expectations might. This is a personal, reflective episode about trust, boundaries, leadership, and the real consequences of letting business and friendship collide without a plan.

Manufacturing has become the number-one industry targeted by cyberattackers, accounting for 27.7% of the incidents investigated by IBM X-Force in 2025. manufacturers such attractive targets? It comes down to production downtime, valuable customer intellectual property, aging technology and our position inside increasingly connected global supply chains. In this episode of My TRUE POSITION, Jim Carr explains why small and family-owned machine shops are especially vulnerable, how cybercriminals get from an employee's inbox to the shop floor and what owners can realistically do to protect their businesses. Jim also addresses what the recent CMMC Phase II suspension does—and does not—mean for defense manufacturers. No scare tactics. No hundred-page IT checklist. Just practical, owner-level actions to protect your company, your customers and your ability to keep making parts.

A big backlog feels great — until you realize backlog doesn't ship itself. In this episode, I break down the hard reality behind today's aerospace and defense demand. The orders may be real. The opportunities may be real. But so are the constraints: labor, material, inspection, outside processing, cash flow, supplier delays, machine uptime, and leadership capacity. This is not a negative episode. It is a reality episode. Because a purchase order is not the finish line. It is a promise. And the shops that win over the next few years will not simply be the ones with the biggest backlog. They will be the ones that can convert demand into delivered product, delivered product into cash, and cash into enterprise value. Backlog is not the win. Execution is.

The government just suspended CMMC Phase II—and the reason goes far beyond cybersecurity. With defense inventories under replenishment pressure, aerospace backlogs at historic levels, and qualified manufacturing capacity already constrained, Washington finally recognized that six-figure certification costs and overwhelming documentation requirements were pushing capable small manufacturers out of the Defense Industrial Base. In this episode, Jim breaks down what the CMMC pause really means, what requirements remain in force, how it could reshape competition for defense machining, and why the next two-plus years may create extraordinary opportunities for manufacturers that are truly prepared to execute.

Manufacturing owners love to say nobody wants to work overtime anymore. But maybe the better question is: why did we build businesses that depend on it? In this episode, I dig into the new overtime reality facing machine shops and manufacturers. The workforce has changed. People want their nights, weekends, and family time back. But customers still want shorter lead times, faster delivery, and flawless execution. That puts owners right in the middle. This episode is not about blaming workers or whining about younger generations. It's about leadership, capacity, planning, accountability, and building a company that does not require constant heroics just to hit the schedule. Overtime should be a tool. It should not be the operating model. Because the future belongs to shops that can deliver without burning people out.

Chicago has spent billions building the future of manufacturing and logistics — rail yards, airport cargo systems, automation, robotics, smart factories, and advanced equipment. But here's the hard truth: machines don't create capacity by themselves. People do. In this episode, I break down the workforce crisis hiding behind the automation boom. We don't just need more technology — we need the technicians, machinists, programmers, maintenance experts, automation engineers, and leaders who can actually run it. Because the future of manufacturing won't be decided by who buys the best machines. It'll be decided by who builds the people capable of keeping them moving.

Most family businesses don't fail because they run out of money. They fail because they run out of leadership, communication, trust, and a real succession plan. In this episode, I break down why some family businesses survive for generations while others collapse the minute the founder steps away. We'll talk about entitlement, founder dependency, hard conversations, next-generation leadership, and the brutal difference between being founder-led and becoming institution-led. Because building a family business is one thing. Building one that can survive without you is something completely different.