Takeaways
- Mark Johnson’s unexpected entry into the fluid power industry.
- The value of hands-on experience in learning and innovation.
- Evolution from traditional tools to IoT in monitoring machinery.
- Challenges in finding passionate and curious individuals in the industry.
- The shift in sales processes post-COVID, emphasizing deep product knowledge.
- Importance of creativity and risk-taking in business.
- Mark’s entrepreneurial spirit and problem-solving approach.
- The role of technology in modernizing industry practices.
- Learning from failures and wrecking tests as a growth opportunity.
- Mark’s future plans and ongoing projects.
Chapters
- Introduction and Mark’s Background (00:00)
- Journey into Fluid Power (00:03:00)
- Technology Evolution and IoT (00:06:00)
- Challenges in the Industry (00:09:00)
- Sales Process Changes (00:12:00)
- Entrepreneurial Insights and Future Plans (00:15:00)
Transcript
Meghann Cook
Welcome to Unfiltered Flow ELSC. I’m Meghann Cook, and today it is my pleasure to welcome Mr. Mark Johnson to the show. Mark is the owner of MJ Hydrostatics in beautiful Owatonna Welcome, Mark. So how’d you get into the fluid power industry,
Mark Johnson
Good morning.
Mark Johnson
believe or not when i was in high school my dad was the principal of my high school i got a scholarship to go wrestle at st. cloud state university my dad’s opinion was my study habits probably weren’t going to allow me to be there very long and so i should choose something else i thought well i’ll be an automotive mechanic and i thought you know working on a 67 corvettes great except working on grandma’s four door impala probably wasn’t that exciting
Meghann Cook
Not so fun.
Mark Johnson
So check that off the list and there was almost zero thought given to going to fluid powers school. That was the next thing on the list and away I went. That was the high level of thought that was given to what I’m gonna do next.
Meghann Cook
Mark that’s a recurring trend, I think, with people in the industry. I don’t think anybody ever really starts out with that in mind. We all just ended up here one way or the other. What would you say your most fun project is that you’ve worked on, or important project for that matter?
Mark Johnson
Right.
Mark Johnson
Boy there’s been many of them. I started out my hydraulics career in the R &D lab at Eaton Many times I’ve thought since then I should have stayed there and enjoyed using their money breaking and learning But since You know I I started I went from Eaton corporation to a company called McNeilus truck working for Garwin McNeilus and that’s the first time in my life that
I really experienced a…
team of people focused on getting things done in its rawest form. I think that I was the hydraulic specialist there and then went into sales after that. that was probably a very good time. Starting my own business. We do a lot of things here that are kind of fun. I we have two dinos, one’s 550 horse and the other’s 150 horse.
Those kind of power capabilities pretty much leave you in any options you want to do as far as testing or wrecking something. We’ve done all of the above, wreck and testing. Those are, those are kind of fun to, those are, and I got instances of that, thousands of them. And so, one of the funner things about owning a business is playing.
Meghann Cook
Absolutely. think you’ll learn more from wrecking it than you probably do from just a straight test, right?
Mark Johnson
Yeah, there’s a lot of lessons from wrecking stuff that can be financially painful, but in the end they’re a learning event and learning is never free.
Meghann Cook
Thank you.
Meghann Cook
Right? This is true. Well, as things have progressed here, talking about IoT and smart technology and the integration in modern machinery these days, what have you seen as far as changes, know, especially going back to your R &D times at Eaton to now and what’s happening now that you’re seeing?
Mark Johnson
that’s a vast jump there from what I had at Eaton. We were using gauges and transducers and oscilloscopes in my day at Eaton, which dates me. To now, I would say, I mean, we have a customer right now down in Iowa that we’re actually with him monitoring a machine that’s in Kansas. That’s in a…
What would you call it? It’s a junk, it’s a, a junkyard. It’s a, it’s not a garbage dump. It’s a dump specifically for dealing with seat material out of industrial mobile machines. Of all things. Yeah. So the, yeah. And so the, the foam and the seat itself goes into this dump and there’s giant thousand horsepower machine with
Meghann Cook
You said seat material, S-E-A-T. interesting.
Mark Johnson
with stubby wheel on the front with a compactor basically and we can watch that machine live hydraulically and engine wise from here with our customer in Donner, Iowa and watch pressures and that kind of thing. are the things that we’re seeing now that are, I mean, it’s very potent. It’s cool for the new kids like my son.
who would say that’s amazing and it’s a good way to collect data. I mean, the IoT thing and the technology that’s coming now is amazing. And I’m kind of a little bit of a techie, so I enjoy it.
Meghann Cook
Nice. Well, you you can also see how much they’re abusing the machine. That’s the other interesting part.
Mark Johnson
So in monitoring the machine in Kansas, we’ve learned that the design that was work that was done initially on this machine does not bid well with the machine’s operation. And I will be with that customer tomorrow giving them some of that good news probably.
Meghann Cook
Interesting.
It helps. It gets you to the end result faster. That’s what it’s all about.
Mark Johnson
Right.
Meghann Cook
So what would you tell folks that are currently in the industry now, what skills and knowledge base they should work on to be most successful in the industry in the next 5, 10, 15 years?
Mark Johnson
I’ll address that with something that’s very recent here. The sales process, outside sales process or the sales process seems to have changed since the beginning of COVID. You hate to anchor it with that, with COVID, cause I get tired of hearing about it, but it looks like now the sales process.
where you used to have a brochure and a business card and go to a prospective customer. And then when there was technical questions or you got that far into the the customer where they had technical questions, you bring in other staff to do that. That extra step appears to have disappeared. I was at a customer last week. And I’ve been doing this since 1984. I mean, I
To say I get it is a true statement. And I walked in there and addressed his issues and took an account. Just by the sheer fact that I’ve had my hands in oil. I’ve worked on a hydrostat. I know the intimate details of how a hydrostat is built and how it functions. And I think that’s an important thing going ahead for everybody.
You need to walk in there with a brochure, with a business card, deep knowledge of what your product can do to help them. All in one step. Everybody’s busy. Nobody has time for multiple step sales processes. So I think that’s an interesting thing, honestly.
Meghann Cook
It’s something that is honestly resounding through these conversations that we’re having with people. It all goes back to the willingness to get your hands dirty, to understand the individual components, how they affect the machine in its entirety, and just the benefit of having that hands-on experience and how it helps you later in the field. And well, this leads into my next question. What do you, what do you see as the biggest current challenges in fluid power?
Mark Johnson
I think that probably the biggest challenge in fluid power and for me running a business in fluid power is the same as a lot of industries right now and that’s people, human resources.
Mark Johnson
It’s finding somebody that really wants to…
dive in head first, totally immerse themselves in, ask lots of questions and that kind of a person with that level of curiosity and ambition, willingness to immerse themselves is a pretty rare person.
You our school system probably has done some of that to us, but out here on our shop, we tell our guys, go ahead and make a mistake. Go ahead and do something outside the norm. Don’t cost me $10,000 wrecking something that you shouldn’t have done. Obviously there’s a line there, right? But,
Meghann Cook
you
Mark Johnson
Go wreck something, go do something different, be creative, think outside the box, and really think about what you’re doing. Those kind of people are rare, we need those. many organizations start with a three or four or five or six person core group that just does exactly that and they change an industry or change a company.
Meghann Cook
Alright, now it’s 100 % true. This is an off the books question mark, a fun one, I think. If you didn’t get into fluid power and you weren’t enjoying just the, all the excitement that comes with having your own business, what do think you would be doing now? Or what would you have gotten into if it wasn’t fluid power?
Mark Johnson
Uh, yeah, that’s a interesting question. My initial thought is I have no idea. Um, it’s been so damn long. mean, I’ve been in this for 30, 40 years. Um,
I think I’m an entrepreneur to begin with. And so I probably would have created something. Sales is solving a problem, period. And running a company to solve the problem is the thing. So that’s probably where I would have, whether it was hydraulics or something else, I would have probably invented something to solve a problem.
Meghann Cook
Nice. That’s an interesting answer.
Well, Mark, appreciate your time. I know you’re busy. If you’re not hammering away at the shop, you’re on the road. So I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and have the conversation. And hopefully, I will be up there to see you and Carol yet this year at some point.
Mark Johnson
Yeah, that was a good time. Although we got three inches of snow yesterday, wait a week.
Meghann Cook
Mmmmm
Mark Johnson
Yeah, I know it was bit was like.
Mark Johnson
It was hard psychologically yesterday to look out the window at the lake and see the lake actually liquid but the grass white. thing enjoying it were ducks and geese. But yeah, that would be great if you could come up. We would enjoy that, spend some time on the lake. Do that when the pontoon and the lifts and the docks are all in. I can show you my next…
Meghann Cook
Yeah, no doubt.
Mark Johnson
my next invention that’s going to be another company I’m starting, so.
Meghann Cook
next project. Awesome. I look forward to it. Thanks again, Mark. I appreciate you.
Mark Johnson
appreciate the opportunity.