Transcript

 

Michael Palumbos (01:01.906)

host, Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And we've got a great show for you today. We've got Johnny Ro- 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:10.894)

I knew I was going to do it, Johnny. I had it in my head. Roumanidakis. I? Roumanidakis. And in full disclosure, everybody, I practiced this three times and asked it in advance. OK, Johnny Roumanidakis from Netcom, third generation family business. We're excited to have you here. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (01:18.412)

dockets. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (01:36.13)

Thanks for having me, Michael. I'm really excited to be here. And it's even more exciting to share that I'm not going by my real name, which is Avangelo Siannis from Anadakis. That might've been a little bit more difficult. You can call me Johnny and we can leave the last name out. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:51.192)

There you go. Thanks, Jody. That's awesome. So tell me, know, we have the tradition, you're third generation. What was your journey into entering into the family business? What did that look like? What was happening before? Did you spend time outside of the family business? Did you just go straight in? What was your journey into the family business? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (02:15.948)

Yeah. So to start, I had no intentions of joining the family. I started at NetCom in college as an accounting intern during the summers. Did some work on the shop floor, doing cycle counting and things of that nature. It was good summer cash for my break from the University of Iowa. And then I went into graduate school to get my master's in finance. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (02:44.534)

in which I thought I would do what most of my peers were doing and get into banking or some other exciting finance career. But it didn't take long to working at Netcom to realize, A, the people I was surrounded by were incredible and were literally family, but also the ones that aren't literally family, felt like family. And B, working in a small business, you get to learn a lot and wear many hats. And I just... 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (03:12.994)

fell in love with the culture here and the idea of growing a business. It was very exciting to me. And so, you know, that was when my grandpa and I decided it made sense for me to take over the finance department, finance and accounting department at NetCom right out of school. And the rest is kind of history. 

 

Michael Palumbos (03:32.27)

That's awesome. So your grandfather started the business. What was NetCom? When was that? And what was he doing? How did the company make money when he started the business? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (03:44.718)

It's a, it's a true, um, you know, American dream story. So my grandfather immigrated here from Greece, um, and came here to get his electrical engineering degree at the university of Illinois. He had some family, uh, that lived in Champaign, Illinois, which is now where the university of Illinois is. But back then, uh, university of Illinois was in Chicago. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (04:11.31)

So he was commuting from Champaign to Chicago five days a week to go to school. Ended up getting his master's in electrical engineering and starting his career in Motorola. And he was tasked with, I'm not sure if you've seen Saving Private Ryan or some of those old war movies, but the guys that carry around the backpack with the big brick like radio. So he was tasked with. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (04:39.598)

reducing that radio in size by a factor of 10. That was the first project he worked on at Motorola. He had a great career there and after I'd say seven to ten years he decided that he wanted to kind of go off on his own and start a business at design and manufactured RF filters or radio frequency components that Motorola would end up using in some of their systems. 

 

Michael Palumbos (05:08.618)

Interesting. And what does the company do today? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (05:13.016)

So today we haven't deviated too far from our roots. In the 70s when he started the company, we were making RF filters, crystal filters, and various types of analog components. This was before digital components were a thing. Today we're still making RF filters, but they're digital. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (05:39.854)

So there's firmware embedded in them and they're controlled through some digital interface. So they perform the same function of filtering out the unwanted signals in a communication system, but just in a little bit of a different way. 

 

Michael Palumbos (05:56.814)

And you've been now with the company for how long? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (06:01.262)

I've been working in Netcam for eight years. I joined in 2016, so a little less than eight years. 

 

Michael Palumbos (06:11.79)

Okay, and so if we look at your, so it's your grandfather, your father or mother involved, who's in the second generation? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (06:21.23)

It's my mom's dad. And so I get to work with my mom's twin and her other sister every day. Unfortunately, my mom doesn't work at the business, but she does provide us a lot of consulting services on the human resources side. And then my uncle was involved in the business, but he moved up north and now runs a awesome fishing and snowmobiling resort up in the north. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (06:49.79)

of Wisconsin. So I don't get the to work with them either. 

 

Michael Palumbos (06:54.242)

So how many family members total have been involved or are involved in the business? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (07:01.07)

have been or are probably close to 10. Right now there's three family members actively involved and then a fourth kind of consulting. 

 

Michael Palumbos (07:18.83)

Okay, from your perspective, you the youngest family member involved now? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (07:26.306)

Yeah, I am. Sometimes my younger cousins join. They're now kind of in the situation I was in when I started. They're both students at the University of Arizona and Arizona State. So sometimes during the summers, they'll come and work with me for some summer money, some beer money. 

 

Michael Palumbos (07:46.478)

Right, exactly. What for you are some of the best parts of being part of a family business? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (07:55.608)

think the trust element is something that I think about a lot. It's really a blessing to come to work every day and be able to just leave your door open and to know that nobody's going to walk in your office and look around or that you're not going to have to worry about someone doing anything deceitful or some of those horror stories you hear about in the workplace. Just trusting everyone I work with is... 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (08:24.414)

is something I don't know if everyone has that opportunity. So I love that part about my job the most. 

 

Michael Palumbos (08:30.51)

Michael Palumbos (08:31.972)

What are some of the tough parts about being part of a family business from your perspective? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (08:36.898)

Well, it's Greek family and we all have a lot of opinions. And usually all of our opinions are right. So it's, you know, there's, I don't know if it's difficult, the right word. There's challenges with working with family that sometimes are, you know, easy to overcome and sometimes aren't. It's never, it's never a good thing to have like disagreements. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (09:06.082)

with people in general, kind of a conflict diverse person to be honest. So I don't really enjoy disagreements with anybody, especially with my family. But on the other hand, kind of going back to that trust element, at least when there is, you know, something that maybe me and another family member don't agree on, it always ends up working out because we trust each other and have great working relationships. So, yeah, there's difficult moments, but for the most part, everything about 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (09:35.34)

working with family in my view is better than that working with family. 

 

Michael Palumbos (09:39.928)

That's awesome. If you're a reader, there's a book out there by Patrick Lencioni called Five Dysfunctions of a Team. for that conflict avoidant personality, I tell people all the time, conflict is good. Disagreement is good. It just needs to be healthy, right? And it needs to be respectful. And if you can do that, then... 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:09.858)

you know, out of conflict usually comes something better. And, you know, there's never, there's not a movie that ever was successful that didn't have conflict in the movie. That's what makes things better and good is, you know, we challenge each other. And then it's that ability to, you know, commit to the path forward because you trust each other to make it work. And I think you said it about spot on. 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:38.094)

Trust is the foundation. It's okay to have conflict, then we commit to what we're doing to move forward. It sounded like it was right out of Patrick Lencioni's book. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (10:47.682)

That's funny. I mean, it leads to better outcomes. Like you just said, getting diversified thoughts, different perspectives. Like I mentioned, I'm the third generation. So, you at some points there's three generations of perspectives, you know, and on the conversation, which ultimately leads to better decisions in the end. think it's a good thing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (11:08.974)

So your grandfather's still involved in the business today. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (11:13.26)

My grandfather's not involved in the business anymore. Unfortunately, I lost my grandfather earlier this year. So that has been really difficult. It's been really difficult for myself and the family. It's definitely an adjustment. You know, he was kind of like the guy in my corner where if, I ever needed to talk about something or needed help on maybe a private. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (11:40.162)

issue that I wasn't comfortable talking about with the team or something like that. he was the guy. So the last eight months have been, you know, an adjustment period and difficult, but, I think it's made me and, you know, some of other family members come together and become closer and we started to work together. we've become stronger together. So yeah, it's been difficult, but he's not, not with us anymore. 

 

Michael Palumbos (12:08.79)

Sorry about that. Walk me through, if you don't mind sharing, and so you just went through, it wasn't planned. Your grandfather's not here any longer. What was the succession plan? Did you have a succession plan before your grandfather? Was there something in writing that everybody had talked about? then now you're going through that. How did that work out? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (12:38.062)

Uh, I think that's actually another great example of why trust is so important. We didn't have a formal succession plan. never worked with a, um, uh, you know, an attorney, uh, or an estate planner to, to really iron that all out ahead of time. Uh, you know, there's, there are situations in which, you know, a lender, someone may ask what's the next steps. Um, and we always had an idea of. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (13:07.822)

of kind of the pecking order of how things would play out. But no, we never had like a formal written succession plan in a trust or anything like that. You know, it really became it really had, you know, unfolded as the family kind of took it day by day. And, you know, moment by moment, just kind of ironing out how are things going to go? I was promoted to president two years ago. So, you know, I 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (13:36.802)

been operating in this role with my grandfather still around for many years. So kind of the roles and responsibilities in the organization weren't impacted too much. But there's a lot outside of the day to day that we had navigate. And we just kind of did it as a family and things are working out. 

 

Michael Palumbos (14:01.45)

And a lot of times when those circumstances arise, it doesn't always play out as amicably as it has in your situation. That's awesome. I'm really happy for you. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (14:16.45)

Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, there there's, I've sought advice at times and you know, many, many people might, you know, caution me. I was going to say, Sam, that, that we're crazy, but not that intense, you know, caution me on, not having, know, types of plans like that in place, like a succession plan or whatnot. And. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (14:46.542)

You know, I grew up in a family, you know, that I was blessed to grow up with where, we, there was just this element of trust and, and camaraderie. And, these were not things we worried about. I'd be lying to you if I said that, you know, kind of going through, the last few years and hearing other views, that it wasn't something I was concerned about or thought that we should have, or, know, if we could do it again. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (15:15.758)

Um, would it be something that I'd suggest, Hey, maybe we should take, um, a more serious look at this. just, you know, it happened to work out for our family, which is great. But, um, you know, I've certainly heard a lot of, a lot of horror stories where, uh, things don't work out as great. So pretty appreciative of that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:36.142)

Perfect. So in your role today, you're the president of the company. How does the roles break down between family and non-family members? If you look at the leadership team at Netcom, how does that break down? How many family members versus non-family members? And tell me about your communication rhythm. 

 

Michael Palumbos (16:04.687)

and decision making process for how you're doing things there. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (16:10.38)

that's still unfolding. You know, I think like there are the day to day decisions, which, you know, I, I generally, you know, handle. So things like hiring or, you know, refinancing our line of credit or any operational issues I pretty much handle if they make it to my desk. But then there's like broader issues that, you know, we're talking about. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (16:41.522)

Any types of big investments or kind of longer term vision for the company will get together as a family. It's not 100 % owned by my family. There are other shareholders involved. So we do annual shareholder meetings and annual board of directors meetings. So there's kind of your typical corporate structure with the shareholders, the board of directors, and then the management team, which is 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (17:09.71)

You know, there's two family members on that team. Um, but. You know, don't, I mean, if you put, if you, if I put an org chart together, you know, there's names on that org chart and some of them are family members. Some of them are not. Um, however, like me and the family, even those that don't work in the business, everyone has a voice. And so there are many times in some of these bigger decisions where we'll just get together and have a casual meeting and talk about things. Um, so. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (17:39.714)

That's pretty much how we're working things out right now. 

 

Michael Palumbos (17:43.15)

No, and this is how, you just so you know that when we're having these discussions, there is no right or wrong. It's just is and what's working or what's not working for your family as you're going through and the shareholders that may not be family members. And so it's just interesting for us to have these conversations. I never know when somebody else is sitting there going, I'm going through this and everybody tells me I'm crazy, but it's working for us. I'm not going to change what's working. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (18:13.314)

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's this old Greek saying, I don't want to mess it up, but it's, it's that, you know, something's not broken, we fix it every day. So, you know, like, I'm not saying that the way we do things is, is perfect. It's pretty ad hoc, but it works for us. 

 

Michael Palumbos (18:35.35)

Right. What is, so how often do you shareholder meetings? Is that just an annual shareholders meeting? Do you mind? mean, how many shareholders are there? Roughly, is that met? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (18:42.914)

Yeah. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (18:49.078)

Yeah. mean, there's about, you know, there's, there's, three shareholders that own like the majority of the company over two thirds of it. And then, there's a handful of other shareholders, that have been in the capital structure, for years, decades, you know, since the company was started, my grandfather had a really great team that helped him grow the business. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (19:18.702)

And there's something I didn't share is that he grew the business to be quite successful and had an exit in 2000 and sold the private equity. that it just didn't pan out after about 15 years or so. The PE group decided that they were going to go in a different direction, sold the company back to my grandfather. So that was like about a year or so before I joined. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (19:48.811)

So there was a decent period of time where, you know, the family wasn't heavily involved in the company, although there were still family members working for the company. You know, that was an interesting twist on the story. 

 

Michael Palumbos (20:02.966)

Yeah, no, that's super interesting. it's, you know, there's, I don't know if you follow her at all. I Stephanie Stuckey on the show and Stuckey's peanut, you know, or not peanut. I just said the wrong thing. Pecan Logs. So you're going to smack me if I, if she hears that. But, know, they had, you know, private equity group had had it she had the opportunity to buy it back. 

 

Michael Palumbos (20:30.646)

And so it was her grandfather's business. And it's kind of cool that, you know, to have that moment where it's, we're back again. Here we go again, you know. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (20:40.814)

Yeah, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (20:41.005)

think, what were you gonna say? 

 

Michael Palumbos (20:44.396)

No, just, that it's interesting that that opportunity arose and now you're back in full throttle, several different shareholders, a lot of family members in the business again and heavily involved. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (20:59.308)

Yeah, I think it's great. And one of the cool things about it is that, there's a lot of employees that, you know, we're here for that whole, period of time from when my grandfather started the company or early, you know, in the, after following the transaction, we sold part of it, until he bought it back. so, you know, there are people I work with right now that literally changed my diaper. I mean, it's, it's, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (21:28.756)

It's really cool that, you know, although the family wasn't necessarily entirely involved in the business, the culture kind of, you know, was upheld and a lot of people have worked here for 20, 30, 40 years. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (21:49.33)

So you, you interview a lot of family business, family business owners. right. And so you've probably had, you know, heard a lot of, you know, different types of, of cultures within family businesses, but would you say it's, it's normal on average, your family business typically has like a longer. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (22:14.798)

employees stay with the business longer than maybe your corporate jobs. 

 

Michael Palumbos (22:20.078)

100%, 100%. There's a statistic that runs around through the family business world that says, it goes back to shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations, right? And so it's like, the first generation starts it, the second generation manages it, and the third generation loses it. And so here I am talking to you right now, but it's... 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (22:42.35)

Thanks 

 

Michael Palumbos (22:46.528)

you know, that's what I think it's like 3 % make it into the fourth generation. Yeah, make it through. And but but at the end of the day, you know, so if you think about that in terms of generations, the business you're running is about how when was it started? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (23:05.23)

again. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (23:05.571)

Michael Palumbos (23:07.542)

Yeah, so I mean, you're going on almost 50 years old. The average company that goes through the stock market isn't 50 years old. Right. And so we talk about this horrible statistic of only 3 % make it, and it's the doom and gloom. And the real simple reason is just there's a lack of communication as the generation starts to get further and further out. 

 

Michael Palumbos (23:34.082)

You go into the cousin generation, which is where you're going into now. The trust isn't the same because we grew up in different households. Communication starts to break down. when you have communication, just exactly what you and I started this whole conversation with, when you start with trust and you have good communication, you can make it through anything. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (23:53.646)

That's right. Yeah, it's actually funny you bring up that statistic around the time my grandpa and I were talking about, you know, me taking over as the president as like, you know, the odds are against me. It's more likely that I'm going to fail and succeed. And he had a lot of trust. I felt pretty 

 

Michael Palumbos (24:14.926)

I 

 

Michael Palumbos (24:15.946)

think that you're noticing that in, you know, it's, they call it governance and corporate governance is how do we make decisions, right? Family governance is how do we make decisions as a family? And, you know, with three different main shareholders, the big thing is, you know, do we have rules in place so that when we get to a point 

 

Michael Palumbos (24:42.264)

where maybe somebody wants to go in a different direction than everybody else, everything's always good until it isn't. So, buy-sell agreements and succession plans, you can always flush them if everybody agrees. And that's the part that everybody forgets, in my opinion, is that just because you have a succession plan, just because you have a really well-defined buy-sell agreement of how you're going to do things, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (24:50.456)

Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (25:12.354)

You can always flush it if you choose to do that together. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (25:17.672)

Exactly. Nothing's written in stone. there's a lot of iterations on things like this as, as years go on, things change. time horizons for individuals change, in terms of their retirement planning. and even like, you know, not such like at an ownership level, but, just thinking back to the pandemic and, know, agreements we had with customers and suppliers, on the supplier side, like. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (25:46.712)

some of these just in time inventory programs or these stocking programs that we had in place evaporated. This material didn't exist. So how are you going to say, hey, well, we had this agreement in place. Well, it's not there anymore. So things change in business all the time and better to at least have something to lean on than nothing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (26:10.894)

And so the documents great, but then we back to what it really is at the end of the day I explained to everybody. When you when you say what businesses netcom in. If you if somebody asks you what business are you in most people come back and say what we're in the telecom we're in the, you know, what else. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (26:31.534)

Yeah, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (26:31.696)

electronics manufacturing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (26:34.028)

Yeah, 

 

Michael Palumbos (26:34.698)

you're not. And this is the part that I, once I, once people hear this for them, you know, they've heard it before, but once they hear it again, they're like, I have to remember that we are all as business owners in the people business. That is, that comes first. And that's because the, you can make the best electronics components on the, on the planet. But if you don't have trust and good communication with the people that you supply with the people that you sell to. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (26:49.176)

That's right. 

 

Michael Palumbos (27:02.754)

with the people that work with you and for you, where are you going? And so that's. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (27:08.91)

That's the set. We have some pretty expensive equipment on our floor that places tiny components on our PC boards to the most precise location you can imagine. And I've always been raised to know that our most valuable asset's the people in the business. And so there's not a number you can put on that because without us, meaning the people, my colleagues, there is no business. 

 

Michael Palumbos (27:40.366)

a thousand percent. So talking about that and you know it's really interesting you brought up you know all bets are off when when COVID happened and now you know again I apologize my heart goes out to you you lost your grandfather but you're there's we we talked about this there's a I think he's an organizational psychologist his name was Bruce Tuckman and he came up with this you know diagram that I think helps people to see this stuff and it's forming 

 

Michael Palumbos (28:09.866)

storming, norming, and performing. Those are the four quadrants. And every leadership team, whenever there's a change, it has to go immediately back to forming. You, after the loss of your grandfather, you're in the forming stage. You're building out that leadership team again. You're going to go through that. Then you're going to go into that storming stage, which is we don't agree with the direction and the strategy. And we got to work through all of that stuff and make those things out, making you laugh, because that's exactly what's happening. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (28:40.205)

Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (28:41.849)

And I love this stuff and it's like, you know, the reason why we coach it and why we teach it is so that people can see it. When you see that image to say, that's where I'm supposed to be, that makes it all better. And then if you lose somebody on the leadership team two years from now, guess what? You're right back to forming all over again. And that all goes back to people. 

 

Michael Palumbos (29:06.776)

How do we hold people accountable? How do I develop my leadership team? How do I get the people to agree on the strategy? How do I create a culture at NetCom that, you know, how do we continue to keep this culture in a place where we continue to have trust, we continue to communicate? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (29:25.102)

Yeah, I mean, that's really hard thing to do. Uh, I think this phrase gets used a lot, but you know, kind of what you're pointing out is it really matters about having the right Pete, not only the right people, but having the right people in the right seats. Um, and so, yeah, that's a classic. Um, but it's so true, you know, because over time, just like we were talking about things in the business world or whatnot, um, the people's skillsets change, people's interest change, people's motivations change. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (29:54.694)

And so, you know, just keeping someone on the staff because maybe they have like the right values, but don't want to do what they're doing anymore. It doesn't make any sense. So, you you need to align all of the cultural and the skill sets and all of those things to keep the organization moving forward. 

 

Michael Palumbos (30:16.686)

I mean, so you've talked to your grandfather many, many times and you've been working side by side with him for years. When you look at the leadership team and the changes that have happened at NETCOM through the years, how do they navigate some of those things? And what were some of the reasons that leadership positions needed to change or more for, know, talk about that for a little bit, if you don't mind. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (30:41.474)

You know, one that comes to mind first is our production manager, our director of operations. He looked at my grandfather like, you know, a father figure. They were very close. They would talk every night at about five o'clock and, you know, shipments were important to my grandfather, making sure our products left the back, got to our customers on time and. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (31:09.414)

And that was this guy's responsibility. And they, like I mentioned, they spoke every night and I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't concerned about what was going to happen when they couldn't do that anymore. you know, I kind of thought about that for myself and, I thought about that for myself and putting that aside, I wasn't sure exactly how he was going to handle that. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (31:38.77)

And it's incredible. It's like all it's like he distilled years of 5pm conversations down to a few values and a few skillsets and just kept doing what he had been doing for the, many years prior and just excelled. You know, he's got his own method, to how he's planning his shipment schedule. he's exceeding our targets. I mean, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (32:05.804)

This guy got out, you know, he doubled production on a single product, in a month, you know, just because we said, Hey, we need to do this. And he figured it out. So it was just, you know, the, team, think, was so close to my grandfather that there hasn't been a lot of changes since then. in terms of people getting out and off the bus at all, actually, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (32:31.042)

the changes have been how people have kind of carried themselves and taken things that they've learned from him and started to apply them in their own ways, which was really cool to watch happen, to be honest. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:42.702)

Oh, that's fantastic. It's exactly what you're hoping to do. And a lot of times people don't realize it, but you can only rise to the level of the top person. You know what I mean? so sometimes, and then I'll just take a company that I can think of off the top of my head. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (32:59.331)

Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (33:08.498)

they might have somebody in finance and they don't, I'm just making this up, but like they've got somebody in that finance position that they've relied on for their whole life and they did a really great job of helping them to get to where they are right now. And that person leaves and they bring in somebody else who is like, why was it done this way? And before you know it, the finance department is like double capacity. They're helping make decisions that they're like, didn't even know that these, 

 

Michael Palumbos (33:38.06)

these kinds of decisions could be made that we could get data this way and that we could help make these things happen. And you just don't know what you don't know as the CEO sometimes or the president of the company, because it's just like, it's hard to do, everything to everybody all at once. And so it's, you go back to what Jack Welch used to do, Jack Welch at GE. 

 

Michael Palumbos (34:07.404)

where he would take the bottom 10 % of performers and get rid of them. And that threat of that happening to people made people rise. I think the other side of that is that as we're growing companies and growing people, you have to be cognizant of the fact that, yes, you may have loyalty to this person, but there might be new things out there that if you're not investigating what's happening in these different areas, 

 

Michael Palumbos (34:37.518)

You could be hurting yourself from a company standpoint. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (34:41.111)

Again, I mean, I think that's like, you know, many things there's, there's kind of a range of what works because, you know, I've actually heard our, head of engineering use that phrase. We don't know what we don't know many times recently. mean, technology and our industry changes, you know, really fast. And, when you hear the leader of that, that, division of our organization, you know, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (35:07.406)

being open and vulnerable to the fact, we don't know, we don't know. And being open to, know, let's go talk to this company and see what they're doing, or let's go look into new ways to use AI to do things on our production floor that we hadn't been before. I don't know how to do it, but let's find someone that does. And just kind of being open to doing those things is you don't need to take the Welch approach and just fire the bottom 10 % of performers. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (35:36.75)

I think there's an education component in making people feel comfortable and not knowing how to do something, but knowing that they'll have the support to figure out new ways of doing something is huge. And that's kind of the approach we take, trying to support people to do new things before just saying, you don't know how to do this. 

 

Michael Palumbos (36:00.492)

No, and I think that there's a balance to that conversation. I just love the fact that, like you said. 

 

Michael Palumbos (36:09.598)

He doubled production in a certain area because you said you needed more. just by thinking a little differently around it. You said something else that I want to talk about. You talked about he was vulnerable. That goes back into trust. What would you say were some of the ways that your grandfather and the rest of the leadership team, you know, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (36:25.005)

Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (36:36.664)

what were some of the things that they did to create a culture of trust and being able to be vulnerable? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (36:48.618)

Mean, you know, it's, hard when, when you haven't met him, but, know, just his presence, you know, gave a very warming and welcoming, you know, environment. he's someone you trust, you know, the day you meet them. So, you know, just kind of like the energy he brought to the room, and of itself created an environment like that. but you know, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (37:17.102)

For example, me coming out of, you know, like textbook finance, when sales would slow, we would get in massive arguments because I'd be like, Hey, we need to cut costs here. And these are my top three recommendations for how to cut costs. And he would reject all three of them and he would choose losing money sometimes to make sure that someone kept their job. And it took me a while to understand that. And so I, you know, I think when, when, when people on the 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (37:48.102)

People on the plant floor, you know, are, they know what's going on because they're making the products. And so, you know, when, when that, when the volume decreases, they know that there could be layoffs and when that doesn't happen, and during slow periods and during, you know, busy periods, people keep their jobs. It's, you know, there's just like these kinds of silent actions. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (38:16.942)

that speak volumes that I think is really how the team and more importantly my grandpa built this culture of just trust in the people you're working with. 

 

Michael Palumbos (38:29.74)

Nice. Where would you see your grandfather throughout the course of a week? Where did he spend most of his time? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (38:39.926)

A lot of it was spent walking around the building, you know, talking to people. actually I have that on my calendar. have like, you know, time slots blocked every day to go, you know, get up from my desk and go do that. And I don't do it every time. you know, but it's important to, to, to really step away from the desk and just go see what's going on. Talk to people. 

 

Michael Palumbos (39:04.278)

Yeah, I knew the answer to that just based on what you were saying. It's different when the owner or the leader, you know, leaders are walking through and seeing what's happening and saying hello to people. It means a lot. It means a lot. That's awesome. For you, as you're looking at, you know, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (39:10.104)

Bye. 

 

Michael Palumbos (39:32.11)

being the president of the company, what would you say are your top two or three priorities right now for the next 12 to 18 months? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (39:44.322)

It's simple. We've got for the rest of this year, you know, our three priorities are hitting our shipments goal, deploying our new ERP system and going live on target and then hitting our booked orders goal. You know, I think that the three goals that we set this year around shipments, booked orders and the go live date with our ERP really embodies so many other 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (40:12.91)

priorities in the organization, part of which is our digital transformation. In the shipment side, that embodies quality, efficiency on the production floor for certain things we're doing there. And then on the booked order side, it's getting into new markets, being able to serve customers in new and better ways. And so those are my three priorities, but it's... 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (40:41.294)

It's not only, you know, what I care about, it's what the whole organization's rallied around right now. And so, you that's it for the next 12 months. Well, shorter than that, because it's our fiscal year goal. So we're in our fifth month. Over the next 18 months, though, and maybe longer term, it, you know, next three years, it's really diversifying our product offerings. That's, you know, we want to 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (41:10.19)

We provide right now, we're really great at designing and manufacturing an RF tunable filter. And that's a critical component in many military communication systems and other types of wireless communication systems. But that component's part of a bigger architecture that has other things like RF amplifiers, antennas, power sources. And so. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (41:38.19)

Trying to get into new markets and new products is my three-year priority. 

 

Michael Palumbos (41:46.19)

Okay. Running the business right now, what would you say are some of the pain points or frustrations as you're trying to hit your priorities? What are the things that can trip you up, so to speak? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (42:04.75)

so what was the massive pain point a years ago was our supply chain and, not being able to get chips, not being able to get a lot of components. that, that put companies, into a mindset where it was, you know, buy what you can get, bring it in, bring it in, bring it in. and I think, you know, it seems as though many companies were slow to see the shift in the supply chains lining up and are now, over supplied overstocked. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (42:35.112)

And so we're seeing kind of a slow in buying because of that, you know, oversupply or overstock in some of the end users of our products. So, you know, I think over the next six to 12 months, it'll be interesting to see, you know, how, how the sales play out, given some of these customers we know have plenty of material on hand. I'd say that'll be one of our challenges to hitting our booked orders goal. 

 

Michael Palumbos (43:05.678)

Got it. Any other pain points, frustrations that you, know, if you wake up at three o'clock, three a.m., what are you thinking about? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (43:16.43)

You know, I think you're seeing it more and more in the news, cybersecurity. We've, it's hard to compare yourself to other companies our size. I'd like to think we're further along than others. But at the end of the day, we're a small business. We've got 60 employees and you know, to really 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (43:42.008)

secure your network and your IT environment is expensive. And it's also when you're selling into the defense base requirement. that's a challenge for us. And then the other is the business has been around for a while, which means we have some aging equipment. And so making sure that we're staying. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (44:10.286)

you know, we're staying current with, know, manufacturing processes, that some of our other competitors have with potentially bigger budgets is something I worry about. but you know, we find ways to, to make things work. those are some other things I'm thinking about that I wake up for. 

 

Michael Palumbos (44:34.606)

I appreciate it. 10 years from now, you're looking back. What are the dreams, the aspirations for you to say? You know that it all came together if. What has to happen? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (44:57.758)

know, there's no, there's no formula behind this. the biggest the company ever got was close to 50 million. so I want to hit a hundred. If we had a hundred million in revenue, in 10 years, I'll be pretty happy. 

 

Michael Palumbos (45:17.268)

Awesome. No, I appreciate you, Sharon. It's fun to be thinking about, you know, these things. A lot of times I feel that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (45:31.704)

especially as business starts to age, meaning we've been around for a while. It's thinking about, you know, making a giant leap, like 50 to 100 is a giant leap. And it's so much easier for people to say, you know, this is just what we've always done. This is where we are. This is where we fit into the world. I would tell you that this would be a really fun exercise to do with your leadership team to say, 

 

Michael Palumbos (46:01.984)

What would we have to do? 

 

Michael Palumbos (46:05.986)

Take the thinking caps off. What would have to be different in order for us to be double our revenue in 10 years? That is a really fun exercise to do with people and take the gloves off, take the, you know, we've always done it this way off and just get creative. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (46:27.534)

I'll do that. That sounds like a really fun offsite type activity. But you know, even on the, on the, is the way we do things or whatnot. You know, being a 25 million or $50 million company, you know, netting 10 to 15 % is a great spot to be for an owner. 

 

Michael Palumbos (46:48.014)

I never want to take anything away from anybody. Most people don't realize the tiny percentages of businesses that get over a million dollars of revenue. It's under 10 % or something crazy like that. And when you break that $10 million of revenue mark, I think you're into the 1 % range on over $10 million. 

 

Michael Palumbos (47:15.424)

at that point. congratulations, hands off. I was not taking anything away from it. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (47:21.582)

I 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (47:21.782)

didn't mean it as you were. was just pointing out that like, you know, that's the decision that, you know, people have to make is like, we want to be kind of a smaller organization that cash flows and makes, you know, the owner's money or do we want to shoot for the moon? I mean, that's still a conversation we're having even as a family right now. So it's, I think both of those are appropriate decisions. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (47:51.755)

of what you want. 

 

Michael Palumbos (47:53.73)

Yeah, and just like you said, in order to grow, it takes cash. And cash sucks growth. It's so much. So you will not cash flow probably for a while in a growth process to double over a 10-year period. But you have to make those determinations. Is it worth it? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (48:11.086)

Bye. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (48:17.048)

That's right. 

 

Michael Palumbos (48:22.922)

Let's talk about accountability real quick. You have a culture where there's trust and there's good communication. How do you build a culture of accountability? how has the company grown this culture of accountability? don't get people doing what they say they're gonna do, getting it done and knowing that you can rely upon people. How did that happen? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (48:51.894)

That's hard for me, honestly, because we do have a somewhat relaxed and friendly culture here that, you 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (49:05.122)

that doesn't always lend itself to the most accountable type of organization. And so that's actually something that, you know, I'm trying to figure out what's right for us at this time. You know, we have accountability because people come to work every day and generally want to do a good job. I don't believe anybody shows up and says, you know, I'm just here to get through the day or I'm here to mess something up or I'm here to miss a deadline. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (49:35.086)

Typically, someone doesn't do something when they said that we're going to do it by because of a reason, whether that was in their control or out of their control. Usually there's a reason. We're pretty accepting of those reasons. It's finding that balance between cutthroat accountability culture and nothing gets done type of culture. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:02.382)

And I would say that where you're at is more appropriate. I don't think I'm not saying cutthroat accountability. You get stuff done. You wouldn't be able to do what you're doing. So there is some accountability that's happening. And yeah, we don't always make everything. like, think it goes back to if I had to, just from our conversation, it's because we trust one another. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (50:13.388)

Yeah, we do. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:30.818)

The trust was probably so important that people know that everybody else's jobs is dependent on the job that I do inside of the business. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (50:39.308)

Yeah, no one wants to let their friend or family member down. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:42.734)

Michael Palumbos (50:43.596)

There might be a little bit of peer pressure even. It's peer pressure. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (50:48.448)

Absolutely. And on top of that, you know, we're a really customer focused company. so, so many of the, every function ends up supporting the customer, whether it's, you know, sales bringing it, bringing in the orders to supply chain, making sure the material is on time to quality, ensuring the customer is getting a good product. And our engineering team designing, you know, high performing, high tech filters. Everybody has the 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (51:16.022)

you know, has a hand in serving the customer. And, I think we do a good job of sharing that. And so, you know, it's not only accountability to our peers, but to the end user. actually a cool story this past weekend, I was at a, I was at a wedding and I don't know if you've been on our website or seen what our products look like, but, you know, they're tiny, they're pretty small. They're, you know, metal enclosures, electronics. there's, you know, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (51:44.59)

They're not that appealing to the eye. You know, we're not, we're not making the F-15. So I've been wondering how can I kind of try to tie what we do here to the bigger picture, which is providing a critical component to military communication systems. And this guy was talking to at a wedding, used to use radios designed by one of our biggest customers. And, you know, I was asking him. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (52:13.494)

those radios ever fail. And he's like, yeah, when comms fails, we have problems. And, you know, it just kind of really opened my eyes, even though I knew this, but hearing a soldier say that when comms goes down, we have problems. You know, that, that piece of equipment went down because of a component and it could be our component. And so, you know, really trying to like tie the narrative to, although it's a small component in a bigger system, it performs a 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (52:42.808)

critical function and knowing that you're accountable for that is another element that's really important to us and probably has a reason to do why we do do things. We get things done. 

 

Michael Palumbos (52:55.886)

No, I love it. I mean, you're echoing core purpose, you why do we exist beyond money? You know, you're out there protecting people, you know? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (53:09.134)

Johny Roumanidakis (53:12.097)

It doesn't always feel that way when you look at the components we're making, but at the end of the day, it takes everybody or every manufacturer that supports those bigger programs to do their part. 

 

Michael Palumbos (53:24.174)

Yeah. I've said it on this show before, but John F. Kennedy was walking around NASA, Kennedy Space, or before it was Kennedy Space Center, I guess, or maybe it was, and asking people, what do they do? And this person, I'm an engineer, and I'm a this, and I'm a that. And when he asked the janitor, what do you do? The custodian said, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. And at the end, know, and it's. 

 

Michael Palumbos (53:52.91)

And whether that's a true story or not a true story, I don't know. But at the end of the day, it really makes a lot of sense. That's what you want in your team. And that's what you were talking about is how do I make sure that everybody knows that every one of us matters in what we're doing here? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (54:09.806)

That's right. And speaking of the moon, we actually have a netcom filter on the moon. So my grandpa designed a filter that was on the Apollo space capsule that when like a light was basically emitted onto the surface of the moon, which is a little metallic, it was reflected and received by a filter as part of the landing mechanism to know how far it was from the surface. there was a soft landing. That's awesome. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (54:36.462)

It's pretty cool product. Probably one of our coolest products that we ever sold. 

 

Michael Palumbos (54:40.494)

that's wicked cool. I'm glad, so I'm super glad that I brought that up then. What, you know, as you think about your grandfather and I hope you get that, you know, this has been a kind of a tribute a little bit to him. He's done a remarkable job. What would you say are his founding 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (54:59.984)

That way it's cool 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:08.91)

know, foundational core values. If you had to boil them down... 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (55:15.564)

Man, that's a hard one. I think, I think about that a lot actually. and you know, don't think I have the perfect answer, but what, what comes to mind is, just doing what's right for other people or being a servant, I guess, is maybe like the, the most basic way I could, could say it. mean, he, he never. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (55:43.19)

You know, he was never thinking about himself. He was always thinking about his family or his friends or his colleagues. and he was always serving people, you know, for the last, I mean, as long as I've worked here. So for the last eight years about, didn't take a salary. Like not once, there were times where, you know, the company was in a, in a, in a difficult position. had to put money in. So, you know, he didn't do this. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (56:11.758)

you know, for the money he did it because he loved the people that he was doing it for and that he was able to serve them. And I think that's what it all came down to. 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:22.35)

It's amazing. I love that. Thank you for sharing. As you're distilling those things down, what was your grandfather's name? Angelo. you can do the, some people may not appreciate this, but it's WWAD. What would Angelo do? And it's so really important to remember, 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (56:31.755)

Angelo. 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:52.332)

the founder of a company and the spirit and everything that they brought to the table through all those years, when you can hang onto that for as long as you can, it just helps. It really does help to look back. I'm second generation and there are times when I have to go back and say, I get why dad did this now. I didn't get it. There was times when I didn't get it. And now it's like when you're- 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (57:21.07)

Really? 

 

Michael Palumbos (57:22.07)

You're in that seat and you're like, OK, that makes sense now. So. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (57:29.237)

I'm glad I had that experience really blessed to have been able to just learn from him and like you said, there were times where I would argue with him until I was blue in the face to save a dollar and now it's I get why we made the decisions we made at those times. 

 

Michael Palumbos (57:45.742)

That's great. If you're sitting on a panel, you've got third generations in the audience in front of you, and you're giving your advice to, what is Johnny's advice for working in a family business? What are you sharing with the audience? 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (58:05.326)

Johny Roumanidakis (58:07.437)

Johny Roumanidakis (58:09.742)

You know, I, uh, unfortunately, um, recently lost another family member that, uh, was my grandfather's cousin. And she used to always, um, although I was never a soccer player, he would always ask me, do you kick with your right foot or your left foot? Um, and I would, you know, he would ask all the younger children that you kick with your right foot or your left foot. And I would always respond that kick with my right foot. And he'd be like, no, you kick with both feet. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (58:38.542)

I always tried to understand what the principle he was trying to share there was, but it's that we do what we're comfortable doing. if you're comfortable kicking with your right foot, you kick with your right foot. But in a family business, sometimes you have to do things that you're not comfortable doing. And getting comfortable being uncomfortable is really important. So my advice would be to kick with both feet. 

 

Michael Palumbos (59:04.834)

I love it. I love it. Thank you. One more thing and then I'll let you go. Favorite book, business book. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (59:20.782)

So principles by Ray Dalio is just, there's so much, it's just an endless amount of information that I'm still trying to take in. So I think that will ultimately be my favorite business book long-term, although I've only gotten through it once. I think the more basic one that I really enjoy is traction. It's the entrepreneurial operating system. And although we don't necessarily 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (59:50.77)

I think my main takeaway from that is any system is better than no system. And so, you know, I like that book. think that I've taken a lot of good pieces of information from it. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:00:02.306)

Yeah, I think Gino did a really good job of distilling down what execution looks like and making sure that we're running a smooth system inside of the, you know, inside of the business. Very, very good. Johnny Ramonadakis, thank you, thank you, thank you. Netcom, you guys are available. What is your website? 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:00:34.702)

So if anybody needs some RF filters, Johnny's the guy, definitely check them out. Check them out. I just want to say thank you. This has been great. I love talking about this. I never know where they're going to go and what the conversations look like. But man, I would have loved to have spent some time with Angelo and you together and just very special. I'm glad that you got a lot of years working with them and learning from them. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (01:00:58.446)

and what we're 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:01:04.078)

That's just awesome. 

 

Johny Roumanidakis (01:01:05.986)

Well, thanks Michael. This was a great opportunity. I really appreciate you having me on the show. I got to be honest, I was a little nervous when I talked to Christina and there was no preparation and I had no clue where this conversation was going to go, but I'm really excited about where it went and just can't thank you enough for the opportunity. Thank you. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:01:25.57)

Thank you. Well, thank you everybody for listening to another episode of the Family Biz Show. I am your host, Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And we cannot wait to have you listening on the next episode of the Family Biz Show. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.