Jeremy Galten is the Founder and Product Development Executive Consultant at The Galten Group. He is a development leader with over 25 years of experience and success in the engineering and product design industry. He began his career as an intern for Acuson Corporation (now Siemens Ultrasound), where he gained valuable knowledge in manufacturing products and designs for different medical mechanisms. Through his career as the Senior Mechanical Engineer and Project Manager for Fitch Inc., and the Vice President of Product for CamelBak, Jeremy scaled his skills as a leader by managing and performing high-level mechanical engineering functions.
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Are you new to the design and engineering industry, but you’re unsure how to approach the creative design workplace? If you’re looking for a better way to get ahead of the competition, Jeremy Galten says you should display your values beyond your class schedule: what makes you unique and worthwhile.
Product development and scaling development teams are the heart of Jeremy’s work. With years of experience in the engineering realm, he has helped companies solve innovative problems and grow their business. According to Jeremy, the first step to effectively creating products is cultivating an environment of accountability, compatibility, and fun.
In this episode of Makers of Our Future, Bill Sharratt of Darcoid sits down with Jeremy Galten, Founder and Product Development Executive Consultant at The Galten Group, to discuss how to humbly scale a career in the engineering and design industry. Jeremy talks about the lessons he learned during his internship program, creating a culture of productivity and responsibility, and the importance of having an appetite for knowledge.
This show is brought to you by Darcoid. We're building this podcast as a searchable store of knowledge, something you can reference if you’re new to seal design. And if you’re starting out on your career in engineering you’ll learn what others have done to achieve career success. Learn more at www.darcoid.com.
Intro 0:03
Behind every great product is a great seal. Join us at the crossroads of preeminence, product design, engineering, seal mastery, and supply chain excellence, and to learn from the makers of our future.
Bill Sharratt 0:21
Hi, my name is Bill Sharratt. And I'm co host of the Makers of our Future podcast, where we talk with leaders in product design and manufacturing and highlight the role of the seal industry behind that product success. The show is brought to you by Darcoid, the steel industry is changing and not always for the better. It's consolidating, tribal knowledge is retiring out faster than it's being replaced. Design Engineers specifying seals often struggle to get the support they need to know God's doing something about that. We're building this podcast as a searchable store of wisdom. So you our audience, can continue to stand on the shoulders of giants can learn more at darcoid.com So today I'm talking to a design engineering leader and innovator who has impacted multiple industries and markets, someone whose success has depended on the best performing most reliable seals welcome Jeremy Galten to make us of our future. Jeremy started as a contributing engineer with a leader in medical ultrasound equipment, went on to become vice president at CamelBak, the inventor of the personal hydration systems, and then led engineering at an innovator in adaptive prosthetics. And now, he runs his own consultancy company, The Galten Group, Jeremy, it's, it's great to have you here. Thanks for joining us today.
Jeremy Galten 1:55
Thanks for having me. You're welcome. So let's get to know you.
Bill Sharratt 2:02
Where do you come from? Where'd you grow up?
Jeremy Galten 2:05
I grew up in San Francisco, California, and went to college at the University of California Davis and haven't strayed too far from my hometown of San Francisco. And then moved, eventually migrated down to the Silicon Valley for many years, and then has slowly migrated north up to Sonoma County. So not a very far radius from San Francisco.
Bill Sharratt 2:30
Yeah, but right where the action has been at for the last 20 or so years, right? Like planning. So how did you get your start? Your first job was an engineer Accu song. Yes.
Jeremy Galten 2:40
Yes. So I was graduating I majored in UC Davis, I definitely double majored in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering. At one point in my career, and my least student career, I was thought about designing airplanes. But got the opportunity to actually be an intern of my junior senior year at a medical company at DocuSign, in Mountain View, and had a great experience doing that. And was a little bit shocked that I got hired. Because I certainly wasn't the smartest in my class wasn't, wasn't the least deceiving. But I was kind of right in the middle of the pack. I remember asking my intern manager at the end of my internship, why he hired me. And he said I wanted to, I wanted somebody who I could spend eight hours a day with, and someone who actually worked during college to help support themselves. And so those are things that did and not necessarily the highest GPA or, or the someone who's involved in the most things, those things are not unimportant. But he wanted something that he didn't mind spending time with
Bill Sharratt 3:44
good character and personality. Yeah, got it.
Jeremy Galten 3:47
And that turned into a position opened up in their advanced development team, and they had a position for a new college grad and interviewed, the intercept helped get the job.
Bill Sharratt 3:59
So the internship had kind of prepared you for what to expect and the culture. And so that was about an easy introduction to a new company, I think as one could expect, right? Right. It
Jeremy Galten 4:11
was It helped me be kind of a known quantity. So they understood, you know, what I was capable of what I was not capable of, and any new college graduate is not going to know much about the business, but they want to make sure they find someone that's clickable, someone who's experienced the culture and, again, someone that they don't mind spending a lot of their time with, that can not only be productive, but also be
Bill Sharratt 4:36
enjoyable. Excellent, excellent. So then you moved on to the Fitch design consultancy group. How's that? Yeah
Jeremy Galten 4:45
I did. I was a mechanical engineer, design engineer for Fitch, which was a worldwide consulting firm. I was out of the San Francisco office, and like most consulting firms we worked on everything from boom cranes to printers to cell phones to air fresheners to. So you name anything that walks through the door. So it was a tremendous experience to work on a variety of different consumer products from startups to established companies from, you know, Sun Microsystems, to Microsoft to Hewlett Packard. And so it was a really rich experience, to be able to get exposure to all those different industries.
Bill Sharratt 5:22
And that's one of the things I love about the seal industry. That's, you know, seals are and everything. So you get exposed to so many applications. Did that experience give you a sense of where you wanted to go next?
Jeremy Galten 5:34
I did, I think I certainly, you know, having worked on a medical product, I really did right out of right out of college, I really did enjoy that. And the fact that it was, you know, doing good by the world. And then working at Fitch, I enjoy working on physical physical products that people actually use that that, that people can enjoy or or not enjoy that good a job that you did, but I enjoy making things people interact with, because I think to me, it's an ultimate test of Did you do your homework? And are you in touch? And are you able to create a product that not only a company can conjure up and design and, and sell for a profit, but people see enough value in it that they're actually willing to spend their hard earned money on it and enjoy it. So that part of it was really appealing to me? Excellent.
Bill Sharratt 6:28
That kind of leads us to CamelBak, but I'm gonna pull you back to Fitch because I understand you were you're running the intern program there for a while? Yes,
Jeremy Galten 6:37
I did. We started, we started an intern program there. For a couple reasons. One, you know, in terms of very helpful, there's a lot of a lot of as you as you know, there's a lot of things that need to happen and the things to get done. And there's really a variety of reasons we do it. One is just to get stuff done to is, you know, it's kind of our way of giving back to, you know, the experience that I had as an intern, to give good people a glimpse into kind of the industry. And you know what it's about, maybe even help them hone what interested in some cases that may not be what the internet about maybe what some cases it is. And it also kind of quite selfishly gave us a good glimpse into like, who the good people coming out of college these days. And as you start to look at the build your program with talented young coachable people, like getting some time with them and see how they work. It's kind of on a trial basis for both sides is really valuable.
Bill Sharratt 7:41
So I think you kind of answered my next question, but I'll ask it anyway. So for tomorrow's budding engineers, kids in school, future interns who are watching today, how can they make the most of those interning opportunities? Well,
Jeremy Galten 8:00
the first thing is probably find them, you know, be diligent and looking and you know, target some industries, if there's some things that really interests you. Go ahead and reach out. And and speaking from personal experience, during that application process, you'll figure out ways that, that you can somehow have your resume or, you know, rise to the top. And that's not by saying you have the greatest GPA, you know, talking from a voice of experience. It's not because you're the smartest, but what makes you what makes you valuable to someone like that. It could be things that you've done, whether their jobs or not, I always find especially on an interim resume, everybody has the same classes. So you can list your whole thing, which is not unimportant. But what are the things that interests you? So I actually want to interview interns, I spent a lot of time on their hobbies. And why that interests them and you know, so making sure you what is it that makes you the person that you are, whether it's volunteer work, I mean, I have people that are that work on cars, that are woodworkers that are kitesurfers, people that forage for mushrooms. So what it does a couple of things. One, it tells a little bit about who you are, and also give someone like me who may be interviewing you something to dive in on say, why does that interest you? And that gives really that person a glimpse into, you know, who am I going to be spending the next, you know, 23456 months with and do I want to do that, but I think that would be important. Make sure to put those things down that makes them uniquely you.
Bill Sharratt 9:32
That's excellent advice. That's really good. Thank you. Let's move on to CamelBak. So you started there as engineering manager moved up to Director of Design and Engineering before the big step up to Vice President of Product as an amazing career progression about 16 years longtime with a company.
Jeremy Galten 9:52
Yeah, it was. I always say it was kind of like working at kind of four different companies for a variety of reasons, both from a product line. standpoint as well as even on ownership standpoint. So in that time, we went through three ownership changes. And adapting to the style of whether it's a financial owner or a strategic owner, depending on who we were. So it was it was a, it was a tremendously rich experience to be able to do that was really fortunate to be a part of it. Some of its dumb luck, some of its hard work, but I'm very thankful for it
Bill Sharratt 10:25
So imagine, CamelBak had a compelling culture as well as a product. How, how do you retain the culture, the winning culture, when you go through so many changes in, in ownership, this is a tricky situation. It can be
Jeremy Galten 10:42
and for the most part, we were pretty fortunate. And there's a reason why there's a variety of reasons why companies buy companies, it's for their product, it's for their, you know, market share, it's for their access to something, we were fortunate that people, you know, owners for us really wanted to buy us for, obviously, the product that we have, but we're also very effective and letting them know that listen, great products come out of great cultures, and a lot of cases, and so if you're doing well, and then they don't want to come in and like if the engines running, well, don't fix it. And so a big part of that was creating a culture internally of certainly of creating great products and doing so efficiently and doing so profitably. But also, in order to do that, you have to create a culture of accountability to create a culture of fun to make sure that you're you're kind of addressing the whole person, not just to what their function is, but them as human beings. And how do you create an environment where there's certainly a need for to get stuff done. But boy, if we can figure out a way to do that, that makes it fun and some place that they want to work as opposed to a place they have to work? To me, I think that's kind of the key.
Bill Sharratt 12:07
No, I think that just shows kind of your character and passion kind of transcending above the doing the day job of the engineering and setting the tone. And that's,
Jeremy Galten 12:18
that's compelling. And some of it's a little bit selfish Bill, because that's the way I like to work. And those are the bosses that I like to have. So
Bill Sharratt 12:28
I think it's important. Excellent. So you joined in 2001. I mean, by then the CamelBak backpack hydration pack was it was like well established in the market and camel backs, the one and only have very small competition at that time. What was left to engineer at that point, I mean, were you looking at incremental performance improvement? Cost Reduction, manufacturing efficiencies? Where's the engineering at that time?
Jeremy Galten 13:01
Well, all of the above, I think, yeah. How hard? Could it be? Right? It's just a bag with a straw in it. So how hard can that be? But for anybody that has the has had the opportunity to try to hold back water? Or any any fluid? It's really hard. But yeah, what what were the opportunities were the opportunities where, you know, there was obviously always ways to make the product better. Either just working as a better hydration system, working better for whatever activity that you're doing, whether it's, you know, on the trail, or on the job, or on the battlefield, there were a variety of different needs, and requirements that those users had to be able to do the thing that's most essential, which is basically to drink water, you know, whether it's to perform better. retain more cognitive awareness. And so we spent a tremendous amount of time trying to improve. You know, we knew it wasn't perfect. We had we had laws that we knew we needed to fix. And also how do we take that, that kind of hydration leader status and then broaden that across a variety of categories. And so we ended up adding everything from bringing that down all the way to water bottles and a variety of different materials, water treatment, nutritional supplements. So people, trusted CamelBak, hydration innovator. So how do we take that some of that brand equity and kind of peanut butter that across a different category, because I knew if it came from us it was going to be quality. It was going to be back for life. And so that was an expectation they had and that was the responsibility that we took very seriously that if we entered a new category, that we were gonna do it the best way we could. But there were some hard lessons along the way and probably had to hide sgpa in the school of hard knocks, as we all do.
Bill Sharratt 15:05
It's interesting. I mean, you've got a product that is designed for athletes, outdoor enthusiasts, cyclists, right. And then you mentioned battlefield performance, that's got to be ruggedized. So that it can be, I don't know, driven over by a vehicle or something. How do you how do you get that balance? So do you at that point having totally two different product streams?
Jeremy Galten 15:29
Yeah, you know, at that point, you know, depending on the build, we ended up having two different product lines. But, you know, there are a lot of soldiers out there that are mountain bikers. And there's no, there's a lot of hikers that were, you know, that are veterans. And so one of the advantages that we had was a lot of the people that use them in the military early on, were people that actually had their first experience with CamelBak in the recreational side of the business. So they just thought is a better way to be able to drink water. But, but yes, the military has a higher standard for ruggedness. And so we did everything from like you said, drive them over with trucks, we dropped the reservoirs out of helicopters. So we, we also made hydration systems that were chemical and biological resistant. So we actually had to go through create a product line that was able to provide hydration to an operator that was in a chem suit, which is not a pleasant environment, and typically high heat, high stress. And up until CamelBak came along with their Chem bio line, they had no good way of being able to hydrate and so it limited their ability to stay in the suit for long periods of time, certainly limited their ability to operate in that suit for long periods of time. And so that is, just couldn't be more different than, you know, someone who's going out for a morning walk. So very different requirements require different products. However, the the ability to deliver and their competence and it doesn't change.
Bill Sharratt 17:05
Fantastic. So you were busy, I can see. So at that point, you know, you move to Director of Design and Engineering. So you move from executing to a a vision to maybe setting the vision for the product, and you're talking about marketing and what the market wants and all of that, that's really going to broaden your your scope of professional tasks, if you will, did you find any conflict between design vision and knowing how it was put together to keep you in a certain path? Or were you able to separate those, set the vision and then figuring out how to make it
Jeremy Galten 17:45
you know, any any transition like that is going to be have its challenges. And especially now managing a design team. And it's the old adage that, you know, designers and engineers don't always get along. But I think creating a culture where any good, I believe any good engineer has a little bit designer and a good designer has a little bit of engineering. And so knowing and knowing that everybody's on the same team, so I think yeah, I had to adapt a little bit. And knowing that it is a continuum. So whatever we create up here it goes, you know, everything kind of flows, quote, unquote, downhill. And so, we all are committed to each other to try to make something that is going to get us to the finish line in the best possible way. So my so I had to develop a sensitivity towards other I had plenty of sensitivity towards engineering, right, because that was my that was my first love. But I really developed a kind of love for the whole process and how everything kind of fits together. And that any since that I made that transition that has kind of been something that I've done, and then really enjoyed because I want to have good mentors that allowed me to kind of see that and watch them orchestrate that. But also, I've seen the fruits of success when that thing goes when that process really goes smoothly. So it was a it was an adjustment but one i i enjoyed.
Bill Sharratt 19:25
Excellent. Good challenge. So you mentioned earlier, water's not always as simple as you think. CamelBak is all about storing water and making it available when needed. And so if there's a fluid, if there's going to be a seal, we know that behind every great product visit, it's got to have a great seal. That's where Dr. Wood came in. That's where we met you for the first time. Well, where were the seals and did you ever run into any seal problems?
Jeremy Galten 19:56
Yeah, no, we did. I mean, it was it was Something we're constantly battling to, you know, in all different situations, maybe some situations that early on, we didn't identify during the lab or doing limited user testing. You know, consumers will always take your product and do things that you never intended with. And so it's then your responsibility to then create product now that will allow them to do what they want to do. Right. So not restrict them. And so we had a few different legacy designs that we had that we were struggling with. We had patchwork fixes. In a in a particular steel, the, you know, if it's not stealing, what do you do you just pack more material in there? And, you know, that should work, right? How hard can that be. And so a lot of cases, and then, but that's what we did, and but that had the effect that all sudden, now you can open and close our reservoir and still get a good seal. In fact, somebody there were more than a few people that hadn't invented wrenches that they would use to be able to remove the cap off the reservoir, because if you tighten it tight enough, we had done a comparatively poor job at seal design, that you actually couldn't get it off using regular hand strength, and you needed some leverage. So that was a real big wake up call for us that, yeah, we had a reservoir that sealed under most circumstances, but it wasn't a good product. So we, you know, explored options internally. And then but also decided to look outside to try to get some real expertise, because there was a lot of other things that we were doing. And it was, it was clear, we didn't have a good grasp on what was happening and the physics and dynamics of what's actually going on there. And it was a, it was a large opening. So we figure we needed to maybe look outside to see if we could maybe get some technical expertise there.
Bill Sharratt 21:58
And that's what we did. So that's how you found Darcoid. How did how did that progression go? I know, some I wasn't with the company at the time. I know some of the law going back that was a now is a very aggressive development cycle and iteration process.
Jeremy Galten 22:17
Yes, it was we actually so you know, we, we had gone to actually explored using Parker to begin with. And the reason is because honestly, we use a lot of their literature. And you know, that's how we tried to educate ourselves as to, you know, how to how to seal design, design seals. But with all of that expertise comes a little bit of inertia, that based on our timeline, we needed to move quickly. And so Parker had recommended going to Darcoid, because of those two, those two things, we needed to move quickly. And we needed the technical technical expertise and kind of that personal attention because everybody's application is unique. And ours was particularly unique, because we had a very flexible and dynamic system. And we we had difficulty kind of managing that. So that's what brought us to Darkwave.
Bill Sharratt 23:12
Excellent, and so moved from an O ring to a quite a custom profile. And it was, I believe, had a friction modification as well, to drive towards that low opening force that you needed.
Jeremy Galten 23:28
Yeah, the requirements were we obviously had to steel under under, you know, a certain pressure range. We had existing parts that we wanted to make to that, you know, hindsight were not ideal. And so we had some legacy tools that we needed to we had some flexibility with, but not a whole lot. So we not only want to see you, but yeah, we wanted to solve the real problem that we were having is that, you know, once people closed it, they couldn't open it up. And so how do we, how do we and our solution to that was taking five pounds of O ring and stuffing it into a two pound space. And that's our problem. So introducing, actually in Darkwave introduced us to some low friction options that could help with that. So and also a more flexible steel that was a little bit counterintuitive to us, because it was very flexible, it was very dynamic allowed the reservoir, because it's a soft system, to be able to do the things that it needs to do and conform to the body and things like that, but still give us the steel pressure that we needed to under the conditions we needed to do. It was really eye opening for us.
Bill Sharratt 24:35
Fantastic. So it's not unusual in our experience working with customers who are pushing to get new performance across new performance boundaries. We often go from a simple belt and braces kind of seal to something that's much more customized to the specific application. So that's not at all unusual. It gets into a commercial thing often when you supplying see goes into a big, high volume production line like camel backs. Are you ever tempted to cut out the middleman to go direct back to Parker and sauce directly once the solution was in place?
Jeremy Galten 25:14
You know, any business is going to look at all the options. But what we found was that the technical expertise that we were able to get and the personal attention that we're able to get and actually get engineers and, and the attention I think we needed, we were a high maintenance customer. And I'm going to stop short of MIDI. But we required a lot of touch time. And that's something Darkwing car provide. And, you know, from our previous experience, we just know, knew that the we certainly got all the textbook Darkwave got all that technical expertise they needed from Parker, but we couldn't get the attention that we need. And so yeah, absolutely. We explored that. But we ended up kind of coming back to dark void because of the value proposition that they they provided.
Bill Sharratt 26:05
Oh, we thank you. Thank you for that. And it has been a tremendous relationship. So and I know you're, you're a part of that. So thank you, Jeremy. Let's jump on to limb innovations. Adaptive prosthetics. How did you adapt from going from one specialty field to another?
Jeremy Galten 26:25
Oh, that was that was an interesting one. It was. I had I had this as a company I had been on the board of advisors for they were a startup in San Francisco that was creating modular and adaptable prosthetics for lower limb amputees, really addressing the the prosthetic market which which historically has kind of light outside the paddock kind of a, it's more of a mom and pop stops. And so the challenge was, is there was no, there, there aren't a lot of opportunities for amputees to get consistency of care, it exists outside the medical health record. And so primary cares, and surgeons, in some cases get very little visibility into prosthetic care after the initial treatment after initial surgery. And so this was an opportunity to create a, what we call a semi custom product, you know, semi modular, semi custom product that really focuses on user comfort, because the vast majority of AAPT certainly in the US have other comorbidities associated with the vascular diseases and things like that, and are typically on a lot of medications and and prosthetics rely on a good fit in order to be comfortable and regain mobility. But the problem with a lot of the patients is that, you know, they may gain or lose weight, due to just primarily due to medications or things like that. And so they're their prosthetics actually weren't comfortable. And of course, if the spiral, right, if the prosthetic not comfortable is not going to wear it, they're not going to wear it, they're not gonna be mobile without mobile than then their health declines. And so you get into this spiral for a patient. That is something that just wasn't addressed in the current prosthetic market. And so jumping into that was what that had both not only in house design, but also in house manufacturing, using actual patient data to be able to customize the fit, but do so using modular components to help change all of them was really really okay.
Bill Sharratt 28:43
I can imagine you bought a lot of experience from the softgoods side of things with CamelBak, comfort, ergonomics, where you were you hands on in the role of way you leading and directing the team.
Jeremy Galten 28:58
That was there was a little bit of both. It was a small team and but very capable, very motivated, passionate group. So a lot of it was kind of hands on. There's I did bring a lot to the table in terms of things that I have done, but I learned just as much from the people that I worked with, you know, everything from, you know, prostatitis to orthopedic surgeons to cardiovascular surgeons to things like that. So even though I had there's a lot that I had done and was happy to bring to the table and maybe cheat a little bit, I did just as much learning and some of that required some hands on so just out of interest, if anything was good.
Bill Sharratt 29:43
Excellent. Excellent. So then you moved to where you're at now, The Galten Group. What's I imagine you have your pick of projects? How is it to be on your own, running your own consulting gig?
Jeremy Galten 29:59
It was It's certainly it's certainly a change. After I finished that limb, I, this was pre COVID. So it was, but I was I was, the commuting was just soul sucking for me. So I just wanted to do something that maybe allowed me to maybe be on the road less and and that was able to tap into the network. And kind of figure out, you know, I knew what I was good at. And but how do you, you know, how do you bring that to the kind of a new company. So it was a, it was a big step for me and one I haven't regretted, and I'm here almost four years in. And really, the thing I really enjoy about is one meeting really talented and interesting people and being able to bring something to the table that makes their business better. But also, the variety of things that I get to see is really the appeal for me everything from medical products, to outdoor furniture, to wearables to you name it, this a lot of so every day is different, for better for worse.
Bill Sharratt 31:10
Excellent, excellent. Same principles apply to any project, but
Jeremy Galten 31:14
the same principles and the same principles apply. Excellent. So
Bill Sharratt 31:18
I'm going to circle back to the beginning, where you got your start at Davis, and back to sales, what level of seal knowledge did you have when you left school?
Jeremy Galten 31:31
And you graduated? Um, see, I'm gonna add the numbers here. Zero. That's right. I had 00 coming out of college. And, and Google wasn't around them. So I'm probably dating myself. But no, I had very little knowledge about the mechanics of seals.
Bill Sharratt 31:53
Okay, so how does a student get an out of school developer good working knowledge of seals? Is it trial and error, enough leaks and explosions that they get the hang of it or reading up on manuals and calculators? outsource it? What's the what's the past?
Jeremy Galten 32:11
Well, I think it's a variety of things. And I think all of those things that you said, apply that it's just sometimes doing the right thing by doing the wrong things. But I think now with the ability to be able to reach out and unless you're working for a steel company, probably your the product that you're working on is its essential function is not to be housing for seals, but it's to do something else, equally as important. So that doesn't mean you have to be an expert in seals. And so I found early on it was, you know, trial and error and, and you get your hand slapped enough, maybe maybe I should call an expert. And to be curious about looking it up and understanding the fundamentals. But every application is different. And so now more than ever, I tried to find someone who actually knows what they're doing. Make me look smart. Make me do it right the first time. And kind of go from there. So it was a progression, no doubt. Excellent. I'm, I'll put you on the spot. And
Bill Sharratt 33:16
I think you kind of answered it with your CamelBak stories. But what's the most important concept a graduating mechanical engineer should know about seals.
Jeremy Galten 33:26
The most important concept is you don't know what you don't know. There are so there are so many things that I didn't understand about seals from pressure to materials to surface finish to gland designed to tolerancing compatibility, that there's just a tremendous amount there. And not only to the most important concept is sometimes it's easy to steal once. Okay, that's all you have to do it, you have to do it once. It's great. If you have to steal 10,000 Or a million times. That's where the expertise really comes into play. And I didn't have any really any appreciation for that, that Oh, I got to work on the lab bench, you know, so we're done. And what I, early on what I didn't account for is not every product is made the same. And so how do you account for that? How do you make sure that you are creating sufficiency across your distribution of product that you are gonna get whether you specify it or not long term, and so making sure the Date field works day one, and a seal that works on day 1000 I think is the thing that is you really got to pay attention to.
Bill Sharratt 34:46
You touched on a lot of things that bring new customers to our door when they are learning the hard way so loud and clear on that one Jeremy so nearly got my final question coming up. I know we were running out of time. But a bonus question. If you're up for it, what's the best? What's the biggest lesson that you learned personally or professionally? Um,
Jeremy Galten 35:21
so many probably, I would say, you know, relevant to kind of this discussion, I think as a candidate, you know, you come out of college and be a secure all that you've learned a lot, you know, a lot, who were probably pretty smart when you went in probably smart, you know, one of the smarter ones in your class, and then you come out thinking that you're just a smart and then you. And that continues for a while. And I think the thing that I learned is that it's very easy to fall into the trap of the not invented here syndrome, where if I didn't design it, it's not good enough, or if I didn't come up with it, or it's not my idea, then it must be bad. And this affects young engineers, and experienced engineers as well. And the one thing I learned is that I can't, I can't necessarily be an expert in everything. And I had a great one of my favorite managers was my manager, rep manager, right out of college, they burst at axon. And he said, Listen, 80% of engineering is knowing where to look. And what that meant was that I don't need you to be expert in everything, necessarily. But what I need you to do is know where to find the experts. And so that kind of gave me you know, did I listen to it to begin with, of course, not. I was young and stupid. But I still remember it. And there are a lot of things, you know, a lot of little things like that. And the beautiful part about it. He wasn't an engineer. He was the best engineer I've ever met. But he was not a degreed engineer. And so there's a lot of things that he said that in particular, that stuck with me to that, never let pride get in the way of delivering the best thing you can deliver. And if that means calling in an expert, or asking a colleague, or listening to a different opinion, and truly considering it, then that's what that's what that's what it takes. And so I think that's
Bill Sharratt 37:20
my perfect edit. No way.
Jeremy Galten 37:23
But do I think about it a lot. Absolutely. And a lot of times, it's kind of saved my bacon.
Bill Sharratt 37:29
So that's kind of the biggest lesson. You put that on your on your notice board, right? Never let pride get in the way that keeps it humble. Right. That's excellent. Thank you. All right. Final question, Jeremy. So, from my perspective, in the seal industry, I know that we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. Pretend you're an award ceremony year at the Oscars, the end, the aim is and yet, you've been presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. for everything you've done up until this point. You're up to the mic. The lights are on. Who do you think we will the colleagues, friends, mentors, peers? Who would you acknowledge
Jeremy Galten 38:22
while I started with everybody, because I you know, regardless of my working relationship with people, I always, I'm a, I love to study people. And I enjoy that. But I think there's a variety of them. I think, you know, going early back in my career, Dave Burgess, who's passed away, was probably had a huge influence on me just from a
Bill Sharratt 38:48
an approach to creative design.
Jeremy Galten 38:54
But, you know, I've worked with a lot of engineers and designers that have influenced me, some I've didn't get along with. But as time went on, I realized they were probably pushing me to be better than I wanted to be. And I was just too stubborn to see it. And then probably on the back end, you know, Sally McCoy, who was my CEO at CamelBak, and continues to be a great friend and mentor to me. She was she was very special to me and to a lot of people. So, you know, when you not that I not that I have the book end of my other of my career on the back end. But, you know, those two for me represented kind of the parts of the career that grew the most because of their influence. And so if I had, like, if I could get two awards to share and not give one to everybody, then those would be the students.
Bill Sharratt 39:49
Thank you, Jeremy. So we've been talking to Jeremy golden principle at The Galten Group. Before we go Jeremy, do Is there anything you need people to know about the golden rule? groups that we haven't talked about how can they contact you?
Jeremy Galten 40:03
Sure. So thegaltengroup.com Feel free to reach out Jeremy@thegaltengroup.com is probably the best email and no, I think you've covered it pretty well as
Bill Sharratt 40:17
Super, thank you. can't thank you enough for your time today, Jeremy. I do appreciate it. I really enjoyed getting to know you better. Thank you. And thanks for watching. See you next time on the Makers of our Future podcast.
Intro 40:32
Thanks for listening to the Makers of our Future podcast. Behind every great product is a great seal. Learn more about how we can help at www.darcoid.com That's darcoid.com. The best seal on time zero defects, Darcoid.
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