Block‑and‑Tackle Innovation for Family Companies

Block‑and‑Tackle Innovation for Family Companies

This episode features Jordan Fuller of the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership in a conversation about where multi‑generation family businesses and early‑stage startups actually overlap. Jordan explains how programs like the FIRE Accelerator bring together capital, mentorship, curriculum, and networks, and how established family firms can use those same tools to spin out new product lines, test succession‑related ventures, and think more entrepreneurially without abandoning their core. The discussion explores practical startup methods such as customer discovery, short time‑boxed experiments, and focused sprints and applies them to legacy companies that want to modernize operations, strengthen customer relationships, and avoid being outpaced by newer competitors. Jordan also describes Erie’s “no wrong door” economic‑development approach, the Diverse Business Scholarship Program, and why partnering with founders, accelerators, and beehive resources is just as relevant to a fourth‑generation manufacturer as to a first‑time entrepreneur. For family business owners and next‑generation leaders, this episode offers a roadmap for combining the stability of legacy with the energy of a startup, and for telling a business story that highlights not just revenue, but identity, continuity, and commitment to place.

Supported Employment in Action: Barber National Institute & Port Erie Plastics

This episode features a conversation with Michelle Izbicki of the Barber National Institute and Heather Evans of Port Erie Plastics about how Supported Employment creates meaningful work for individuals with disabilities while solving real workforce needs for local employers. The discussion unpacks Pennsylvania’s “employment first” commitment and how Barber’s Supported Employment Program turns that vision into day‑to‑day practice, through community‑based assessments, tailored job development, and on‑the‑job coaching. Michelle explains how job coaches walk alongside participants through interviews, the first 40 hours on the job, and any new tasks that arise later, with a goal of fading support as independence grows. Heather shares how Port Erie Plastics was introduced to the program at a hiring event, hosted on‑site “shadow days,” hired two employees through the program, and saw one progress from part‑time to full‑time and into a leadership role, strengthening culture and proving that “everybody belongs here.” For Erie‑area family and closely held businesses, the episode highlights Supported Employment as an untapped talent pipeline, a built‑in training partner, and a practical way to align operations with community values.

Filling the Gaps: Family, Manufacturing, and AI with Kevin DiGilio

This episode features a conversation with Kevin DiGilio, founder of KMD Technology Solutions and spin‑off AIBI, on how a highly technical software company unexpectedly grew into a multigenerational family enterprise. Kevin traces the journey from a single project‑management platform built during an internship at LORD Corporation to a secure system now supporting hundreds of complex engineering and manufacturing projects around the world. The discussion explores how his daughter Courtney became the platform’s lead tester, trainer, and de facto product owner, and how his son Nathan joined during COVID through a programming co‑op, helping prove that powerful AI models can safely run on local hardware inside regulated facilities. Together, they now use structured data systems and air‑gapped AI to clean decades of “messy” manufacturing information, automate documentation, and surface insights engineers never had time to find. For family businesses and manufacturers alike, the episode illustrates what it looks like when next‑generation talent brings AI, automation, and fresh thinking into an existing enterprise while a founder focuses on mentoring, setting guardrails, and making the company flexible enough for them to take it in new directions.

NAVI-gating A New Era W/ James C. Bly

In this episode, we sit down with James Bly, Managing Director of Family Enterprise Business Services at EY, to talk about what the next 40–50 years will look like for family business heirs. James explains why the post‑World War II era of globalization and efficiency effectively ended early with COVID‑19 and how we’ve entered a new “S‑curve” defined by de‑globalization, geopolitical fragmentation, rapid digital change, and demographic shifts. We dig into what he calls a NAVI world, nonlinear, accelerated, volatile, and interconnected and why owners can’t simply train the next generation for the business as it exists today. James walks through his “four quadrants” of positioning, 11 core performance factors, and the 10 exponential technologies (from AI and quantum computing to biotech, robotics, and renewables) that will reshape business models in the coming decades. If you’re thinking about long‑term succession, board and owner governance, or how to give heirs the strategic literacy to steward your enterprise into the next S‑curve, this conversation is a roadmap for where to start.

Growing Deep Roots: Three Generations at Ron Jones Hardwood

In this episode, we sit down with Steve and Nate Jones of Ron Jones Hardwood, a multi‑generation hardwood lumber company rooted in northwestern Pennsylvania. Steve shares how his father Ron launched the business in 1983, built a reputation strong enough to put his own name on the door, and gradually transitioned ownership to Steve over many years as the industry, product mix, and markets shifted again and again. Nate joins to tell the third‑generation story: from childhood trips to the yard, to a formative journey to China at 18 where a customer pulled him aside and sold him on the future of hardwoods, to graduating into COVID, going through lumber‑grading school in Memphis, and being pulled into sales when demand exploded. Along the way, we talk about what it means to grow up watching your dad sell, work side‑by‑side in the office, and still have a grandfather who calls regularly just to ask, “What’s going on in the industry today?” If you’re in a family business, this conversation is a great window into generational mirroring—how Ron mentored Steve, how Steve now mentors Nate and his brother Isaac, and how each generation is trying to honor the name on the sign without locking the next one into something they don’t love.