Before the holidays, we sat down with Keith Gausmann, one of the founders of Blur, to talk about finishing the year strong, synthesizing what he learned last year, and goal setting for the new year.

A note from the editor: We realized about twenty minutes into recording that we hadn’t done Keith’s intro. With some audio magic, we moved this little sound clip to the beginning. Typically I wouldn’t point this out, but it encapsulates almost too-perfectly one of the themes of this episode: adapt and keep moving forward.

 

Julia

We haven’t actually said who you are yet.

Britt

Yeah, we need you to actually introduce yourself. That’s a good point. 

Keith

My name is Keith Gausmann, I’m one of the partners here. I help run the business, I help run a project or two, and every now and then I do a little mechanical engineering, which I still like to do. Only every now and then, though. 

Britt

Why don’t you tell us also just a little background on Blur and how it got started.

Keith

So Blur started in 2015. There were four of us who started this company: myself, Scott Liddle, Nathan Luck and Jeff Rosino. We were all part of the engineering team at a local start-up company here in Raleigh called TearScience, which was sold eventually to J&J in 2018. We all worked there together for somewhere in the eight year range. We started this off as just the four of us, and over the last eight years we’ve grown into over 50 people. 

We do pretty much everything you need in the medical device space: industrial design, regulatory, ISO 13485, mechanical, electrical, software, firmware, systems engineering, we have a full prototype lab, machine shop, 3D printers, all that good stuff. And then we have manufacturing as well, we’ve done that for about three years with a separate manufacturing facility that’s about two miles from here. It’s really easy to go back and forth when needed. 

We do everything under the sun for a medical device, including writing the design controls when needed, doing all of the V&V testing, prototyping, bread boarding, doing the manufacturing and all the engineering. We can do all or some or even tiny parts of any of that for our customers. It’s kind of whatever the need is, we figure out how to fit in and be a part of our customers team and go from there.

Britt

The number one question I get asked is where the name Blur came from.

Keith

Well, when we were at TearScience, the other three partners and I, one of the things that we didn’t really like was that it was a little bit siloed. You were pretty much told to stay in your lane, and we as engineers don’t really love that too much because we like to think about other things, and make spreadsheets, and show sales people how they can sell better. 

Julia

I’m sure they appreciated that.

Keith

Yeah, they don’t always like that. But it really is blur the lines between all the different disciplines. Our philosophy from day one is hire smart people, bring them in, and they’ll do a good job and also have good insight into other things. Normally smart people don’t just focus on their own little area of the world, they think about other things. If you run a business smartly, you’re going to listen to people when they have comments or thoughts or suggestions about how you market yourself, how you sell stuff, what kind of things you’re offering and how you deal with clients, not just the specifics of a product or the engineering. 

That’s where Blur comes from, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of doing that. 

Britt

You have, and I feel like every client that has asked me about our name and I’ve told them that, they’ve loved that. It’s been a thing that most people like, that we all work together and we aren’t told to stay in our lane. Thank goodness, because I’m always going in other peoples’ lanes.

Keith

Yeah, that would not be that fun. Again, this comes directly from experience and it’s not that fun to not be able to think about other things. People want to grow and move and do other things with their lives as well, and it gives them the ability to think about stuff like that.

Britt

How do we end the year strong? We try to set expectations with holidays well, but also push hard for our clients. Understand what their goals are for their end of year needs, and then work together as a team to achieve them.

Keith

You know, there’s a give and take. You have crazy schedules and a lot of clients want crazy schedules and things that are right on the edge of being doable, and you always want to go for it. I’m of the opinion let’s go for it, but you also have to realize sometimes you’re not going to make it. But if you don’t go for it, you’ll never make it. So, I like the “Think you can and you will,” mentality, but you have to weigh a bunch of stuff. You don’t want to burn people out, which is a fine line. When you increase your activity and you really go at it hard, you learn a ton. 

This particular client is a really good example in that we had some pretty crazy deadlines, we were doing some things for the very first time. We busted it to meet those goals, and people put in more than they should have. And this time of year that’s tough because everyone’s got family things and you don’t want to be doing that. But the effort that we put in and the things that we learned and the progress we made on the project were hugely valuable. We would not be where we are today if we wouldn’t have gone through that pain, it would have taken us much longer. But now I feel like we’re entering a new year and we’re in good shape. It’s really all about, you want to gain the value and limit the pain, and that’s a fine line. Especially this time of year. 

Britt

I agree with you. We did learn a lot, and we learned a lot in a short amount of time. Sometimes an aggressive goal can help you achieve a lot of learning, which then adds value to future things you’re building or goals you’re setting. 

How would you say you keep the team motivated in those type of aggressive goals when things aren’t always going right and you’re trying to manage clients’ expectations but keep the team moving?

Keith

I think there are a couple of ways. One is you have to keep it positive and you have to add some perspective. Like saying, “All right, what we did from the beginning of the week to the end of the week was we took a two or three day process and turned it into a five hour process. That’s a big deal.” You have to remind people of that because they don’t see it because they’re in it. You have to be able to take a step back, look at something and see the big picture, which is hard to do when you’re in the thick of it. So that’s one thing. That’s like, hey, all this stuff we did wasn’t not worth it. All this stuff actually was worth it, and look at the improvements we made. It will save us from ever doing this again because of all of these improvements, these things aren’t going to take nearly as much time as they used to.

The other thing I think you have to do is be generous. If you ask people to go above and beyond, you have to be willing to do that too. Take your team out to dinner somewhere nice, give them an extra day or two off if they’re working nights and weekends. Those are easy things to do, and they help remind people that it’s a team.

Julia

I think that’s something I’ve noticed here. I’ve never been asked by any of my bosses to do something that they wouldn’t do themselves or aren’t already doing and helping with. As an employee, that certainly helps to keep me motivated because I can see they’re pushing just as hard, they’re working right alongside us, they’re really putting in the work as well. 

Britt

How do you set up for the new year? We’re ending the year now and then we have the holidays coming and then we’re starting out 2024. How do you typically go into each year in setting goals?

Keith

That’s hard. Our business is a little cyclical, we depend on the economy some. You can see a certain amount of work going into the new year. Some of it’s real, some of it you put odds to it: we’re 80% that that’s going to happen, 50% that this is going to happen, and 20% that this is going to happen. Then you try to make plans accordingly to grow and staff as needed. 

Again, you don’t want to be crushing people but you also have to be realistic. You can’t go and hire six people on a whim because you have two jobs that may start in March. That’s going to end in disaster. You kind of have to figure out how to win and get those in the door, start them, and then have your people lined up if you need extra people to do that. Maybe it’s diverting resources from other jobs that are winding down, stuff like that. It’s a bit of a moving target, so that’s not easy. 

Those are the kinds of things we set goals for: how many people do we want to grow into, what kind of areas of the companies do we want to expand? Manufacturing is a good one, that for us, I think in 2024 will be one of the areas that we try to grow. There may be times that we need engineers and R&D to come over and help out as we adjust and try to get the staffing right. 

Britt

That’s the great way of how we do things here. People are willing to pitch in in areas that aren’t necessarily their job role. I think that’s important with a company that’s growing, is to have flexibility and to wear a lot of hats until you understand the current need and something that is going to be needed long term, and to your point staffing accordingly.

Keith

I think the other part of that is fixing known problems in our staffing. So there are different holes that cause pain. For instance, in manufacturing the person that can do a multitude of tasks that everyone is pitching in and doing now but it’s not their core competency, and it takes away from their ability to do what they are good at. It would be like having a wide receiver on your football team and asking them to play running back because you don’t have enough of them. You wouldn’t want to do that very often. 

It’s recognizing those holes and trying to fill them with the right person, not necessarily just a warm body.

Julia

What did you learn this past year?

Keith

In this business you’re always relearning the same lessons over and over again because there’s inherent truth in how you run a business, run projects, communicate with people, deal with people who are poor communicators. You constantly, I won’t say you learn that because it’s not brand new, but you constantly relearn that. And how do you take that and translate it into things that different team members can deal with? They’re all different too. They all need their own level of communication.

I think understanding that that’s more important than ever.

Britt

I think every year we learn even better how to communicate, both externally and internally. You have new projects, and new projects create new obstacles or a miss that you never considered you could miss. It’s not even really a miss at that point, it’s something you now learn from and you try not to miss it again. Those are usually the things I learn throughout the years, and the next year I say, “Okay, how can we ensure that on the next project with an aggressive timeline, we ensure we’re moving fast but we’re hitting all the things.” And that lists continues to grow with each project.

Keith

I’d say one of the other things we’re learning, I wouldn’t say we’ve learned it yet but we’re still learning, is how to communicate our open business model on manufacturing costs. We have an “our books are your books” situation. That’s a good thing because as an engineer that’s always what I wanted from my manufacturers, so we just translated that into what we’re doing because I think it’s fair, it’s honest, and it’s helpful for everyone involved. But when you do that, you get questions on everything. So, you have to make sure you’ve communicated correctly, and you also want to do it in a way that people who are looking at your stuff and other stuff that isn’t so open can compare apples to apples. 

Part of what we’ve learned is how to communicate that openness better, make sure that everyone is on the same page, that they understand what all the line items mean. There’s a ton of information and a ton of data, which ultimately is a good thing, but it can be overwhelming for people sometimes. So, it’s really learning how to work through that with our clients, our potential clients, and communicate it, be clear about it, and make sure that everyone’s on the same page with the different levers that can be pulled and how we can reduce cost where needed, things like that, and being on top of that. 

I think that’s one of the biggest things: don’t just wait for them to ask, just be on top of it. It’s even evolving the open-model forms. I know I’m getting these questions, I’m going to just answer them up front for you so you don’t even have to bother asking. We’ve done the same thing over the years with the R&D proposals thing, making them more open, more detailed, more plans, it always evokes other questions. WE know what those are so we go ahead and answer them up front. You continuously learn that, and it saves effort in the long run.

Britt

What are you most excited about coming up in 2024 for Blur?

Keith

Honestly, I’m excited about stopping spending money on the new building. That’s gonna feel really good.

Julia

Getting settled.

Britt

Getting settled into our new spaces.

Keith

Yes. Again, we’ve spent a lot of money getting this and manufacturing [ready].

Britt

That’s fair. I feel like there has been a lot of growth.

Keith

There has been. It’s really nice and it’s gonna be really good, but I’m gonna be really happy to not do that and have, like, we’re good. We’ve got all the software systems we need, we’ve upgraded all the software, outside of a piece of equipment here and there, we’re good for a little while. Let’s just take it and run and focus on the work for a little while as opposed to all the other stuff. Which has been fun and it’s been great, and it’s really nice, this is an amazing upgrade for all of us. It’s going to serve us well for years to come

Britt

I don’t know if our podcast listeners realize we’ve moved into a new building, I don’t know if we’ve said that on the podcast yet. We’ve got two building and increased our square footage, so that’s been a fun last quarter. It has had us busy in great ways and is good for growth in 2024, which is what I’m excited about. I feel like now we have the appropriate spaces going into 2024 to have new business come in and really grow as a company. 

Keith

Yeah, I mean just getting settled and now using our new abilities and our new space and let’s see what we can do with it. 

Julia

Thanks for chatting. 

Keith

Thanks.

Britt

Thanks for being here, we really appreciate your time. This has been helpful to hear how you look at the company both from ending the year to starting out the new year.