Adam Torres and Arnold Volker and Dawson Volker discuss Arnold’s new book.
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Show Notes:
New book alert! In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Arnold Volker, Owner of Next Innovations, and Dawson Volker, Product Development Manager at Next Innovations. Explore Arnold’s new book, Mission Matters: Mission-Based Leaders Share Inspiring Stories on Leadership and Success (Best of Edition, Vol. 1).
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About Next Innovations
Next Innovations manufactures a visually superior line of products tailored to each of their clients’ unique needs from custom decorative coatings, precision laser and water jet cutting, and custom fabrication. Their custom decorative coating ability is beyond industry standards to ensure the desired aesthetic quality. Next Innovations has the capability & tools to develop concepts into quality products. Their services are most competitive with medium to high volume production runs.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right, today we got, we got a celebration going on. So we’re talking about, and we are discussing and celebrating the very first release of Mission Matters.
First audio book. It’s a best of series. And I’m proud to bring Arnold Volker, one of our best of a series authors onto the line, and then also his son, which he writes about extensively in the book. So we got, we got a guest appearance from Dawson Volker as well. Who’s a product development, development manager over at next innovation.
So father and son team first off, Hey guys, I just want to say, welcome to the show. Yeah. Thank you very much for having us. Yeah. Thank you. It was very exciting. Oh man. So I guess just to get us kicked off, we’re going to start this episode the way that we start them all with what we call our mission matters minute.
So Arnold Dawson we at mission matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. What mission matters to you? For me, I, I love to create create things, design things and so really helping, my mission is helping other people create and then kind of try to get things out into the market.
But especially with youth, I mean, and that was kind of what my story was about. I really thank Adam for being in that first book and now it’s in an audio. So really that’s a mission of mine is to help people create and expand their ideas. It’s awesome. What about you, Dustin? One of the missions that I have is, is I’m always trying to learn something new and always add something to my tool belt.
There’s a lot of new technology and new ways to do things nowadays and I always like to learn about those new things or learn something new to me and, and learn. It’s always, always an opportunity to learn, so. Yeah, that’s great. And it’s fun to have the father and son team on here. And for those that are, of course, if you’re watching on YouTube, you can kind of see what we’re looking at, obviously, but there’s a lot of people that have listened to this on the podcast too.
Maybe do describe a little bit, tell us a little bit about what we’re looking at, especially that big old blue trailer behind you. Well, Dawson and I love to motorcycle, so I have a Harley, a bigger ultra classic, and Dawson has a We just love to ride. He’s got a crotch rocket and then so it’s like I love challenging my son It’s one thing as a parent, you know, it’s like I give them ideas and what if we did this?
So we love motorcycling. So we came up with this beautiful trailer behind us Dawson 100 percent design it very proud of them And it pulls ATV right now. We have it hooked up to an ATV side by side, but Dawson will tell you more about it, but that’s something we’re excited about. Yeah. It’s also very, very light.
It’s about 500 pounds and there really isn’t any of them on the market that are that light and being fixed where this one’s not collapsible or anything. It’s actually a fixed top and it can be pulled by a motorcycle, which there really isn’t any on the market right now. And so it’s cool to invent something that’s really new to the market.
And it also has a lot of capabilities with just the designing of it. It was cool to work with a laser pipe cutter to design. So all the frame and everything actually stabs inside of the lower frame. So you don’t use any jigs or anything. It’s all just clamped down and then weld together. So it’s really, really cool.
One person can assemble the whole thing. And there was a lot of just challenges of Okay, we’ll wait and other things when you’re trying to deal with towing with a motorcycle. So, and it’s, it’s big too. Like I saw that picture of you guys and Roland Williams. So it says he, Roland’s a big guy. Like, and I saw him standing next to it.
I’m like, that thing’s big too. Like, so it fits a bit, you know, big people, right? It’s, yeah, sleeping area is six, six, and then there’s a full twin size mattress on the inside. So yeah, it’s big. It’s it, you can fit one person very comfortably inside and there’s also a 32 inch flat screen TV in there as well.
So you can watch movies and there’s full solar, so you have power for all your electronics. Man, that’s like a mini man cave is what it is. And there’s a full kitchen in the back as well. And all the panels are all custom aluminum panels and the doors I designed that made them so that they’d all work together and seal and still be waterproof.
So, yeah. It’s a really, really nice machine. It can really also add to your camping experience, you know. Yeah. So, so Dawson, I have to tell you, every time I talk to your dad, like none who’s in the office, we can have a conversation, something else sometimes will pop in or otherwise, or you’ll be like, we’re out here talking to you on the side.
And I’m like, so you keep Dawson in the shop all day. He’s the one working. You’re in the office. I see how this works. How’s it like working with your dad? This is my first father, son interview. So I’m excited. How’s it like working with your dad? To be honest. It’s, it’s one of the greatest things and it can be it’s frustrating at times cause you’re working with your family all the time, but it’s really, really nice to have a relationship with my dad and then also be able to work with them because it’s really nice to just have someone that knows what you, your capabilities are, you know, what, what you can and can’t do.
And we have a really tight relationship. It’s definitely added to our relationship because we’ve been together. For so long and we’ve been working together for so many different things and it’s really nice to have somebody that you can bounce ideas off of and and be able to ask pretty much whatever you want, you know, when you’re working on stuff, it’s yeah, it’s really nice to have that level of relationship with someone rather than it just being your boss, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s really cool to work here and actually have that so.
It’s awesome. Yeah, I remember like when I was growing up, so I grew up in kind of the shop environment as well So my dad owned an auto body shop. I’m from Michigan from Detroit originally and and I grew up in that environment working in the garage with him and otherwise obviously it didn’t quite work out the same way Maybe we didn’t work the same ways or whatever that means.
I could be I’m a tourist It’s probably more me than him. Honestly, but But I love to see it, like, when I see this father son duo. Arnold. So I want, I wanted to spend a little bit of the time on the book today. So in the book you share, and I know it’s been a while since you’ve been on the show, so we’ve got a bunch of new listeners.
So I want to go into the story a little bit in the, in the book and in the story, you share a lot about Dawson and about some of his early on inventions and things that he created that may, you know, that ended up being pretty pivotal to the business overall. Maybe lay some of the groundwork and kind of let, let the readers and the listeners know a little bit more about what you wrote about.
Okay. Well, yeah, it’s something, you know, just as a parent, it’s always fun to challenge your kids and support them. And so when Dawson was I think probably 12, he wanted a go kart and I said, well, if you want a go kart, you’re gonna have to figure out how to pay for it. I brought home a piece of scrap.
And he’s a kid that’s rural area growing up and really was into shooting sports and things like that. And he came up with the shooting target. And so then we put graphics on it, zombies ran. And so Dawson, that 13 got asked to go to a national conference. He was on the front page of our local paper, made national news just with his Kind of ideas and stuff around the shooting environment and that actually really helped us stay open I mean pretty soon things evolved a little bit.
We were shipping Semi load of shooting targets every couple weeks There were some larger targets and the whole product line expanded and we would have never Had that if it wasn’t for Dawson’s idea of just getting into shooting targets and wanting a go kart. So but that’s, that’s kind of cool. And then over the years, it’s, it’s fun.
As a parent, it’s like, I get, we got a 500 some foot long building and it’s like, I don’t like this big blue wall. It’s like, Dawson, it’d be pretty cool if you could have a 20 foot eagle that’s on the side of the building. And so it’s fun. challenging them and Dawson always knocks it out of the park and that’s kind of how this trailer got started.
It’s like you know, but it’s cool. We have the tools and resources, you know, so to invent things. Yeah, so dawson when you like when you were that young and you started seeing you know your idea become reality Like so you had this piece of scrap you come up with something new you start creating like like what was that like for you?
It was it was really cool. It really because you’re young by the way. I think you said it was about 12, right? Like this about 12. When I invented that man It was really cool. Just Understanding, like I’ve never had invented anything before and then going through like the inventing process of just trial and error of like, okay, well, this is what we want to do.
And this is the product that we have and how does it work and what do we need to change? And as a kid, you know, you’re kind of just like learning all that. And so it’s, it’s cool to when I was a kid, it was like, It was more of just like, I have this and I want to do this and how do I make this do this, you know, and, and those things ended up turning into more different targets of different calibers.
So it’s different thicknesses of steel. And then we started with 18 gauge steel and we ended up. Switching to AR 500 and when I was younger, I got really into just the differences of steel, you know, got me interested from 18 gauge versus the armored steel of AR 200 or AR 300 all the way up to AR 500.
And we got into thicker targets and stuff. And as a kid, I, I really liked shooting of all things. And so it was like, how do I. Implement what I like to do into what I’m trying to design. So, yeah. What was it like for you to see other people use your product for the first time when you saw it in market?
Like, what was that like? It was, I remember the first experience I had was we were going to that NRA show that my dad was talking about, and we brought the first shooting targets with for Nerf guns, and we actually cut a tree down in the woods, and grafted onto the roof, and brought it to this show all the way in Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, and then set this tree up in our booth, And all the targets off of it.
And people, all these kids would come in to our booth and shoot these targets. And they just thought it was like the coolest thing ever because of the noise and, and spinning it when you hit it. And, and it was just really cool to see. People interacting like you’re saying with my product and it was just like well people actually enjoy what you’re making, you know, And that’s really gratifying to see.
Yeah. Did you did you did you get the go kart? I never asked you this question. Arnold. Did you did you get the go kart? No, just like all this stuff. I built everything. I wanted to build my own go kart and it was really cool I ended up getting a frame from a guy who was That worked with that. Doesn’t surprise me.
By the way, Dawson off the shelf is not going to work for you. I already know. And then I bought a lot, I bought them engine off of a lawnmower. And then I had a two spare four wheelers that I had cut apart for all the axles and everything. And then I ended up learning a lot. I had this guy that helped me and he taught me a lot of how to pretty much assemble this go kart with four wheeler parts.
And we got to a point where we pretty much couldn’t continue anymore because we didn’t know how to link the motor to the actual axles and so we ended up selling what we had. Kids grow up way too fast, so in a fast version of that, the go kart turned into a 280ZX Datsun. So, yeah, I kind figured , he’s like, hold on, we’re selling a lot of targets.
Dad, come on man. Pony up . Yeah, I ended up selling the the Go-Kart and I ended up buying myself a two 80 Z Nissan. Yeah. I’m a big fan of what you’re doing. And I’ll tell, I’ll tell you why, obviously I love the father son team. I love that you’re inventing and creating, but I feel like sometimes in the digital world right now, like we forget about manufacturing and we forget about inventing and we forget about like the physical.
Side of creating something new. I feel like you know, on TV, whatever, Instagram, all these other things, like it’s always, you know, the digital thing or this or that. And I’m not against AI, all these other things, right. They, they all help in all these processes. I’m not saying that they’re not a piece of it in design and otherwise, but to me still, there’s something about like me hearing this story and seeing you, you know, even the trailer that you have behind, you come up with that in your mind and your process, and then to one day be able to use it and to be free.
Physically in it. Like I feel like that’s that’s a it’s a different experience. Yeah, definitely. When I first like in this design on the computer, I’ve used fusion, which is a three D software and it was just seeing it on the program and then Now like I’m laying in here watching a movie. It’s it honestly doesn’t feel real I mean, but yeah, it is at the same time and it’s just super super gratifying to be like man I was able to do that on the computer and now I’m actually in real life laying in it.
You know, yeah What kind of advice would you give to the other, the other inventors, the other people out there that are maybe younger, just coming up in the industries and trades and creating in terms of like their pursuit for creating new things that, what kind of advice would you give them? Just do it.
I mean, just, just do stuff. I mean, that’s. Honestly, the thing that me and my dad always say to each other is, is that you learn by doing. And the only way that you know how to do stuff is if you’ve done it. I mean, you can watch videos and stuff and that’s a lot that teaches you, teaches you different things, but the best way to go out and know how to do something is by doing it.
Yeah, you created recently something for a church like talk to me a little bit about that Like that was that was awesome. I your dad texted me the pictures. They’re amazing So we’re just doing it. So now we got you know, spreading some jesus too. We’re just doing it Now we got a new tub. No, it’s no it’s not called a tub.
I don’t know what it’s called. You tell me I said a tub i’m gonna be like, oh i’m gonna pray on that one this weekend. Yeah but it was a baptismal display for the tub It sounds much better than what I said. The baptismal display. Yes. Tell me more about that. So they wanted a custom baptismal display that they wanted to actually be shaped like upper and lower red Lake, which is a prominent Lake here in Minnesota.
And they asked me to design everything and they had a picture of one from a different place and they said, well, this is what we kind of want it to look like, but. figure out how we were going to do this and, and let us know what we need to do. And so I figured out the plans online and, and designed it to fit these plastic inserts that another company was making.
And then they would insert into my quarter inch aluminum baptismal display that was two levels. And the water would actually flow from the upper To the whole basin, just like it would in real life in the actual lake. And so there was a lot of figuring and stuff. And plus I’ve never actually made anything waterproof with aluminum.
So, cause I had to make a basin out of aluminum. And so there was a lot of, man, you got a lot of pressure on the line on this one. Yeah. And then there was a religious holiday, so it had to be done by that. It had to be, so I had to make it in three days. Yeah. And there was. There was a lot of, of, well, I feel like there’s something biblical about that.
I don’t know. But yeah, and then I ended up welding this whole thing together and then they wanted it to look as nice as possible. So sanding down all of the welds on all the corners and then re welding, you know, to fill back in some of those spots because it’s not even, and so you got to fix what, you know, isn’t looking right.
And so, and then it was like, I’m done now. And I got to leave because I’m going to Mexico and yeah. And so I filled it up with water and it wasn’t leaking. And I was like, thank God. And so we went and then that was the end of that project. And I had to let somebody else paint it because I had to, I had to go.
So it was, it was a very stressful, but then what now I got the guy that Installed it in the church, sent me pictures of it and everything and it just looks really good. So it’s really gratitude, I mean a lot of gratitude to, Yeah. That I made that for the church and it’s going to be used by a lot of people.
Amazing. What’s that, what’s that cartoon that you, or that animated show you liked as a kid that he was an inventor? I can’t think of it. What I love about, you know, the whole creative process is it’s about feeling somewhat forward. Like you, you try to put something together and make something and it’s, it never really works the first time.
It’s a series of Advancements and that’s what I love about the team at atmosphere of it, you know here and then and then you throw on the production It’s like one thing to make something. Yeah, how do you produce? 10, 000 of them or something so Which doesn’t it’s amazing and so and then having other people just about sometimes you get to a spot You’re like, I have no idea how to do this and you just go get somebody else So like what do you think about this, you know, what do you think you would do here?
And they’d be like well, I do this and you’d be like Man, that’s a great idea. I don’t want to do that. You know, it’s like you, you need other people sort of balance stuff. Yeah. So I think it’s humbling at the same time. Cause it’s like, wait a minute, that is a good idea. And then, and then you’re constantly taking other people’s ideas and building off from it.
But back on the question earlier about the book, you know, at the, you know, the first it was a kid that invented the earmuffs. It was a kid that invented the popsicle, the kid that invented the trampoline. I mean, if you really look at history, I mean, there’s a lot of things that kids have come up with.
And luckily they’ve had, you know, the support of their parents and family and stuff. But, you know, how do we continue to encourage that? And that’s something I’m passionate about. Yeah. And do they and, and one of the things that you’ve in the products you’ve been working on is in venture you and also and encouraging others and encouraging others.
Like why, why has that been so important to you, Arnold, to, to number one, share Dawson’s story and in the book. Cause there’s a lot of things you could have wrote about. So sharing the story of discovery, but then also to inspire and want to pass that on to others. Like, why is that so important to you?
You know, I think my grandfather was an inventor. So I feel like it’s in my genes. And, and he passed away at almost 101. He invented the first potato planter, you know, and it, it’s kind of honoring my history and, and I just feel I was named after him, so it’s, I think deep down, it’s like I, I really want to continue to pass that on as far as creating and inventing and, and Dawson’s definitely excelled at that, it’s something he’s, he’s interested in and loves, just as a little kid taking things apart.
So I think, I think just part of my history and, and honoring, honoring, you know, the people that were before me. What’s that like, Dawson, coming from that lineage of inventors, man? It’s definitely something that you’d have to look back on and be like, well, I gotta do good, you know, great, you know but then it’s also just super cool to know that I have that in my family.
Well, I have to say this has been fun having you both on the show, fun catching up, talking about the books, finally getting to, you know, get, get Dawson on, on camera too. I’ve been looking forward to this. What’s next? I mean, what’s next for you both, whether it’s projects or otherwise, like what’s on the docket next?
Right now, I mean, there’s always, always working on cool stuff for myself. Right. Besides you going back to the office, Arnold, and leaving Dawson in the shop to work, what’s next? There you go. Well, I think as you know, the name of our company is Next Innovations. I mean, people can go out and check it on our website.
We, it’s kind of ingrained in us. So, you know, just putting our name, what’s next. And, and so we’re, Dawson’s got a really cool shooting bench that he’s working on. And, and so when you have a 60, 000 square foot manufacturing plant, it’s like, we kind of focus on things that we enjoy to do, which then makes it even more fun.
But the challenge in this economy is, is trying to find what are things that people are buying right now and what are they spending money on, and that’s kind of a category like the trailer. There’s more camping and stuff, but we’re, we’re constantly trying to try to enjoy ourself as much as possible, but yet, you know, come up with things that people would buy and, and design part of something Dawson loves doing, so.
And then for me personally, I mean inventor, you, I mean, I help people whether it’s consulting or coaching just whether it’s on their own life. I believe everybody’s an inventor. So how can I help support that? So Inventoryou. com is somewhere they can go and book, book a consulting free, free intro type thing.
And, and it’s just fun hearing about other people’s ideas. I think as a kid, most kids are, are positive and they don’t know, you know, no, and how do I, they don’t get caught up in all the roadblocks. So I feel that’s partly my job with some of the experience we’ve had and I’ve had. And how do I encourage others to, to help them bring something to market or just encouraging them, supporting them on their idea?
Amazing. What were those websites one more time? Next innovations. net or inventor you. com. Fantastic. And we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that everybody watching can go check it out. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t hit that subscribe or follow button yet, now is your chance to definitely hit that subscribe or follow button.
We have this is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new new entrepreneurs, new experts, new executives, and we don’t want you to miss a thing. So hit the subscribe button and then Dawson Arnold again. So much fun. Thanks so much for having them for coming on the show. Yeah. Thank you.
I appreciate it. Have a good day.