Who’s Running the Shop?: Gretna Machine Shop

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Unshakeables – "Who’s Running the Shop?: Gretna Machine Shop"

Release Date: March 24, 2026
Hosts: Ben Walter (CEO of Chase for Business), Kathleen Griffith
Guest: Nubia Perez (CEO, Gretna Machine Shop, Houston, TX)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the remarkable transformation and resilience of Gretna Machine Shop, a Houston-based family business serving the oil and gas sector. The story is told through the lens of Nubia Perez, who took on the challenge of leading her family’s manufacturing business after a decade-long leadership vacuum following her father's passing. The conversation explores Nubia’s journey—her initial reluctance, moments of epiphany, how she redefined both the business and her own role, as well as broader insights into family business succession, local business ecosystems, and the resurgence of American manufacturing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Family Business Origins and Early Years

• Gretna’s Foundation & Immigrant Roots

  • Founded in 1980 by Nubia’s parents after immigrating from Colombia.
  • Named after Gretna, Louisiana, reflecting their family journey.
    • [02:49, Nubia Perez]: “Gretna was started in 1980 by my mother and my father...So my dad was a machinist in Colombia...He came over in his early 20s looking for an adventure...In Gretna, Louisiana, is where my sister and I were born. So that’s why the company is called Gretna Machine Shop.”

• Life in the Shop: Childhood Memories

  • Vivid descriptions of the machine shop environment, paper-based operations, and family involvement.
    • [04:18, Nubia Perez]: "My dad was a manual machinist, so I have very vivid memories of him smoking a cigarette while he's on it...Having a four or five year old running around in a machine shop with metal shavings, probably not allowed anymore..."

• Desire to Forge Her Own Path

  • Nubia initially wanted to forge a career in international development, far from Houston and the family business.
    • [05:56, Nubia Perez]: “I was convinced that I was going to go work for Greenpeace or go work for the UN, marry a Brazilian, live in London, have our children in different countries.”

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2. The Turning Point: Returning to Gretna

• Family Duty and Reluctance

  • A combination of her father's declining health and a spiritual calling brought Nubia reluctantly back to Houston and into the business.
    • [07:10, Nubia Perez]: “The priest says, I’m going to tell y’all a story about how I had the calling to become a priest...I left that day, I was like, oh, I get it...it’s not what I wanted to do, but I knew it was the right thing to do.”

• Conditions for Return

  • Nubia negotiated to pursue her MBA while working at Gretna.
    • [07:51, Nubia Perez]: "If Gretna can support me getting my MBA, then I'll come work in the family business for two years...I started my MBA at Rice University in August and my father passed away in September."

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3. The "Dark Years": Leadership Vacuum (2012–2023)

• Lack of Clear Leadership and Structure

  • After her father’s death, the business lacked direction. Mother was nominal president, but roles were undefined.
    • [00:53, Nubia Perez]: “My mom was president, my sister and I vice president, but there’s no clear functions for those titles... it really just started crumbling...”
    • [08:57, Nubia Perez]: “A good 10 years... there was no clear leadership or no clear direction because Gretna had always been fine.”

• Survival, Not Strategy

  • Nubia handled problems ad hoc, “fire extinguisher” mode, rather than strategic leadership.
    • [09:47, Nubia Perez]: “Oh, I’m a fire extinguisher...I just go where the problem is...I was not involved at all in customer facing, acquiring new customers, talking to customers...”

• Pivotal Strategic Decisions Despite Instability

  • Led the diversification from oil & gas into aerospace, requiring new certifications.
    • [10:36, Nubia Perez]: “In order to participate in the aerospace industry, you have to have certain certifications...So we revamped our quality management system...”

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4. Inflection Point: Stepping Up as CEO

• Pandemic as a Catalyst

  • COVID-19 exposed the need for real leadership as the business stumbled after its best year ("2019 bathing suit, our highest grossing year, to just plummeting").
    • [15:33, Nubia Perez]: “Covid exposed the good, the bad, the ugly..."

• The ‘Frozen’ Moment & Epiphany

  • Inspiration from watching “Frozen 2” with her kids resonated with Nubia’s sense of destiny as a leader: “I am the fifth spirit.”
    • [16:28, Nubia Perez]: “In Frozen 2...she realized I'm the fifth spirit. It literally was an epiphany...no one else...me. I am one of the owners. I grew up in the family business. I have my MBA, and I wanted it as much as deep down, I probably didn’t want to admit that.”

• Securing Support and Asserting Leadership

  • Received backing from her mother and sister; gave a speech to the company affirming her new role.
    • [17:26, Nubia Perez]: “I gave a big speech and I said, all right, it’s time. It was more for me than for everyone else, but I was basically laying my qualifications as to why I should be the person to be in charge of the company.”

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5. Transforming the Business: Learning, Coaching, Systems

• Immersing in the Operation

  • Spent six months on the shop floor, observing, learning, and connecting with the team.
    • [17:42, Nubia Perez]: “The first six months, I sat on our shop floor and I did what I call an internship in the company...I would talk to the guys at the time. They say, Nubia, it’s so good to see you on the shop floor...They just needed some more leadership and a true vision...”

• Professional Development & The EOS System

  • Joined Vistage, got executive coaching, and learned to implement EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) to bring structure and accountability.
    • [18:13, Nubia Perez]: “Through Vistage, I was introduced to EOS, which is Entrepreneurial Operating System. It creates a framework...with very specific roles and responsibilities, making sure that all the right people are on the right seats, all based on our values...”

• Tackling Challenges and Doubts

  • Candidly shares moments of self-doubt (“crying in the shower moment”), and seeking posthumous guidance from her father at the cemetery.
    • [19:26, Nubia Perez]: “I remember going to my dad, to the cemetery, literally getting on my knees and be like, I don’t want to do this...just give me a sign...I joke that my dad has helped the company more from heaven than when he was here...”

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6. Cultural Shift & Building a Real Leadership Team

• Honesty and Communication

  • Open communication with vendors; focus on eliminating process waste (“the non sexy part on the operational side”).
    • [20:38, Nubia Perez]: “Having those very hard conversations with our vendors of, hey, I know we owe you this...That’s part of the solution, is not hiding and having those conversations with your vendors...”

• Knowledge Distribution & Culture-First Leadership

  • Moved away from the founder-centered model to cross-functional teams, prioritizing values and fit over tenure or technical skill alone.
    • [21:45, Ben Walter]: “The biggest thing Nubia did was to remove all the knowledge from one central person...”
    • [21:59, Nubia Perez]: “Between 2023 and now, I counted the other day, I think I had 17 different people say on my leadership team...Do they fit the values and the culture of the company first and foremost?”

• Current Leadership State

  • After much trial and error, now has an effective, aligned leadership team in place, operational accountability, and clear roles.
    • [23:23, Nubia Perez]: “We really all started working together in Gelling, like in the last month and a half...making those strategic decisions, it’s become much easier with an accountability chart...making sure that all the right people are on the right seats, all based on our values...”

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7. Personal Growth, Mission, and Houston’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

• Bringing Her Values Into Business

  • Strategic vision incorporates sustainability (“mindful manufacturing”) and workforce development inspired by her international interests.
    • [24:39, Nubia Perez]: “We want to be leaders in mindful manufacturing...finding ways to implement more of a sustainability throughout as much as we can on our shop floor and in our offices.”

• Giving and Receiving Mentorship

  • Nubia participates in a manufacturing renaissance, actively involved in industry associations and peer networks.
    • [26:06, Nubia Perez]: “I’m a board member of the Greater Houston Manufacturing association, and you’re definitely seeing this new generation of manufacturers throughout the United States that are supporting one another...”

• Houston as a Business Hub

  • Houston’s diverse, entrepreneurial, international atmosphere makes it ideal for business growth.
    • [26:50, Nubia Perez]: “Houston is extremely diverse, and...is an immigrant city. People leave their countries to find something better. So that spirit, I think, is definitely one of the cornerstones of Houston...”

• Importance of Local Ecosystem

  • Discussion on the value of building businesses within strong local industry clusters rather than isolated, low-cost areas.
    • [29:06, Ben Walter]: “I can’t overstate how important it is to have mentors, a supply of employees, a deep list of suppliers, a deep list of customers...having a center of gravity or a magnet is pretty helpful...”

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8. Advice for Small Business Owners

• Be Open, Stay Humble
  • [31:11, Nubia Perez]: “It would be to be open, but to stay humble. If you allow yourself and allow the universe to really guide you and you’re open to it, then there are people who will help you along the way, even if it is your parents.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Epiphany as Leader:
  “It literally was an epiphany. As I’m sitting on my couch and I’m looking at the org chart, it became very apparent that there was no one else who was quote, unquote, meant for this role than me.”
  — Nubia Perez [16:28]

• On Leadership by Consensus Failing:
  “It was a time where I thought leadership by consensus was the way to go. We were just doing what we needed to do to survive.”
  — Nubia Perez [11:13]

• On Facing Business Adversity:
  “The manufacturing business is tough. Whether it was cash flow or whether it was having to let someone go who’d been here for 25 years, it was having to have hard conversations with my sister. Whatever those moments were, I call it the crying in the shower moment.”
  — Nubia Perez [18:56]

• On Houston's Unique Business Climate:
  “Houston is extremely diverse...People leave their countries to find something better. So that spirit...is definitely one of the cornerstones of Houston.”
  — Nubia Perez [26:50]

• On Modernizing the Family Business:
  “I had to remember that my role was not only to work in the business, but also on the business...”
  — Nubia Perez [22:49]

• Advice to Fellow Entrepreneurs:
  “Be open, but stay humble...allow the universe to really guide you and you’re open to it, then there are people who will help you along the way, even if it is your parents.”
  — Nubia Perez [31:11]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Gretna’s Early Years and Nubia’s Childhood: 02:49–05:25
• Nubia’s Initial Resistance & Epiphany: 05:26–07:43
• Father’s Passing, “Dark Years” Begin: 08:06–09:14
• Leadership Vacuum and Firefighting: 09:36–10:25
• Diversification into Aerospace: 10:25–10:56
• Covid as Catalyst for Change: 15:33–15:59
• Org Chart Epiphany ('Frozen' Analogy): 16:28–17:13
• Leadership Transition & Shop Floor Internship: 17:26–18:13
• Implementing EOS, Coaching: 18:13–18:49
• Difficult Conversations, Lean Operations: 20:38–21:45
• Building a Sustainable Leadership Team: 21:59–23:55
• Sustainability, Workforce, and Industry Mentorship: 24:39–26:38
• Houston’s Unique Advantages: 26:50–27:49
• Advising Small Business Owners: 31:02–31:25

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Episode Tone and Final Thoughts

The conversation is open, honest, and introspective, showcasing Nubia’s humility and candor about family business challenges, personal sacrifice, and her commitment to continuous learning and improvement. The hosts encourage a practical, real-world perspective grounded in empathy, curiosity, and mutual support—echoing broader themes of legacy, adaptation, and transformation that are foundational to small businesses nationwide.

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For listeners seeking actionable inspiration and a nuanced, authentic look at what it takes to lead and transform a legacy family business in a changing America, this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

[Ben Walter]

Small business stories are so often defined by the path of their CEOs, but in the case of Gretna Machine Shop from Houston, Texas, a good chunk of their last 10 years was defined by not having a CEO. Nubia Perez, daughter of the founder, called that time period the dark years of Gretna's history.

[Nubia Perez]

It was a good 10 years, and it wasn't that the company was not successful, but I call it the dark years because of the image of us not truly knowing what was happening.

[Ben Walter]

Her father died in 2012. He left the company to Nubia, her mother, and her sister. Who was in charge then? Your mom.

[Nubia Perez]

That was part of the problem. There was no clear leadership.

[Ben Walter]

No one that whole time, or just the three of you who were running the company?

[Nubia Perez]

My mom was president, my sister and I vice president, but there's no clear functions for those titles. At the time, we didn't have school, strong policies and procedures, and so it really just started crumbling until the company

[Ben Walter]

reached one of those inflection points that changes everything. Nubia knew if Gretna was going to survive, they needed to find a leader, and she had a sinking feeling that that leader might be her.

[Nubia Perez]

It literally was an epiphany. It became very apparent that there's no one else who was meant for this role than me. I just had to convince everyone else I was the one.

[Ben Walter]

Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on America. They don't just drive our economy. They define our communities, create opportunities, and inspire the next generation of dreamers and builders. They on the Unshakables, we're sharing the daring moments of business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of how they got through it. Kathleen is here, and we've got a really interesting story today. It's the story of a CEO. For a lot of small businesses, the CEO is the business, which is definitely true for Gretna. That also means that the stress of the CEO is the stress of the business and vice versa.

[Kathleen]

Yeah, I'm really excited to dive into this one.

[Ben Walter]

Then let's get into it. On today's episode, Gretna Machine Shop from Houston, Texas. Fun fact. Gretna Machine Shop is named after Gretna, Louisiana. I know I just said it was in Houston, and it's always been there, but the Perez family who started and runs Gretna wasn't always in town.

[Nubia Perez]

Gretna was started in 1980 by my mother and my father. So my dad was a machinist. And Colombia, which is where my family's originally from. And in the late 60s, he came over to the United States. It was during the Vietnam War, so they were giving visas and opening up the doors to welders and machinists.

[Ben Walter]

We could still use a few more of those.

[Nubia Perez]

Yes. And he came over in his early 20s looking for an adventure. The one friend he had was in New Orleans. So he ended up in New Orleans and then went back, married my mom. He was working for Baker Oil Tools in Louisiana, and Baker asked my dad to move to Houston to work for the company. But he decided to open up his own shop and just do Baker Machine components. And in Gretna, Louisiana, is where my sister and I were born. So that's why the company is called Gretna Machine Shop.

[Ben Walter]

As it turns out, Houston was a great spot to start a company that manufactured precision components for the oil and gas industry. If you think of Texas, you may think of football, but you probably also think of oil. And that association has been built by small businesses over time. Big oil is the star of the show, but it's the small businesses in oil and gas that make the whole production possible.

[Nubia Perez]

Pretty much from 1980 until we started diversifying into other industries. Only about 15 years ago, it was 100% oil and gas. And that's how we started.

[Ben Walter]

And what do you remember about those early years?

[Nubia Perez]

My dad was a manual machinist, so I have very vivid memories of him smoking a cigarette while he's on it. Manual mail, which of course would not be allowed nowadays.

[Ben Walter]

Back then it was just normal.

[Nubia Perez]

It was just normal. I was 4, 5 years old. And back then everything was paper check. So my mom would give me a check to give to the machinist and I would run out to the shop floor, hand it to them and come back and get another paper check. Having a four or five year old running around in a machine shop with metal shavings, probably not allowed anymore. The strongest memory is just the scent and the smell of that machine oil. It's a mixture of coolant and oil, and they say your scent is one of your strongest memories.

[Ben Walter]

Nubia and her sister Nancy got to know that smell very well growing up. They spent their summers at the shop

[Nubia Perez]

and it was like you either stay home or you come work for us at the shop with my mom helping with the accounting or the filing. And this was before, so it was a lot of handwriting. And I found it to be Dreadfully boring, and I hated it.

[Ben Walter]

So when Nubia considered her own future, she knew Houston was the perfect place to do it.

[Nubia Perez]

No, That's a big no. The dream at this point was to get as far away as possible from Houston.

[Ben Walter]

She'd grown up going to visit family

[Nubia Perez]

in Colombia, traveling and being in different cultures and being in that environment was always very compelling to me.

[Ben Walter]

She made it a point to stay as far away from Houston as possible. She majored in International Studies and got a master's in Sustainable International Development.

[Nubia Perez]

I was convinced that I was going to go work for Greenpeace or go work for the un, marry a Brazilian, live in London, have our children in different countries.

[Ben Walter]

Eventually, her job did bring her back to Houston, and she lived downtown, traveling for business and pleasure. When you're young, before you have kids and you're single.

[Nubia Perez]

Yeah, yeah, it was great.

[Ben Walter]

But then you didn't.

[Nubia Perez]

But then I didn't.

[Ben Walter]

What happened?

[Nubia Perez]

There was some writing on the wall that there was going to be some layoffs at the company I was working for, and my dad started getting kind of sick. He had already, at that point, had two valve replacements and a pacemaker put in. So combination of those two things, I knew deep down that my calling was to come back to the company. It was what my dad had expressed to me privately that he had always wanted. But I fought.

[Ben Walter]

Really deeply fought it. I mean, even considered changing a career she loved just to avoid Gretna.

[Nubia Perez]

I had looked at pharmaceutical sales. I had looked at teaching. I had looked at anything under the sun except coming back to Gretna. I really, really did not want to come back.

[Ben Walter]

There was only one thing that could change Nubia's mind, and it wasn't her parents. It wasn't her sister. In fact, it took some divine inspiration.

[Nubia Perez]

We're Catholic. And I ended up going to mass that Sunday, and the priest says, I'm going to tell y' all a story about how I had the calling to become a priest. And he starts telling the story of how he did not want to be a priest. And he tried to negotiate and say, hey, how about this? I'll have six sons, and I'll make them all be priests. But I don't want to. I want to have family. So I left that day. I was like, oh, I get it. I get it. Okay, I'm going to do this. It's not what I wanted to do, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

[Ben Walter]

Although Nubia was ready to accept her fate, she had a condition for her return. She took her parents out to dinner and made her pitch.

[Nubia Perez]

If Gretna can support me getting my MBA, then I'll come work in the family business for two years. That was May 1, 2012. I started my MBA at Rice University in August and my father passed away in September.

[Ben Walter]

The death of her father marks the end of what Nubia refers to as the golden years of Gretna.

[Nubia Perez]

I call it the golden years from 1980 to 2012 for a couple reasons. The company withstood the ups and downs of oil and gas.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, which is not easy.

[Nubia Perez]

Which is not easy. And that is an impressive milestone and something to be very proud of just to withstand.

[Ben Walter]

The mid to late 80s were tough

[Nubia Perez]

after the 80s and then again the 90s. So just that cyclical nature of the business. But because we were 100% oil and

[Ben Walter]

gas through all those cycles, Gretna seemed fine.

[Nubia Perez]

You just know that your parents will take care of things. And I didn't really, truly understand all the nuts and bolts of what was happening within the company. Then comes what I call the dark years. Between 2012 up until probably 2023, it's

[Ben Walter]

quite a long time.

[Nubia Perez]

It was a good 10 years. A good 10 years. And knowing what I know now, at that time, there was no clear leadership or no clear direction because Gretna had always been fine. We just assumed that things would just continue the way they are.

[Ben Walter]

And for a while, things did. The company stayed relatively stable. They had their oil and gas contracts and Nubia had branched out into aerospace. More on that in a moment. And they had their biggest year ever in 2019.

[Nubia Perez]

But I call it the dark years because of the image of us not truly knowing what was happening from a cultural standpoint.

[Ben Walter]

Who was in charge then? Your mom.

[Nubia Perez]

So that was part of the problem. There was no clear leadership. There were employees at the time, but it was very fragmented.

[Ben Walter]

And what were you doing?

[Nubia Perez]

Oh, I'm a fire extinguisher. I remember coming into work, you run to the problem. Literally not knowing what my day was going to be like. And I remember being very proud of that at the time of, oh, I just go where the problem is, whether it's people not wearing the right uniforms to we have to get a new insurance or we need to revamp our handbook. So all over the place because a freshly minted mba, er. I thought I knew it all. I was not involved at all in customer facing, acquiring new customers, talking to customers. There was just other things going on. And we just always assumed Gretna would continue the way it's going.

[Ben Walter]

That's not to say Nubia wasn't making strategic decisions. She was in fact, diversifying from oil and gas into aerospace and federal contracts was an initiative she had led.

[Nubia Perez]

In order to participate in the aerospace industry, you have to have certain certifications, not just ISO, but a quality certification called AS9100, which is very rigid. So so we revamped our quality management system during this time in order to be able to participate in the aerospace industry.

[Ben Walter]

And so all this time, what you called the dark ages, who was in charge? No one.

[Nubia Perez]

That whole time loosely in charge was my mom was president, my sister and I vice president. And I know no one can see me but in quotation marks because there's no clear roles or functions for those titles at the time.

[Ben Walter]

So just the three of you were running the company?

[Nubia Perez]

It was a time where I thought leadership by consensus was the way to go. We were just doing what we needed to do to survive.

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[Ben Walter]

okay Kathleen, this seems like a great time to talk a little more about Gretna and Nubia's story. What'd you think of the story? What do you think of her business?

[Kathleen]

For me, this wasn't a story about growth or hype. This was a story about stayed when it was easier to walk away.

[Ben Walter]

Oh, that's an interesting observation. Say more.

[Kathleen]

She's not someone who is like bullishly hard charging into being the leader of this company and her life could have looked so much different going into international sustainable development.

[Ben Walter]

For me, this was less a story about the business, although it's fascinating, and more a story about the business's CEO and how the business's CEO's journey evolved along with that business.

[Kathleen]

I could not agree more. So can we talk a little bit about leadership and just how the business was structured too? Because I'm curious to know what you think on that score coming out of like the dark ages. Right. She talked about a decade of darkness where there was no leadership and no one was in charge. Leadership in general, like flat structures, and that's getting a lot of heat right now in the market. As a small company, normally you have one person who's in charge and that shows that you've got a level of decisiveness as a company and then you have people who are experts at what they do. She didn't have that for a while, and then they moved to that sort of model. So I'm curious to know what you think. What is the inflection point where someone actually really does need to build out middle management or senior leadership team, like separate from this business?

[Ben Walter]

Yeah. There's no right answer to that. There's always an inflection point when you go from 0 to 1, and there's an inflection point when you go from 1 to 2. And then there's another one when you get to about 25 because everyone can't sit in a room together and have a conversation. And somewhere between that and 200 is when it changes. Because at 200 you can't know everyone. And that means you need a leadership team.

[Kathleen]

I think the thing to punctuate for people is early days. It really just is you as a founder. And a lot of the founders I speak to are like, well, if I had a senior leadership team in place and if I had a GM or coo, then we'd be in a radically different place. And it takes a while to get there.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, but the more amazing part for me was not how many people are how flat or how tiered it was how long they went with no one in charge. I kept asking, asking about it because I kept thinking like, how does that work? Who decides what happens when people disagree? And I know they're family and it sounds like they're very close and that's beautiful. And by the way, I should add, the reason I kept pushing on it is because it's not uncommon in family owned businesses to sort of have these ill defined roles where people do what they want, when they want. Everyone just gravitates toward what they like or what they're good at. And I think that does a disservice to the business. It's not that it can't work for a while, but as she found out, it can't work forever. And so I think it is pretty common among these family businesses, partially because people don't want to face into it, because it means making choices and choices about people, the same people who sit around the Thanksgiving dinner table together. And that's hard. But let's get back to Nubia. Gretna was certainly established in the right spot, but like anything else, that's not enough to totally isolate it from global patterns and especially global pandemics.

[Nubia Perez]

Covid exposed the good, the bad, the ugly.

[Ben Walter]

A friend of mine used to say, when the tide goes out, you find out who's not wearing a bathing suit.

[Nubia Perez]

Exactly. We went from 2019 bathing suit, our highest grossing year, to just plummeting. And because we didn't have a strong framework, strong vision, strong policies, it really just started crumbling. And the biggest outcome of that. You've asked it now several times who was in charge?

[Ben Walter]

And I can't help it. Sorry.

[Nubia Perez]

Well, I couldn't answer that.

[Ben Walter]

And once again, divine inspiration led Nubia to her next step.

[Nubia Perez]

It was December 2022 was during the holidays, and with little kids and nieces and nephews, Frozen was the rave.

[Ben Walter]

That's the movie Frozen, the juggernaut that introduced sisters Elsa and Anna to the Disney canon. While half watching the movie with her kids, Nubia was busy studying Gretna's new org chart.

[Nubia Perez]

Like, who's going to lead this company? And in Frozen 2, when Elsa goes down to the cave and she's looking for the fifth spirit, and then she goes into this cave and she realized I'm the fifth spirit. It literally was an epiphany. As I'm sitting on my couch and I'm looking at the org chart, it became very apparent that there was no one else who was quote, unquote, meant for this role than me. I am one of the owners. I grew up in the family business. I have my mba, and I wanted it as much as deep down, I probably didn't want to admit that. But I take leadership very seriously, and I knew that it was time for me to truly take the reins of this company.

[Ben Walter]

Nubia went to talk to her mother and sister shortly after her epiphany.

[Nubia Perez]

My mom was 100% supportive. She said, this is actually what your dad had always wanted. My sister was supportive as well.

[Ben Walter]

With her mother and sister backing her, she went back to work after the holidays to address the company.

[Nubia Perez]

I gave a big speech and I said, all right, it's time. It was more for me than for everyone else, but I was basically laying my qualifications as to why I should be the person to be in charge of the company.

[Ben Walter]

And what did you do when you took the reins?

[Nubia Perez]

The first six months, I sat on our shop floor and I did what I call an internship in the company. So I just sat and watched and learned more on the operational side of the company. And I would talk to the guys at the time. They say, nubia, it's so good to see on the shop floor. It's good to have you here. And I think that's what they needed. They just needed some more leadership and a true vision of where the company was going to go.

[Ben Walter]

Nubia also enlisted the help of a professional organization called Vistage and got an executive coach.

[Nubia Perez]

She was the one who first called me CEO and really helped me talk things out and really make sense of what my role was. But more importantly is through Vistage, I was introduced to eos, which is entrepreneurial operating system. It creates a framework for us to take our vision and bring it down to an accountability chart with very specific roles and responsibilities, making sure that all the right people are on the right seats, all based on our values, and creating a very strong culture.

[Ben Walter]

She got off to a strong start, but she still had to face into the realities of running a small business.

[Nubia Perez]

The manufacturing business is tough. Whether it was cash flow or whether it was having to let someone go who'd been here for 25 years, it was having to have hard conversations with my sister. Whatever those moments were, I call it the crying in the shower moment. When you're just, I can't. I can't do this. I'm gonna start crying.

[Ben Walter]

So she asked for help from the one person who knew the company like she did, the former CEO.

[Nubia Perez]

I remember going to my dad, to the cemetery, literally getting on my knees and be like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to move to London and raise my international kids. And I was looking up and I remember saying, just give me a sign. Give me a sign, please. And the trees were kind of swaying, and the branches would just go back and forth, back and forth. And I took as a sign of, like, just gotta keep going. Just keep going. I joke that my dad has helped the company more from heaven than when he was here, because there's so many random just, okay, well, that was so weird. We would have an inspector leave and I would get a phone call a couple hours later saying, I just saw you guys on a website and I'm a QC inspector. Just wondering if you have any openings, you know, trying to meet payroll some weeks. And there would be moments where we would just get this random check for a couple thousand dollars because of a customer that forgot to pay three years.

[Ben Walter]

And Nubia is leading with bravery and intention. She doesn't hide from the struggles and has found more creative ways to move Gretna into their next chapter.

[Nubia Perez]

So having those very hard conversations with our vendors of, hey, I know we owe you this. Are you okay with this month's this week and our promise by next week? And we all do it. Maybe a lot of companies don't admit it, but that's part of the solution, is not hiding and having those conversations with your vendors. The other aspect of it is the elimination of operational waste. My guys get excited about getting a tool that will help reduce the time from 40 minutes to 5 minutes or whatever the case may be. So I'll push them sometimes like, yeah, but the material sat there for five days before it even got to the machine. So let's try shaving off weeks and days. The non sexy part of it is oftentimes on the operational side, the flow from the material to the machine, to inspection, back to the machine to shipping and receiving, sitting there, getting the all of that process, there's ways to save costs. When it comes to that, it's a little more nuanced, so it can be very frustrating. But it's equally as important as, you know, getting that check.

[Ben Walter]

The biggest thing Nubia did was to remove all the knowledge from one central person. Unlike her father before, she wanted to spread knowledge and expertise out among a team. And finding leaders who can do that, that's really hard.

[Nubia Perez]

Between 20, 23 and now, I counted the other day, I think I had 17 different people say on my leadership team. So initially it was, oh, this person's been with us for 20 plus years. Clearly they should be part of the leadership team. So sometimes it was those people I would put in, it would be, oh, this person's really technical. Maybe they should be on the team. And then do they fit the values and the culture of the company first and foremost? And do they have the expertise and the experience for the role that I'm asking them or the department I'm asking them to lead. And it sounds so Simple. But a lot of times with family run businesses or small businesses, it's, hey, you're really good with people. You should head our HR department.

[Ben Walter]

What works emotionally may not work strategically.

[Nubia Perez]

I had to remember that my role was not only to work in the business, but also on the business and take that time to step away and seeing where are we going with all of this and the way that you do that is through a strong leadership team, which I did not have initially. So now I am optimistic and excited and confident in the direction of the company, primarily because of the leadership team that I have now.

[Ben Walter]

But it took her a while to get there. In fact, the four people who are now leading it are brand new. They joined just in the last few

[Nubia Perez]

months as a team. We really all started working together in Gelling, like in the last month and a half.

[Ben Walter]

But making those strategic decisions, it's become

[Nubia Perez]

much easier with an accountability chart with very specific roles and responsibilities, making sure that all the right people are on the right seats, all based on our values, and creating a very strong culture. So it makes decisions of who stays and who goes extremely easy. Because at the end of the day, are you on the bus?

[Kathleen]

Are you off the bus?

[Nubia Perez]

Do you believe in these values? Do you exemplify these values? Are you okay with accountability? If you're a leader, are you going to lead? Are you going to manage? Are you going to hold accountable your team? One of my roles is to promote the company's culture, and I'm very proud of our culture. Now.

[Ben Walter]

Do you feel like you've hit your stride as a CEO?

[Nubia Perez]

I definitely feel that I'm starting to have fun.

[Ben Walter]

Okay. Kathleen, do you have a question?

[Kathleen]

It's been such a rich conversation. I'm just curious, given your early interest in sustainable development and international, has that found its way into the business strategy at all?

[Nubia Perez]

Yes, it has. We want to be leaders in mindful manufacturing. So mindful manufacturing, the way we're defining it is to be very intentional in not just our employees and our customers, but finding ways to implement more of a sustainability throughout as much as we can on our shop floor and in our offices. But from an international perspective, it's understanding how manufacturing is on a global scale. It's still being defined, but because of the sustainability background of mine, I'm trying to figure out ways how to bring it more and more into our company.

[Kathleen]

It feels like it was a sliding doors moment for you where you picked a path and there was another path. And so I'm just curious if you feel like it was Worth it.

[Nubia Perez]

I do. I do feel that it's worth it. At the end of the day, we all want to be seen. We all want to be heard. We all want to be valued. I feel that I've been able to drive that culture of empathy that you don't often see in a machine shop. I'm proud of positioning Gretna as a company, a leader, or a participant when it comes to workforce development. Very passionate about the conversations around onshoring and really making manufacturing sexy again and getting young people excited about manufacturing.

[Ben Walter]

And what about the network? Do you mentor other business owners? Have they mentored you? Is there an ecosystem of that?

[Nubia Perez]

Yes, a very strong one. So because there's such a renaissance in manufacturing, I'm a board member of the Greater Houston Manufacturing association, and you're definitely seeing this new generation of manufacturers throughout the United States that are supporting one another. It used to be an industry that was very private, where you didn't talk about what machines you're getting or anything like that. But it's much more open now. There is enough work out there, and the more we support each other, then it just helps the whole industry.

[Ben Walter]

So you and I share something in common, which is we both grew up in Houston. I would have said on my own that Houston has a special entrepreneurial culture. But talk to people about the environment in Texas, in Houston, that makes it such a good place to build a business.

[Nubia Perez]

Houston is extremely diverse, and when you look at the international makeup of Houston is an immigrant city. People leave their countries to find something better. So that spirit, I think, is definitely one of the cornerstones of Houston because it's such an international city that is embedded definitely in the work ethic of the city. It's also because you have the oil and gas industry, the medical industry, you have our proximity to NASA. So there is some very strong industries that are also in Houston. And we have great restaurants, so it makes business dinners really fun.

[Ben Walter]

The food is very good. I say whenever I go back, I like to eat.

[Nubia Perez]

It's not the most beautiful city, but people who go there, they go to work, and it's a great place to start a company, raise a family, and you can fly direct to literally anywhere in the world.

[Ben Walter]

Kathleen, I know you enjoyed this conversation with Nubia as much as I did. I'm thrilled to see the interest in manufacturing resurface across the country. It's awesome, and it's amazing to hear about her growth as a leader. It's clear the company's in great hands, but it could so easily not have been if she hadn't stepped up and taken the CEO role. And I know we'll talk about it a little more later on, but it's a fascinating evolution. And of course, I have an affinity for this story because they're based in Houston and that's my hometown.

[Kathleen]

Yeah, you both are Houstonians. And it does sound like it's a really special community that she was able to plug into.

[Ben Walter]

Texas is an amazing place to grow companies, big companies, small companies, doesn't matter. There's the energy sector, there's a tech sector, there's a financial sector, and we spent a lot of today's episode showcasing that. But the whole state is set up to make growing a business easy. There's a low tax, high innovation, pro growth ethos that really enables growth. The big lesson is that you need to put your business in a place where there's a supportive ecosystem. If you want to serve the auto industry, be in Detroit. If you want to be in entertainment, how about the West Coast? And for energy, it's Texas.

[Kathleen]

Can we talk about that? Because there's been this. I think it's a misnomer, like this idea that you can move to the middle of nowhere, Topeka, Kansas, and be out of a ecosystem, but the cost of living is less, and so you'll have more Runway. As a small business owner, like, what do you make of that?

[Ben Walter]

I think it depends what you're doing. I think it's really hard.

[Nubia Perez]

Yeah.

[Ben Walter]

There are certain small businesses that you can, you know, if you were serving that local community. Sure. And maybe if you're an established entrepreneur in that business, you've done it before. I'm going to do it again. But when you're coming up, it's tough because I can't overstate how important it is to have mentors, a supply of employees, a deep list of suppliers, a deep list of customers. When you live in a city that has a critical mass in any industry, you just run into people because you have friends and your friends have friends and they work in things and you see them at a party and you learn a new connection and they can help. It's quite hard. Not impossible, but hard.

[Kathleen]

Yeah. New York finance, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles for entertainment.

[Ben Walter]

Austin's an emerging tech hub. You want to be an automotive. You should probably have a few people in Detroit that kind of know something about cars there. And it might not be everything. Like, there's a geothermal company that actually spun out of mit, but they've got a lot of stuff down in Houston. Because if you want to drill into the ground, there's people there who know how to do that. So you're going to have to go where the talent base is.

[Kathleen]

I always tell small business owners who are just starting out to think about really tapping into the local community. Everyone is so focused on their national footprint. And what is your local chamber of commerce look like local universities for Indians interns? Go to your library, find the local newspaper, find farmers markets. There's just so much richness in the local community when you can tap into that.

[Ben Walter]

The other thing you're going to find in your local community is either adjacent businesses or sometimes even competitors who want to help you succeed because they want their community to succeed. If you live in Chicago, you care that other people in Chicago succeed. It's the nature of a community and wanting to uplift a community, it doesn't mean you won't have relationships across the country. I mean, manufacturing is a distributed industry overall, but I think having some kind of critical mass somewhere, having a center of gravity or a magnet is pretty helpful, particularly in the early days.

[Nubia Perez]

That's good.

[Ben Walter]

Last question we ask every one of our guests. If you had one piece of advice for an aspiring or current small business owner, what would it be?

[Nubia Perez]

It would be to be open, but to stay humble. If you allow yourself and allow the universe to really guide you and you're open to it, then there are people who will help you along the way, even if it is your parents.

[Ben Walter]

Nubia, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for coming and joining us today.

[Nubia Perez]

Oh, thank you for having me. It's been super fun.

[Ben Walter]

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Unshakeables. If you liked this episode, please rate and review it. And next time we're getting into the AI conversation, but not the hyped up version, I'll be joined by Kathleen and special guest Oz Velashan, host of the hugely popular podcasts Tech Stuff and Sleepwalkers. Live from south by Southwest in Austin, Texas. We'll be digging into what small business owners really need to know to leverage AI. And we'll hear how some of them are actually using it right now to work smarter, move faster, and scale more effectively. I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from Iheartra Media. We'll see you back here soon.