Q&A with Matthew Nix, CEO of Nix Companies
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Matthew Nix, CEO of Nix Companies, is celebrating his 20th year with the Poseyville-based business. The company originated in 1902 when his great-great-grandfather started a blacksmith shop. Today, Matthew Nix and Adam Nix are the fifth-generation principal owners of the holding company.
Nix Companies includes Tri-County Equipment, Superior Fabrication, Heritage Custom Fabricators, Northend Gear & Machine, Indiana Body Works and King’s Custom Machine. Matthew Nix spoke with Inside INdiana Business about the company’s growth and complementary projects.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You’re celebrating 20 years with Nix Companies. Tell me about your journey to CEO.
Whenever I started, it was me, my dad, my grandpa and my aunt. There wasn’t such a thing as a CEO nor the need for one. I started when I was eight years old, cleaning machinery on Saturdays and in the summertime. I graduated from high school, went to Vincennes University for one year and joined the business full-time in 2004.
In 2010, I hired the first team member outside the family. In 2013, I hired the first salary support staff, had grown the business a little bit by then and then evolved the business. My dad and I were 50/50 partners by that time. But just by virtue of me being the one out pushing and growing the business, I was making the decisions: hiring, firing, acquiring and so forth.
Once I became the majority owner, I was president and CEO of our parent company I founded in 2017 as a holding company for our various subsidiaries we started or acquired along the way.
Talk about Nix Companies’ revenue growth under your leadership.
We grew the revenue over 100 times in 20 years. Less than 20 years, really. We’ve gone well past that now, like 128 times.
How did you achieve that growth?
Having a clear and compelling vision for where we wanted to go and assembling talent to do it. It’s pretty simple to say; it’s not so simple to do. But those are the two factors. We recently found out we made the list of the 40 largest job shop fabricators in the U.S. in Fabricator magazine, the main publication in our industry. We were, like, number 37.
We had a vision. I set that vision and assembled a small leadership team that bought into that. And then we’ve cast that vision for others of where we want to go as an organization. And that’s our vision statement, to be a world-class team, a nationally recognized brand that transcends generations.
We’ve been real intentional about trying to get the best talent there is to do that. And when I say best talent, we have very little pedigree. We don’t look for the best colleges or someone who worked for the best or biggest guys out there. It’s just people who have good values, want to work hard and be a part of something that’s always changing and growing and evolving.
What can you tell me about Nix Companies’ upcoming acquisition?
It’s a privately owned business, so I can’t talk about it until it’s closed, but it’s another multi-generational family business. They’re in a different part of the state. They’re in the same industry as us. The youngest generation there is going to retain some ownership in the new company and will be the managing partner of that business.
We’re excited to be able to carry on that family’s multigenerational legacy and for them to be able to continue to be a part of it. For us to be in a place to be able to do is gratifying and validation of what we’ve tried to create and build, the culture and reputation. They didn’t want to sell to investment buyers. They want their team members and their legacy taken care of. That deal is supposed to close in September.
Tell me about the company’s recent move and expansion.
We moved our parent company administration office into a temporary space. We bought an old historic house on Main St. in Poseyville. We call it the Founder’s House. It was an Airbnb. It was a fun, cool project. It’s the founding family of Poseyville. It was their home place from the 1800s, a big Victorian home. I hated to take it off the rental market because that was a neat thing to have for our little town.
But we’re temporarily in there, just a small administration team. The remainder of our support staff moved out to Frontage Road just outside of the Poseyville city limits. That’s where we’re building our new headquarters office. When that’s done, that will house the staff that’s already out there and the team that’s in Poseyville.
What about the book on the growth of Nix Companies that’s coming out this year?
It’s called Forging Ahead: How Five Generations of Small Town Values Collided with Big Ambitions to Spark One of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies. The book starts by telling the history of the company, and then it starts to heat up once the fifth generation joins the business. My brother and wife and I are the fifth generation. It tells the story of our journey.
It’s a relatable business book, and there are, hopefully, some leadership tidbits in there. But more so, it’s a family business story that will be so relatable. The good, bad and ugly associated with that and how rewarding it can be also. A middle America story coming from a tiny town. There are 1,500 people in our town, and we’re the largest employer now, which is a tremendous sense of responsibility to continue to give back and support the community that supported us.
We’re excited about being able to share that story with others. I’m an avid reader, and there have been some great stories that have influenced me. That was part of the inspiration to be able to pay it forward and do that for others. It’s slated to come out in early December.
Explain the ProFab Alliance and how that began.
That was part of the motivation behind getting the book out there. The family holding company is made up of multiple, small businesses that operate with some level of autonomy. Some are consolidated together in some ways, and some remain completely autonomous and independent. We’ve had to develop a lot of systems and processes along the way to be able to do that.
There’s just such a massive need in the space, particularly in our industry. We’re focusing on our industry, but the need exists in every industry. There are so many folks who are good at the trade and whatever they did to make their business successful but aren’t as skilled or as focused on the back office and the administrative side of things. The things you have to do to keep a business healthy and keep it around.
We come in alongside these folks and let them do what they do well but help them make the business a more well-oiled machine. Our mission statement for that business summarizes it: we want to help them grow their business, maximize their profits and live a more balanced life.
A lot of business owners are making plenty of money. They’re just tired of being a slave to the business. They’re tired of missing the kids’ ball games or not being able to go on vacation. We meet them where they’re at and help them with whatever it is they need.
What about Nix Franchising? Where does that stand?
It’s taking things a step further. Instead of just interacting with business owners as a consultant, they can become part of our network and operate as a location of ours without selling the business to us. They maintain ownership of the business, but they get access to all the resources we have.
The advantage for us is we get to leverage our economies of scale, but it also helps us grow geographically and continue to add customers through that franchise network. We’re still in the late stages of finalizing the legal aspects of that.
Tell me about the MakingSparks podcast. How did that get started?
It’s part of MakingChips, the parent podcast. I got to know those guys a few years back through the Tri-State Manufacturers’ Alliance. I used to be the chair of that. We had them down to a TSMA event, and they emceed it. We hosted it in our new facility and then went out to dinner.
They asked me to be on the podcast. I was on it a time or two, and then my wife and I were on the podcast a couple of times. They’re the longest-running manufacturing podcast and one of the top downloaded podcasts in manufacturing. We’ve been wanting to do our own thing, so it was like, why recreate the wheel? Why not just partner with the guys that do it best?
I pitched it to them. I thought we could focus more on the niche of the welders and fabricators, where they were more geared toward the machining side of our industry. But Metalworking Nation is what we call it, so a lot of alignment. And we launched MakingSparks.
It’s been fun. I’ve met a lot of cool people through the connections with the show and the sponsors but also people reaching out to us that listen to the show. I think it’ll lead to some business opportunities, but even if it doesn’t, it’s been fun to do. Try to give back a little bit.
Being a CEO is a tough job as it is. Why start all these other projects?
Everything that I just talked to you about is all aligned and interwoven, and it’s all part of our parent company. I’m not doing things off on the side, and they’re all complementary to one another.
For example, the podcast led me to a consulting client. It’ll probably bring acquisition opportunities to our business. The book is going to bring consulting, franchise and acquisition opportunities. It’s going to be a tremendous resource for our team members to understand our story. They’re all connected. There’s always a reason behind those things.
But even with that said, I have to be careful about making sure that it’s a valuable use of my time and that I’m not getting distracted. What enables me to do that is I have a tremendous leadership team that is focused on the day-to-day. Just within my executive team, we’ve got a chief financial officer, a vice president of business development and administration and then three VPs of operations.
Each of those three guys runs multiple locations. Every location has a general manager who reports to one of those VPs. We have systems and processes that I can keep my thumb on things, and I know what’s going on and if I’m needed.
I just like being out, moving the business forward. That’s my best and highest role, and I think my team would agree. They want me out, working on new things, acquisitions, consulting, franchising and trying to move the business forward.
What’s the state of manufacturing in Indiana and particularly southwest Indiana?
At this moment in time, at a very micro level, it’s a little soft right now. But beyond that, the state of manufacturing is very strong. I mean, you’re living under a rock if you don’t know about the shortage of skilled labor. That’s an increasingly hotter and hotter topic. But beyond that, it’s strong.
The pandemic drove a lot of reshoring of U.S. manufacturing. A lot of that was already trending that way, but it accelerated it. The U.S. infrastructure spending is at an all-time high. There’s so much going on with investing in old, worn-out assets but also the electrification of the country and all the things that are going into that.