We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dan Becker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I am not just happy as a business owner, I feel purpose. I can only speak for myself on this one. Everyone is a little bit different, there is no guarantee that starting a business will give YOU purpose, running a business gives my life more meaning and I am grateful for that. I could never look back once I left the regular job workforce. Once I took on entrepreneurship, I knew that I would never go back, there was no question about it. I just didn’t find meaning in a strict regular job routine where everything was cookie cutter and spelled out for me. I wasn’t even working in a very boring environment when I had a regular job, aerospace engineering is very interesting and productive to society. I worked with big companies on very important projects such as industrial gas turbine power plant design and military aviation gas turbine design (jet turbines), as part of a team of hundreds of engineers, we were responsible for designing the next generation of power turbines for industrial/military use. It was rewarding in a ‘sense’, but if I had to put my finger on it, the rewarding aspects of working in this kind of job were not enough for me. I wanted to be completely free to use my creativity, the corporate environment was not built for that, and for good reason. Big companies generally make slower progress because they need to follow rules, there is a lot more on the line for them, more money and reputation and in some cases, peoples lives. Don’t get me wrong, when I was working in a real aerospace engineering environment we were allowed to be creative to design aircraft or power generation engines, but there was a hard limit. That limit was company specific, but very clearly defined. See, the way these big hardware and tech companies work is, they have rules that get put in place over time. You can design parts and run tests, but everything has to fall within their design ‘rulebooks’ (and there are many), the reason they do this is to prevent everyone from doing what ever they want which can end up being a huge liability and waste of money and time. With companies like General Electric or Pratt & Whitney, with hundreds of thousands of employees, there needs to be a level of organization that allows engineers to work but not go completely out of bounds. For example, there is a history of jet engine design that goes back 100 years, there is a ‘rule of thumb’ for how to design turbine rotors, or turbine blades (the stuff that makes those engines turn), this rule of thumb has been used for a long time and it works. So, we try to re-use it as much as possible, because why re-invent the wheel right? This is great in a sense because it makes for reliable engines (most modern jet engine technology can be traced directly back to Nazi Germany during their development of jet technology) but it inhibits creative types from wanting to expand and innovate. If one young engineer were to come up with a completely new idea that is a bit wild, but good, what do you think the executives would say? They would love to hear about your ‘idea’ however if those ideas do not fall within the ‘rulebook’ for design criteria for rotors or turbine blades, then they would just give you that corporate smile and tell you to refer to design manual 6719 or whatever. In the eyes of a large corporation, it would cost too much money to implement new ideas, and there would need to be tons of research and risk to make a wild new idea happen. I was willing to take that risk myself with my own business and my own products. Big corporations need to have bureaucracy in place, unfortunately, it keeps them safe. I wanted to break out of the ‘safe zone’ and really try new stuff, the only way I could do that was on my own. And I love it!

Dan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi, my name is Dan Becker. I was born and raised in Hollywood Florida. I’m an FIU Alumni with a B.S in Mechanical Engineering, I graduated in 2008. For about 7-8 years after graduation I worked in West Palm Beach for a number of different Aerospace companies. I learned a lot about rigorous engineering design and analysis of jet turbine components and corporate structure and operations of big and small businesses. I started my company in 2014-2015, I always wanted to have my own business but it took some time before I was able to take the plunge. I never really felt ready, but you never do with these things. I had a part time consulting position with a company in Jupiter which allowed me to have some time on the side to work on my own consulting company. However consulting was short lived and I soon got my hands on my very first 3D printer in 2015. I was obsessed with 3D printing ever since. I knew how to design parts using CAD (Computer Aided Design) so I naturally started thinking of products to 3D print and sell. I was very inexperienced back then, with business, 3D printing in general and being on my own. None of that mattered because I had a vision. My vision was a to grow a 3D printing manufacturing company right here in the USA, where we design automotive parts, make them and ship them from our location. It has been about 8 years, Velossa Tech Engineering has grown into a mature and well established company in the aftermarket industry. We now have a fleet of 42 proprietary in-house designed 3D printers as of 2022 (and growing) and a staff of 7 and we are planning to scale up consistently for the foreseeable future. Our product line is unique in that it is both an aesthetic and performance oriented aftermarket modification for car hobbyists. The trademarked name for the product is the BIG MOUTH ram air intake and can be found on our website www.velossatechdesign.com for many different vehicle models. All of our products are 3D printed and then processed through our own in-house developed finishing process to give the products a beautiful sheen. Most people have no idea our parts are even 3D printed, our company doesn’t just make car parts, we also develop manufacturing technology for 3D printing on a large scale.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I never went to school for management or business. When I started out, I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn’t even heard of the word ‘distributor’ before. My lack of experience showed in every way, starting out. After about 2 years of learning everything myself, doing everything myself and solving all problems on my own, I was getting drained. One of my good friends who is also a business owner, who was a bit farther ahead than me, had suggested that I start hiring people to take on lesser important tasks which will free up my time for more important tasks, this is important for scaling up. If I am too busy printing shipping labels and packing boxes, when will I have time to design more products or shmooze with distributors and network? I jumped right in soon after I got the suggestion, I hired my first employee, and shortly after that I hired a second, and then a third… I soon built a team of people around me where every person had a purpose. I felt both scared and relieved. Morale is very important for a team. Humans are not robots. We don’t just need electricity and lubrication from time to time and we work forever. Humans need to feel like they are at home, no matter where they are. Morale is extremely important for me and my team. Before I hire anyone, I usually let them know up front that if they are going to hate this job, don’t work here. Morale is more important than skillset. A person with a huge resume and impressive skillset is going to do better in the beginning, but a person with no skills and a strong morale and team oriented mentality will grow and will become a long term asset. In the age of the internet, new skills can be learned quickly. Since I view morale as such an important aspect of my company culture, I curate it very carefully by instilling a ‘no drama’ policy in our workplace. If there is a problem, we sit down and talk about it like adults and we find a solution. There are rarely any problems in our workplace, though. Morale can be instilled into people by example. As the company owner and leader of the team, I have to keep my cool when things might be going downhill. Don’t take it out on them, ever. Another important thing is to always give your team the benefit of the doubt, even if they make mistakes (and they will) you have to hear them out first. Good leadership does more listening and less talking. My team sees this, and as a result we have a solid symbiosis that is built on trust. They trust me that I will be there for them in a time of need, and I trust them that they will get the job done to the best of their ability.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Any business owner will tell you that they had to unlearn a few things. And if they say they didn’t, they are either lying or are doomed. No one person is going to be the best at everything, we all need to learn and unlearn certain things. Humbling ourselves is part of entrepreneurship, this is what makes it hard. Having to face the fact that you are alone in this (I have no partners) and that there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for business is terrifying and makes you doubt yourself and your decisions on a daily basis, sometimes hourly. It gets better as time goes by, eventually you learn to trust yourself. The most important thing I had to unlearn was not to take things personally. I am very passionate about my company and vision, thus I tend to identify myself through it which leads to emotions when someone is upset at my business. Not all customers will be happy with your company, no matter how hard you try. If 99 people think your company is the best company out there, there will be that one person who will test your emotions. Usually this ends up being at its worst on social media. Unlearning how to highly personalize the one person while mistakenly ignoring the 99 positive others is the lesson I had to unlearn. I needed to give equal weight to everyone, if 99 out of 100 people love what you do and stand for, then chances are you are doing it right.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.velossatechdesign.com
• Instagram: velossa_tech
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/velossatechdesign
• Youtube: velossatech